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December 8

PLEASE help me find a new Desktop sidebar!

Google pulled an unthinkable Jar-Jar with their products and userbase by DISCONTINUING Google Desktop. It was a perfectly-working desktop application; there was no need to discontinue it.

I still want to see information on the side of my desktop.

Therefore, what other desktop sidebar app is still available (and gets updated as regularly as Google Desktop used to), with a wide widget selection to choose from to add to said sidebar? Thanks for helping me find a suitable replacement. --70.179.174.101 (talk) 08:33, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why not start here? --Ouro (blah blah) 11:12, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So this may not be the best answer, however start menu search in Windows 7 actually work fine. (assuming you are looking for desktop files). And when you need to search the web, a web browser can quickly do that for you. General Rommel (talk) 10:07, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Aztec code reder for computer

Does anyone know, if there is program for Windows/Linux that can read Aztec barcodes? I know there are many mobile phone programs that can do that, but I do not have smartphone, so I can´t use them. --91.156.175.33 (talk) 15:16, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The usually handy libzbar doesn't decode Aztec Code yet (there's an open feature request), but Zebra Crossing (ZXing) does (they say Aztec decoding is at an alpha level). I tried the sample on the Wikipedia article on their online demo and it decoded that fine. A slight downside is that while libzbar and zbar-tools are commonly packaged for linux distributions, you may have to build ZXing yourself (it's in Java). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:56, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Editor vi changed somehow... how do I change it back?

I've been using vi on my Ubuntu (10.04 LTS?) system at work for many months now. Even though I hate vi as an editor, I use it because it is ubiquitous across *nix platforms. Sometime in the last couple of weeks, the behaviour on Ubuntu has changed in a most annoying way: When in insert mode, I used to be able to use the arrow keys to steer round the file to wherever I wanted to enter text. However, since the change, the arrow keys now drop uppercase "A", "B", "C" or "D" on a new line in the file. This leads to much frustration as I exit insert mode, and enter "dd" repeatedly to get rid of these extra lines. I strongly suspect one of the last two system updates did something. What happened and how do I change vi's behaviour back to how it was? Astronaut (talk) 15:22, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are multiple possible problems. Instead of attempting to retype all of them here, this page popped up as having both set term and nocompatible "fixes" that I suspect will fix your problem. Hopefully it helps. -- kainaw ™ 15:36, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. The supplied link, led to other pages on the same site which suggested a fix. It also hinted at a bug in newer versions of Vim. I created a .vimrc file containing set nocompatible and the problem is now fixed. Astronaut (talk) 12:31, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

Wireless USB adapter in Linux

I'm trying to install a wireless USB adapter under Linux. The device is connected (checked with lsusb), the driver is installed (with ndiswrapper, the hardware is recognized), but I don' t manage to connect through this adapter. The output of iwconfig is just lo, eth0, eth1 (like before). I expected to see something like wlan0 after executing iwconfig. What am I missing? 88.8.76.138 (talk) 16:19, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What distro are you using? As far as I was aware ndiswrapper was now essentially obsolete. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:47, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm using Ubuntu 9.x. ndiswrapper might be obsolete, but it managed to install the driver and recognize the device as present (ndiswrapper -l outputs netathur : driver installed device (0CF3:9271) present). (BTW, lsusb output is Bus 004 Device 004: ID 0cf3:9271 Atheros Communications, Inc.).

88.8.76.138 (talk) 16:55, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What does "ifconfig wlan0" report? ifconfig doesn't always report unconfigured network interfaces. Is it listed in /dev/.udev/db ? CS Miller (talk) 18:32, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I get "wlan0: error fetching interface information: Device not found" from ifconfig wlan0. and there's an x2fdevices/x2fvirtual/x2fmisc/x2fndiswrapper link (broken) in dev/.udev/db, when I connect and disconnect the dongle. 88.8.76.138 (talk) 20:20, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

When you want a list of interfaces from ifconfig including the ones that haven't been upped, that's what the -a flag is for. 68.60.252.82 (talk) 22:13, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Check with http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Devices/USB a lot of people use ndiswrapper despite there being a proper native driver because all they find initially are old howtos. ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:53, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

android

please, can a smart 7' android 2.2, work as a computer — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.206.13.3 (talk) 19:34, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's a computer. As for doing the particular thing you want it to do, it depends on what particular thing. Jim.henderson (talk) 20:48, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For some people "work as a computer" means "run all my Windows software." Android is not Windows. It is not Mac. It is Android. If the application you want to run is available for Android, you can run it on your Android computer. -- kainaw ™ 00:59, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean 7" not 7'? --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:03, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

December 9

Latex Table

Maybe I just need sleep, but I cannot see the error here:

\begin{table}[ht]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{c|c|}
\cline{2-2}
 $S$ & 7 \\
\cline{2-2}
 $T$ & 6 \\
\cline{2-2}
 $U$ & 5 \\
\cline{2-2}
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

Whenever this is built into a PDF, the line down the right side is separated. Why? -- kainaw ™ 03:03, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It looks fine to me. I tested your code (as-posted, with \documentclass{article}) on my setup (Texshop). It appears exactly how I expected, and I think as you intended: the boxes are all clean, unbroken vectors, down to 2000X zoom. I conclude the problem must be something to do with your installation, not with the code. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:57, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Web hosting and third level domains

Now that my ISP has pulled the plug on their personal web space feature, I am scrambling to find a new temporary home for a handful of static web pages. There seems to be no shortage of starter web hosting services. However, I am not clear as to whether or not I also need to purchase my own domain. Do some or most of these hosting services also provide include a free third level domain (e.g. mysite.theirdomain.com) in their packages? I've posted a couple of inquires at some of the services, but they have not yet responded. Thanks. 24.254.222.77 (talk) 04:01, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is no such thing as a third level domain. That is just a hostname. A domain name is like wikipedia.org or kainaw.com. The "en" on wikipedia.org is a hostname on that domain. If I were to give you mysite.kainaw.com, it would just be a hostname at kainaw.com. Many web hosts give free hostnames. It is a map to your real name, which would be something like www.kainaw.com/hosts/mysite. Not all free webhosting services offer the hosting of actual domain names. So, if you purchased mycoolwebsite.com, you might find that your free webhosting company will tell you that you can't use it. But, some do allow such a thing. They map it to your real name (just like they mapped the hostname). -- kainaw ™ 04:13, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

http://nearlyfreespeech.net/ Dirt cheap, with and without domain. ¦ Reisio (talk) 04:26, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perfect! I now have my own dirt cheap web site called "http://<mysite>.nfshost.com/". 24.254.222.77 (talk) 05:08, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

recovering from forgetting password

Microsoft has advice for regaining access to my PC (laptop) if I forget my password: "If you forget your Windows password, you can use a password reset disk to create a new one. We recommend that you create a password reset disk when you create your password, so you don't lose access to your files and information," and I have done this. But I can't find any information about actually how to use the "disk" when I need to. Do I just stick it in when Windows asks for the password? And once this process is started, do I have to follow through and change my password, or can I abort? (In other words, can I test the process? --Halcatalyst (talk) 16:22, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is a Linux live cd called Ophcrack that you may use to recover lost Windows passwords. There is a step-by-step guide available here. TheGrimme (talk) 18:36, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unless you need to know what the password used to be, this probably won't be very useful. Ophcrack is quite good at cracking the old LM password hash that was stored by default pre-Vista, but it's not so good at cracking passwords on Vista and later, at least without huge tables that won't fit on a DVD. -- BenRG (talk) 22:49, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a Microsoft description of how to use a recovery disk on Windows XP. Of particular interest is the following - "Note: The password reset disk is automatically updated with the new password information. You do not have to create a new password reset disk." I would assume the process is similar for Vista and 7, but don't quote me on that. --LarryMac | Talk 19:43, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Actually, I already have the password reset disk (in the form of a USB flash drive), and I don't need to use it yet, but I'm wondering exactly how to use it I assume, just stick it in, and the system will know what to do. All I have to do is follow instructions. Is that right? --Halcatalyst (talk) 20:44, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How to use a password reset disk is addressed in the article I linked. --LarryMac | Talk 21:29, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That information is for XP, and I'll have to assume it hasn't changed for Windows 7. --Halcatalyst (talk) 23:07, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that's the first time you've mentioned which version of Windows you're using. For specifics, start "Help and Support" and search for "Password Reset". On my copy, the second result gives the details, which appear to be similar to what's in the KB article. --LarryMac | Talk 11:07, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bright and efficient lights ?

Projectors and DLP TVs still use inefficient lights, with the usual problems of wasting electricity, generating lots of excess heat (which may then require more electricity for fans and A/C in summer), and a short life. Is there no better light source ? Why are CFLs and LEDs unsuitable for this application ? Can they not be made bright enough ? How about a large bank of them (using lenses to deliver the light where needed, at the proper angle) ? StuRat (talk) 22:19, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Um who told you there aren't LED projectors? This is from 2008 [1] (I think these are reviews of that projector [2]), this from 2009 [3], this from over a year ago [4]. Even our projector article mentions LED projectors while handheld projectors note a complaint that pico sized ones aren't bright enough. I would note if you're using LEDs you do have to worry about heat. LEDs lose brightness as they get hot and can't survive high temperatures for long. Nil Einne (talk) 05:35, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Glad to see they have some models out, but in the $10-15K range, unfortunately. The stores where I shop must not stock such over-the-top items. I hope the price comes back down to Earth soon. Heard of any LED backlight DLP TVs ? StuRat (talk) 05:43, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

AIM

I recently returned to my old AIM account, and found that since signing on on this computer it also opens up AOL every time I turn the computer on, which I don't particularly want. I have looked around the site, but found nothing, is there any way of stopping this site popping up like that all the time? Whilst I'm here, some thing called Windows Live Messenger has been popping up on my computer every day for a while too. I went on their site and found the place to opt out of that one, but it still came back, how do I get rid of it?

HS7 (talk) 23:06, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It'd be impossible to tell you exactly where to go, without knowing precisely what version of each program you're using. For a start, I'd try going into the Start Menu- 'All Programs' or whatever. There should be a folder named Startup- if you go into that, and AIM or Messenger are in there, right clicking on those icons and 'delete'ing them should stop them popping up at startup. Otherwise, there will be an option, either in the menus of each program or somewhere in the 'options'/'preferences' that you should find in the menus, to stop the various programs starting at startup/login/whatever. Nevard (talk) 23:19, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've tried that now, neither of them are in Startup, and I went to the preferences section of Windows Live, unchecked the box, with no effect. :( Searching the Windows Live website, I found a bunch more menus, with more boxes to uncheck, let's see if that does anything... HS7 (talk) 23:29, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and a third question, AIM automatically gives my full name on my profile page, which I am not sure I like everyone being able to see, but any time I try to change it, it changes back automatically. Is there any way to fix this? HS7 (talk) 23:36, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Go to start menu -> accessories -> run. Type msconfig and hit enter. Go to the startup tab, unselect the box next to anything you want to disable. Before disabling anything, you may want to do a quick google search just to be certain that it is the program you think it is or that it does what you think; disabling something critical can happen. There is also a program called autoruns that is a tad more advanced, but which I like better; though, you don't need it here. For a third option, if you download and install spybot search and destroy, they have a simple to use startup controller under tools if you put it into the advanced mode; though, other than this, the program is fairly useless for spyware detection anymore, so not the best option. As for the third question, I don't use AIM, so can't offer much here. If any of this is unclear or I left something out, please let me know so I can fill it in :-) Phoenixia1177 (talk) 09:28, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion, the makers of programs like AOL Instant Messenger and Windows Live Messenger like to think their programs are the most important thing for their users and often go out of their way to ensure they start up when Windows starts so you don't miss all those vitally important instant messages. Luckily, buried somewhere in the program options there is usually a tick box for "start when windows starts". Astronaut (talk) 11:00, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

December 10

Adaptive 3D Y / C Comb Filter

What is a Adaptive 3D Y / C Comb Filter on a television? 184.7.157.90 (talk) 02:24, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Have you had a look at comb filter? See also dot crawl for the problem it's intended to fix. For more info, see [5][6]. Do you need to know the mathematics or electronics, or do you just want the high-level overview for keen TV watchers? --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:28, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

scanning objects on a flatbed scanner

Can I scan flowers or leaves on a flatbed scanner without damaging it? --117.253.191.91 (talk) 13:51, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would probably prop the lid up a bit with something else (e.g. a small book), so it wasn't in contact with the flowers/leaves. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:06, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you want to scan them? I ask because there may be a better way to accomplish whatever it is that you want to do. Dismas|^(talk) 14:40, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To answer your question, you are unlikely to damage the scanner, although the glass would need careful cleaning afterwards. However, a scanner is designed to photograph flat objects only.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 14:45, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Scanography article discusses what people have found possible, and the limitations of (mis)using a scanner in this way. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:58, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This article shows some unorthodox scans of things like leaves and shrimp. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:08, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Network layers

Im doing a networking course and we were analysing packets and one of the packets had an ICMP packet embedded within an IP packet (or the other way round; not important for what I'm asking). My question is how can this be if they are both at the network layer? Shouldn't it be one per layer? --178.208.219.151 (talk) 16:17, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

ICMP packets are encapsulated in IP packets; as the ICMP article says "Although ICMP messages are contained within standard IP datagrams, ICMP messages are usually processed as a special case". It sounds like you're trying to interpret the TCP/IP hierarchy in terms of the 7 layer OSI model, but there isn't a perfect mapping between the two - as the latter article says "In the TCP/IP model of the Internet, protocols are deliberately not as rigidly designed into strict layers as in the OSI model". So ICMP is a network layer protocol wrapped in another network layer protocol, but not necessarily handled in the say way that other packets in the wrapping network layer are handled. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:29, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Web site opening trouble

Why some websites do not get opened in my home computer, whereas they are easily opened in my office computer?For example the URL of the site is www.jpl.nasa.gov. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.244.103.175 (talk) 18:08, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Could be to do with your bandwidth. If you've got a slow connection at home, some content heavy pages may not load properly (and jpl's probably got a lot of content), but on a faster connection at work they could load no problems. I have seen this problem on many occasions without the browser actually reporting an error. Another possibility is that your browser software is out of date at home, and pages optimised for current browsers may not display on an older browser. You may even be using totally different browsers at home and work; while this isn't usually a problem these days, some sites won't display properly, if at all, in some browsers. Additionally you could be missing required plugins at home; the jpl site for example requires some browser plugins. --jjron (talk) 03:38, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why do browsers not tend to render text first?

Often it is observed that web browsers do not render text first while loading a web page, as the webpage is getting loaded. This is more pronounced when accessing pages through a slow internet connection, when the text may appear much later after the user has started loading a web page. Is this a valid observation, if so what are the possible reasons for this behaviour. Gulielmus estavius (talk) 19:49, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

First the browser loads the html. Then it parses that, and recovers a list of assets it needs to download (images, stylesheets, javascript, more html, fonts). These it adds to a workpile which is watched by asynchronous download threads, which set off downloading those. I take your question to mean that at this point, when it has the HTML but not the assets, why doesn't it immediately render the text of the page? It certainly could. The trouble is that it doesn't really know how soon those other assets will be available (they come from different servers and may come almost immediately, in a long time, or never). Imagine the browser took an aggressive policy, where it rendered the page as soon as it could and then re-rendered it each time it loaded an asset that materially changed the layout. On a fast site (where the assets load quickly) the page would be recalculated and rerendered a dozen or two times in the first few seconds of you looking at it; that would be exceptionally annoying, and could lead you to clicking links you hadn't intended (you're clicking on one link, but the page reformats while you do so, and you end up clicking on the wrong thing). Alternatively the browser could take a very passive approach, and not lay out until all the assets were available - that's really bad too, because a single slow asset means the whole page is blank, potentially for a minute (or however long until the browser gives up). So a compromise has to be found. The browser authors would really like to draw the page just once, like turning on a TV set, so they put a timeout at the beginning, and don't render anything until that expires (or all the assets are present). For a fast site the page just works. But for a slower one, where that timeout expires, they have to give up and render what they can (to give the user the idea that something is actually happening). Thenceforth they probably chunk updates again, again to avoid a flutter of annoying redraws, before again flushing out the changes they can show. Different browsers will have different schemes for waiting and flushing, and there's no right way to do it. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:17, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some browsers also decide if they have enough info to layout the page properly they draw it. They can do this if the information in an as-yet-unloaded asset (particularly an image) wouldn't affect the layout. So explicitly specifying the sizes of things (particularly images) in HTML or CSS can give the browser all the info it needs. If the page doesn't, the browser needs to load the image to know its size (strictly it needs to load the start of the image, but it's rare to peek at a partially loaded asset) or the sizes of boxes that contain it or would be shunted around by its changing size, then the browser can't know how to accurately lay the page out. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:23, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

vandals

I dont know if this is the right place to ask, but what is the most vandalize page in wikipedia? MahAdik _usap 21:37, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pls. Cancel MahAdik _usap 21:44, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

"TCB" and "SYN-RCVD state"?

Been reading RFC 1948 and in the "A common TCP bug" section it says "When SYN packets are received for a connection, the receiving system creates a new TCB in SYN-RCVD state." So what do "TCB" and "SYN-RCVD state" mean? I have no idea what TCB is. I imagine SYN-RCVD stands for SYN received but what is it exactly? A state of what? --178.208.219.151 (talk) 22:14, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

SYN-RCVD (fully SYN RECEIVED) is explained at Transmission Control Protocol#Protocol operation, and also see the state transition diagram in this section. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:16, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A TCB is a Transmission Control Block, and is described here; roughly speaking its a single entry in a little table that a TCP stack has to maintain to keep track of all the simultaneous connections it's handling. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:21, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

December 11

Desktop link not showing up after I mount Truecrypt volume

In the case of a specific Truecrypt volume (others work as expected) I do not get a desktop link (in Ubuntu) after I mount it. The problem is certainly not THAT important, but I'm curious. Where can this be set? 88.9.210.149 (talk) 00:00, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Apache on AWS/ what am I doing wrong?

Hi. Just recently discovered Amazon Web Services.

Here's my situation:

I have a Fedora Core AMI running in a Micro Instance. It has Apache running in it, and there is an elastic IP address attached to it. The security group that the instance is in, is open on SSH and HTTP. I can SSH in no problem with the elastic ip, and inside the instance when I type http://localhost or http://localhost/test.php the contents of my /etc/var/www shows up just fine. Back here on my local machine, when I enter the elastic ip address in firefox it immediately tells me that it can't find the server at xx.xx.xx.xx (if the instance is running) or it times out (when the instance is not running).

What might I be doing wrong/missing?

Thanks in advance

Duomillia (talk) 03:59, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Something is wrong either with the security group or with its association to the instance. I think you need to stop an instance to meaningfully change it security group settings; maybe you did that for ssh, but not for http? 84.93.151.83 (talk) 11:33, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, I'm afraid that's not it. The security group was changed while the instance was stopped. Duomillia (talk) 14:17, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Tablet PCs Christmas sales

Hello. I'd like to buy a tablet PC, Im thinking MotorolaXoom, and was wondering if that is the sort of product that will go down massively in the Xmas sales, ie. between Xmas and early January? Or do such technologies not tend to be discounted? Thanks. --anon

Since sales practices vary between countries, you're likely to have to tell people where you live before you can get anything close to a meaningful answer. Nil Einne (talk) 14:15, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Im in Birmingham, UK. --anon

I would expect them to go on sale if they have surpluses left over, just like any other product. This is even more true with technology, since they can't just let them sit in a warehouse until they sell, as the technology rapidly becomes obsolete and they decrease in value. StuRat (talk) 15:39, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Previewing Large Libraries

So I have several large collections of music and I have been looking for a utility/media player which will let me preview all of it automatically. I want something where I can just load all the songs and it'll play only the first 30 seconds or something and then move on to the next file and so on so that I don't have to keep clicking next. I imagine everybody has huge libraries nowadays but its amazingly hard to find something like this anywhere. Any good suggestions? Does VLC have that functionality (I couldn't find it anywhere)? Thanks! - Looking for Wisdom and Insight! (talk) 20:29, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You've not said which platform you're running on; if it's Linux, you can do this find /home/kaiser/music -type f -iname "*.mp3" -exec play {} trim 0 30 \; (where /home/kaiser/music is where your music library is, change as appropriate). If you don't have a play executable, install the sox package. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:42, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Working on Windows...is there any hope? - Looking for Wisdom and Insight! (talk) 22:35, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, transfer all data files to an external hard drive, then overwrite windows with Linux.--Aspro (talk) 22:56, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

??? -- BenRG (talk) 23:10, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sure there's hope. You could try the gen_intro plugin for WinAmp. Or you could install Cygwin and then run Finlay McWalter's command. Or you could install Python and I'll write you a short Python program to do the same thing (which could be a lot more versatile with respect to song ordering, etc.). -- BenRG (talk) 23:10, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A Python program (which uses Pygame and thus Simple DirectMedia Layer) follows; I've not tested it on Windows, but it should work:

#!/usr/bin/python
import pygame,time,os

pygame.mixer.init()
for root,dirs,files in os.walk('.'):  # change '.' to the folder that contains the root of your music
    for f in files:
        if os.path.splitext(f)[1].lower()=='.mp3':
            print os.path.join(root,f)
            pygame.mixer.music.load(os.path.join(root,f))
            pygame.mixer.music.play()
            time.sleep(30)
            pygame.mixer.music.stop()

-- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:38, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wow guys. Thanks! The winamp plug-in was exactly what I was looking for. - Looking for Wisdom and Insight! (talk) 00:01, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

December 12

Perl pie

Why would someone use perl -p -i -e over sed? Would it only be when they're writing a Perl script and want to remain in Perl or are there other reasons? Dismas|^(talk) 09:52, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some people simply haven't used sed and, therefore, don't use it. If they hear about it, but see no examples, they don't know how to use it. If they are already a perl programmer, why not use what works? -- kainaw ™ 15:16, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perl is also, generally speaking, more powerful than sed. If you suddenly realize that the problem is a little more complicated than you thought, Perl is more likely to provide you with an easy way to solve it. Paul (Stansifer) 15:58, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also, although GNU sed has a -i option now, that is a recent addition (relative to the total history of unix which has had a sed command for over 30 years), and it was inspired by perl. It only exists in the GNU and FreeBSD versions of sed. So if you intend to write a portable script, you have do the tempfile handling yourself, and you'll have to run sed once per input file so you'll have to write a for loop. A random unix box is more likely to have perl installed than GNU sed, so use of perl could be seen as a compromise, more portable than "sed -i" but less verbose (therefore harder to screw up) than the fully portable sed equivalent.

And even if portability isn't a concern, there are a lot of people who formed their habits between the late-1980's release of perl and the early-2000's invention of "sed -i".

If you're relatively new to unix and your intro was a GNUish system, "sed -i" might look like a natural part of the landscape. For those who used unix in the last millennium, it's conspicuously non-standard.

The same goes for anything that uses "perl-compatible regular expressions" and isn't perl. We actually had to live with just the 2 varieties of POSIX regular expressions for a long time and we liked it! 68.60.252.82 (talk) 21:40, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm one of these people too who started using perl -p -e over sed as soon as I found out about it. My info may be out of date, but I don't think sed (or the version I learned on) supported nongreedy expressions, some types of negative lookaheads, and some of the character classes that I find convenient in perl. Also, and this is probably the biggest thing, I don't have to escape out some very useful meta characters with perl but I do with sed. For instance, if I want to do a group I have to escape () in sed, but not in perl. Same with + or ?. But not with []. Trying to keep all of that straight is a pain, so I settled on the one I'm going to be using anyway.

The flipside, however, is that sed is presumably much faster than perl (at least according to this article I read once). Shadowjams (talk) 00:20, 13 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

PRoblem with System Restore

I am using Windows XP, and I am attempting to use System Restore after a long series of glitches, lags, and freezes. But it seems that even the system restore process is affected by this as well; it would commonly freeze during its "Copying Files" phase of the recovery. Is it just because that my computer is too old and is already damaged beyond repair, or is it possible to fix such a problem? When it runs normally, before I tried the System Restore, it would freeze then jump back to the startup logo on occassion, but soon opens up normally given a few minutes. Afterwards, it would start to lag and later freeze up if I use it for too long. It would be sad to see my computer go though, I've had it since elementary school. 72.235.221.120 (talk) 14:56, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Graph theory

What is the difference between Path and walk? What is the difference between graph and network?--Intr199 (talk) 15:05, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A network can be represented by a graph, but not every graph is a network. Think about path as a possibility, and walk as actually performing a search in a graph or network. 80.39.16.11 (talk) 17:33, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This doesn't fully explain what the difference between a graph and a network is. I know what a graph is, and your answer sounds like a network is a subconcept of a graph, but it doesn't include a definition of what kind of subconcept. JIP | Talk 21:55, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

December 13

reboot?

if a computer supposedly turns itself off when you tell it to reboot, but turns itself back on, does that mean that some part of the computer stays active and reboots the rest, making it not a total reboot, just a reboot of the main stuff? 99.43.78.36 (talk) 04:00, 13 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]