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June 21

How can I get Unicode range of a Language.

Dear Experts,

I want to know the unicode range of following languages.

For example Japaneese scripts are Hiragana and Katakana starts from 0x400 and ends at 0x4ff. Like Japaneese what are the starting and ending of the below languages.

Russian,German, Italian, French, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish.

Thanks in Advance,

Santhosh4g (talk) 05:36, 21 June 2010 (UTC)\

Try here first. If that doesn't solve it let us know. The range is in the first page of the language's PDF. http://www.unicode.org/charts/index.html --mboverload@ 07:39, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I already checked this page. But I dont know the exact script name of all languages. For example Japaneese scripts are Hiragana and Katakana, also Russian characters are identified in Cyrillic pdfs.

How can I map Russian to Cyrillic ? Also what are the script names of other languages ?

Hope my problem is clear. Santhosh4g (talk) 10:53, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, Unicode does not try to encode for specific languages. It encodes for character sets - that is, ways of graphically representing text. These writing schemes are independent of language - that's an idea higher up on the "conceptual ladder" than character-encoding. Because Unicode codes for all possible kinds of writing systems, you need to keep in mind that this requires a sort of complicated architecture. Every single unicode code point has a unique numeric value (usually, this "code point" maps to "one single character", but there are exceptions). Read about terminology for Unicode. Groups of code points are arranged into Unicode planes, and the Basic Multilingual Plane can be subcategorized into separate language families - see this table and the others below it in our article. However, there can be significant overlap between languages, (e.g. English, French, and Czech all share many characters, but each also use characters not found in the other two). Similarly, Unicode understands and categorizes CJK characters - glyphs that are common to Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Because of the unique way that these written languages represent their ideas, Unicode attempts to share these character encodings to the maximum extent possible. So, for basic Japanese writing, you probably will find that your codepoints will span these categories on the basic multilingual plane:

• Supplemental Punctuation (2E00–2E7F)
• CJK Radicals Supplement (2E80–2EFF)
• Kangxi Radicals (2F00–2FDF)
• Ideographic Description Characters (2FF0–2FFF)
• CJK Symbols and Punctuation (3000–303F)
• Hiragana (3040–309F)
• Katakana (30A0–30FF)
• Bopomofo (3100–312F)
• CJK Strokes (31C0–31EF)
• Katakana Phonetic Extensions (31F0–31FF)
• Enclosed CJK Letters and Months (3200–32FF)
• CJK Compatibility (3300–33FF)
• CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A (3400–4DBF)

You may find that Russian can be written entirely in Cyrillic and its supplements:

• Cyrillic (0400–04FF)
• Cyrillic Supplement (0500–052F)

However, it depends on exactly what you are writing. Unicode allows you to mix and match elements from these different character sets because they are all encoded in a uniform way - so that your text file is represented and rendered universally, independent of the language used to interpret it. That is the purpose of Unicode - to separate character representation from linguistic interpretation. In a former era, if you were to open a perfectly formatted Cyrillic text file that you mistakenly thought was English, your computer would decode it in the wrong way and spew gibberish to the screen. You wouldn't know what the source language was, except that "it wasn't ASCII". Now, if your computer opens a Unicode file with Russian language text in it, you might not understand the language, but at least it prints properly. Nimur (talk) 14:20, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Still my problem is not solved. Im trying to display different language texts with opengl. Inorder to support whole unicode character set, I should create 65536 bitmaps. It will consume huge memory and not practical at all. Now my idea is to create required bitmaps for current system language.

For example, if current system language is Russian I'll create bitmaps from 0x400 to 0x4ff.

I dont know maximum unicode range to support following languages. German Italian French Spanish Danish Swedish Norwegian Finnish

Inorder to support a single language at a time, I have to know the unicode character range of these languages.

Thanks in advance, —Preceding unsigned comment added by Santhosh4g (talk • contribs) 13:48, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Binary - Difference Between Displaying Text And Numbers

how do computers tell the difference between text and numbers in binary? i know very little about binary. from what i understand "97" is the same as "a". is an extra piece of binary added or what? 68.7.192.98 (talk) 06:42, 21 June 2010 (UTC)legoman

You mean like ASCII or Unicode? Don't fully understand the question. --mboverload@ 07:43, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

To a computer everything is numbers. Say you have a byte in binary "11001011" - it might mean 203 in decimal, or it might mean -53 in two's complement, or it might mean the letter "Í" in ISO/IEC 8859-1 encoding. You tell the computer what you want to do with it - whether you want it as an unsigned number, a signed number, or a character, but to the computer it's all the same number. --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:24, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Antilived is correct; allow me to expand on the explanation a bit for those who may not follow that explanation.

Modern computers store everything as collections of 1s and 0s. A specific collection of 1s and 0s may represent just about anything: numbers, text, pictures, videos, etc. In order to interpret a given collection, the computer must assume how it is to be interpreted.

Your "97", for instance, is represented as 01100001 in an eight-bit 'byte', a common organization on modern computers, and does represent the number 'a' in ASCII, a commonly used set of codes for letters. If the 'a' were to be represented in EBCDIC, it would have a different 8-bit code, and in Unicode it actually has 16 bits. My point is that, as said above, everything stored by the computer is done in 1s and 0s, and representing letters is a matter of deciding what arrangement of 1s and 0s will represent what letters. Usually this is, in turn, a matter of using a standard set of such arrangements, mostly so that other programs and other computers will also be able to interpret your output.

As to how the computer tells, it is normally told how to interpret any given set of data. For instance, on a Windows system, computer programs rely heavily on file extensions for information on how to interpret data: .TXT is thought of as a file of letter codes in ASCII, .MPG as a file of codes for video, .XLS as an Excel file, etc.

If a computer were just given the binary equivalent of 97, then it could be a number of things, and there is no way for the computer (or any engine or person) to say for sure what was meant by it. rc (talk) 11:04, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) ... or "01100001" could represent part of a floating-point number or the colour of a pixel in an image or the address of some other bit of data or a processor instruction - the possibilities are endless. Basically, the computer does not know or care what "01100001" represents - it leaves that up to the program that it is running. To do this, the program has to have some way of remembering what type of data is stored in each memory address that it is using - so it uses more memory addresses to store that information too. Different programming languages handle this in different ways. Some langauges insist that the programmer identifies the data type of each program variable before they use it in the program. Other languages work out the data type of a program variable from the way that the programmer uses it. Some languages only allow the programmer to use data types from a fixed set of built-in types; other languages allow the programmer to define their own data types. Some simple languages even side-step the whole issue by not bothering to remember the data type of each variable at all - the danger then is that the programmer can easily produce nonsense by, say, multiplying the letter "a" by the colour blue. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:20, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Most modern "normal" computers have specialized circuitry (digital function units inside the CPU) to deal with the following types of data: whole numbers ("int), including negative numbers; numbers that represent fractions ("float"); numbers that represent locations inside the computer (pointers); and (sometimes) special circuitry for "characters" - numbers that directly map to the most common representation of letters and printable characters. (There are variations, especially with regard to the accuracy and range of these values, depending on the kind of computer you have). These special interpretations of binary are called "primitive data types" and have special meaning in most programming languages. They are the most efficient kinds of data to work with, because the concept represented in the programming language directly maps to a single, specific operation with one particular electronic circuit inside the CPU. Every other type of data, like a picture, video, or music sample, must be represented as some combination of instructions and streams of primitive data. For example, a character string is often constructed using several characters and a special numeric code, NULL (but this depends on your programming language and how you choose to represent a string). Similarly, you can construct a PCM audio buffer out of a stream of integers, with a few special numeric tags to describe certain formatting details. Other kinds of data, like variable-sized compressed data, can be carefully treated "as if" it were a regular numeric value, as long as the programmer is careful with the operations applied to that data. Some computers have specialized hardware to deal with such "compound" data types - vector computers, digital signal processors, and to some extent, even a standard modern PC will have extensions to its circuitry that know about extremely specific combinations of numbers that represent intermediate steps in common algorithms like video processing. (You can say the same about hardware representations of triangles, lines, and image textures on a GPU). In each of these specialized cases, the circuitry needs to be carefully controlled - programmed - so that the correct data is loaded into the correct location. Otherwise, unusual and unspecified behavior can occur. In modern computers, the program is also represented as a set of numbers - you can think of these as a bunch of "settings" for switches that direct "the next number" to the correct circuit inside the CPU. Because modern computers are sort of complicated, there are literally thousands of possible combinations of those switch settings - billions of possibilities, actually (though only around a thousand are used). For this reason, programming languages were designed to simplify the task of converting conceptual operations into specific machine instructions. Nimur (talk) 15:28, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I am now convinced that all the answers above (including mine!) tried to do more than answer the OP's question. I'm going to try to answer that succinctly here.

Modern computers store and process binary; whether a given piece of binary data is a number, letter, or something else cannot necessarily be determined by looking at that piece of data. Your "97", for instance, could be 'a', or 97, or something else. In order for the computer (or computer program) to tell the difference, it must have some other information.

A computer program can sometimes look at a whole bunch of data and make a reasonable guess as to its use; a long string of bytes encoded as letters in a specific encoding, for instance, tend to have strings of binary data in specific ranges and not in other ranges. But, in fact, most programs that determine a datum's type automatically are using something else -- a file extension, a code embedded near the front of a data file, etc.

I hope this answers your original question, and I *know* it doesn't branch out into other areas nearly as much.

204.152.3.37 (talk) 20:59, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Subnet calculator

I am looking for an online netmask calculator that translates a generic IP-range to a minimal list of subnets. For example:

Input

Min to Max address: 10.112.0.0 - 10.123.255.255

Output

Subnet_1: 10.112.0.0/13

Subnet_2: 10.120.0.0/14

Proof

Subnet_1 = 10.112.0.1 - 10.119.255.255

Subnet_2 = 10.120.0.1 - 10.123.255.255

There are tons of online calculators (see example in proof) that do the opposite. Any idea anyone? DVdm (talk) 09:56, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

[1] -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 10:47, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Bingo. A thousand and twenty-four thanks! - DVdm (talk) 11:10, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Files to Images

Is it possible to encode a non-image file into an image? Say for example a small mp3 converted to png. Obviously the image would look like gibberish machine code or randomness. Is this possible? What programs can do this? 82.43.90.93 (talk) 11:29, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

You can rename the file from test.mp3 to test.png. When you open it with a viewer, it might produce a black screen, or gibberish, or a program or system crash, all depending on your viewer software and operating system. DVdm (talk) 11:46, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Assume you take the mp3 file byte by byte. Each byte has a value from 0 to 256. If you take those three at a time, you have red, green, and blue values for a pixel. You can write a program to color in the pixels of an image using those values. Now, the problem is getting the mp3 back. You cannot use a lossy format for the image because you will lose important data for the mp3. That is why encoded secret messages inside of images isn't such a trivial task. You cannot have the lossy format messing with the message. -- kainaw™ 12:20, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Container format might help. Both PNG and MP3 use a file format that contains a fixed-format header followed by data. It sounds like you want to take the data payload out of an MP3 and put it in place of the data-payload of the PNG. (If you just try to use an MP3 as a PNG, you will be missing the necessary metadata, so whatever program you use to interpret or display your PNG will probably simply refuse to do anything). You might benefit from using a library that already knows about these file formats so that you end up with a "properly formed" PNG (even it its data payload is gibberish). Also note that because the PNG and MP3 formats are both compressed, it is not safe to say that "any combination of bytes" will represent a valid PNG (i.e. it might not even be possible to display gibberish - certain combinations of bytes will be "improperly formed" and can not be mapped back into an image of any kind). Compare this to uncompressed formats, like WAV files or BMP files. Any combination of bytes you stuff into the data payload of these uncompressed formats will display as something (though depending on your BMP reader, it may hiccup of die if your payload size doesn't match the metadata expected size). Nimur (talk) 15:41, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

As an aside - if you're just doing this for the sake of hobbyist exploration, you might find GNU Octave a helpful tool. In exactly three lines of code, you will be able to read an arbitrary file of any type; reshape it to dimensions of your preference ("height x width"), and display it as an image buffer. Consider the Wikipedia logo: (you can put a URL in the fopen() command, or save it to disk)

x = fread(fopen('wikipedia-logo.png'));
imagesc(reshape (x, 119, 131));

In the first line, I open, read, and store the Wikipedia logo to an array, "x". In the second line, I reshape that file into a 119 x 131 matrix (by luck, the file happens to be 15589 bytes, which can be factored into a square-ish matrix). Then, I display it to screen with the "image scale" command. If you find an MP3 or OGG file, you can open it in a similar way, and display its raw data as an image buffer. I just tested this technique on this audio of a red panda - hint, the file can be displayed as a 767 x 409 element buffer. It looks like noise (as we would expect). (Note that by using this method, we're treating the raw file, including its header, as part of a continuous uncompressed bitmap). Nimur (talk) 15:53, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

What's a good tool for Knowledge Engineering?

I'm looking for a readily available tool that can be used for modeling an expert system. Perhaps something like PCPACK, but something I can get quickly instead of without having to wait for some time. Any ideas? 122.255.2.108 (talk) 12:22, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Key code of win-key on azerty keyboard

I am installing Ubuntu and want to have the normal functionality of the win-key. Here I found a solution, with the following code:

#!/bin/bash

xmodmap -e 'keycode 115=Menu'

But it turns out that 115 and 116 are the codes for the right- and end-keys. Does anyone know the code for the win-key on an azerty keyboard or how I can find that out? Also, the script changes those keys into the functionality of the context menu key (next to the win-key). So should I change 'menu' into something else? DirkvdM (talk) 12:56, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Switch to a virtual console that doesn't have an X server on it (e.g. ctrl-alt-f6), login, and run showkey. That displays the raw keycodes for each key you press. On my uk-qwerty keyboard, the left and right windows keys are 125 and 126 respectively. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:37, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

But (at least for Ubuntu's normal GNOME desktop environment) this works (the thing you linked to seemed like only half the solution). Note that he's using xev instead of showkey, which for me is returning different results (I think other X keyboard remappings are changing things); for your use the result reported by xev will be the one to use. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:43, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Also note that you can put the 'keycode blah=bar' straight to ~/.xmodmap and X will load it at login. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 15:43, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah, ok, I have to run xev, keep the little 'event tester' window active and then press the win-key to see info about that in the console. Took me some time to figure that out. :) Turns out it's 133 for Super_L and 134 for Super_R (the left and right win-keys).

For the rest, gconf is for Gnome (I use KDE) and I don't have a file ~/.xmodmap. So I just put the number 134 in the script I already wrote, logged out and back in and now the win-key behaves like the context menu key, as I feared. So I changed 'menu' to 'panel_main_menu', but that didn't work. Nor did 'panel_menu'. Or Panel_Main_Menu' (upper cases). DirkvdM (talk) 17:50, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Ubuntu/Vista Dual-Boot Broken - Reason

Recently I had a problem, in which Vista wouldn't start up on my dual-boot system here. After going through a (fairly) lengthy process of trying to fix it, I ended up reinstalling Windows. The problem I was encountering was that after the Microsoft loading bar had been on for a short while, I would get the blue screen of death and an auto-reboot. Stopping the auto-reboot managed to get me to the error messages on the blue screen, but they were not very informative. Anyway, that's all in the past now. However, I've been wondering how I could avoid such a problem occurring again and going over my actions prior to the problem. The only thing that I remember doing was seeing if I could run a program from my Windows partition whilst in Ubuntu using Wine. This, of course, failed (because the program was a game and not one supported by Wine). It was shortly after this that I had the problem. Could anyone confirm that this might have been the actual cause of the problem, or am I still in danger of this just happening again? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 14:42, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Running programs already installed on a Windows partition is usually a bad idea since there will probably be .dll files and registry entries missing and things like that since you didn't install it in Wine. Depending on how you mounted the Windows partition it could inadvertently modify files needed by Windows, but unless you know what broke Windows there isn't much more to say than don't use wine to run Windows installs of programs unless you have to and know it works. --antilived^{T | C | G} 02:34, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Why do the XHTML specifications "forbid" serving XML syntax as text/html?

I prefer writing markup for the XHTML serialization (i.e. all lower case, expanded attributes, open/closing tags, self closing tags etc) but the HTML specifications actually say it is incorrect to serve this format as text/html. Now, obviously browsers don't actually care if you do but why is this "restriction" in place anyway? 193.122.22.247 (talk) 16:21, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh, browsers do care. Serve XHTML as application/xhtml+xml, and watch IE getting confused, and Mozilla/Safari switching to a much stricter DOM model (createElement isn't good enough anymore, and (at least older versions of) Safari would even forget about 'document.title'. On the plus side, serving as xhtml will put browsers in a much stricter parsing mode and they will refuse to process non-wellformed XML documents.

As http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/ explains, you should use the XHTML mimteype unless you structure your document to be usable by both HTML and XHTML parsers (ie, use the short syntax for tags like <img />, but the long syntax for tags like <script></script>). Whether XHTML actually servers any practical use, is probably still a matter of debate. Unilynx (talk) 21:13, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I guess my real point is why is XML syntax for HTML considered "invalid" HTML unless it's served as XML? Why can't both forms be valid (i.e. <br> vs <br />, or <option selected> vs <option selected="selected">). Obviously since IE won't render XHTML correctly with the XML mimetype it's basically pointless for the majority of pages to be written in XHTML syntax, but there are benefits to writing in this way (especially when dealing with things like the <p> element which have optional closing tags. Since the browsers seem not to care anyway I guess it doesn't matter that much...yet. 193.122.22.247 (talk) 12:51, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

XML syntax in HTML is invalid. The standards are not compatible. For example, <br/> is a line break in XHTML but it's a line break followed by a greater-than sign in HTML. No major browser will print that greater-than sign, but that's because they deliberately violate the HTML standard for compatibility reasons. See this crazy document, and the explanation. -- BenRG (talk) 03:45, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Editing an MPG file

I took a video with my Sony digital camera lasting about 1 minute. When I was finished I forgot to stop recording and slipped the camera into my pocket. As a result, the recording continued for another 10 minutes, stopping only when the memory stick was full. I would like to keep just the first minute of the video and discard the rest. Is there any software that lets me do this? Hemoroid Agastordoff (talk) 16:38, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Try virtualdub -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:05, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

TMPGEnc has a nice set of tools for cutting and joining MPEGs without recompression. -- BenRG (talk) 03:46, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

June 22

Multiplication by a fraction avoiding temporary overflow

Suppose, in 5-bit unsigned integer arithmetic, I wish to compute 13*17/19 (that is, 11). Is there a standard trick for performing such calculations efficiently (in terms both of execution time and code complexity) when no higher primitive word size is available? In particular, I mean a*b/c where the numerator is not representable but the overall result is. (Obviously changing it to a/c*b or a*(b/c) doesn't work for integer arithmetic and yields 0 here.) --Tardis (talk) 00:05, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

The "standard trick" is to use a larger word for the results of multiply instructions. Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that an n-bit number times an m-bit number will yield a result that requires an (n+m)-bit representation. This is a fact of binary representation: log₂(NN*MM) = log₂(NN) + log₂(MM). You may choose to always discard the least significant bits; or you may choose to conditionally overflow and throw an error iff the inputs are too large. Your problem is actually a special case of the general problem - that your intermediate representation requires higher precision than your inputs or your outputs - but there is no way around this problem for the general case. (If you knew, for example, that your inputs were only going to be in a certain range, you could use any fixed point math representation to input only the significant bits). For example, if you always divide by 19, you could approximate that as a "left-shift by 4 bits" (divide by 16), thus always discard the lowest four bits. Alternately, you can implement a simplified floating-point (i.e. use one or more bits to specify dynamic range). With a five-bit word, this isn't much of a gain. Nimur (talk) 02:23, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Use multiple locations to store a double (or treble or quad) sized number. Your basic 5-bits will handle 0..31. A double length will handle 0..1023. You would need to write some subroutines to do (single * single -> double) and (double / single -> double quotient & single remainder) You can do both by mimicing standard hand calculated long multiplication and long division. If your computer instructions can't manage localised overflows well, you may need to divide the 5-bit numbers into (say) 2.5 lots of 2-bit numbers so that even a local multiplication doesn't overflow 5bits. Exactly which is a good choice depends on the limitations of your system. -- SGBailey (talk) 09:46, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

It's quite possible that those mixed-type subroutines are exactly the answer, but I don't know immediately any efficient way to write them. (The assembly I've seen for doing multiplication into two words is not trivial, and I imagine that division would be worse.) The number 5 is of course irrelevant; I just wanted to give a concrete example and one that was all primes so that no reductions were possible. --Tardis (talk) 15:16, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

If you're really desperate and two of those numbers are constant you can work out what you are multiplying the other one with as a binary fraction and then do shifts adds and subtracts on the number to get that fraction. Seems over the top with even the simplest microprocessor nowadays. Dmcq (talk) 10:38, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I would consider writing my own double precision functions. So multiply5(a, b, result, overflow) would take in two 5-bit values, a and b and return a double precision result in the 5-bit result and a 5-bit overflow. Similarly, divide5(a1, a2, b1, b2, result) would take in 2 double precision values, a and b (each made from 2 5-bit components) and return a single 5-bit result. Alternatively, you could write a class 5bit, define single and double precision values, and overload the multiply and divide operators. Astronaut (talk) 11:19, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

(As in my other simultaneous reply,) That sounds great! How does one write such functions, given no access to operators that can use larger types for you? (I know that, for example, the x86 MUL* instructions are $n\times n\rightarrow 2n$ even for the largest machine integers, but not many higher-level languages give you access to that.) If it's easier, we can use an even number of bits since that's the standard and then you can divide the numbers into two subwords that are small enough that even all their squares can be represented. But of course signed numbers matter too in practice. --Tardis (talk) 15:16, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah... so I think you mean how would you write multiply and divide functionality for a hypothetical 5-bit microprocessor using basic instructions like add, subtract, and bit operations such as complement, shift, etc. And are there any shortcuts that could be used to simplify the process.

Well, I can't think of any shortcuts. I can imagine how I would write a multiply function using something like long multiplication on binary values. That would involve shift and add instructions and keeping careful track of the carry flag. As for how to write a divide function, I would really have to think how it could be done, but it would probably use repeated subtraction. Astronaut (talk) 11:03, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Vista Q

I have Windows Vista Home Basic and I'd like to place my computer on a setting that provides an audible/visible warning alarm that the battery is low. Please advise. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 02:12, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Don't have a Vista laptop handy, but click the Start Button and just type "Power". The power options menu should come up in the results. All those settings are in there. Let us know if you can't find it; I'm sure we can scare up someone who uses Vista. --mboverload@ 08:56, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

The Power Option in the Control Panel has a whole bunch of settings for what to do when the battery is low. However, for an audible alert to accompany the System Tray popup, you need to go to the Sound Control panel and assign a sound to the Low Battery Alarm and Critical Battery Alarm. Astronaut (talk) 10:59, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Internet Protocol Addresses of Network Interface Controller Ports

In a Network Interface Card with multiple ports, does each of the ports have its own IP address, or do all of the ports share the same IP address? In addition, do Network Interface Controllers have permanent IP addresses, or are IP addresses assigned (whether statically or dynamically) to Network Interface Controller? Rocketshiporion (talk) 02:31, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Hello Rocketshiporion. I'm in IT and trust me - if you're taking a class on networking you're going to want to read the books cover to cover. You can start your research on Network interface controller and DHCP. If you're covering multiport cards you're probably covering servers. Networking is not something you want to skimp on in this case. If you need help deconstructing this problem and finding the answer please reply back. --mboverload@ 08:34, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Agree with the above. The answer to pretty much all those questions is: it depends. I imagine it's up to you to work out how, when and why. Vespine (talk) 04:12, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Make your own Anime

Can you make your own Kirby: Right back at Ya episodes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Prgreeneyes (talk • contribs) 03:30, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Please expand on your question. --mboverload@ 08:31, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Can you make your own character in Kirby anime like your own story your own monster? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Prgreeneyes (talk • contribs) 14:54, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

As a commercial venture to make a profit by selling it to a TV company... almost certainly not. However, as a piece of fan fiction or fan art, maybe you can depending on the legal situation in your country and the copyright holders' attitude to fan made work. Astronaut (talk) 06:57, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Which Linux distro is right for me?

I have used Suse Linux for many years now and want to look around a bit more. I just tried Ubuntu, but that had too many issues. But the amount of distros is just staggering. So can anyone suggest one for me that is to my liking? So what is my liking? Here's a list:

• not mouse- but keyboard-oriented (loads of keyboard shortcuts)
• very configurable (I want to define those keyboard shortcuts myself)
• not terminal- but gui-based (see below)
• functionality over looks
• no fancy stuff that is supposed to make life easier, because that tends to confuse me. For example no msWindows-like 'interpretations' of what I want. If I don't know what I want I want to learn that the hard way (not too hard, though, please. :) ) .
• slim, hard-edged look-and-feel. This is hard to define, but for example I hate smooth scrolling and I prefer German cars over French cars, if you know what I mean.

I say I want it to be both keyboard- and gui-oriented. That is a bit of a contradiction, so let me explain. I want it to be gui-based so I get a complete overview of all options without having to know them by heart. And if I have an overview, it makes most sense that I can activate those options in that overview, without having to switch elsewhere (the command line) and then type that in. Alas this is hard to do with a keyboard, so I'll have to compromise there and use the mouse.
Note I said a complete overview. So not loads of sub-sections that show just a few options, where you have to click 'advanced' to get just a few more. I have a big screen and want to use it to the full. And big tables don't scare me, I love them (if they are logically ordered). If I don't understand something that doesn't matter. I'll leave it alone but will have learned that that option exists and in which context. I don't want to be shielded from details I am supposed not to understand (says who?). I may be ignorant but I'm not stupid. :)
Some examples to illustrate what I like:

• Photoshop: very keyboard-oriented and loads of (well ordered) possibilities. May take some time to learn how to use it, but once you know that you get a lot of power.
• KDE rather than Gnome, and not KDE4.4 but 3.5, although I realise that is going to be difficult.
• I don't like the Kickoff menu style, where I have to scroll. Also, no recently used programs at the top of the start menu. I want to completely arrange the menus myself and have them stay that way, so I can start an application with my keyboard with my eyes closed, so to say.
  

Does anyone understand what I want and know of such a distro? DirkvdM (talk) 10:14, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Only you can: [2]. Appreciate the irony of the above answers. You also might like Ubuntu... which translated means "can't install debian"... but those re mostly rumors. Shadowjams (talk) 10:31, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Which above answers? Bloody deletionistst at work again? If so, they've been very thorough and even removed those answers from the history.

Anyway, like I said, I already tried Ubuntu, but I encountered too many problems with that - it even crashed on me just now, the first time that has happened to me with Linux (even Ctrl-Alt-Del didn't work). Also, it feels too much like msWindows for my liking.

You link to building my own system, but I'm not enough of an expert for that. That's what distros are for, right? But then I'd have to know beforehand what they are like and I can't find any good info on that. And downloading them all would be madness. So can you give a hint as to which ones I might try that are a bit like what I described above? DirkvdM (talk) 12:45, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Btw, the way linuxfromscratch is organised is a good example of what I don't want: see this help page, that links to loads of tiny bits of text. I want the whole text in one go, so I can quickly browse through it. DirkvdM (talk) 12:51, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

gnome do could be your friend. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 21:48, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Automatic backup of files?

I'm looking for a freeware program that can automatically do either one of the following things:

1. Sync files from a specific folder on a network drive to a local drive.
2. Backup/upload files from a specific folder on network drive to cloud storage.

Background: I am constantly updating the files on the network drive, but the program I'm using bugs out on occasion and may delete the file I'm working on. I can't work off the local drive because the files need to be available to my coworkers. I would like a automatic backup option that takes the files from a specific folder (the network drive is huge) and puts them somewhere else.

I'm hoping there's a freeware program out there that can do this, or fairly cheap program.

I've already tried SyncToy (not automatic) and DropBox (doesn't work off network drives).

My System: Windows 7 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xvkarbear (talk • contribs) 13:52, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Synctoy can be run from the Windows Task Scheduler, with instructions about what to synchronise given on the command line - see here -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:09, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Help me understand the whole megabit/mebibit confusion

Here's how I understand it. Please correct me where needed. So, the metric kilo, mega, giga prefixes are multiples of 10. But for the longest time, those prefixes were used to describe base2 memory sizes -- even though they were not the same. A "true" megabyte is really 1,024KB, not 1,000KB. As the numbers got larger, there was more of a discrepancy between base10 and base2 numbers (A "true" computer gigabyte is 1,073,742KB, not 1,000,000KB... a difference of over 73MB.)

Computer storage manufacturers measure drive space in kibibytes, but marketing them as kilobytes.. So when a user plugged in a "1 Terabyte" drive, their computer actually reported 976 GB. So the term kibi, mebi, gibi are used to correctly and precisely describe the actual memory a computer sees. So while the metric prefixes are wrong, it's common usage. Man, that's confusing. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 15:41, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Additional info in Binary prefix and Kibibyte. --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:58, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

The last paragraph isn't quite right; it's more confusing than that. "Kibibyte" is a newer term, and it is definitely 1024 bytes. Traditionally, "kilobyte" has meant 1024 bytes, but if the bending of the metric units bothers you, or you make hard drives for a living, you'll say that a kilobyte is 1000 bytes.

This whole mess only applies to fixed storage. If you're talking about RAM, "kilobyte" almost always refers to 1024 bytes because, for technical reasons, it's important for memory to be evenly divisible into largish powers of two, so 1000-byte units are kind of silly. Paul (Stansifer) 16:09, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

You've more or less got it. Traditionally power of two units were used for computer storage. Some people thought this was a misappriation of the SI prefixes.

This was 'fixed' by redefining the words to match the base 10 numbers, and creating new, sillier, prefixes for people who still want to use the traditional power of two units.

Nowadays some people still use the old units because they need base-2 units, but can't bring themselves to use the silly names.

Personally, I think it's too bad that Knuth's idea of calling them "Standard Kilobytes" and "Large Kilobytes" didn't catch on. It'd be a lot less silly. APL (talk) 16:28, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

For archived discussions about whether to use the precise words in Wikipedia articles, you can visit Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) (shortcut: WT:MOSNUM), find the archive box at the right-hand side of the page, and follow the links under "Binary prefixes".

—Wavelength (talk) 16:57, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

There is no sane reason to report hard disk sizes in gibibytes. It is a completely stupid thing to do. Somehow people have gotten it into their heads that the hard drive manufacturers are in the wrong here. I imagine it's because gigabytes are smaller and people are sensitive to the idea that they're being cheated. Whatever the reason, it's irrational. The problem is Explorer. People blame Microsoft for everything else, whether or not it's Microsoft's fault; why can't they blame Microsoft for this when it really is their fault?

I believe it's true that hard drive sizes are always a multiple of 512×63×16 bytes = 504 KiB exactly, for a mixture of historical reasons. My laptop drive is exactly 310101 = 7×11×9397 times that size, for a total of 160,041,885,696 bytes. What this has to do with human-readable sizes displayed in GUI windows I can't imagine. Why not report the numeric part of the size in binary, if you're going to use the binary metric units? After all, computers work in binary. Wouldn't it be logical and natural? -- BenRG (talk) 03:21, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm surprised no one mentioned Timeline of binary prefixes Nil Einne (talk) 11:41, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I cannot read the Wiki website

Can anyone please help? I've always read Wiki at work and on my home computer the print is all illegible, small and I cannot read it w/o really squinting hard. It's nealry impossible...totally unclear.

I've reset my display for larger type (I prefer small, crystal clean fonts) but that makes little difference.Is it my system and is there any way I can make your program legible? I've read Wiki for a long time and miss it.

This does seem new. I can't recall it being this way here at home before recently.

Thank you for any help here. I've tried resetting my type sizes/fonts and it makes little difference. Wiki is the only site where this occurs.

Sorry to send it here but I can't read the site well enough to find another place on the Wiki site.

Thanks,

Jeremy Gubbins I'm at this email....(e-mail redacted) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.161.187.1 (talk) 17:47, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

1. I've removed your e-mail; answers will be posted here. 2. Normally WP:HELP is a better place to post questions about help with Wikipedia; this is a reference desk. 3. We may be able to help you here on the Computing desk anyway, if you could take a screenshot of your screen and upload it to a site like Flickr so we can see what you're seeing. To take a screenshot, if you're using Windows, press the "Print Scr" key (or "Prnt Scrn" ... keyboards vary); then run a graphics program like MS Paint, then hit CTRL-V to paste the screenshot into Paint; then save the picture as a PNG or JPG file; then upload to Flickr and point us to the file. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:00, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried hitting ctrl++ - this often makes the text size larger in browsers? Also, Internet Explorer 8 (and maybe other browsers too) have a little zoom control in the bottom right of the status bar - 50% make the text so tiny it is unreadable.

One other thing, when I played around with the DPI for the default font on Windows Vista, it created all kinds of havoc when I went to change it back to what it was before I started (IIRC, the font size of every screen element remained tiny, until I reset each one in the Advanced Appearance settings). It was such a major hassle that I have never changed the font size since and instead rely on the methods I mentioned above to zoom in and out. Astronaut (talk) 06:30, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

operation behind deleting a file

hay, i wand to know the operation behind deletion. usually i delete unwanted files in my system and always keep recycle bin empty.once i noted that a particular software in my system (installed by my brother) help me to retain the deleted files.how it is possible.then Wat is actually happening during deletion. is the same operation take place during cut-past,copy-past? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.204.85.120 (talk) 18:08, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

It depends on your computer's file system, but in general file deletion leaves data remanence which can sometimes be recovered by means of undeletion, which in turn can be prevented using data erasure. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:23, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

can i prevent coping a file

i wand to prevent a file to be copied from my disc by others (but it should work from disc), is it possible then how?is it possible to copy it later by me,how? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.204.85.120 (talk) 18:13, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Not really. There are various digital rights management schemes which try to limit this kind of thing, but they don't work very well and really aren't available to a normal user. Perhaps (depending on your circumstance) the best idea is either file encryption (in which case someone can copy the file, but can't make any sense of it) or disk encryption. Both require a degree of skill and judgement on your part, and add some complexity to your normal doings of things. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:20, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I second that. I would recommend installing TrueCrypt on each PC that you work with, and use TrueCrypt to create an "encrypted file container" on the disc. You can use TrueCrypt to "mount" the file container as though it were a hard disk, so Windows treats it as your S: drive, or whatever; and you can put whatever files you want into the S: drive. When your enemies get hold of your disc, they will be able to copy the encrypted file container to their hard disk, but it will just appear to be a random string of 1's and 0's to them, because TrueCrypt uses strong encryption. As Finlay McWalter says, this adds some complexity to your day — for example, in order to use the disc at all on another computer, you'll need to first install TrueCrypt on it, which won't be possible in many school or Internet-cafe situations. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:31, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Quick note: As you can see the only solution is an encryption product. File system permissions and such are worthless if someone has physical access to the machine. Just wanted to make that super clear. Also, don't think you're outsmarting the government or a technical user unless you've read and understood all of TrueCrypts limitations outside of its control. --mboverload@ 02:01, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Rank amateur wants to install Windows and Linux OS’s on two +15 year old computers, and later install OpenOffice and Ogg Vorbis, for 50 bucks or less

I have two old computers sitting in my basement locker—they have been for a few years. One’s on a pre-Windows XP, whereas another doesn’t seem to have an OS at all. I want to give them to someone who knows even less about computers than I, and both of us are poor (though I have my own computer (Windows XP with Office 2003)); and I feel free to experiment with these two computers.

First, can I and how do I create “partitions” for MS OS’s and Linux?

Second. Presuming that older is generally cheaper, how much would it cost to get, say a Windows XP, 2000, 98, 97, even 95?

Third, as I’ve never done this, are these discs re-usable? Could I take, say a Windows XP and upload it on +10 computers? If so, could I do the same with, say Office 2003 Professional?

Fourth, let’s say even a used Windows XP and/or Office 2003 Pro was too rich for my blood, and I decided on, say, Windows 95, what are the latest versions of WORD, EXCEL, and POWERPOINT, and PAINT could I use?

Fifth, how do I get such computers to take an OpenOffice? Could I get them on the earlier Windows, and/or I would be better to have them on the latest Linux versions?

Sixth, what good free painting/pics and player software would you recommend? Could Ogg Vorbis be installed in earlier Windows, or should I have it on Linux?

Seventh, as I’m too poor for even internet connections (I’m using an employment centre computer to post this) how would I download this on another computer (say internet café one) onto a USB, CD-ROM, or DVD-Rom, and then install it on these computers.

Thanks for the help and time.
:-)
70.54.181.70 (talk) 19:19, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

You cannot buy new Windows XP or any older consumer version of windows (I don't know about arrangements for Vista or server-Windows). You can find XP on sites like ebay, but these tend not to be cheap, and I would be highly suspicious that these were either downright illegal or that they had been activated on other machines making it illegal, or difficult, to use on your machine. You are at best going to be scrabbling together odd bits and bobs, second hand. Depending on the windows version, the disks may be reusable, but doing so will generally not be legal, unless you can get multiple licences too. For XP there is also product activation, which enforces the licences, preventing multiple use of a single-use licence. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:42, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Frankly the only reasons I would recommend anyone try what you're doing (getting XP or 98se or whatever) to run on an old machine like that is either for nostalgic purposes or if they have some piece of software that absolutely will not run on anything else. If you're looking to just resurrect these computers and get some basic use out of them (some internet, some basic word processing) then I'd very strongly recommend you download one of the many Mini Linux distributions and install that. You don't have the issues about licences and ancient install media, you don't have nearly the trouble of getting device drivers for ancient hardware (and once we're talking pre-XP, installing device drivers is a pretty darn technical activity), and you can still get software that will run on them. All those mini linux distributions will give you an ISO image which you can burn onto a DVD and install from there. Modern full linux installs like Ubuntu are probably going to be much too heavyweight for your antique machines (frankly you should check the computers' features against those supported even by the mini linuxes, as you're really going back a long way). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:49, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

To answer your specific questions:

1. You'd install windows, then linux (but really, please don't do this) and the linux installer will take care of partitioning.

2. Whatever someone on ebay can get away with charging you. XP will be surprisingly expensive. Linux is, for your purposes, free.

3. As with 2, you're back to whatever junk you can scrape up from jumble sales and ebay

4. You can't get any of those programs from their creators. There are some (perhaps questionable) sites on the internet that will let you download old versions of things, and again you might be able to find old disks around. Linux will come with a compatible, lightweight office and graphics program (or will have an easy option to install one)

5. I don't think Openoffice will run on anything older than XP, and may be too heavyweight for your computers. Retro sites, ebay, jumble sales again. Linux will have a (more basic) office suite.

6. Much the same as 5.

7. Linux: yes, CDs (not DVDs like I said above, your computer is surely too old for that). Windows: probably not legally.

-- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:06, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice and explainations. Mind you, I'm pretty confident that the ghost of Gary Kildall wouldn't mind me ripping off the company that ripped him off (CP/M, 86-DOS, and all that). As for this Product activation, a cursory check on the article sez it's applies to post-2000 MS software, and when I bought my Dell computer--the one with the XP and Office 2003, not once did I have it connected to the internet. The other two were internet capable and active on it. I'll at the very least check out the Mini Linux article and links, and print this for later perusal (the centre will soon close for the day); and again, thanks.
:-)
70.54.181.70 (talk) 20:11, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

The OEM version of XP on your Dell was (essentially) pre-activated at the factory. The retail install you'd have to get would not be so forgiving. If I were you, I'd spend a fraction of that $50 putting up little cards in a newsagent's window (or whereever classifieds are posted in Canada) saying "poor but virtuous person needs a half-decent computer for self betterment, can't pay but will collect" and you'll find people will give you old computers (but much nicer than the ones you're talking about fixing up). I have frequently had to take perfectly functional, and much newer than 15 year old, computers to the recycling centre, as no one will buy them, no child wants them, and no charity will take them. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:24, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Another good idea. Thanks.
:-)
(same person--different IP (library))205.189.194.208 (talk) 20:48, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

In my experience, stuff older than about 10 years is usually too old to be recoverable, largely due to a lack of Windows drivers for older hardware and OS combinations. Even with small Linux distributions there is a lower limit to what will still work with a GUI. It can work though - I sometimes run Puppy Linux and Windows Me (and Microsoft Office 97) in a dual-boot setup on a Pentium-III dating from about 2000, though the original 128MB memory was not enough and I had to buy some more. I could install Windows XP, but then I would have to buy a license or find a way to avoid the attention of Windows Genuine Advantage telling me it needs to be activated.

An alternative might be to get slightly newer stuff and refurbish it. Very cheap or even free stuff is easily available, often with an Operating System and other softwere still installed. Ask your friends and relatives, search the small ads in the paper, supermarket or perhaps online in places like eBay and Craigslist, and ask friends who work with computers if their company is throwing out some old PCs. Only a couple of months ago I was given 3 old laptops, all with Windows XP and Office 2003 - two I have successfully refurbished, but the other is probably beyond repair with its trashed disk and broken keyboard. Astronaut (talk) 06:05, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Astronaut for your input.
Hmmmm. As I remember, one of the computers had WORDPAD, and I wanted WORD--or even WRITE. A few years earlier I created a few WRITE files on yet another computer, stored them on a floppy disk, and when they changed the programming of that computer, found that their newly installed WORD program would open it. I figured that if the one of these two computers had even that, my friend could use it, for writing resumes and the like, and WORD programs on other computers would open it. However, again, it only had WORDPAD--which according to the WP article indicates that it's more advanced than Write. Hmmmmmm (I'm not so sure). The weird thing is that the computer opened jpeg files and had a media player--yes it played CR-ROMs, so I figure it can handle a latter OS and OFFICE prorams--cost being the main factor here. As for the OpenOffice, again, I figure that if I can't get a latter WORD program in, or any WORD program, due to cost, then have both an old MS writing program (early WORD, WRITE, or even the WORDPAD) and a new OpenOffice program. That way, I figure, the former, while primative, might be supported by a latter MS program--if he wanted to alter it on a latter better computer; while the other, though not supported by WORD (I think), would nonetheless enable more features that an earlier MS program wouldn't (he could type, tailor, print, and save on his computer).

As I think of it (I haven't got to them yet--the locker is jam pack with stuff) when the second computer was given to me, I was given a disk, and while I can't say I remember it requesting anything about activation (in the prompts--DOS prompt, command prompt, whatever you call it--it's white print in a black background that you might see when a computer boots up) but it might have been rejecting the disk for that reason--I don't know. I'm certain it was originally capable of Internet, media players, and yes, even WORD.

The reason why I initially posted this is when I was talking to someone at the soup kitchen who had a bit more knowledge about computers than I, he sounded like I could get all these things for free--from the MS site even. When I checked MS--I admit, I'll have to peruse the site more--it seemed to say that upgrades were free. As for Googling "free Office 2003", well, I might as well asked for "free Beatles MP3's".

The idea is to got to an internet cafe, burn whatever OS's and programs, go to the locker, pull out the computers (and a bunch of other stuff), see if I can fix them in the laundry room, if and when, then wrap them in some heavy torn up blankets (i.e. disposeable but useful for this purpose), put them in a shopping cart (there are a few in my housing project), wheel them to my friends (he lives about 1 km), drop them off, and my promise-of-sorts will be fulfilled.

As for the idea of getting free computers, such has merit and I'll likely try that, but again, I'm also thinking of practicing with fixing them, as as Astronaut indicated with the laptops, they needed fixing, so again, I might profit from some practicing. Mind you, again, thanks for the above.70.54.181.70 (talk) 18:37, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Wordpad is indeed an improvement on Microsoft Write, enough such that I set WordPad up as the word processor of choice for my parents 10 years ago. The price is unbeatable. OpenOffice.org Writer is far more full-featured, if you can get it to run on an old computer. As Finlay McWalter wrote above, this seems unlikely. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:49, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Hmmmm, maybe it's my memory. It could be other things. For instance, the WRITE program I used had a spell-check, whereas a computer with a WORDPAD program a neighbour of mine had, didn't. Have you ever seen a 10 page document, copies of which were plastered all over the buildings' bulletin boards, where the writer couldn't spell and there was no spell check? Fortunately for her, some of the content was conciliatory.   :-D  . Very well, if OpenOffice is likely too big and modern-like, what other free or (very) low cost word processing programs are there that would fit in such ye olde computers? Thanks.70.54.181.70 (talk) 19:38, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

On Linux, AbiWord is much more lightweight, and is the wordprocessor in some small linux installations I have tried. An older version is still available (though well hidden, [3]) which supports older versions of Windows such as 95, 98, & Me. Astronaut (talk) 11:13, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again.  :-)  70.54.181.70 (talk) 17:18, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

If I were you I would forget about XP and just install Linux instead. If your computers are too old to take XP or Linux Ubuntu, they should be able to take one of the Mini Linuxs, which are all free and include word processors etc. There is lots of free Linux software. You could burn one of the Live CDs and see if it works in your computers without having to install it. You could also try Freecycle to ask for old computers. 92.15.30.151 (talk) 08:22, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

twitter

i wanna create a new twitter but i dont want to manually have to re-follow all those people. is there a program i can use or can i save the people im following? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexsmith44 (talk • contribs) 19:42, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Babylon's dictionary of Wikipedia

In the Babylon translation-software, the user can add Wikipedia as one of the online dictionaries. It is possible to download Wikipedia for offline use, through this link: http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20100130/enwiki-20100130-pages-articles.xml.bz2 But is it possible to do one of the following: (1) Get an offline version of Wikipedia for Babylon? (2) Convert the above XML-file to a BGL file?

Thanks in advance. 77.127.184.216 (talk) 20:04, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Wget

I'm trying to mirror a specific part of a website, not the whole website. Through searching, trial and error and hours of wasted time I've come up with the following:

wget -mk -X */images/ -np http://example.com/pages

However, this only downloads the html files in the directory "/pages/", and not any of the other resources that are displayed on the pages. I want it to download the css files (located at http://example.com/css/) and the thumbnails (located at http://example.com/thumbs/). What do I need to do to make wget do that? Thanks for your help 82.43.90.93 (talk) 20:18, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Take a look at the the -p (--page-requisites) option. --Bavi H (talk) 01:55, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I tried that and is don't seem to work. Only the index page gets thumbnails and css downloaded, all the other pages are still missing thumbnails and other embedded images. 82.43.90.93 (talk) 10:22, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Please read the link Bavi H put up there. It describes exactly your problem. You'll also need the "-l <number>" option, to specify the depth of recursion you want. Indeterminate (talk) 00:26, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

June 23

Just built a computer but it wont turn on

After pressing the power button it doesn't do anything. The fans don't spin. No lights light up. It is absolutely quiet. I am unsure what the problem is. (power supply maybe?) Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.118.202.92 (talk) 08:04, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Assuming you are sure mains power is actually getting to the PC (go check the fuses/circuit breakers in your house and the power cable leading to the PC), the first place I would look is the power supply. Many PC power supplies have their own internal fan as shown in this image, and if that isn't running the power supply unit itself is likely to be faulty. Check your power supply has the correct input voltage settings: 100-127V AC, 60Hz in the USA, which is usually selectable with the small red switch on the backplate. The small plugs that supply the power to the components inside your PC, carry voltages typically 3.3, 5 or 12V DC. Check each one with a multimeter to see if the correct voltage is being supplied. Make sure each plug is properly seated, the correct way round in its socket on the motherboard, disk drives, etc. and note that some can be a very tight fit. Astronaut (talk) 09:43, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

(edit) Due to the much better advice provided below, and me forgetting quite how a PC gets switched on, I've struck out my rather simplistic view of how a power supply can be checked. Astronaut (talk) 17:13, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

If you just built a computer and it isn't turning on I would be careful about assuming the PSU is faulty. The PSU will only turn on if the motherboard tells it to turn on so there could be plenty of reasons like the motherboard is faulty, you didn't plug the power switch in properly, the power switch is faulty (presuming the motherboard doesn't have a built in switch which you are using). Okay technically the PSU us always on by the fan doesn't usually run when it's in standby mode (a few keep it running for a few minutes after you turn it back to standby mode but I don't think I've ever seen any that turn it on when you first turn it on in standby mode although probably something does exist), there may be some lights visible on the motherboard, there may not be so without knowing more details about the particular set up, it's difficult to say whether the OP would be aware of the difference between PSU completely not working and motherboard never turns on the PSU. Depending on the PSU if something is shorting you may also get something like this (although usually the PSU will turn on briefly and then go off quickly albeit depending on how much attention you paid and where the computer is you may not notice). Of course if it's the standby that's shorting then I would guess this would usually fuse it fast enough that wouldn't notice.

In terms of testing, you don't really have to worry about disk drives. I would connect only the motherboard and perhaps video card if it has a power connection first (disconnecting anything else plugged into the power supply). In fact, often you'd disconnect everything but the video card (unless it has built in video in which case even that is unnecessary if you have one), RAM and CPU from the motherboard plus the power switch if needed and of course the power. There's also little use trying to measure voltages if the PSU isn't even on (other then the standby lines).

If all else fails, you can disconnect the PSU from the motherboard and video card, connect it to a few disk drives, or fans or something and then short the power on (usually green) and ground (usually black) lines and see if the PSU comes on properly as discussed in our ATX PSU article. If it does, try measuring the voltages if you can. (If it doesn't then yes your PSU may be faulty presuming you've made sure that the PSU is actually getting power and any switch on the PSU is on.)

If you have a good PSU, you shouldn't really need to connect anything, it should come on even without them although the voltage regulation may be poor. (And as Astronaut mentioned the PSU should have a fan which would normally come on when it comes on properly so you should be able to tell if it's at least working somewhat without connecting anything.) For some cheap & crappy PSU however, I wouldn't discount the possibility of them either refusing to turn on, or even dying if you start them without any load so I'd be careful. If the PSU seems fine, I would look more carefully at the motherboard. You could try shorting the pins for the power manually if you're careful.

Nil Einne (talk) 11:15, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Make sure the PC Speaker header (SPK or PCSPK or something like that) is connected up - the motherboard uses that to signal (by means of several beeps) if there's a problem (and if you can't hear the beeps you can't know what it's trying to tell you). Next make sure the power supply connector to the motherboard is properly connected, including the additional +12V2DC connector that most motherboards have (it's separate from the main connector, and is often located nearer to the CPU). Then make sure that the CPU fan is correctly connected to the appropriate header on the motherboard - most motherboard microcontrollers will refuse to let the system boot if they don't detect the fan (as a missing or bad fan would result in the CPU being very quickly cooked alive). In my experience these two mistakes are the most common causes of newly-built machines not starting at all - if they're okay, the PSU should power up, even if the RAM and CPU are entirely missing. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:40, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Another simple thing: I assume you're using the front-panel power button to try to turn it on, but first make sure that if there's a hard power switch on the PSU, that it's turned on. -- Coneslayer (talk) 13:51, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

And, of course, that the front-panel power button (PWR) is properly connected to the appropriate header on the motherboard (apologies for stating the obvious, but sometimes one can get caught up in byzantine hypotheses for a failure that's cause by something so trivial one has overlooked it). Ditto for the case reset (RST) switch (if it's accidentally shorted the motherboard may refuse to boot, thinking the machine is being deliberately held in reset). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:00, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all of your help! I thought it was the power supply at first since it was completely dark. (But that's actually because the motherboard just doesn't have an led.) It turns out I didn't plug in the front panel connector for the power switch. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.108.156.138 (talk) 04:30, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Finding and deleting disused DLLs

I've just done a scan of my HD using the freeware program DLL Archive by AnalogX http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/System/dllarch/Freeware.htm which searches for unreferenced DLLs.

I thought it would find either none or just a few. In fact it found over six thousand of them, the biggest of which were over 13MB in size. They must be using up gigabytes of space on my nearly full HD.

a) Are there any paths/folders where it would be particularly unwise to delete them?

b) Would deleting those not in the Windows folder be safe?

c) Is there any other practical means of finding disused DLLs? Thanks 92.15.17.9 (talk) 11:24, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Here are some more similar programs, except the first one: http://www.softpedia.com/downloadTag/delete+dll 92.15.17.9 (talk) 12:32, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't think such programs are terribly safe, and I wouldn't recommend relying on one. That's because of how DLL dependencies work. There are two mechanisms whereby Windows loads a dll. Firstly is by means of static dependency, where the information in an application's Portable Executable file lists all the dlls it depends upon (and they, being PEs themselves, list those that they in turn are dependent upon). That's how programs like the ones you're talking about work - they find all the executables, and then traverse the tree of dlls indicated (directly or indirectly) by these headers. It's tempting to assume that any DLL file on the disk that isn't reachable by this traversal is therefore "unreferenced", and so can be safely deleted. This isn't the case, because of the second mechanism Windows employs. DLLs can also be explicitly loaded by a program calling the LoadLibrary function; LoadLibrary takes the name of a dll and loads it when it's told to; that name isn't in the PE header of the executable, and so isn't found by the traversal discussed above. This might sound like an obscure way of doing things, but it's actually a very common pattern. Lots of programs will have a "plugins" folder (or several), and when they start they'll look in that folder, read the names of all the dlls they find, and then LoadLibrary each one (and so installing a plugin is as simple as copying its dll into that folder). The traversal misses all of these, classifies them as unreferenced, and so you'd be deleting things that are in fact used (but not statically referenced) and so break stuff. To answer your specific questions: a) clearly the windows directory and its children, but really no-where is safe b) no c) as described above, not really. Instead I'd recommend running a smart uninstaller like Revo Uninstaller Free and aggressively uninstall programs you don't use (smart uninstallers are better than dumb traversal, because they have some knowledge a-priori about the files used by many popular programs). But really I'd question that dlls are really taking up a significant part of your disk; it's almost always media files or the data files associated with applications that's really to blame. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:18, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

There's probably other stuff on your disk that can be deleted first. You can start by clearing your browser cache, emptying your trash/recycle bin, clearing various folders called temp or tmp - c:\temp, c:\windows\temp (80+MB in mine!), and other places too. Astronaut (talk) 17:01, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I use Ccleaner and CleanUp! all the time, so already doing that. I found three copies of hwxjpn.dll, 13MB each, 20 copies of ieframe.dll about 11MB (although some vary slightly in size), and many more repeated seemingly identical DLLs. I have 6719 unreferenced DLLs, dating back to 1994. BTW, I do frequent virus scans with four or five different scanners so they are unlikely to be malware. Its a pity that XP isnt designed to use just one DLL file rather than having many identical copies of them. I don't suppose there is any software that can do the second thing that FinlayMcWalter described? Thanks 92.15.3.0 (talk) 20:09, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Just because you have two DLLs that are the same name doesn't mean they're the same, or that they're redundant, or that you can safely remove any of them. DLLs all have versions, and applications sometimes depend on specific versions (it's rare for an application to actually check the minor version, but they do assume that dlls they find in their own search path are the ones they installed, ones they were tested to work okay with). You can see the version of a given DLL by bringing up its "properties" sheet in Windows Explorer and looking in the "details" tab. The second thing I described above is not a solution, it is a reason why no software can exist that accurately find genuinely unreferenced DLLs. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:07, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Task Scheduler

Resolved

I want to run a .bat script every 10 mins with Windows Task Scheduler. However, it doesn't work, the .bat script just flashes up for half a second and then ends. If I run the .bat script normally it works fine. What am I doing wrong? 82.43.90.93 (talk) 14:34, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Try adding a "pause" statement to the end of your batch file so you can see the result and hit a key at your leisure, so Windows doesn't just immediately close the cmd.exe window once the .bat file is done. Comet Tuttle (talk) 14:43, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

And you'll probably see a "file not found" error of some nature. That's typically because you're expecting the batch file to run with its working directory set somewhere, and with the PATH set with something in it, and it's providing a different environment where that's not the case. It's generally best to specify the full paths for everything (for the batch file, for all the executables it calls, and for any data files it references). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:55, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks everyone, that solved it! 82.43.90.93 (talk) 15:15, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Language Display in Games

I've got a mod for one of my games (Men of War) which adds certain scenarios to it. Unfortunately, the English version of this mod is not available yet (i.e. the localization files for this mod have not been released), and I only have the Russian version. The problem is, the cyrillic is not showing up in the game (I get random symbols), meaning I can't read what the objectives are (the objectives are spoken, too, but it's way too fast for me!). Does anyone know what I should/could do to fix this so that cyrillic is displayed in-game? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:12, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Assuming a windowsish OS, try setting your system locale to Russian (Control Panel->Regional and Language Options->Administrative->Change system locale... in the Vista box I'm currently on). You may need the Russian version of Men of War, though. —Korath (Talk) 17:19, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Did you use Windows Update and make sure the Cyrillic language pack is installed? Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:18, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I believe the cyrillic language pack is installed, because in 'Regional settings' I can install Russian input (which I have done) and therefore write in Russian. I can view Russian in any other software (Office, browsers, etc.). If this is not what you mean, then how would I go about checking for this (and then installing it if it's not installed)? I don't want to change the system locale just for one single mod, though. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 18:45, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

What is the operation done for data or file is created ,deletion ,selection ,cut,copy,past

What is the operation done for data or file is created ,deletion ,selection ,cut,copy,past,drag drop etc —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.204.80.63 (talk) 17:29, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand the question, and I don't think other editors are likely to, either. Are you asking how to write a program to do these things, or are you perhaps asking what Windows or Linux do when the user does these things? Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:20, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I think it's the second one, "what is the OS is doing to the data when those actions are taken". 82.43.90.93 (talk) 20:14, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Making a page live.

I have edited pages that have already been live in the past, but this is the first time I have created my own page. The page name is "Newman Grace Inc.", and I have finished editing it, I have saved it, however, I cannot find it on wikipedia when searching for it. How can I make sure that my page is indeed live, or is there another step that I must take in order to make the wikipedia page live. Thank you for your help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by OBillyHill (talk • contribs) 19:22, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

You created the article on your user page, User:OBillyHill and it is still there. More common is to create a subpage by entering in the search box at the upper right of a page User:OBillyHill/Newman Grace Inc.. That way you can create and improve the article, adding references and categories, before moving it from a subpage of yours (a sandbox) to the article mainspace. A new article of a sentence or two created in main space is very likely to get speedily deleted, but an article with references and a reasonable claim of notability stands a much better chance. You rename the page by "moving" it as described at Help:Moving a page. In the most recent version of the Wikipedia "skin," you place the cursor on the downward pointing arrow at the top of the page, and you should see the option "Move." Then in "To new title" you enter the name the article should have, Newman Grace Inc. You cannot move a page if your account is too new and is not yet autoconfirmed. If so, you can request at Wikipedia:Requested moves that it be moved from your user page to mainspace. Please do not copy and paste to move a page, since that violates the Wikipedia copyright rules for contribution history. Edison (talk) 21:16, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

To Edison's last point, it's actually OK to copy and paste to move a page if you are the sole author of the page and you originated it on, say, a user sub-page of yours. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:09, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

You will notice that Wikipedia does not include "Inc." in the title of an article about a company. So you should consider creating your page with the title Newman Grace. Sussexonian (talk) 21:49, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Letter case in filenames when transferring photos from digital camera to Linux

I've been transferring photos from my Olympus E-520 DSLR to my Fedora 12 Linux computer by connecting the camera to a USB port, mounting it under the Linux filesystem tree (using automatic filesystem detection) and then just copying the files across, because I haven't been able to make any better or easier way work. Previously this has worked all OK, but now I've run into a small issue here.

Previously, Linux saw the files on the camera in all lowercase, such as dcim/100olymp/p1010001.jpg. Now, with no apparent reason, it has suddenly started seeing them in all uppercase, such as DCIM/100OLYMP/P1010001.JPG. This creates a problem, because like all Unix-compatible systems, Linux uses case-sensitive file names, and so the two are actually different files. If I just blindly copy the files across, mixing both conventions, I end up with duplicated photos. I have been able to change the filename case with a simple command: for i in *; do mv ${i} `echo ${i} | tr [:upper:] [:lower:]`; done, but it's awkward having to do it every time.

I don't know whether the fault is in the camera (thinking all the world is Windows, where letter case in filenames doesn't matter) or in Linux (thinking that since Windows is case-insensitive, the default rendition of the filenames doesn't matter and it can blindly force its own version instead), but I want to know how to fix this. I want to force Linux to use a consistent letter case, no matter what letter case the camera uses internally. How can I do this? Is there some option to mount or some filesystem driver parameter I can use for this? JIP | Talk 19:30, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

There are several File Allocation Table filesystem drivers for Linux, as described in FAT filesystem and Linux. It sounds like, for whatever reason, your camera is mounting as msdos rather than vfat. See what it's mounting as now, and try manually mounting it with vfat. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:40, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

No, it's mounting as vfat. I don't have any idea what caused Linux to suddenly start seeing the filenames in a different case. Maybe there is some option to mount that tells it how to see the filenames? If all else fails I'll just have to rename the files afterwards. JIP | Talk 06:46, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

FAT originally didn't store letter case. This changed with extensions added in Win 95. The extensions are called "vfat" because Win95's FAT driver was called vfat (so was Win 3.11's) and people don't understand the difference between drivers and filesystems apparently. Digital cameras (at least the ones I've used) don't implement the extensions. This means there's no correct case for the filenames generated by digital cameras; it's up to the filesystem driver (or higher-level software) to decide. Linux's "vfat" driver supports the shortname=lower mount option to use lowercase, but that's the default, and I don't know why it would suddenly change on your system. -- BenRG (talk) 13:26, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. The mount option shortname=lower is exactly what I was wanting. Now I just have to automatise the process. Up until now I've been using the same mount point for every device connecting at /dev/sdc1 (/dev/sda and /dev/sdb are reserved for my internal hard drives), which include both my LaCie Neil Poulton drives and the digital camera, as Linux seems to access device files in /dev in sequential order as it finds the devices in the first place - not probably unlike how Windows assigns drive letters such as C:, D: and so on. I can't just write the option into /etc/fstab because then it would probably affect my LaCie Neil Poulton drives as well. Well, there's nothing forbidding multiple mount points for the same device file, each with different options. I will just have to remember which is which. I could automatise the entire process, but I'm not just storing all my photographs in a single big directory - it would contain tens of thousands of photographs. Instead they're divided into subdirectories based on their sequence number, and I will have to figure out a way to make Linux automatically find out which files it needs to copy (in other words, which it doesn't already have) and into which subdirectories. JIP | Talk 19:28, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Reasonably new Linux systems use udev to manage devices, particularly dynamic devices like pluggable usb disks. If you want to do special stuff for a specific disk, you'd add a rule to a file in /etc/udev/rules.d (well, that's the directory on Ubuntu, I don't know about other dists) that detects that specific disk and gives it the specific mount options you want. General notes for writing udev rules (and how to figure out how to identify your specific device automatically) are here, and an example that manipulates the mount_options variable is here. Note that udev also allows you to run a given shellscript when a given device is plugged in (or out), so you could have a script that detects your camera, copies its files off, does whatever jiggery-pokery you want with them (e.g. prefix them with the date and time, or put them into a new subfolder named after the date and time, move that to your final picture archive, and delete the copies off the disk). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:41, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Logo of Diba inc.

Resolved

Can anyone find me a copy of the logo of Diba Inc., a Menlo Park, California internet-appliance startup that was bought by Sun Microsystems in 1997? I only have it on an ancient t-shirt, which I've scanned here. Tineye and my usually proficient Google-fu haven't come up with anything at all. Note that it's not the insurance company, the Iranian bootmaker, or a defunct East-European social-networking site. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:58, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

http://web.archive.org/web/19970120192623/http://www.diba.com/ You will need to remove the drop shadow, and it is a low-res GIF. PleaseStand ^(talk) 22:47, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

More specifically, http://web.archive.org/web/19970505134343/www.diba.com/logo.gif PleaseStand ^(talk) 22:51, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Gosh, silly me, I entirely forgot about webarchive. That's just the ticket - thanks! -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:14, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

How to watch the new Torrent TV Pilot "Pioneer One"

"Pioneer One" is said to be the first TV program pilot specifically for viewing by Torrent. I have never tried this video form before, and when I go via Firefox to the website [4] and click on "Download Torrent" nothing happens. I use Windows XP. I get a box which says "Opening Pioneer.One.S01E01.720p.x264-VODO.torrent Open or save? "Open" leads to "Browse" and a choice of Firefox and other unlikely programs for viewing. I assume "Save" is the right answer. This leads to a list of downloads, with a 90.1kb file, clearly not the 1119 MB file for the show. If I double click that 90.1 kb file, I get a Windows message that "Windows cannot open this file" without knowing what program created it. If I click "Use the web to find the program" I get a Windows page which offers some downloads from sources of unknown trustworthyness which might contain malware. Basically, what computer program should I install to be able to watch a Torrent program, and what are the basic steps to download and watch this particular program? It really should not be this roundabout. Will some widely known media viewer such as Real, Itunes, or Windows Media player play the thing? And how do I avoid cluttering my hard drive with giant files for programs looked at once? If they were in the playlist for a particular viewer, I might be able to download, watch, and delete. If I have to download a "BitTorrent client" then free, widely used, malware free, glitch free and legal would be good criteria. And why is a downloading and viewing program called a "client?" Thanks. Edison (talk) 20:50, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

You need a Torrent client. The torrent file you downloaded (the 90kb one) is just a 'pointer' of sorts to allow a client to then find the file through 'seeds' and then download it. I use Transmission which is on Mac but there's plenty out there. Note - you don't normally watch a torrent until it has completed the download as it doesn't necessarily download the file sequentially. ny156uk (talk) 21:01, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Per Comparison of BitTorrent clients, Transmission does not run on Windows. What would be a good one for Windows? How about BitTorrent 6 ? Some concern: 1)Is this part of the peer-to peer sharing thing, where people have gotten sued for downloading copyrighted programs, or where material on my computer becomes accessible to others? 2)Are torrent files more likely than others to bring in malware? 30 How do I avoid clogging up the hard drive with downloaded files watched once and of no future interest? I have a fast broadband connection, so I usually just watch TV or movies streaming. Edison (talk) 21:27, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

1) Yes it is a type of peer-2-peer network. The torrent will only share files that you allow it to - which at the very least will always include the file(s) that you are in the process of downloading. As long as what you are downloading/sharing is legally allowed to be downloaded you are fine. 2) A lot of torrent hosting sites have a 'good' and 'bad' indicator (so bad files are voted down) but beyond that i'm not sure - it's certainly accepting files/packages of files from the internet so it's definitely not risk free. 3) Set the downloads to your desktop/a folder on your desktop and then watch the downloads from there - you can then just delete them as soon as you've watched them/whenever (basically keep all the downloaded files in one place then it's easy to go in and delete at your will). ny156uk (talk) 09:28, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

μTorrent is highly regarded. If you want something open source and not just cost-free, try Vuze. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:32, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Smaller alternatives to OpenOffice with British-English spell checking?

OpenOffice is nearly 400MB with a British English add-on; despite "Never look a gift horse in the mouth" dare I mention the word bloatware? And it has some irritating features I don't like. I've already looked at List_of_word_processors#Freeware and similar articles.

What smaller free alternatives with British English spell checking are there please (that people can recommend from personal experience or knowledge rather than just providing a link to Google)? All I really want is a word-processor, never use the other things in OpenOffice except sometime the spreadsheet which may be available independently. I have Windows XP.

I spend a lot of time writing letters so something that can help me do that quickly would be great. Thanks 92.15.3.0 (talk) 20:54, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

AbiWord does the job if all you want is a word processor. According to their website it has British English language support. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:52, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Of course, if staying online to use it is acceptable, there is Google Apps. You may need to download a British spell-check dictionary for your web browser though. PleaseStand ^(talk) 22:37, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Can the Windows Vista Business be installed in more than one computer within a small business?

Can the Windows Vista Business be installed in more than one computer within a small business (like the Office Small Business)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.137.86.18 (talk) 21:06, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

No, not according to Microsoft's licensing terms. Only through a volume licensing agreement such as Open License does Microsoft permit using the same Windows product key on multiple computers. By the way, the Office Small Business license agreement only allows the second installation to be on a "portable device" that is only used by the primary user of the other computer, so even for that, installing on two desktop computers (rather than on a laptop) would not be permitted. PleaseStand ^(talk) 22:31, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

June 24

Operating System Advice

I'm planning on building my first computer soon, but I'm still not sure what OS to use. I was hoping someone here would have more experience with OSes and be able to offer a little advice to a poor lost soul such as myself. Basically, I'm deciding between Windows 7 and Windows XP. (please don't tell me I should get a Mac or Linux; I really don't want a Mac and I might dual-boot with Linux anyway, so you don't need to proselytize) I plan to use the computer mostly for everyday work (word processor (which I can use Open Office for, to save on buying Office), the Internet, that sort of thing), but also playing the occasional game, mostly Valve Corporation stuff. I don't really know anything about operating systems, though. So which would be better for playing games, and which version of the operating system should I get? I've heard Windows 7 has some trouble playing games, especially older ones, but are they enough of a concern for me to go with XP? Or are there other factors that might make me want to choose one over the other?

As a side note, while money isn't too big of a concern here, it's still a consideration. I'm a student, so I think I'd get a discount on Windows 7, but I'm not sure about XP. So... any help? Thanks. Fletch the Mighty (talk) 03:44, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

I upgraded a little while ago from XP to windows 7 and have never looked back, and I really liked XP. This is obviously just my opinion. I work in IT so have considerable exposure to computers and operating systems. One main advantage of W7 is Direct X 11, however that's only with recent games, not old ones, and I can't say I play a lot of old games, so that part I don't really have an opinion on, I've found compatibility mode to be pretty good. The few things I haven't been able to get working on W7, like some pretty specialized programming hardware and my serial to USB dongle I've worked around by installing XP on a virtual machine which I run using the free Vmware player. However you still need a license of XP to legally install it on a virtual machine, and I haven't tried playing games on it, but if the games are old and your computer is powerful, i think it would be alright. Vespine (talk) 03:59, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Keep in mind that Microsoft is phasing out support for Windows XP, and it hasn't been available to purchase for about one to two years now (except for "ultra low-cost PCs", where it's available until October). While security fixes will still be provided until early 2014, technical support and feature upgrades have been discontinued for over a year, unless you have already purchased an extended support contract. - Bottom line is that if you don't have an XP license already, you're unlikely to find one. Even if you do, for long term support, you're better off going with Windows 7, unless your hardware doesn't support the Win7 system requirements. -- 174.24.195.56 (talk) 04:26, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Windows 7, hands down. Simply the "Search" field off the Start menu is great. It crashes far less due to the different driver model. Comet Tuttle (talk) 05:41, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Adding my support for Windows 7 too. Over the last ~6 years I've used Valve's Steam platform for pretty much all of my games (just counted - 132 different games are in my list!) and I haven't had any major problems (although I didn't have any problems with Windows Vista either for that matter!). There are a handful of the older games that have a few niggles/need slight tweaking to get to work properly (you can get the relevant information from the Steam forums), but anything released in the last 2-3 years should run problem-free, even on Windows 7 x64 which I'm using. Hope this helps! ZX81 ^talk 12:14, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Anyway avoid Vista. I had a notebook with it which died irreparably recently and I was so glad because it meant I could go and get a new notebook with WIndows 7 instead which I'm quite happy with. Dmcq (talk) 13:45, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the advice, everybody! I'm definitely going to go with Windows 7. I didn't think about the support side of it before, but 174.24 above is right, so thanks for that! Fletch the Mighty (talk) 23:11, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Networking

How to control a PC with hardwares of some other PC connected with it on LAN? 220.225.96.217 (talk) 04:30, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

If you are looking for software to remotely control one PC from another, VNC software such as TightVNC (preferably with the "mirror display driver") or UltraVNC should do the job. Alternatively, Windows has a built-in Windows Remote Assistance feature that can be used for remote access (the main limitation is that someone has to be at the PC being controlled to accept the connection). Finally, some versions of Windows have "remote access" or "Remote Desktop" settings in the System control panel that will allow you to connect from the other computer using Remote Desktop Connection (the main limitation is that the connection will not work if you are logged in at the time). PleaseStand ^(talk) 05:26, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Actually if you're using version 5 of Remote Desktop Connection client there's a /console parameter to connect to the main console and in version 6 this changed to /admin. Running the client with this parameter (i.e. mstsc /admin ) with connect to the main console of the target machine. However, only if you have the same credentials as that user that's already logged on. ZX81 ^talk 11:55, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Also, fwiw, Windows XP, Vista, 2003, 2008, and Windows 7 all have Remote Desktop capability. Some simply restrict the number of users that can connect at any given time, which often forces you to take control over the "main desktop" session. The setting for this is available if you right click "My Computer" (just "Computer" in 2008/Win7) and select "Properties", there will be a Remote tab (or "remote settings" area in 2008/Win7) that lets you activate or deactivate the feature. Nothing personal to anyone, but it astounds me that so many people use VNC when this built-in, tried and true method of remotely accessing a windows computer is right there ready to go. --144.191.148.3 (talk) 13:55, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Windows Vista starter, home basic, and home premium editions do not feature an RDP server, and neither do their counterparts in Windows 7. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:54, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

how to boot from cd?

Today I got my newly built computer to power up. It asked me to insert a cd. So I inserted a Linux cd I downloaded from the internet. (I need to wait until my friend gives me back my Windows cd so I figured I'd try to use Linux instead.) But it was a bad file I downloaded and it didn't install good. It froze and the screen was black. So after a while I restarted the computer but it isn't the same as before. It doesn't ask me to insert a disk anymore. Instead it says verifying dmi pool data and just freezes there. I tried resetting the bios but it doesn't help. Does anyone know what I should do? Thanks in advance. http://www.flickr.com/photos/51417520@N03/4729633936/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.108.156.138 (talk) 04:51, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

I built a computer fairly recently that would freeze right at that spot for several minutes before proceeding. Thanks for the bad memories! After trying various things the problem went away when I replaced the DVD drive with another one. I think I changed the SATA cable, as well. Try disconnecting each drive, in turn, and rebooting, and seeing whether that fixes the issue? Comet Tuttle (talk) 05:38, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Your system is likely set up to attempt booting from the hard drive, which has the corrupted Linux installation, before trying to boot from CD. To boot from CD in this case, read your motherboard's manual. It should mention the key you need to press to access the BIOS boot menu (usually F8, F11, or F12; you could try those). That should give you several options; one of those will allow you to boot from CD. Alternatively, you can change the boot device sequence within the CMOS setup utility, placing the CD-ROM drive first (so that the system attempts to boot from CD regardless of whether or not an operating system is installed on the hard drive). PleaseStand ^(talk) 05:50, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh, yeah. You should certainly use PleaseStand's suggestion before trying mine. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:30, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I tried changing the boot sequence to make the cd-rom as the first priority but it doesn't help. The "verifying dmi pool data..." message comes on too early, before it even boots. I've also tried changing the hard drive, but no matter what I do, it still freezes there. I think the problem might be stored in a different location than the hard drive, since I replaced with a different one and it still doesn't work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.28.3.33 (talk) 07:20, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Ugh. One clarification: That whole screen, including the "Verifying DMI Pool Data" message, will always come on before it boots, no matter what drive boot order you are using; it's a BIOS message. It's supposed to only take a second, is the problem. So are you saying you are no longer able to get the computer to boot at all from any device? (Have you tried actually letting it attempt to boot for like 10 minutes?) Could you do another check through the BIOS options to make sure there's nothing that looks like a non-starter? If I were completely unable to boot in this situation after trying several boot devices and changing around the SATA cables to eliminate them as a cause, my next step would probably actually be to try removing all the RAM except for one stick at a time to try to eliminate that as a cause. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:51, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Is your DVD drive connected with a SATA rather than an IDE connection? If so, try putting the DVD drive's SATA port in IDE mode rather than AHCI mode. You might also want to try resetting the BIOS settings to their defaults. PleaseStand ^(talk) 22:27, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Looking for a separate XML Schema file

hello,

I am looking for a separate XML schema of the XML dump "pages-articles.xml" file. It is mentioned in your Website that the XML schemas are defined at the top of the dump file. Since this file is too huge to open in an editor, I'd rather use its schema. How can I have the schema as a separate file?

Thank you.

D.B —Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.84.128.133 (talk) 08:15, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Perflib_Perfdata_650.dat

I have this file in my C:windows/temp folder. It will not delete, but is re-made every time I start the computer. I have spent some time on the internet trying to find out what it is. How do I find out what program is using it please? I'm using XP and Firefox. Thanks 92.24.186.235 (talk) 08:56, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

That's a temporary file used by Performance Monitor. You can find it under Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Performance Monitor. However, depending on your version of Windows, by default it will be monitoring a few basic things (memory, processor, network and disk usage on Windows 7 it seems) so having these temporary files isn't unusual. Unless it's using an unusually high amount of disk space, I wouldn't worry about it, it's part of normal Windows operations. ZX81 ^talk 12:05, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

turning text into html in JSON

So I finally got my basic javascript Twitter page working. BUT. Twitter sends the "source" element, like what client they use, as a link. But when I just use document.createTextNode on it, it doesn't render it as a link. It just displays the anchor tag text, without rendering it. (for example)

<a href="http://www.tweetdeck.com" rel="nofollow">TweetDeck</a>

Instead of becoming a link, the above just displays as text. The whole thing, <a href> </a> and all. What can I do about this? Thanks, [flaminglawyer] 10:08, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that Twitter sends you data 'as a link', but document.createTextNode will output pure text, so any HTML tags will be lost. Tell us more about what Twitter sends, and I'm sure someone can tell you how to include it into your page. As a quick fix, have you tried to set the sent data directly as an elements innerHTML? Zigorney (talk) 18:48, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

That was stupid of me. Yes, innerHTML worked. Thanks. [flaminglawyer] 17:58, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

cd

With the DOS / Command prompt function "cd", is there a way to make it got to the current directory instead of having to re write the script every time I move it to a different folder? 82.43.90.93 (talk) 14:49, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

This link lists a way to do what it is that I think you want. (I haven't tried it myself. I assume what you want is: your batch file has already done some "cd" statements to change the current directory to be something else, and you then want to "cd" back to the original current directory.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:29, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Unless I've misunderstood, you can simply use pushd . (the period means set whatever the currently directory is) and popd to jump back to that directory as long as it's in the same session.ZX81 ^talk 16:43, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Hey, that worked for me perfectly. (Though I'm not the original poster.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:22, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I thought the OP was asking how to get a batch file to CD to the directory that it's located in. That location is stored in the environment variable %0. But that includes the name of the script, so if this is what the OP wants, s/he should use: cd /d %~dp0 which will CD to the drive and path that the script is stored in. [5] Indeterminate (talk) 00:03, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Information about microsoft

can u please provide me with the details about the different components such as finance, production function, marketing, administration, inputs & outputs, research and development and human resource management of microsoft company? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ashuhaso (talk • contribs) 14:56, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

You can start with our article Microsoft. Then, here is a copy of Microsoft's most recent Form 10-K annual financial report, which is hard to parse if you haven't read any 10-K's before, but it has a lot of information. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:26, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Captcha is bad

I once saw a website which asked users to prove they're not bots by simply correctly identifying a picture. This looked easier than captcha to me; depending on the words used in captcha, I can end up having to re-prove myself two or three times, but these pictures were easy, I got them first time. Why isn't this used more often? Vimescarrot (talk) 21:20, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

I imagine it's because a captcha can be generated from any arbitrary word, algorithmically; whereas your describe-a-picture idea requires that when setting up the system, a human must look through many, many pictures (hundreds? thousands?), identify them all, and not make any mistakes. Another robot-identifier that is, I believe, popular in phpBB message boards is to say "What is 2+6?" and have the user enter the result into a text field. This of course is really easy to make a robot solve, if the robot's author has taken the time to make the bot look for a math problem next to a text field. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:24, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Because Mr Spammer quickly collects a massive library of pictures and their valid identifications, obviating the whole thing. To avoid this, captchas (whether read-the-text or not) really need to be mechanically generated. I have seen proposals for ones that show a couple of simple phong-shaded people with a variety of ordinary objects, and you have to answer questions like "what is the object in the man's right hand and the object on the table", and say "umbrella, banana". They vary the lighting and the orientation of everything, and apparently solving this in general is one of the unsolved problems of computer image analysis. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:26, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

All this makes me feel bad because I feel that we're now in a situation where two good-will technologies are competing against each other. We're trying to both enhance automatic visual recognition and hinder it at the same time. Of course these are being done for different purposes, but there's nothing inherently stopping a good-will technology from being used to an evil end. The technology itself won't know a difference. I've even seen Wikipedia being used as a means to help spam evade automatic spam detection. JIP | Talk 21:36, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

You have a point, but think of it this way; when the image processing improves thanks to nefarious demand, it can then be used for good and a new protection test can be rolled out. It is certainly a cat and mouse game but it's only zero sum if you are in the spam/spam protection business. For the rest of us, we get some nice technology out of the whole deal. Also, see recaptcha for a way to do good while preventing evil. --144.191.148.3 (talk) 17:44, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Picture ones can be difficult too. You see a picture of an ear of corn is that "Corn" "Maize" "Grain" "Vegetable" "Plant"? (And too bad if you think corn is a fruit!) APL (talk) 15:01, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

This is very much tangential, but all of this reminds me of the Army Alpha and Beta tests from WWI... --Mr.98 (talk) 13:57, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Meaning of Ubuntu "version?" number?

I have two machines running Lucid Lynx, here are the $ uname -a results:

Linux machine1 2.6.32-22-generic #33-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 28 13:27:30 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

and

Linux machine2 2.6.32-22-generic-pae #36-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jun 3 23:14:23 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

They are running the same kernel, but the other parts are different. (btw, machine1 was an upgrade, machine2 is a clean install of LUcid) What do the #33 and #36 mean? and can you point to a relevant webpage? Thanks! --Rajah (talk) 23:55, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

PAE refers to Physical Address Extension. Does machine2 have more RAM than machine1? That might explain the difference. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:17, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I know about PAE. Please disregard that for the purposes of this question. Both machines are now up to #36, for example machine1 is now:

Linux machine1 2.6.32-22-generic #36-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jun 3 22:02:19 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

Ok, doing:

$ grep install /var/log/dpkg.log|grep 36

Turns up:

2010-06-04 19:34:51 status installed linux-image-2.6.32-22-generic 2.6.32-22.36
2010-06-04 19:34:51 status installed linux-headers-2.6.32-22 2.6.32-22.36
2010-06-04 19:34:53 status installed linux-headers-2.6.32-22-generic 2.6.32-22.36

So now, as stated in Software_versioning#Odd-numbered_versions_for_development_releases, they don't just use the fourth number, they also have a fifth number. These pages: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/2.6.32-22.33 https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/2.6.32-22.36 , etc. seem to indicate it's just a way to version extremely minor changes to the source. --Rajah (talk) 06:54, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

The part of the version after "#" is taken from the .version file in the source tree where the kernel was compiled. The number in that file is incremented every time a kernel build starts. So it's basically a count of how many times someone ran "make" after untarring the source. This serial number doesn't tell you anything about what's in the kernel. All it does is guarantee that if you recompile, there will be something in the new kernel's version string to distinguish it from the previous one. 98.226.122.10 (talk) 10:17, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! --Rajah (talk) 05:57, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

June 25

Converting Word to PDF

Hello. When I convert a Word 2007 document containing formulas created by Equations Editor to a PDF, the formulas become invisible in the PDF except for fraction bars and the top line of radicals. How should I fix this? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 00:42, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

How are you converting it to a PDF? Are you using Word's own PDF support or something else? The obvious thing to try is another method of making the PDF, like with CutePDF. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:56, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

If you are doing this just once, a quick and dirty method might be to just take screen shots of the formulas and put them in the document instead. This obviously won't be practical if there's hundreds or if you need people to be able to copy and past out of the PDF.. Vespine (talk) 05:43, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

If you'd want to make the original doc file available to us, someone more knowledgeable might find a different method more quickly. As for myself, I use the built-in Export to PDF feature of OpenOffice.Org. --Ouro (blah blah) 11:14, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Why are you using the very old Equation Editor in Word 2007? Word 2007 has built-in support for creating formulae, and these can be converted to PDF (using the Word's built-in converter) with no problem - it works great (example). I would not recommend trying any third-party PDF creator tool (such as CutePDF, Nova PDF, or PDFCreator), for in my experience (and I create PDFs from Word several times a week and has been doing this for years, and have tried a few third-party solutions) they are all much worse than the Microsoft solution. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 12:14, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, that isn't terrible. Not as good as LaTeX, of course. But Word seems to be getting better than it used to be. What is the UI like? --Trovatore (talk) 18:44, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

I use Word's own PDF support and its built-in support for creating formulas. Yet to consider a third-party solution. --Mayfare (talk) 18:26, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Searching for Bootable PCIe 1.0 x4 SLC NAND Flash SSD

Hi.

   I am looking for a Flash-based Solid State Drive which meets the following requirements. Does anyone here know of any such product?

1. It must be bootable, i.e. the workstation computer in which it is installed must be able to boot from an operating-system installed on it.
2. It must be built with Single Level Cell NAND flash memory.
3. It must connect directly to the motherboard via a x4 PCIe 1.0 Slot.
4. It must have a minimum capacity of two hundred binary gigabytes, i.e. 214,748,364,800 bytes.
5. Its length must not exceed 254 millimeters (ten inches).

   Thanks in advance. Vickreman.chettiar (talk) 05:00, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

The RamSan-10 and the RamSan-20, both from Texas Memory Systems, fulfil most (items 2 to 5) of your requirements. The RamSan-10 and RamSan-20 have usable capacities of 225GB and 450GB respectively. However, neither of them are bootable. Hope this helps. Rocketshiporion (talk) 05:25, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

   Thank you, but I am looking for a x4 PCI 1.0 SLC NAND Flash SSD for the express purpose of using it as a boot drive. Vickreman.chettiar (talk) 05:45, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

writing a program, USB and interface

I'm only a beginner programmer, I know a bit of C and python. I've been working on this project www.vespine.com for about a year and I've got the hardware pretty much worked out now, so now I need to work on the software. I have ideas of my own how to go about this but I don't doubt there are probably better ways of doing it.

The firmware is in C on a microcontroller where the cube is represented by a data array which holds separate R, G and B values for each LED. I can get some visualizations going in the cube but ultimately would like to be able to feed more complex animations and stuff through USB, ideally with some sort of user interface, maybe even graphical representation. For windows by the way.

Should I look into java or visual studio or something else or stick with C? C++? I haven't got the faintest idea how to build an interface with c, is there a simpler way? Is there such a thing as USB app building software or something? Any other suggestions? I know these are all noob questions and I'll have to start at the bottom, I made my 1st LED blink on a microcontroller only a year ago, happy to start at "hello world". Has anyone interfaced USB hardware before? Any tips where to start? I've been googling ideas but there's obvously LOTs of stuff online, thought I'd ask here for people's opinions. Vespine (talk) 05:24, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

That's a pretty cool looking thing, and a fun project. Just so I understand what it is you're asking, can I recap - you've already built this nifty LED array, and hooked it up to a microcontroller. Using software you've written in C and transferred to the microcontroller, you can get the LEDs to flash in some attractive patterns. What you'd like to do now is to have a Windows PC program that communicates with the microcontroller over a USB interface, that tells the microcontroller (in real-ish time) what lights to flash. At some point you want that PC program to have a GUI, so you can design, save, load, and otherwise manipulate light patterns. And I'd guess that you'd like to be able to distribute that program to other people, so they can build (or buy from you) a lightcube and program it themselves. I'll answer shortly (this all seems fairly straightforward) - if I'm misunderstanding what it is you want to do, my answers will reflect that (and probably won't be useful, so stop me if I'm off chasing snarks). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:18, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, firstly you'll have to do the microcontroller end. You've not said what microcontroller it is (I'm guessing it's an Arduino or similar) or what libraries come with it (if you can link to public docs legally, that would be very helpful). I guess you've been programming this thing over the USB interface, but now you want to talk directly from your prospective Windows app to your microcontroller app, in real(ish) time. I'd very much hope that the microcontroller comes with a library that gives you proper control over the USB interface, and lets you drive that yourself. In this case I'd imagine you'd want to set that up as a custom USB device class (because you're not pretending to be a mouse or a disk drive or anything else) which seems to be device class 0xFF (and you'd set up the vendor info and device info so that Windows doesn't mistake your device for anything else, and so that your Windows program can accurately identify the lightcube). Then you need to design the control protocol you'll talk between the two. I'd guess there's not much the PC will read (make sure you have firmware revision numbers and a hardware identifier too, so that you can later work with different versions of your hardware and software). Mostly you'll be sending commands saying "set these LEDs to these values" - you might be able to do that just with a control transfer message; if you need to send a lot of stuff (e.g. a complex programme of LED changes over time) then you might need to use the bulk transfer mode as well (or instead). I'd see if you can do it all with control transfer for now. How you implement this on the microcontroller depends on its USB library. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:27, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I see your website says it's a PIC32. This note discusses a USB stack for the PIC32 (which I think you can get here). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:23, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Next you need a Windows app. Firstly you should have a simple non-gui app, that lets you talk over the USB using your custom lightcube protocol. As long as a library is available, it really doesn't matter what programming language you use. You know C and Python, so lets say you do it in Python (but really C is just as good, and if your skills are stronger there use that instead). I'd think using libusb to handle the low-level communications is a good idea; it works on Windows, and if you later want to support Mac or Linux, it should make porting easy. If you're coding in Python, there's PyUSB, which is just a thin Python skin over the C libusb - the operations you'll do will be the same regardless of which language. Firstly your test app will have to setup the USB interface and find any lightcubes you've plugged in. Then you'd use the control interface to send "change the LED" messages, using the protocol you designed above. Later you might find the need to add fancier stuff to the protocol, and make both ends smarter, but in the first case this should get you going. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:35, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, to clarify when I say "Firstly you should have a simple non-gui app", I mean that you should write a simple text-based test one first, not that you should never add GUI functions to that later. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:57, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Wow thanks heaps for that fantastic reply! We must have a time zone difference, sorry for not replying earlier. I'll definitely be saving this as a road map. I thought at best I'd get a few cynical one liners:) . So most of your assumptions were dead on. At the moment, I can generate some basic patterns in the cube firmware, just using linear loops and stuff, and I can play some files that I found on the internet at 3dleds.com which look great but are just "frame by frame" recordings someone made so you can't really manipulate them. So yes the goal is to get some more complex stuff streaming form my PC.

I'll be replacing my basic pic32 starter kit with the pic32 usb2 starter kit, I suspect that it will be a lot easier to utilise the USB on that since that's what it looks like it is made for. The cube is represented in the microcontroller(Uc) code as a data array, so I imagine what I'll do is just mirror the data array in my PC application so I can manipulate it and then use USB to send the PC's array to the Uc at 25Hz or whatever my frame rate will be. So the 1st thing I'll need to tackle is the control protocol.. Thanks heaps for your help, this really gives me a solid idea of what I'm facing. Vespine (talk) 01:30, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

One last question, I've done a bit more reading and am starting to think maybe wifi might be the way to go… there is a wifi module avaliable for the pic32 starter kits, and come to think of it, I don't really want the cube plugged into my pc all the time. So do you think ethernet and wifi will be much harder to implement then USB? Or is it much of a muchness? I'm going to look into it some more. Any opinions? Vespine (talk)

Assuming they've also got a TCP/IP library for the PCI32 PIC32, that takes care of the wifi stuff too, then it's much the same as USB. You'd just use the socket libraries of both platforms rather than libusb. And again, python, C, or whatever, just about every general purpose language has a TCP/IP api (almost always Berkeley sockets). You still need to have your own high level protocol that defines what you're sending back and forward. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:52, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Ok, perfect, you've been a great help. Cheers. Vespine (talk) 15:36, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Networking Cable Diameters

   I need to know what are the overall exterior diameters (i.e. including the jacket) of the following types of cables.

1. Category 3
2. Category 5
3. Category 5 Enhanced
4. Category 6
5. Category 6 Amendment

   Thank you. Rocketshiporion (talk) 12:50, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

They're all similar - this is useful [6] gives CAT5 as 1/6inch. You can get thicker cables.77.86.123.157 (talk) 15:55, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

There is enough variance in the spec... It all depends on the gauge of the wires, whether they are stranded or solid, if the cable is shielded, and the type of jacket used (softer > thicker, etc.) I have seen some super thin Cat5, and some super thick Cat5. 1/6 of an inch is probably fair but by no means universal. "Generally" they get thicker as you move up the scale, due to more demanding signaling requirements. --144.191.148.3 (talk) 17:38, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

mysql last value query

This is just trolling for some ideas that I haven't thought of yet... Here is the situation: You have a table with people in it. You have about 30 tables, each identical, with yearly data on the people. So, you have purchases_2000, purchases_2001, purchases_2002... The people may have entries in one or more of the yearly tables. The goal: QUICKLY create a list that shows the last purchase per patient. It can be as simple as the patient's unique ID and the last purchase's unique ID. Most solutions that I've seen people come up with take about 4 hours using real-world data. I'd like to see it get to around 4 minutes with some creative insight into how MySQL optimizes queries. -- kainaw™ 14:06, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm twitching a bit at the idea of per-year tables, but anyway, are the purchase tables indexed on the patient ID? (If so, what accounts for the slow queries, and if not, could they be?) -- Coneslayer (talk) 14:38, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

It is easy to manipulate the tables, so you can join people.person_id to purchases.person_id. There is a date, item, and value field in purchases. Obviously, you need date to get the LAST purchase. Nearly every solution I've seen uses subselects or joins each purchase table on itself (sometimes 3 or 4 times). I have a method of doing it that is functional, but I know someone much smarter than me will have an outstanding way of solving this little problem. I feel that if I simply give a query and say "make it better", then all I will get is minor improvements on that query, not a wholly new query that is far superior. -- kainaw™ 14:50, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

I understand that you can do a join where people.person_id = purchases.person_id. My question is whether there's an index for purchases.person_id. The presence or absence of an index will, I think, greatly affect the speed of that join. -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:18, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Correct. There is an index on purchases.person_id and purchases.date and even (purchases.person_id,purchases.date). -- kainaw™ 15:23, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

OK... I'm a little surprised that the straightforward approaches are slow, then. Is a very simple query like "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM purchases,people WHERE people.person_id = purchases.person_id" slow? Would you be able to post an "EXPLAIN SELECT ..." for that same query? Also, is it a good assumption that any single person's purchases are a small fraction of all the purchases? (That is, you don't have one customer who dominates your business?) -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:30, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

That is not slow. What is slow is methods of getting the last purchase per person. A person's last purchase could be in any one of the yearly purchase tables. So, common methods are to search all of the purchase tables (per person) to find the last purchase date and then search all of the purchase tables again (per person) to find a purchase on that date and, if there is more than one on that date, wrap it all in a big query that groups by patient to make it one purchase per patient. That isn't how I'm doing it. I query each purchase table and order by purchase date desc. I union the results. Then, I join that big union to the person table and group by person. I get 1 purchase per person and, because I ordered dates from most recent to the past, I get the most recent purchase. That takes about 15 minutes. -- kainaw™ 15:35, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, I got you. I wasn't fully appreciating the problem, and was focusing on the problem of finding the last purchase date for one customer. I therefore assumed you could just start with the newest purchase table, and work your way backwards until you found a table with at least one purchase. If this is a real, ongoing problem (as opposed to an intellectual curiosity) it may be worth denormalizing and explicitly storing a "last purchase" date for each customer. Is that a possibility? -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:41, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

The problem is much more widespread. There is a need for last time a vegetable item was purchased. Last store visited. Last cashier used. Last time bread and paper products were purchased at the same time. There are tons of requests for "last" queries. I used to make a temp table that I filled with the last date based on the purchase criteria, but now I just union all the purchase tables (from 1990 to the present), limiting on the criteria and then join it to the customer table. It takes a long time - much longer if I copy-paste and regex-replace the criteria and accidentally replace something else so I have to fix it and rerun the whole thing again. -- kainaw™ 15:49, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

If you don't have an INDEX on the field you're doing an ORDER BY on, doesn't that mean the SELECT doing the ORDER BY has to read essentially the whole table and sort it? And if you're doing a SELECT ... UNION on those N yearly tables, doesn't the implicit table that this generates (the one you then join on) then have no index? It would be tempting to create a VIEW of that query, but views can't have indexes. Things might be better if you invert the order things are done (that is, you do the join and ORDER BY on each subtable first, before the UNION) but really the subtables are the problem. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:46, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

That makes sense. I'm going from tons of indexes tables to a monster-sized unindexed table and then joining that to a large (but relatively much smaller) customer table. I'm going to try to reorganize it so all joins take place on indexed tables then the union. However, the final group by must take place on the final result which will the result of unions so it won't be indexed. If I could just think of a way to index the union of 20 tables on the fly. -- kainaw™ 16:52, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

What if you insert the results of the individual-table queries into a temporary table that's appropriately indexed? -- Coneslayer (talk) 16:59, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

If I was doing this, I'd be bold and junk the per year tables and make them all one purchases table, with purchase year as one column. That'll be one bit of effort to do, but will bring huge benefits in the future when you want to do things of this sort again. --Phil Holmes (talk) 16:35, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Internet problem

I have a thing that makes one modem provide internet to two computers via a wire. It is an SMC Barricade. When I turn off my modem and turn it back on while one of my computers is using the internet, the modem shows that Power, Ethernet, DSL, and (sometimes) Internet are all up and running but the internet doesn't work on that computer for a while. Sometimes the internet on both computers doesn't work, but sometimes it works fine, iF i run a network diagnostics it says there is a DNS server error or soemthing. If I connect either computer directly to teh internet it works fine. What is going on and how can I fix this? 76.229.149.7 (talk) 17:02, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Your SMC Barricade is a device called a router. When you turn off the modem, and turn it back on, the modem will spend a minute doing self-tests and starting up, and then the modem communicates with your ISP to say "I've been turned on; please give me an IP address". Your ISP's computers then give the modem an IP address. Now, all this time, your router hasn't had an IP address, because the modem has been off; so every once in a while the router tries to ask the modem for an IP address. Once the modem does have an IP address, the router will finally get the IP address it needs, next time the router asks the modem for one. Now, also, all this time, your computers have not had an IP address while the modem was off, so now the next time each computer asks the router for an IP address, the router will finally give the computer an IP address; and then you can access the Internet. If you want this to go slightly faster upon turning on the modem, you should first turn on the modem, then turn on the router, then turn on (or restart) the computer. (Is there a reason you keep turning off your modem?) Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:28, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Microsoft Office 2010 Student Edition

Does the Microsoft Office 2010 Student Edition contain/display the "non-comercial use only" stamp like the Microsoft Office 2007 Student Edition? Thanks! --Tyw7  (☎ Contact me! • Contributions)

Yes, probably. Let me find a link.... Chevymontecarlo 14:44, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Argh, can't seem to find one. I think there is a separate version for commercial use. Chevymontecarlo 14:47, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

New Features

When I log on to Wiki I get New Features activated by default. I have to log in to choose to no-New Features mode. Is there any way I don't get New Feautres by default ?  Jon Ascton  (talk) 04:35, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately no, the developers of Vector apparently didn't give a shit about non-logged-in users who might not want the horrible new skin. However, there are two ways that I know of to revert Wikipedia back to the old style. Firstly, you can add "?useskin=monobook" (without quotes) to the end of any url, reload, and it should now display the page with the monobook skin. The second way is this userscript for greasemonkey, which adds "?useskin=monobook" to urls automatically while your browse. 82.43.90.93 (talk) 09:52, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

June 26

antenna connectors on cell phones

Old phones had antenna connectors but new ones don't. Is that just a cost saving thing, or is there a better reason? I'd like to add an antenna since my reception is lousy at home, but it no longer seems possible. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.57.243.88 (talk) 08:06, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Speaking as a former cell-phone technician, exterior antennas are superior to internal antennas when it comes to line noise and dropped calls. Even better would be an antenna mounted outside of your cell phone altogether! Some people mount antennas on the dashboards of their cars and even on their roofs. They then hook up those antennas to their cell phones. If you wanted the best possible reception, you would mount a tall antenna on the roof of your car. Someone at Radio Shack can set you up with one.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 08:42, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, but 1) I rarely use my phone in a car and when I do, it almost always works fine. The trouble I'm having is indoors in a residence. 2) I don't see how to use an external antenna with any recently made phone since they don't have antenna connectors any more. That's what I was asking about. 75.57.243.88 (talk) 08:48, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

This blog post from an antenna manufacturer, about the recent iPhone 4 antenna problem, touches on the fact that the antennas have disappeared due to consumer preference. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:07, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Maybe you can attach an antenna through the charging point. Kittybrewster ☎ 15:33, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Information theoretic loss of JPEGs through displaying

I'm asking this out of curiosity, not for any practical application reason. Suppose one had a JPEG file, displayed on the screen at 1x zoom, no special effects applied or anything, and one took a screencap, and saved the screencap in a lossless format (PNG or BMP or whatever). From an information theoretic point of view, would the resulting copy have lost image information? Would it be in any information theoretic sense an inferior version of the original image? Note that I'm not interested in metadata or anything like that, I'm only talking about the actual image itself. Any thoughts? Maelin (Talk | Contribs) 08:37, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

No.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 08:44, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Unless the computer being used to display and take the screencap only had, say a 16 color display. Then the screencap would be limited to 16 colors, regardless of whatever the original jpg was 82.43.90.93 (talk) 09:46, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I think that in some situations, the raw JPEG might have a higher color depth than what can be displayed on a screen, no? --Mr.98 (talk) 12:02, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

So there's no kind of interpretation or processing algorithm that is used that is not universal to all JPEG displayers? Every possible program you could use to open a JPEG will send exactly the same pixel pattern to the monitor, and hence, one would always get the exact same BMP no matter what app it was screencapped from? Also: assume the system has maximal available colour depth. Maelin (Talk | Contribs) 19:04, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

It is unclear to me what you mean by "the original image". By this, do you mean the first JPEG file that you mention? If you have a JPEG file on your system, it has already gone through a step of lossy compression, hasn't it? Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:04, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, nomenclature I intended was "original" -> jpeg, "copy" -> bitmap from screencap. Maelin (Talk | Contribs) 19:04, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Userscript

Would it be possible to write a userscript that can scan a wikipedia article page a randomly select a link, then navigate to that article? 82.43.90.93 (talk) 10:17, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, you could use your browser's find feature. In Safari it's Command-F and in IE on Windows it's Ctrl-F. It won't just search for links or automatically navigate to the articles though, sadly. Chevymontecarlo 14:41, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Picking a random link and then automatically navigating to it is the whole point of my question. 82.43.90.93 (talk) 14:53, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

What operating system are you on? this could (obviously) be done in javascript, which you could add to your user javascript page, or if you are on a Mac you could write something in applescript to do it. The first is not an entirely trivial problem, since you'd need to do some dom manipulation to set up a button or link to trigger it, and integrate that with the rest of the page.

(e/c) It's tough to do, since all links aren't just floating around in the <body> element, they're buried in several layers of divs and <p>s. So if you just randomly pick a link from the whole page, you're quite likely to get one of the sidebar links, or an external link. But if you go into the bodyContent div (the actual article text), you can't easily get a list of all the <a> elements. This might be avoidable by using the WP API, but since you're not a bot or bot owner, you don't have access to it (I think). [flaminglawyer] 17:53, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

API access is not limited to bots or bot owners. Although as a user's limit on queries is 500, and flagged bots is 5000. ^Avicenna_sis @ 18:30, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I just found the proper API call for just links. I'll try to write up a short script. [flaminglawyer] 19:08, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Free wi-fi at a cafe

Why would they use WPA2 security when they freely give out the network key? It seems to defeat the purpose of encryption. 67.243.7.245 (talk) 14:55, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Presumably so that they can limit it to customers rather than anyone within a few dozen yards of the building? ╟─TreasuryTag►assemblyman─╢ 14:57, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Since the name of the cafe is the SSID of the network, anyone nearby could just walk in and ask for the key. 67.243.7.245 (talk) 17:35, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Most likely whoever installed the wi-fi set it up with security as that's the done thing these days. 82.43.90.93 (talk) 15:00, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Prevents Reduces the likelihood of casual snooping of the wireless traffic. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:02, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

the straight forward answer is "Because they don't know any better". The cafe contracts with someone who comes in and set up the system (who doesn't usually know anything about the cafe business or put much thought into why they might or might not want security). The system is operated by the store manager (or more likely, whatever employee happens to be handy), where 'operates' means 'turns the computer on and off at need'. No one cares beyond that. --Ludwigs2 17:50, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

"non-comercial use only" stamp in MS Office?

An earlier question prompts me to ask: What "non-comercial use only" stamp is Tyw7 asking about? I was going to recommend this version to my sister, but I'm worried this might mean a visible watermark on every document, which is clearly not suitable for letters to the bank and such like. Astronaut (talk) 16:11, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

The text in question appears on the top bar of the window of the program (see pic) (nb my latest version is Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition) I haven't seen any visible mark in documents, but it is possible you can tell what version was used to write a particular document somewhere in the individual document properties. File:Office07homestu.png
--220.101 (talk) ^\Contribs 17:08, 26 June 2010 (UTC)