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August 1

Going to a section of page is not functioning

For the past two weeks whenever I click on the arrow in my watchlist for the specific section of a Wikipedia page I am taken to the page but never arrive at the section. I have not intentionally changed any of my preferences or anything on my computer; no monobook changes, no added programs or tools, nada. Any ideas?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:24, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I am also having this problem, but only for the last hour or two. Should probably take this to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). Algebraist 00:26, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I've done so. Algebraist 00:38, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

This should be fixed now, but then it shouldn't have started happening until midnight today (when a buggy revision went live). Is it ok for you now? Algebraist 01:11, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Nope, but then again it appears that whatever is affecting you is not the same as is affecting me. It's probably pure serendipity that yours stopped functioning near the same time I posted about my long-existing issue, thus implying a common cause when the timing suggests none.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:28, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll just mention that this started happening to me when I logged in today - about 10 minutes ago. --LarryMac | Talk 12:43, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Its been rebroken: see Bug 14995. Algebraist 14:05, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

what do you learn in digital communications class?????

can someone please tell me what the heck that means???? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.252.8.3 (talk) 00:32, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

A description should be in the class guide. It would be impossible to generalize. --mboverload@ 03:32, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Question regarding MAC data

The IT columnist of a major Indian newspaper, the Hindu, says thus about MAC address: "...and something called physical address ... 12 digits or letters, two by two separated by dashes. This is your MAC number. If someone hacked your e-mail account and sent a mail in your identity, it will bear your IP address. But the physical address is something unique to your physical machine." "Once you have secured your PC physically, the MAC number will help you prove mails sent by hackers did not originate from your machine. That is the status today... till hackers come up with something new against MAC numbers." The article appears here

• This sounds like it jars with some commonplace online lore on MAC spoofing. Further, is it true to state that an email carries the original sender's MAC address through all hops it makes? Can somebody make it clear for me? Karvaka (talk) 07:10, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Pure bullshit. MAC addresses aren't recorded as part of the standard mail trace header. The sender's MAC address is only used on the first ethernet hop (which is a subset of the first IP hop, which is a subset of the first SMTP hop, so really a tiny fraction of the journey). and if anyone did bother to keep track of them, they'd be as useless as knowing the "10.0.0.x" address of the sender's machine behind a NAT router. By the time anyone reads a mail message, it's far too late to ask what the sender's MAC address was. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 07:34, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Seconded. This guy should be fired. --mboverload@ 07:38, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Plus, it's quite common to be able to change your MAC address to whatever you want. -- Coneslayer (talk) 12:18, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Which is why MAC address filtering is an incredibly stupid and terrible way to secure your wifi network. MAC addresses should not be used for any type of security or identification, they cannot be trusted. ADFSGL (talk) 12:47, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, it will be only proper if I give here the columnist's own explanation mailed to me by the readers' editor of The Hindu. The two following paragraphs have the columnist's view. "The reader misses the whole context of the news item he alludes to. The purpose is not to deliver an explicit and technically watertight explanation of MAC numbers ... if one needed to do that, Wikipedia in any case, might not be the most authentic source to search. Malicious mails are being traced to their so called sender based on the IP address. The MAC number of the networking hardware is a unique identifier of the physical system, unlike the IP address. Against a background of events where possibly innocent victims of stolen identities, are asked to explain mails bearing their IP address, it might come as helpful information that there is a reasonable way to establish that a particular PC was no t used for sending a particular mail. The onus of proving otherwise shifts to the one tracing the mail.

Before the reader leaps up to question if the MAC number is absolutely unique,let me add that it is considered by purists to be quasi unique, because MAC number spoofing is also something that hackers are doing. I have taken note of this when I suggest that the comfort of being able to say 'This did not originate from my PC', may last only "till hackers come up with something new against MAC numbers". Karvaka (talk) 01:01, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

This is just a crackpot theory from someone who apparently just found out that MAC addresses exist and got too excited about it. How is a mail forgery victim supposed to establish anything based on information that is not recorded, either in the message headers or in the server logs, by any mail server? Take a look at any message in your mailbox, wanted or unwanted, and ask yourself if you suspected me of sending it to you, how would my MAC address (00:0B:2F:4B:DC:3C on the interface that connects my computer to the cable modem) would be relevant. It's not. My IP address (98.226.122.187 at the moment) might be useful; there are IP addresses in the message headers (Received: from ... by ...) which you can compare it to. With the MAC address, on the other hand, there's nothing to compare it to. All the bleating about how "unique" MAC addresses are is missing the point. What good is a totally unique machine identifier, if no record is kept of it when a message is transmitted? --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 01:45, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Some mitigating circumstance: A mail claiming responsibility for the recent serial blasts in some parts of India was said to have originated from a US national's flat in Mumbai. It looks like his ISP account was stolen and used for mailing.[1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Karvaka (talk • contribs) 05:22, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

ethernet card in Ubuntu

I am using Ubuntu 8.4.1 on a compaq desktop with Pentium III processor, 20 gb hard disk, and 384 MB RAM

lspci results are here: http://pastebin.com/m23753eee How can I get my network card working? thanks. Kushal (talk) 12:16, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

First in the terminal type "sudo apt-get update" and then "sudo apt-get upgrade" then after No internet can't do. go to System->Administrations there are two things dealing with network. My card automatically worked. So I am sorry if this doesn't work.Rgoodermote^{Not an admin}  18:07, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

It seems that machine has a DEC 21142 ethernet device, which should be supported by the tulip driver (although some cards with workalike features appear to be supported by the "dmfe" driver instead). This page (which is rather old) discusses how to swap the tulip for dmfe (you can try either to see if it works). A check of modprobe should determine if the Ubuntu installer has already set one up (perhaps wrongly). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:50, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Oops, for "a check of modprobe" read "a check of lsmod" -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:16, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Note that this device, in some configurations, appears to support multiple concurrent interfaces. Could your problem be as simple as Ubuntu has configured only one of the ethX devices, and you've got the network cable in, and have been sweating the config of, another? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:53, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Various issues regarding DEC 2114x chips are discussed in the Linux Ethernet FAQ here (gosh, is 2003 really the latest?) which identifies de4x5 and tulip as possible drivers, and explains why neither may be sufficient. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:12, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

lspci -n would give a precise ID that might be easier to look up, since there are so many different tulip cards. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 19:54, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

here it is http://pastebin.com/f1ac639c7

babu@babu-desktop:~$ lspci -n
00:00.0 0600: 8086:7190 (rev 02)
00:01.0 0604: 8086:7191 (rev 02)
00:03.0 0780: 127a:1003 (rev 01)
00:04.0 0401: 12eb:0001 (rev 02)
00:12.0 0200: 1011:0019 (rev 41)
00:13.0 0c00: 104c:8009 (rev 01)
00:14.0 0601: 8086:7110 (rev 02)
00:14.1 0101: 8086:7111 (rev 01)
00:14.2 0c03: 8086:7112 (rev 01)
00:14.3 0680: 8086:7113 (rev 02)
01:00.0 0300: 1002:4c42 (rev dc)
babu@babu-desktop:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host bridge (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX AGP bridge (rev 02)
00:03.0 Communication controller: Rockwell International HCF 56k Data/Fax Modem (rev 01)
00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: Aureal Semiconductor Vortex 1 (rev 02)
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21142/43 (rev 41)
00:13.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments FireWire Controller (rev 01)
00:14.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
00:14.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
00:14.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
00:14.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage LT Pro AGP-133 (rev dc)
babu@babu-desktop:~$ 

thanks Kushal (talk) 22:26, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I was wrong about that. 1011:0019 is still pretty vague. Maybe lspci -v and see if there's a "Subsystem" listed under it. But are we asking the right question? You started out by offering lspci, so we're assuming that your complaint is that the card wasn't recognized, since that's the type of situation where lspci is relevant. Why don't you describe what you've tried so far, and what type of response you got --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 23:59, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, I have no idea. The connection works fine on another desktop running Ubuntu liveCD. Well, here is the pastebin http://pastebin.com/f56b633d1 http://benjaminrogerstexas.googlepages.com/lspci-v.txt Please help. Kushal (talk) 00:41, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

You have no idea what you've tried so far? --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 00:50, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I have not tried a whole lot. Oh, by the way, dhcpcd seems to not be installed. and here is another text paste http://benjaminrogerstexas.googlepages.com/ifconfig-a.txt Kushal (talk) 01:06, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

So the card is detected just fine... opening the conversation with an lspci dump really led us the wrong way. If you want to use dynamic addressing, it's a good idea to have a DHCP daemon installed. Does Ubuntu have an /etc/network/interfaces like Debian? That would be the place where you declare the eth0 interface's IP address to be dynamically assigned, like this:

 auto eth0
 iface eth0 inet dhcp

--tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 01:16, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I get a command not found for both of these commands. please help Kushal (talk) 02:09, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Ubuntu should have DHCP client called "dhcp3-client" installed. Can you check if it's there? If not try putting in your LiveCD and use it as a repository to install the package. I have also put your lspci output into <pre> tags for better aesthetics. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:47, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

What could have gone wrong here? How can I fix it? Is there any further information needed to solve the problem? What is it? Please let me know. Kushal (talk) 13:50, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Babu finally found his Windows XP installation disc and we were able to access the wired network from Windows XP without a problem. What could have gone wrong? (Not that it helps any in this case, since babu has decided to stay with MS Windows for that machine.) Kushal (talk) 15:03, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Easily putting together images

Hi-- I have a series of images (over 100 of them) that I simply want to put together into an animated GIF, so that first image1 appears for a second, then image2 appears, etc... Does anyone have any recommendations for a free program (or programs used together) that can do this for you? I know the GIMP has animated GIF creation capabilities, but it will take eons to open every single image file, somehow make it a layer in one single file, then create the animated GIF from that. Thanks for your help! -- 132.250.122.83 (talk) 15:08, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

If you are on Windows Microsoft GIF Animator works well for this sort of thing. Just highlight all the images you want in the order you want them, select an interval time and it will do the rest. 20I.170.20 (talk) 15:21, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Use ImageMagick (windows, mac, linux, etc.): convert -delay 100 -loop 0 *.jpg animation.gif -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:27, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Enter key instead of tab in text entry fields

My work involves feeding data to a Postgre database which has Python as query language. The interface is a any web browser and the OS usually is a Linux distro. If enter key, instead of tab were usable to move from one text field to another, work would be very easier. On some machines with Konqueror browser this is possible. Can this feature be enabled on Mozilla, Galeon etc? --Pitcherplanter (talk) 15:25, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Can you modify the source of the page itself? This would be trivial to implement with Javascript. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:42, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Be aware that using the tab key to move between fields has been standard practice for many years across all OS's I've used (Windows, Mac, VMS, and various flavours of unix including Linux). By all means make the enter key do the same, but other users of your input interface will expect the tab key to move between the fields. Astronaut (talk) 10:59, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

pdf file company logo to article info box

How do I upload our company logo (which is a pdf file) into my info box? IntegratedBiomolecule (talk) 17:48, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

What's an info box? --Sean 18:02, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi IntegratedBiomolecule! At the moment you should probably focus your attention here Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Integrated_Biomolecule_Corporation. Please don't take this the wrong way. Please read WP:CORP and WP:N. If you have any question you can ask me personally on my talk page by clicking the little @ sign. --mboverload@ 18:08, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I blame safari

I recently installed safari web browser, got fed up with it and uninstalled it and went back to internet explorer... Now when a page is loading sometimes the screen is totally red, also some websites leave the page red on blank parts..

Why? and how can I stop this?87.102.86.73 (talk) 19:04, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

could you upload some screenshots? Kushal (talk) 21:21, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I could - this image http://www.skd-dresden.de/media/images/museen/alte_meister/400_alte_meister_6.jpg (picked at random by typing "picture" into an image search) appeared red outside the boundary of the actual image when loaded in a webpage, whereas before it was white...

I actually solved the problem- it seems the background colour had been set to red, so I reset it to white and problem solved..

Except I don't think I ever changed it.. Is it possible that safari did and again why? (or have I just lost my marbles.)87.102.86.73 (talk) 21:49, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Safari would not have the privilages to make changes like that, besides, what kind of trick is that? Changing the background color. Chances are, yuo did it by mistake, or someone using the computer messed with it.

GnuCash application seems to have disappeared

I installed GnuCash last week and created a data file for my accounts. Now the shortcut has disappeared from the desktop and I can't find the exe anywhere on my hard drive, although other GnuCash files (including the data file) are still there. Could it have somehow been mysteriously uninstalled? Running Windows Vista but I'm not very familiar with it — this is a new laptop. --Ginkgo100^talk 21:02, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

stupid problem in windows

hello, I have an old desktop P3 with 256 MB RAM and 20 GB hard disk. even when I log in as administrator, I get a prompt that the administrator has disallowed it. and that is in safe mode.I cannot even get the dumb think to work when I am in normal mode.Please help. How am I supposed to disinfect the computer if I cannot even log in? Kushal (talk) 21:21, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Is this running 2000 or XP? Can you give us the exact error message? --mboverload@ 03:34, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

WHOIS information lookup, using VB Express 2005

Hi, i am writing a small program using VBExpress 2005 (.NET 2.0) (trying to sort out ip addresses / info, Pay per click-related), and i need to be able to look up information (owners contact info, location) given an IP address. What would be the best way to accomplish this? I've been looking for some sort of Control i can include in my project, but i cant find any free/open source ones... Can someone please point me to a tutorial on how i can do this? I was considering one of the following approaches:

a.) using direct TCP / sockets to connect to a whois server ; (i also need to know how to pass-retrieve data)
b.) using a hidden webcontrol and then screen-scraping data from it (I'd also like to read on a guide to access webcontrols document object)
or c.) Something that i don't want to have to do: call a commandline program (like whosip.exe), output to a file, then process that (or maybe get the stdout, i dunno)

I will be processing quite a number of them, just incase it matters.

Thank you all very much in advance 122.3.19.200 (talk) 22:31, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

It sounds like automated WHOISing is "frowned upon" because it's sort of a spammer technique for harvesting personally identifiable information. But, here is a free-ish web service which will provide you with XML output (this should be easy to parse with standard VB .NET XML libraries)

• Sample XML query for NIMUR, from some private company I've never heard of
• The same, text/html format, from InterNIC

For reasons I don't understand, this gives me less information (about myself) than when I use whois from a linux command line (which gives out all kinds of spooky information like a phone number that's been disconnected for years, and so forth). It may be a terms-of-service agreement with this WHOIS-providing website, or maybe they have a pay/premium service for more information, or something like that. Nimur (talk) 18:44, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Addendum - Yes, it seems like these web services limit your data access so that they can charge for it; they also include a pleasant reminder to use WHOIS data responsibly. Nimur (talk) 18:50, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Website Redesign

Hello. Why are so many websites (e.g. Canada Post, 4-1-1, Google Maps, etc.) redesigning at the same time? Is the web design industry monopolizing? Is a new programming language conquering the Internet? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 23:52, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Sites regularly redesign in a way to look like they are still "up to date" and being actively maintained. (Sites that haven't updated their basic appearance for years on end tend to look stale.) Google Maps doesn't look all that different than how it did a few months ago, unless you're referring to something I don't see. They've always been adding new features. I don't think it has anything to do with a "monopoly" on the web design industry; I doubt it has to do with any new languages (though in the last year or two many big sites, following Google's lead, felt the need to convert to AJAX-like interactions). --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:20, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

If implemented in a reasonable way, switching to AJAX will greatly reduce network traffic, which can greatly reduce bandwidth costs for large websites. However, redesigning a site to get the most out of AJAX can lead to a complete makeover. So, you will find many sites look entirely different after an AJAX makeover. -- kainaw™ 00:25, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

August 2

Ubuntu LiveCD crashes (turns off automatically) during use

When I use the LiveCD, it sometimes turn off automatically. I don't know how/why it happened. I use two Ubuntu 7.10 LiveCDs to access the Internet with a DSL connection. I have to use the LiveCD because my laptop's hard disk drive is damage. I don't have money to buy a new one. The one I made is the primary one and the ShipIt CD is the secondary one. It does crash sometimes. I clean the CD with alcohol and towels to reduce crashes. It crashes then it loading too much (like when I'm using YouTube). What should I do to reduce the number of LiveCD crashes? Jet (talk) 03:23, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Remove the hard drive itself from the machine. How do you know its the LiveCD and not the hardware that is at fault? --mboverload@ 03:33, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

It could also be the increased load of using too many programs at any given time. The CD drive may not be able to keep up with the demand and just stops. I suggest cutting down on using too many things at any given time. Like use only 1 program at a time. If that does not work. Then do the above or if you really want to. Do both. Rgoodermote^{Not an admin}  04:23, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that explains it. LiveCDs are built to be loaded off CDs and wait for the data. What you describe would immensely slow down the OS, not crash it. At least I've never encountered it. --mboverload@ 05:14, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I used to run LiveCD too on my laptop because of an HD problem. It would crash every time I ran too much. I fond out that it was because the CD drive on the laptop didn't do very well being very active and just stopped working. I was thinking he was having the same problem as I was. Rgoodermote^{Not an admin}  06:08, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Try Ubuntu 8.04.1 LiveCD? Or run it off a USB flash drive using Unetbootin and see if it still crashes. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:40, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by "turns off automatically"? Does the system power off completely? Does it crash to the black-and-white PC console? If the computer itself is turning off, I'd suspect either hardware problems or your computer has reached a heat or fan threshhold and ACPI is powering off the system. -- JSBillings 14:45, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Adding to what Jsbillings said, if the computer is randomly shutting down you may have some sort of power-saving hardware device which automatically shuts down when you have not used the computer for a certain amount of time. Or, if the computer is crashing when you run too many programs, or a few resource hungry programs, you can try adding more RAM. But it could be that the processor is just not fast enough to cope with what you are doing, especially if it is an old computer. 20I.170.20 (talk) 15:07, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

You could be running out of memory. This can happen because there is no swap disk, so the only memory is the physical memory (RAM). You get less of this than normal because some memory is used to make the read-only CD-ROM into a read-write CD-ROM+RAM disk. Linux normally kills high-memory processes when out of memory, but this could cause the computer to shut down. Use gnome-system-monitor, free or top to check memory usage. --h2g2bob (talk) 17:59, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Multi-touch: what's behind the hype?

Why is multi touch so hyped? I love the touch screen on my Sony Ericsson W950 but that's only because it enables handwriting recognition and can do things akin to the mouse, but so far the only intuitive application I've seen is browsing photos and be able to zoom, rotate etc. with your fingers. I can see that being quite useful in areas like desktop publishing and graphic design, but otherwise in other uses (web browsing, checking email, the basic uses) I don't see how it is any better than normal touch screen or the traditional keyboard/mouse approach. Most of the non-zooming/rotating things on the Perceptive Pixel demonstration video can already be done with normal touch screens, and to me the panning/zooming UI is way cooler than the multi touch capability (although I also fail to see how that's useful in normal use but at least it's cool). If anything people seems to be amazed more by the fluid and organic animations, like something powered by Clutter (computing) or Core Animation, as evidenced by the whole iPhone hype. None of the demonstrations that I've seen deals with problems like gorilla arm if it's vertical, or neck fatigue if it's angled/horizontal. Can anyone enlighten me how is it the UI of the feature? --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:02, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Multi-touch is a breakthrough because it lets you touch more than one place on the screen. That's all. Right now, UI (including common mouse-driven UI) is single-touch. So, there isn't much existing UI for multi-touch. If it works well, it may be adopted over time. It may be one of those things that is lost. Who knows - we don't foretell the future here. -- kainaw™ 12:41, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Translation for non-computer people: UI = "user interface". StuRat (talk) 13:44, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I tend to agree that it doesn't seem all that useful, especially in a hand-held device where, presumably, one hand is busy holding the device and thus only one hand can be used, anyway. The added complexity might make it more likely to fail, too. I'm thinking it will be like the Segway Scooter, kind of fun but, in practical terms, not all that much better than what it aimed to replace (the bicycle), just more expensive. StuRat (talk) 13:44, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I find the multi-touch pretty useful on handheld devices, *because* I only have one hand. Scroll around with one finger, use two fingers to zoom in and out, it doesn't require switching tools or holding down a modifier key. For the laptop, it's nice to have a multi-touch trackpad because you can use one hand to point and scroll without needing to use the keyboard. -- JSBillings 14:36, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Isn't it great because it's like hollywood science (ie the same tech as they have on startrek) - rather than having any (major) user performance benefits..?87.102.86.73 (talk) 13:52, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Star Trek? Don't you mean Minority Report? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 22:09, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Just like the mouse, interfaces need to be designed to take advantage of multitouch. At the moment I don't know of any good uses. But I leave those ideas to other people. --mboverload@ 19:17, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

We forget really how much current GUIs suck because we've become inured to the horror of them (and we're glad they're marginally less horrid that their precessors). Multitouch is the next step on a gradient of progressively better touch interfaces. Imagine scrolling by just grabbing the page like it was a sheet of silk and moving it to where you want (rather than the absurdity of the scrollbar); imagine cut and paste by circling the text you want and then tearing it out of the page; imagine playing a desktop game with your kids where you throw objects and catch them. Anyone who plays a musical instrument (particularly something "touchy" like a violin) knows that there's a great depth of skill and dexterity to using it, and people have been happy (ish) to put up with the undoubted complexity of beginning to play the violin because of the great interaction and control you get when you're a practiced user. The current keyboard/mouse/touchscreen interface has, by comparison, a very shallow learning curve, but one that reaches only a low level of capability. Touchscreen (for some applications) is better than keyboard and mouse; multitouch is better than plain old touchscreen. What's needed is more subtle control yet - can you pinch something or press it or palm it around. Beyond that you really need some haptic feedback (a technology that, for consumer at least, is mostly useless and gimmicky right now). Why can't I riffle through a stack of mp3s the way I can with a stack of vinyl records? Why aren't the files I last used warmer than ones I never touch? Shouldn't the Vulcan nerve pinch pinch me back? Mboverload is dead on the money about interfaces needing to adapt to new input and output technologies. This is rarely as planned as might be hoped, and often things get used in ways very different from how anyone had intended. I can't imagine how Doug Englebart could have imagined people interacting with 3D worlds (Half Life 2 etc.) using his mouse and WSAD (and not those fancy 3d trackball devices and datagloves that all the VR guys were convinced we'd all need). In a couple of decades we'll look back on our current modes of interaction and think our former selves to have been downright disabled. Right now touch and multitouch work best in vertical segments like kiosks and in a bunch of gimmicky ways, but it's another step to our shedding the surly bonds of WIMP. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:12, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Except most of the things you said are already doable with keyboard/mouse. Google Maps uses your "grabbing the page" idea to scroll; you can select a section of text and drag it somewhere else to copy it (at least on Linux anyway), akin to your tearing out of the page idea. It still comes back to my original gripe: all these new innovations in UI design do NOT require multi-touch. Those Perceptive Pixels guys already modified the UI of a few applications in addition to writing their own applications to take advantage of multi-touch, and yet it's still limited to the whole rotate/enlarge thing. Is that all there is to multi touch: zooming and rotating with 2 fingers? --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:25, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

There was a much older peripheral device which seemed even better, but was alas discontinued. It was a board with 8 dials used on graphics workstations (affectionately called the "nipple board" since it looked like a pig's nipples). One dial would zoom, one would pan right and left, one would pan up and down, one would rotate in the plane of the screen, two more would rotate out of the plane vertically and horizontally. One was used for the front Z-clipping plane and one for the rear Z-clipping plane. With this combo you could manipulate a 3D object far easier than with current methods or with a multi-touch keypad. A dial has the advantage of being able to turn it quickly or slowly (with precision), depending on the need. By contrast, volume controls on TVs that only have "up volume" and "down volume" buttons fail in both respects, you can't change the volume as quickly as with a dial, or as precisely. StuRat (talk) 03:13, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Yah, I always wondered why there are not more dials on controls. I have a volume wheel on my Logitech G15 and I love it. When music is baring at you because you left it on 100% you can't wait for some Up or Down control to change it fast enough. --mboverload@ 04:04, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

thumb drive adding to RAM in Vista

I've converted an XP PC with 0.5 GB RAM to Vista. Having read that Vista was capable of utilizing the storage space on a thumb drive to supplement the RAM, I plugged in a 2 GB thumb drive, but the system reports only 480 MB of RAM. First, is what I read true? Second, if so, how can I make Vista recognize and utilize the thumb drive as RAM? --Halcatalyst (talk) 12:51, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm a bit skeptical that you can use it as RAM, or would want to, since it's likely to be slower, but perhaps it could be used for paging space. StuRat (talk) 13:31, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

What you're read about is ReadyBoost, which augments disk cache, not RAM, with thumb drives. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:43, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Vista (and many other OSs, including earlier versions of Windows, can use disk space as Virtual memory. However, you really don't want to use a flash drive for VM, because of the slow speed of the device (compared to your hard drive) and limited number of writes flash media has. Using a thumb drive in this manner is just a bad idea, I don't know where you'd get that idea. -- JSBillings 14:40, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks for your responses. --Halcatalyst (talk) 19:13, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

TFT Vs LCD

Do you use a TFT or a ordinary LCD? Does it matter? Is ordinary LCD very difficult to use and read compared to TFT? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.109.243 (talk) 17:06, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

and older type of LCD display

Did you mean as a monitor? I think all LCD monitors use some form of TFT technology.87.102.86.73 (talk) 18:08, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

See Thin film transistor liquid crystal display I would say that these screens are easier to read than the original type of LCD (see image) - but this may because of the higher resolution, and the backlight..)

Perhaps you meant something like the display on a Z88 (see article for image) - I think that may not be TFT - but it is quite easy to read and effective.87.102.86.73 (talk) 18:16, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Is anyone else aware of non-TFT LCD displays nowadays?87.102.86.73 (talk) 18:12, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Programs for puppy linux

I want to install some program in puppy linux, but I´ve found only Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo and SuSe version. What ´flavor´ is more appropriate for me? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 18:41, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I could be wrong, but I think that each session of Linux can use another sessions programs..I am not too sure. But I believe it doesn't matter. Rgoodermote^{Not an admin}  18:53, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Why are then various versions of Gimp? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 18:59, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Puppy uses .pet or .pup packages and its package manager is PETget which will download & install software from the repos. Link1 Link2 Link3 -Abhishek (talk) 20:12, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

IIRC Puppy Linux is Debian based. However, to install Debian packages you have to do something to the package to make a .pet or .pup which you can then install. Astronaut (talk) 22:19, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Intel - risc

It's an often repeated fact(/factiod) on internet discussion forums etc that modern x86 convert instructions into risc like micro-ops prior to execution..

I'm wondering if this is true , especially with reference to the Intel Atom ? 87.102.86.73 (talk) 18:49, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

That's true (I don't know specifically about Atom, but most other Intel x86 architecture processors have done this, for at least several generations). Our micro-operation article is rather sad, but this intel document says (of Core) "In modern mainstream processors, x86 program instructions (macro-ops) are broken down into small pieces, called micro-ops, before being down the processor pipeline to be processed." -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:36, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Something more concrete: Jon Stokes' Inside the Machine (ISBN 978-1-59327-104-6) describes the Intel P6 architecture (that's more than a decade old, the Pentium Pro). He says P6 pulled 16 byte wide chunks of IA32 instructions from the L1 instruction cache into three parallel decoders which push the resulting microops (up to 6 microops per cycle) onto a micro-op queue. Those go then to the re-order buffer and then off to be executed. The hard bit is the complex decoder, which handles the (rather rare) complex IA32 instructions - these are processed by microcode which emits a sequence of simple micro-ops. So the answer to your question is that simple instructions (loads/stores/arithmetic/logic) get translated into micro-ops (where probably a given instruction turns into 1 or 2 ops) where complex instructions are processed into a longer sequence of micro-ops. Stokes quotes a source that estimates "40% of P6's transistor budget is spend on x86 legacy support" (up from 30% for pentium, where everything was either done in gates or microcode). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:50, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

It should be noted that micro-ops are not quite equivalent to a RISC instruction set because ultimately an x86 processor has to support all the complications of the x86 architecture. In particular, x86 micro-ops have to be able to update one or more flag bits in the flag register, which means that many micro-ops take the old state of the flag register as an additional input and produce a new state of the flag register as an output. RISC instruction sets with a flag register (such as PPC) simplify the implementation by always updating all the flags at the same time. Another complication is that the memory semantics of x86 micro-ops must incorporate the current values of the segment registers. 84.239.160.166 (talk) 16:48, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

On the same architecture, Hennessy & Patterson Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach ISBN 1558605967, says "if an IA32 instruction requires more than 4 uops [micro-ops] it is implemented by a microcoded sequence that generates the necessary uops in multiple clock cycles". -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:25, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Things haven't changed much since then. Core 2 is just an evolutionary improvement on the Pentium Pro design. AMD's processors work in essentially the same way, as do modern RISC processors. Itanium was a radically different design which failed spectacularly (relative to expectations, anyway). -- BenRG (talk) 01:39, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

With Atom, however, it doesn't seem to work quite the same way. This article says they don't bother with micro-ops for many instructions (they just execute them directly). There more on that (some more concrete estimates) in the Intel Atom#Architecture section, but they don't have supporting sources. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:33, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

The reason is that whereas P6 etc. are built for speed, Atom is build to consume less power. P6 performs out-of-order execution on those micro-ops, to try to get as much going simultaneously as possible. Atom is strictly in-order, so it doesn't have most of that back-end pipeline architecture. All that gubbins needs space on the die and power to run, and it seems they've binned all that for Atom in an effort to keep its power usage down. In a lot of ways Atom seems architecturally rather like a Pentium, albeit built with modern processes. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:41, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

That's what I was wondering. So it could be quite an old design built to new process perhaps.87.102.86.73 (talk) 21:16, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Philosophically its architecture is something of a throwback, but it's clearly an entirely new design, and it does a bunch of clever things to do with power saving that Intel IA mobile/desktop/server microprocessors haven't done (but that other chips aimed at the embedded space like StrongARM and DragonBall have). Atom seems to be a sign that smart people in Intel's embedded-space product marketing have prevailed in the perpetual "can't we can just downscale a desktop chip into the embedded space" war. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:22, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I think I've found out as much as I can without getting involved in serious industrial espionage...87.102.86.73 (talk) 22:14, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Mouse clicking?

Is it possible to ruin a laptop just by clicking the mouse too much? (Superdupermaryaaam (talk) 20:42, 2 August 2008 (UTC))

If by "mouse" buttons you mean those buttons beside the touchpad on most laptops, that work the same as a real mouse button, then it seems maybe yes. They don't ever seem to be all that well constructed, and its not uncommon to see older laptops with those buttons broken or snapped off. To some extent maybe that's because that bit gets damaged when something nasty happens to the laptop. Of course you can always just plug in a USB mouse: breaking the button isn't the end of the world. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:47, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

That is very very unlikely to happen. The mouse is built to withstand alot of pressure and impact. The only way to truly break your computer by clicking by using a hammer. I think somebody just told you this because they didn't want you to use their laptop! (Josh389 (talk) 20:50, 2 August 2008 (UTC))

Or, someone was tired of hearing "click... click click... click... click... click click... click... click... click..." -- kainaw™ 21:28, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I work with laptops all day. Short of hitting the laptop with a mallet there is nothing you can do to the track pad or keyboard to damage a laptop. The only ways to break a computer are:

• Liquid inside
• Blunt force that cracks internal components
• Force that breaks the LCD screen
• High amounts of pressure that bend metal together and short out the computer

Short of any of these things you do not need to worry. At all. Just enjoy your computer. It will take care of itself. --mboverload@ 22:11, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I had a laptop once where the mouse couldn't "click" anymore (it did still work, but there was no tactile feedback and it would occasionally click by accident) - annoying, but nothing that couldn't be bypassed by disabling it and using an external mouse. To someone who's not resourceful enough to think of this, something like this could easily make someone call the computer "broken". --Random832 (contribs) 22:12, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Good observation Random. Even then with fine motor skills, good lighting, and a small tool most keyboard/mouse problems can be fixed. I once used a very tiny piece of rubber cut with an exacto knife when the real thing fell out. It's a different feel but it didn't cost $100 to replace! --mboverload@ 22:43, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Installing graphics drivers w/o uninstalling

What will happen if you install graphics cards drivers without uninstalling the older version? Both ATI and Nvidia recommend uninstalling old ones first, but I'm just wondering what will happen if you don't. Lowered framerate? Graphics glitches? 67.169.56.232 (talk) 20:52, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

A (windows) graphic device driver is, these days, a big complicated beast with lots of files (some that do stuff, some for configuration). Between releases of the driver (particularly if you're upgrading from quite an old one to brand new one) they move things around and rename stuff. If you somehow ended up with files pertaining to the old driver left around when you're trying to run the new one, it might inadvertently pick up an old DLL or config file or registry entry or something, producing unexpected (and uniformly unpleasant) results (crashes, loss of features, or total inability to work at all). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:02, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

How does a computer work?

I know the general ideas and stuff, and I'm not a computer n00b, but I never found out how a computer really works. What are the most basic instructions given to a processor, and how does the processor perform them?--96.227.106.168 (talk) 21:48, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Have you read computer processor? -- kainaw™ 22:01, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

The most basic instructions are called machine code, the program takes values stored in memory (pointed to by the program counter) which typically consist of simple commands such as

• add two numbers
• store a number at a point in memory
• compare two numbers and set a special 'flag' if one is greater than the other
• move the position of the program counter to a new position.
• store the value stored at a position in memory into a Processor_register

Typically a computer uses 'registers' to store values locally or temporarily (usually they have 8 to 64 registers)

The individual instructions are done using logic gates, numbers are represented by binary and maths is done on the binary representations of these numbers.(If you want more information on this please ask)

a good introduction might be to read about hardware adder also see Adder (electronics) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.102.86.73 (talk) 22:13, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

The page Zilog Z80 gives some simple examples of this. Unfortunately Wikipedia doesn't seem to have a page that represents a good introduction for a starter to this topic - (a lot of the articles assume prior knowledge)

Maybe someone else knows of a good introduction?87.102.86.73 (talk) 22:10, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Danny Hillis' The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:12, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

A list of instructions in most 32-bit machines is on the x86 instruction set page. The How computers work section of the Computer page is also worth looking at. --h2g2bob (talk) 03:16, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I've found The Unix and Internet Fundamentals HOWTO to be a clear introduction, even though I have experience mostly with Windows --Iamunknown 04:14, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

When studying this topic, it is good to get into the mindset of changing level of abstraction. In the lowest level, volts and amps float around through physical pathways that are carved into a piece of silicon by photochemical manufacturing processes. These electrical properties represent logical bits, cumulatively forming a very complex finite state machine with a variety of inputs and outputs linked together through a fairly standardized connection architecture. Each interconnected device translates those digital representations to its own internal "meaning" (for example, a VGA controller will convert a bunch of inputted data into a bunch of analog timing signals for controlling a monitor; a keyboard converts physical button-presses into a sequence of voltage pulses which can be understood by another digital circuit). Since we started making computers, we have built lots of conventions for these types of information translations, culminating in the user interface which you are familiar with today. One of the earliest transformations is the abstraction of software, or instructions to the machine, as a modifiable program code; subsequently, other software was designed to translate human-readable text into machine-instructions to make programming a machine easier. As a desktop user, you may write your own software or use other people's designs, but internally, you are using this extremely complex set of electronic circuits to perform a series of conceptual and physical translations from high levels of abstraction into low-level electrical impulses with very definable behaviors.

This overview was necessarily broad. If you substitute your original question with (for example), "How does my Dell Inspiron 5150 work?" you can start replacing specific electronic circuits instead of vague topics. You can obtain datasheets for these chips, learn what wires need to be connected to that chip, and how fast the signals need to be clocked, and so forth. Some of these data sheets are available to you right now, and some require that you work at a large corporation, because the information is confidential and expensive to obtain; but there are a variety of open-source digital circuit designs which together can be used to build an entire machine. Nimur (talk) 19:09, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Icons and Extensions

I have enabled file extensions on my computer (Windows XP Home Edition V 2002 SP 2) and can see them on the desktop. I have some .txt's and some .cpp's among other things on my desktop. I see that links to programs don't have a file extension and it does not matter what file extension you give it, it's still a link. Well, I haven't renamed these files or anything, but today when I got on, I noticed there were the little black arrows in white squares (like are used to indicate a link) at the bottoms of some of the .cpps and .txts. I checked the properties and they were not links and it gave no option to change the icon. Can anyone tell me what's going on here. (Also on a possibly unrelated note, I have disabled my AIM (using msconfig) from opening on start-up and prompting me to sign in. Sometimes, though, when I log in, it is turned back on. Can someone please tell me what's going on with this as well and how to fix it?)
Thanks, Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 23:47, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Quick and dirty idea (in a rush at the moment). Download TweakUI from Microsoft and go to repair -> icons. --mboverload@ 02:30, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't have a solution to your problems (except to second mboverload's suggestion) but I wanted to point out that Windows shortcuts do have an extension, .lnk, but it's never shown by Explorer even when you tell it to show all file extensions. -- BenRG (talk) 16:17, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I knew the .lnk but I didn't know explorer wouldn't show it. Why is this? Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 17:41, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Just how windows works. --mboverload@ 19:41, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Windows stores the file extension information (icon, program, etc) in the HKCR (HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT) part of the registry. You can see it with regedit.exe. The .lnk extension points to lnkfile, which has the NeverShowExt value set. --grawity 16:07, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Grawity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!--mboverload@ 19:09, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

August 3

Computer problems

Hi i bought a pavilion pc a 6000 cmputer two week ago after install every thing i'm getting error massage and can not run some programes.below mentioned massages are appearing in my pc.

Recovery-Reminder has stopped working A problem caused the programe to stop working correctly.windos will close programe and notify you if a solution is available.

other error is,

Windows host process (Rundll32)has stopped working.A problem caused the programe to stop working correctly.windos will close programe and notify you if a solution is available.

please tell me y and any wrong with pc.

thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.96.226.88 (talk) 04:59, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I would say get HijackThis, SpyBot S&D, AVG AntiVirus free edition, and SUPERAntiSpyware. Run a HijackThis and save the log file. Copy it and submit it here. Fix anything it tells you to fix. This should probably fix your problem. Just to try to get rid of what may have caused it, run a scan with AVG, S.A.S., and S&D. Fix anything these programs tell you to fix. This should get rid of your problem. Cheers, Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 05:29, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you mean an "error message" ? (Although I can see how you could think that an "error massage" was computer related, as that's when they accidentally touch your naughty bits.) :-) StuRat (talk) 13:37, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Moving Safari profile

1. Where does Safari store its data (bookmarks, preferences)? (I use Windows XP.)
2. Is there any way to force it to use a different folder?

--grawity 13:30, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

What is this "Safari" thing you speak of? Is it related to Firefox? --mboverload@ 03:25, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Mboverload, Safari is a web browser from Apple lol. I will install it today and try to find the solution. -Abhishek (talk) 04:20, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Click the word "Safari" in my question. --grawity 16:04, 4 August 2008 (UTC) P.S. I only use Safari for testing my website, so stop trying to switch me to Firefox.

I found %AppData%\Apple Computer\Safari\, but how to force it to use a different folder? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grawity (talk • contribs) 16:53, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Search for that string in the registry. Go to Start>Run>regedit.exe --mboverload@ 03:22, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Feeding Papers Into a HP Deskjet 3420

Hello. How do I feed several pieces of paper into a HP Deskjet 3420 without it taking all the papers at once? I want to feed several pages (below the maximum) to the paper tray and the printer will take on one page at a time. I realize the benefits of feeding one page at a time but I would need advice on printing single-sided on many pages. Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 16:08, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Can you clarify what is you are trying to do? I don't understand the "without it taking all the papers at once" part. You should be able to put as much paper in the paper tray and it should only take one at a time. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 17:13, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

My old HP Laserjet 6L developed a fault where it would take in several sheets at once. HP recognised it as a known problem and provided a free fix kit to anyone who requested one. My Laserjet now takes one sheet a time from the feed bin (this is normal behavoir for printers - manually feeding each page when needed is not normal). Perhaps a similar problem has affected the Deskjet 3420. I suggest you visit HP's support site for your country. Astronaut (talk) 17:27, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

This seems to be quite a common problem with printers. I just feed them one page at a time. This has another advantage of being one of the few ways you can stop an out of control printer from printing junk pages, by just denying it paper. I then get an "Out of paper" error, and it actually allows me to cancel the print. If I ever got a printer that could feed paper properly, I wouldn't know what to do with it. StuRat (talk) 22:10, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Elements of a computer

hello, asking about the five elements of computer...thanks for the immediate reply... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yagifranci (talk • contribs) 16:21, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

As it says at the top of this page Do your own homework. You might find the computer article helpful. Astronaut (talk) 17:29, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Five? I'd would have imagined there are more than five elements in a computer. 20I.170.20 (talk) 20:02, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

If your teacher has five specific elements in mind, you might have to consult the assigned reading/lecture notes. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 23:00, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Earth, air, fire, water, and upgrades. OtherDave (talk) 04:05, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

As has been pointed out, a physical computer has far more than five elements. However, perhaps your question relates to an abstract computer architecture with five main components, in which case Von Neumann architecture may be what you are loooking for. Note that this is not the only possible computer architecture - see Harvard architecture and Modified Harvard architecture for other possibilities. Gandalf61 (talk) 09:45, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Command Prompt

What's up with the start "%~dpnx0" command. It seems that all the text in parentheses does is title the prompt opened by the start command. Even if one types in start "" or simply start a new command prompt window will open so why the %~dpnx0? Thanks, Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 17:46, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

The help for the start command starts like this:

Starts a separate window to run a specified program or command.

START ["title"] [/D path] [/I] [/MIN] [/MAX] [/SEPARATE | /SHARED]
      [/LOW | /NORMAL | /HIGH | /REALTIME | /ABOVENORMAL | /BELOWNORMAL]
      [/AFFINITY <hex affinity>] [/WAIT] [/B] [command/program]
      [parameters]

... and suggests any text between the quotes becomes the title of the created command prompt window. If I enter the command start "%~dpnx0", I get a new command prompt window with %~dpnx0 in the title bar, which is exacly what I would expect to happen. However, environment variables are substituted for their value when surrounded by "%" chars. Perhaps "~dpnx0" is an environment variable on your PC. To use it in a start command, the command would be start "%~dpnx0%". Astronaut (talk) 18:16, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

When I use start "%~dpnx0%" I get a command prompt window with title %~dpnx0%. Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 18:19, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

...in which case ~dpnx0 is not an environment variable (it's not on my PC either). Astronaut (talk) 18:45, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

so what's it for? Why would anyone name a window that? 74.193.92.53 (talk) 18:55, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah, it should be start "" "%~dpnx0", because now start thinks that the % thingy is a title, while it's a command. Also, this must be started from inside a .cmd/.bat file to work. (Create a new file, anything.cmd, and put this command inside.)

In cmd.exe, %0-%9 refer to command line parameters. For example, if you launch foo.cmd One tWo thRee, then %0 will be foo.cmd, %1 will be One, %2 will be tWo, and so on.

Some version of Windows introduced a way to expand these parameters. For example, if %0 is foo.cmd, and it's located in C:\MyScripts, then %~d0 will be the drive (C:), %~p0 is path (\MyScripts), %~nx0 - name and extension.

So %~dpnx0 will expand to the full path of the batch script.

--grawity 19:05, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

In short, create a file with extension .cmd (or .bat), and put this inside:

start "" "%~dpnx0"

That should work. (Save all unsaved documents before starting.) --grawity 19:08, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Great joke... just love that never-ending command window creator. Astronaut (talk) 14:25, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I didn't tell you to launch it :) If you liked that, this is nice too:

:a

start "" "%~dpnx0" & goto :a

--grawity 16:02, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Playing normal DVDs on an HD screen

Hi, can anyone tell me what the quality is like playing normal DVDs on an HD screen? Like does the quality look impared compared to playing them on a standard def. screen? I was specifically thinking of buying the base level Sony FW model, but wanted to make sure my normal DVDs wouldn't play badly. Cheers, LHMike (talk) 20:30, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Providing you're not sitting very close, it shouldn't look any worse. How it does look will partially depend on the DVD player - a lot of newer DVD players have some pretty good upscaling, which manufacture fake details to produce an HD-dimension image from the standard dimensioned DVD signal. It's certainly not as good as a real BluRay or HDTV source, but the mismatch between people buying HDTVs and yet not buying BluRay players to match has been ascribed to people being largely happy with the upscaled images they're getting now. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:43, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

At least in my case, I don't want to pay for a BluRay player unless it can also record in BluRay. I'll continue using my current DVD players until they can do both, at a reasonable price, and without any defective DRM logic that prevents it from working. StuRat (talk) 22:01, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Stu, I think your objection is really waiting over price and not recording functionality. If you want to record HD just get an HD Tivo. Why would you want to record HDTV on to Bluray discs that (will eventually) cost 2 bucks each? --mboverload@ 22:08, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

How much does TiVo cost for a month ? Enough for several BluRay disks, I imagine. How would I store 100 HD movies on a TiVo ? Also, how would I hand a TiVo to a friend who wants to see the movie ? I would guess that BluRay blank disk prices will also eventually come down to the price of blanks DVDs. StuRat (talk) 22:21, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

All great points Stu. I mostly use Tivo to timeshift and keep shows for a week, whereas you want to keep them for longer, which I did not consider. --mboverload@ 00:47, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Your DVDs will look ok. It really depends on the MPEG-2 codec your laptop has. Laptops usually have PowerDVD, which is pretty good. --mboverload@ 22:08, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks all, big help. I suppose even before blu-ray people watched DVDs on screens of many different resolutions. In a couple of years, if I'm desparate for HD, an external drive will be far cheaper than the price difference to a blu-ray model is now (heck, they're already cheaper than the price difference...). LHMike (talk) 19:17, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

External hard drive and eSATA

Can you plug an external SATA hard drive into the eSATA hole (sorry, I mean, port) on a computer and expect it to work? Are these interfaces compatible, or do you need an enclosure? I have read this article [2], and to me it looks like they were designed to be compatible - it just seems a bit alien to plug an internal hard drive into a computer as an external peripheral.78.144.211.104 (talk) 21:25, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

[3] --mboverload@ 22:12, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

So yes, you can. Because although they have slightly different form factors (eSATA is symmetrical, SATA is L-shaped), there are cables on the market which will connect an eSATA port to a SATA hard disc. Thanks. SATA HD's must be bus powered, then.78.144.211.104 (talk) 22:37, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Mathematical Keyboard

I'm not sure if this should go here or in the Mathematics desk... Anyway, is there a way to input advanced mathematical symbols (like ∝, ≈, ⇔, ⊕, ∫, among others) from the keyboard? As one can type accented characters with a US-International keyboard configuration, I was wondering if there was something similar to this? If not, perhaps there are some IMEs to do this? Since I use mathematical symbols quite often, I'd rather enter them from my keyboard than having to copy/paste or going to Character Map all the time. Maybe perhaps even a macro editor? Thanks for any suggestions. 63.24.175.154 (talk) 23:15, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Microsoft Office allows you to map keyboard shortcuts to insert any symbol (including Greek characters and equation characters common in mathematical writeups). Nimur (talk) 00:07, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I use Open Office. It has a math module that lets you type a math markup language very easily (or point and click at a cheat sheet if you need to). -- kainaw™ 01:11, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

If you use them that often you may want to look into LaTeX or other applications designed to make writing mathematical expressions easier.--droptone (talk) 12:17, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

TeX is more practical, but you could probably rig up a space-cadet keyboard if you really wanted to. --Sean 15:07, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

August 4

UMTS flow of events

Good day. can any body answer me about the general procedure that happened when we use an external modem assigned to a GSM network to browes a website?

i want to ask about the path of the request/responds, and the functions of every node in the UMTS network.

Regards. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ammarissa (talk • contribs) 00:59, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

The external modem first contacts the active-active pro-node to establish the time sync, which is based of the gov atomic clocks. This prevents bounced signals and other interference from interfering with the signal. After syncing is done it authenticates with the active-passive cluster using the identification string assigned to that device along with a salted cache of the date. The active-passive node checks your string and salted date against a list of active devices and if allowed grants access to the network. --mboverload@ 03:31, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

After that it connects to Wikipedia and trys to get it to answer homework questions. =) Sorry mate, we literally couldn't give you the answer if we wanted to. The answer and the wording your teacher is looking for is in the textbook. --mboverload@ 03:39, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Youtube

Youtube is just ridiculously slow from my house, and has been for a few days. I was wondering if youtube was as slow for everyone else. When I stream a video, I actually have to hit the pause button and wait several minutes; sometimes, it's freezing altogether. It also might be a problem with Comcast though; I know they've had some legal trouble recently with not providing full access to certain online material. Magog the Ogre (talk) 02:23, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

It could be Comcast. It could be your physical wiring connecting you to the Internet. It could be your computer. There are many possibly problems (far too many to go into detail about). In order to have any shot at diagnosing the problem, you need to experiment further. Is it ALL computers from your house? Is it ONLY YouTube? What other computers have you tried? Both Wireless and hardwired? What other video streaming sites have you tried? -- kainaw™ 02:50, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Ha ha, now I am a programmer, so I have done all that. No, other sites are plenty fast, and yes, other computers in the house are slow (we even restarted the wireless router). The thing that has me thinking it's youtube is that http://tubezoid.com is slow too. Have you tried doing any downloading from youtube? Magog the Ogre (talk) 02:52, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Comcast is a nasty company that blocks sites and tools that compete with them. Like bittorrent. Or things that compete with Video On Demand. Like YouTube! --mboverload@ 03:24, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

YouTube is at its usual speed form my computer. This video, which is 4 minutes and 43 seconds long, was fully buffered after 1 minute and 5 seconds. Downloading the video from Tubezoid took almost exactly the same amount of time. From Shijiazhuang, the download time was 58 seconds. --Bowlhover (talk) 03:58, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

How about downloading the higher quality version, however slowly, via keepvid.com; then you can watch it whenever you want, served up as fast as your own computer can supply it. -- Hoary (talk) 09:38, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

[4]. Get to it. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 08:36, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Anti-Virus

Please answer quickly, because this is important.

My computer has been overflowed with viruses. I cannot clean the viruses because I have to register the anti-virus software, which is difficult because I'm a child. My computer still works (now, at least), but I cannot access Control Panel or Task Manager and I cannot access my hard drive and disc drive from My Computer. And the computer slows down when it tries to perform certain tasks. Please tell me how to eliminate these viruses, because if I cannot find a solution fast, my computer will crash! (P.S. I am using my laptop at the moment.) Les Games (talk) 09:16, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Maybe your parents could help. When the anti-virus software was bought, it should probably come with big long number called a serial number, which you need to type in before it works. What is the Anti-Virus called? Is it McAfee? There might be some free anti-virus, which you don't need a serial number for.78.144.191.13 (talk) 09:42, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

First, if your sick computer is connected to a LAN or otherwise connected to the internet, disconnect it. I mean, physically unplug from it whatever cable connects it to the rest of the world. Ignore any angry message that this might bring.

Because it's free, ClamWin won't need registration. Download it with your healthy computer and somehow get it onto your sick one.

Being older won't help you, being calmer will help you. So don't rush. -- Hoary (talk) 09:59, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

To be honest, I wouldn't bother trying to sort out the computer if it is so badly infected. That happened to one of my computers and what I did one day was I copied out all my files, restarted the computer with the Windows installation CD inside, then re-partitioned the hard drive - thus formatting it and deleting everything.

The disadvantage of this method is that you'll have to reinstall windows from the CD, and then you'll have to download things like sound card drivers your self (here's a good place). Believe me, setting up your computer again will take a VERY long time. And if you've forgotten to copy out one of your files... it's lost.

If you can sort your computer out with anti-virus software, I'd definitely do that, but if it's "overflowed with viruses", I'd say you got fat chance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.128.200 (talk) 10:06, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

The first thing to do in this situation is to turn the computer off. This will stop the virus from spreading and causing more damage. Now, you'll want to rescue your important files, so get yourself a Linux live cd; download on another computer, burn to disk. Run the live CD on the infected computer and you should be able to copy your files to a USB stick or floppy disk. Note that Linux will not be effected by the virus as it will most likely be a Windows specific virus. Be careful only to copy your files and not any system files, as these could be infected with the virus and you will just be spreading it to the next computer. Once you've saved your files, you have two options; try to repair the computer or just reinstall Windows. Personally I'd reinstall, as it at most will take about an hour, and with XP it should have most of the drivers you'll need preinstalled. If you want to try and repair, Linux should have a copy of Clam AntiVirus, the anti-virus engine ClamWin uses; but if as you say the computer is totally infected, there will probably already be too much damage to bother trying to repair. 20I.170.20 (talk) 12:37, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Computer viruses don't "spread through the air"; you have to run them. Using a Windows-based recovery CD would be fine too as long as you didn't start launching applications from the hard disk. Contrariwise, if you have a macro virus in a Microsoft Word document (for example), using a Linux-based recovery CD to copy it isn't going to get rid of the virus. Like StuRat, I'm suspicious that your problem really is viruses, though. The only symptoms you mentioned are (a) can't access Control Panel, Task Manager, or My Computer and (b) the computer slows down when it tries to perform certain tasks, neither of which sounds like a virus problem to me. In fact both are more likely to be caused by antivirus software. People tend to blame every mysterious computer problem on viruses without considering the alternatives. Still, regardless of the problem's cause, copying your important files and reinstalling is likely to be the quickest and easiest way to fix it. -- BenRG (talk) 16:46, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure it's viruses that are the prob ? It could be other problems. Try a reboot, defrag, and then run free anti-spyware programs like AdAware and Spybot. StuRat (talk) 14:53, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

speed of data types

I'm wondering whether some data types can be used operated on by the computer faster than others. Because I couldn't find any information on the web (other than that 64-bit computers can operate 64 bit integers faster than 32-bit computers), I decided to write some C++ code as an experiment.

I am incredibly confused by the results. As expected, unsigned longs ran the fastest, but I was surprised that unsigned chars and unsigned shorts ran MUCH more slowly... slower even than 64 bit long longs, which were only slightly slower than longs! If the computer is only 32 bits, and an integer is 64 bits wide, wouldn't the computer have to do several calculations to carry bits over or something? Also, unsigned long x:8 bitfields sometimes ran faster than unsigned chars! Shouldn't the compiler have optimized all the chars then, or is it because I'm using Visual Studio Express edition? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cnbn (talk • contribs) 09:49, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

You should expect optimal performance when dealing with the native word size of the machine, when accessing word-aligned data. How fast sub-accesses (accesses to packed arrays of things smaller than the word size) are depends on the native instructions available on a given architecture, and on which of those instructions a given compiler actually emits. Barring handy shortcut instructions (and perhaps even then) you'd expect byte access on a (say) 32 bit architecture to be slower (for data in cache), as to access (e.g.) the 3rd byte in a word the compiler has to generate instructions to shift the word down and AND off the other stuff. I mentioned cache above, and I guess your test was on data that would fit into the cache? If you're accessing so much data that it doesn't fit into the cache, then your timings will be dominated by cache latency (not by the few extra instructions that are needed to address some sizes) - so accessing 1Gb of uchar8s and 1Gb of uint32s should be much closer together than the ratio of the same on only 10Kb of the same. The best thing you can do, if you really want to understand what's going on, is to have your compiler emit assembly language too, and see the difference between the code it generates for the different data types. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:30, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Once you've understood this, take a look at how the compiler handles stuff like:

      struct {
        uchar8    c;
        uint32    i;
        uchar8    c2;
      } foo;

some architectures (like MIPS) will insist that i be on a word boundary, some will allow it to be misaligned (Intel), and some will allow it depending on a processor flag (SPARC, I think). Those architectures that do allow misaligned access essentially have to do the shift-and-mask thing themselves for you, and so are often slower than if you'd aligned things better. That's why compilers often have a bunch of flags that let you specify alignment and packing (things you didn't care about until right now), and why the C-programmer's favourite trick of casting a buffer of received bytes to a structure can be unportable or downright fatal. Again, looking at what the compiler emits can be very instructive. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:49, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

A question about software bug reporting .

Bold textFirst i want to say that this is not a question of how to report a bug in wikipedia. My question is how to make a perfect software bug report including : bug report components,best way to avoide needless information within the report.I hope i get an answer as soon as possible for i need it so much,,thanks... —Preceding unsigned comment added by NightxKnightx87 (talk • contribs) 12:14, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

It varies a bit depending on what you're reporting on; if its something with an open bug-reporting system (like Bugzilla) it's a good idea to see what other people are reporting. Different programs generate different kind of error codes or data dumps, and these are generally what someone wanting to fix a bug will need. You always have to say what version of the program you're running, and generally what related things (OS version, versions of any software that interacts with the buggy program) you were running. Say what you were trying to do, what you actually did, what you expected to happen, and what actually did happen. The "what you actually did" can be very important - in order for a bug to be fixed, it must be reproduceable. So bugs that say "I was using the program and it crashed" aren't much use; instead saying "I went to www.foo.com and clicked on the red box three times, and the system reported error code X123000 and hung. I've done this several times on two different windows computers and the same thing happens every time" is much much better. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:41, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

For how much do you think this domain is worth?

For how much do you think this domain www.bloggersday.com is worth? I want to know because I want to sell. 59.96.137.111 (talk) 14:29, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

The standard answer is that something is worth the most that a buyer is willing to pay and the least a seller is willing to accept. OtherDave (talk) 01:05, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

The fact is that since you didn't do anything except get lucky in registering it the odds are that nobody is going to want to pay you very much for it (and why should they?). How much is it worth? However much some sucker would be willing to pay for it. Even if I was dying to have a site named "bloggersday" for some reason it would be easy enough to do "bloggersdayonline" or something like that. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 02:46, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

What should i do?

i bought a system from a coy at a give a way price which has an administrator's password and i tried to remove it because the person that passworded the system is no more working there and nobody knows the password.

with my little knowledge, i went through so many ways with the CMD, and this was what i got after trying the steps:

NET USER [username [password | *] [options]] [/DOMAIN] username <password | *> /ADD [option] [/DOMAIN] username [/DELETE] [/DOMAIN]

i don't know what it means, and what am i suppose to do?

somebody assist cos i cant download any software without the administrator's password which is really making me mad

thanks.

Mb —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.73.189.210 (talk) 15:15, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

It may be worth re-installing the operating system, since you don't have full access to the machine's administrative account. Nimur (talk) 15:40, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

If you're not afraid of command like, try ntpasswd. But since your computer was used by someone else, I recommend a fresh reinstall. --grawity 16:12, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Nimur and Grawity has the right idea here. Technically you can get into it. The problem is that used systems are nothing but trouble. Who knows what kind of viruses, spyware, and misconfigurations have happened? You should be able to use any XP cd with the serial on the sticker on the computer to reinstall it. --mboverload@ 20:31, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

TFT display reliability and energy usage

Are TFT displays more or less reliable than CRTs now? I heard a few years ago that somepixels would fail leaving black spots. Also do they use mor or less energy that CRT when in use? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.76.204.221 (talk) 16:15, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

They are more commonly called LCD displays or TV's. Considering the billions of dollars of investment into the technology, this is the way the world has gone. CRT's are definitely old technology and in some places are literally being thrown away. As LCD's have thousands of hours of active life in them, by the time these hours are used up the next technology would be around anyway... anyone for holographic TV? The "black spot" problem was more prevalent in older models... I've seen this with my own eyes; my older Viewsonic had a few but my newer LG and Samsung don't have any. They definitely use less energy than CRT and in most cases less energy than plasma TV's. Newer LCD's are becoming even greener and using less energy. I can tell you from personal experience as well - LCD's are better for your eyes than CRT's especially when you're staring at one all day and from a close distance. Sandman30s (talk) 17:54, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

LCDs definitely use less power, but I'm skeptical that they will be as long-lasting as CRTs. I have 20 year old CRT TVs which have been in everyday usage and are still going strong. Based on the short length of warrantees on LCD TVs and early reports of failures on some, they seem less likely to last, to me. Also, I don't know if this applies to modern LCDs or not, but I've had LCD calculators, watches, and clocks ruined by exposure to cold if I left them out in the car during winter. I've also had an LCD laptop with random colors appearing on certain pixels. I'd be very interested in seeing a report on mean hours until failure for each technology. StuRat (talk) 20:01, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

My sons' 17" HP's which I bought in 2003 still show, via the monitor software, 18000 and 20000 hours of usage left. They are still going strong. I doubt very much if anyone would still want to watch a LCD 15 or 20 years from now, given the current rate of change of technology. With talk of 3D 360 degree holographic images popping up from watches and cellphones, I can see why. Besides, if LCD is still around in 20 years, they would probably be using paper-thin foldable material running at super-duper-ultra-HD or something. Sandman30s (talk) 13:14, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

CRTs lasted for a century, so I can imagine LCD technology lasting at least a few more decades. And, if I buy a $2000 TV, I would expect it to last for more than just a few years. StuRat (talk) 01:12, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Looking for two specific linux tux images

I am trying to find two linux tux images I have seen but I can't remember where from. One is Tux working an abacus with small tuxes as the beads, the other is tux holding up two small tuxes, one in each of his wings. I've been able to find a small version of one of these but I am looking for the originals. Thanks -- 209.30.197.76 (talk) 17:27, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Linux Counter. The other I found is holding only one tux Link- Abhishek (talk) 17:40, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! the linux counter logo is one i was thinking of. The other has tux holding mini tuxes like a waiter might carry trays. -- 209.30.197.76 (talk) 23:35, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Cheap webhosting

Dear all-knowing Refdeskers,

I recently bought myself a domain from a relatively rare TLD. For various reasons I bought it directly from the registering authority. I am now looking for a cheap webhost - I need some small space for a HTML page or two and email forwarding. Now, do anyone have any tips for cheap and reliable providers? By "cheap" I mean, perhaps, less than $40 for the first year including setup costs etc. I have the domain but nothing else - all I have at the domain register interface is the possibility to enter the addresses of name servers. I am located in Europe but the hoster could be anywhere as long as the interface is English. Thanks a lot! Jørgen (talk) 19:35, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

NearlyFreeSpeech.net is by far the best host I have ever used. For users like you, the cost each year will be negligible. But, you could use a free host - and by free I a mean absolutely free. I currently use 000webhost.com - which would be perfect for your needs, but will probably be less reliable if you need it constantly than a paid host. However, I use them for my email at the moment and I couldn't ask for a better job. (I hope NPOV doesnt apply here ;) - Sorf^ane 19:56, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Personal opinions are fine as long as everyone understands that we are not liable for anything. --mboverload@ 20:29, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Unless it's legal or medical advice, in which case your personal opinions are still not postable. Nimur (talk) 05:12, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, I'll look into those (looked at NFS some time ago, in fact), feel free to add more opinions, neutral or not... :-) Jørgen (talk) 06:32, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Vacation videos - what format to use?

Dear all-knowing Refdeskers,

some time ago I bought a regular home-use DV camera, which records to Mini-DV tapes. Now I want to spend some time, but preferably not much (I know that can be hard) editing this video. My main question is: what is the optimal format for storage of edited videos? I really hate throwing away information, but realize that storing the video in the same format as on the DV tapes will really be a drain on HD space. Let's say I want DVD-grade quality - what compression/codec/resolution should I use? Also, I would really appreciate tips on free / win32-bundled video editing software. I looked at Microsoft Movie Maker and perhaps it does actually fulfill my needs - except that it seemed rather restrictive on formats for the saved videos, which relates to my previous question. Can that be adjusted somehow? Thanks a lot! Jørgen (talk) 19:39, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I've always used DivX for compressing all my videos, and it's always compressed really well and kept very good quality. (http://www.divx.com/) Regarding editing, I've never had a problem with WMM for my basic editing needs, and I've always liked it becuase it lets me edit my DivXs, but I'm sure other users will have better ideas ;) - Sorf^ane 20:02, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep the video in the native codec for editing. For the finalized video I think H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is a pretty awesome, standard one. I personally recommend that one. However, I do not know how widespread it is implemented. --mboverload@ 20:23, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Glancing at the DV article, I didn't find any resolution information - any suggestions on the resolution I should use on the final video? And is it straigtforward to customize resolution/codec for the final product in Windows Movie Maker? Jørgen (talk) 06:35, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

You should not care about any of this in the current stage. You want as high quality as possible, and that means keeping it in its original format until the final recompression. All video compression in common use are lossy, so you want to recompress as little as possible. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:24, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

My (signal) strength is waning...

Is there a walk-in store where I can buy the Channel Master CM4228 antenna in the Detroit area ? StuRat (talk) 19:51, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Radio Shack? Useight (talk) 20:39, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Radio Shack typically prides itself on selling overpriced, foreign-made junk, so I doubt if they would carry a quality, reasonably priced, American-made antenna like this. StuRat (talk) 20:43, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Hey, hey, hey. No bashing Radio Shack. Whenever you need some weird little converter to plug some electronic thing into another, they have it. I've never been disappointed. Also, their return policy is amazing. Everything is returnable, even if it's open, with no restocking fee. The higher price is worth the excellent service. Sure beats Best Buy and its inferior goods. Useight (talk) 23:23, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps, but they sell some rather pathetic TV antennas, like those from Terk. StuRat (talk) 02:06, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

At participating Ace and Tru Value hardware stores. --LarryMac | Talk 21:01, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

That list is of stores carrying some Channel Master products. While Ace's website lists some CM products, they don't list the CM4228 antenna. The True Value website seems quite useless, it doesn't list anything related to antennas at all. StuRat (talk) 21:18, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Windows vs. Puppy Linux

The amazing thing about Linux in general is not only that it works better, but in some cases it is much smaller than Windows. Puppy Linux, for example, in its full-fledged version, only needs less than 200 MB. What does Windows have in all its GBs for more or less the same functionality ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 19:53, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I think my Vista install is like 16 GB. Could be wrong. Whats in there? Programmers and people who have read Windows Internals by Mark Russivich should be able to help. --mboverload@ 20:25, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I think Microsoft (and a lot of other software companies) have taken the position that hard drives are so big now that people can afford to devote a few gigabytes to the OS and hundreds of megabytes on each installed application. And for most users that's true—I think your typical laptop/desktop hard drive is mostly empty these days. It has little to do with Windows internals; it's mostly rarely-used user-level stuff. For example, XP has some kind of "welcome to XP" multimedia thingy which remains permanently on your hard drive (just in case you add a new user to the machine some day and they want to see it). XP keeps a permanent backup of lots of system files for the System File Protection feature, which effectively doubles the space those files take. When you install a security update, the old versions of the changed files are kept in case you need to undo the change. Same with service packs. Many/most machines that ship with Windows also include the raw contents of the install CD on the hard drive so that you can install new drivers, language support etc. without needing a physical Windows install CD. Lots of other applications like to put their files in the Windows folder, which might lead you to count them as part of the OS. You may have a paging file and a hibernation file taking up a few gigabytes each. The System Restore feature will happily use as much space as you give it.

Another reason for bloat is increasing use of general-purpose libraries and increasing use of static linking. General-purpose libraries are less buggy, and static linking avoids DLL hell. They reduce development time and support costs. But it does mean that every application that uses XML is likely to have its own copy of an XML library, and that library is likely to have its own copy of hundreds of kilobytes of Unicode traits tables and Shift-JIS and Big5 conversion tables and so on, even if you only ever use ASCII. And if the application comes with several different executable files or DLLs, each one may have its own copy of the library.

Also, software tends to have fewer installation options now. Once upon a time you had a lot of control over which parts of Windows to install, but XP has only a few token options which hardly affect the installed size at all. Fewer combinations to consider means easier development and support. Also also, Puppy uses aggressive compression to get the disk image size down. Windows has nothing similar, and that kind of compression doesn't really work anyway for a system that's being incrementally updated with new software and service packs.

Looking back on these I notice that most of them have to do with easing customer support. Keeping as much as possible on the hard drive, in as many copies as possible, means no hunting for CDs and fewer cases of critical files being lost or damaged, and Joe User has no other use for the extra space. I think that's the direction the whole industry is moving, not just Microsoft. And I think Linux is moving that way too. -- BenRG (talk) 21:29, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that -- just to pick one example -- Windows comes with DirectX, which is a collection of software that makes it easy for games (and other multimedia applications) to use numerous different types of graphics and sound hardware without the programmers having to include separate support for every single graphics card out there in the multimedia application in question. Considering the wide variety of hardware manufacturers and products, that's not only an obvious time and money saver for the developers, but also something that makes life a lot easier for the consumer. I mean, I'm sure Windows could be a lot smaller than it is if Microsoft made that a higher priority, but it's not as if the list of features in Windows Vista is similar to that in Puppy Linux. They just aren't designed for the same purpose. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 01:55, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

There IS OpenGL you know, DirectX is not the only technology out there. Puppy Linux is designed for compactness, whereas Windows is not. Normal Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, installs to a similar size to Windows (I have 10GB for each), but it contains a full office suite, graphics editing tool, and a lot others. I guess dynamic linking does save a lot of space. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:21, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Sure, but DirectX includes support for a lot of things other than just graphics. And yes, there are absolutely alternatives to them, but there's a reason why Puppy Linux (as opposed to some other Linux distribution) doesn't include them. I'm not saying that Windows Vista couldn't possibly be any smaller. Or faster, or better, or any such thing. I'm just saying that comparing it to Puppy Linux is a little like saying that this axe sure is better than this chainsaw, because it's not as heavy. It's getting pretty deep into that apples and oranges territory. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 09:55, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Restoring old version of Microsoft Word doc

I accidentally changed, saved, and then closed a Word doc. Can I get back the earlier version ? There's no Undo option since I already did a save. StuRat (talk) 21:01, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid you can't. The only thing that might help is if you had backed up the old version of the file somewhere.  ARTYOM  00:38, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

There's a faint possibility that you may find something useful in a Word temp file. This would likely be in the same directory as the document itself. (Not a great hope, just an outside chance that in opening the temp file you'd find something salvageable.) OtherDave (talk) 01:09, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Just agreeing with the others- Word actually deletes content (unlike Excel). --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 01:46, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Use a recovery program and search for files that begin with ~. One of those might be your Word document. Its probably too late by now. --mboverload@ 03:38, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Try to leave the computer alone and do research on the problem on another PC. We don't want to overwrite the area of the hard drive that contains the file we want to recover.

Download this program on another PC and put it on a disc:

http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/

On the PC that has the file, start in the program "Windows Explorer." (Start - All Programs - Accessories - Windows Explorer)

Delete any files you know you don't need or can easily get back. This gives us some disc space to put the utility on. The more files and the bigger - the better the odds. Videos are great for getting disc space back.

Then load the undelete program. If you can, load it on a drive other than the drive that contains the file you want to recover (probably C).

You just may get lucky and be able to recover the file - that is if the area of the hard drive where the file was has not been overwritten with other files - including: your web page cache that grows with every page you visit (including this one), and the undelete program you install. How lucky you are depends on a lot of things (mostly hard drive size and file fragmentation). Some of it is luck too, but deleting some files first improves your odds.

Even if it is too late to get the file back, free undelete is a great program to already have installed if you ever need it in the future. Hope it helps.

--Wonderley (talk) 07:19, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the file wasn't deleted, it was overwritten with new content. Would any of this work for such a case ? StuRat (talk) 11:54, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I think so. I'm pretty sure that when you resave a file it: Saves the file under a temp name. Deletes the original. Renames the temp file.--Wonderley (talk) 22:52, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

The temp file(s) was/were deleted, so they'd need to try to find that file.--droptone (talk) 12:10, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

August 5

Java applications do not run in browser

Resolved

Hello. I recently reinstalled my operating system, and installed Java from java.com later to be able to view Java applications in browser. However, the first time I installed it, it did not run correctly; Internet Explorer (7) was just closing when I opened a website with a java application in it (http://www.operamini.com/demo, for example). I tried reinstalling it a couple times, even installed the older version (1.6.0.02, that was installed on my system before the OS reinstall), but nothing worked. However, somehow I managed to get the browser not to crash, but now it displays a red X in left-hand corner of the Java application window on the webpage. Java console displays the following errors in it:

load: class QuoteList.class not found.
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: QuoteList.class
	at sun.applet.AppletClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
	...
load: class org.microemu.applet.Main not found.
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.microemu.applet.Main
	at sun.applet.AppletClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
	...

I tried disabling and re-enabling the Java Active-X control in the browser, but it didn't help. I am wondering if it is because I'm using a 64-bit Vista (although Java doesn't work both in my 32-bit and 64-bit IE's); but it was working before - I just bought this laptop a few weeks ago, and it had everything preinstalled on it. That's where I got the 1.6.0.02 version from, it was among the driver installation files, but it didn't help either. I wasn't able to find any solutions online as well. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!  ARTYOM  00:36, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, I fixed it. Just in case somebody else would be having the same issue, I am posting my actions here. It turned out that version 1.6.0.07 (the latest one) was just installing independently from the already-installed version 1.6.0.02, i.e. without removing it. I uninstalled both, reinstalled the latest version, restarted the computer, and disabled and re-enabled the Java Active-X in IE again. That solved the problem. I guess something went wrong during installation when I tried to install Java the very first time.  ARTYOM  01:29, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Image stabilization, after the fact.

I checked Image stabilization, but didn't find an answer, so maybe y'all have an idea.

Is there a way to take an older, somewhat shaky, video file and run it through some software (free would be nice) that will reduce the shakiness? Thanks. Bunthorne (talk) 03:49, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there are software packages that governments and police use to stabilize video - no matter how shaky. They have taken completely unwatchable clips into super-steady video ready for the jury to see. The only people I have heard of using it are professionals. I think they were using Avid but I'm not sure... --mboverload@ 05:22, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

This is the ultra highend professional level solution I was referring to. dTective - Powered by Avid I am still looking for a consumer level version. --mboverload@ 05:29, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Mboverload. I checked the presentation, and that's exactly the type of thing I would like to do. Of course, since that's professional software, I'm too cheap to buy it. So if there's a consumer or free program that will do the same thing, I'd be interested. Thanks for your detective work. Bunthorne (talk) 15:43, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

There is an add-on for Adobe Creative Suite that does exactly that. I don't recall the name of it, but my google searching has found anouther similar one called Mercalli. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 23:40, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Cinelerra will do it, but it is kind of hard to configure properly. And just for the record avid has a built in image stabilization plugin effect. I have used both, cinelerra's motion stabilization is more powerful but alot harder to get working because of all the options, the built-in avid effect is much simpler and usually "just works". -- 209.30.197.76 (talk) 22:03, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Web site default page replaced with "core-project"

I have a server at my house that I keep my web site on. Yesterday my default page was modified and I have no idea how. The new version of the page simply read "core-project" - No formatting, page title, nothing - just that text. So far it does not look like any changes to other files were made.

I had been on the server yesterday, but I don't think I was at the time stamp of the file change. Even if I was, I did not: download anything, edit the web site, run any new software, do anything unusual, I did not even check mail. I did go on the web but I don't think I went to any page I was not familiar with (Netflix, Amazon, maybe the IMDB). Now maybe I did go somewhere else, but I'm 99% sure it wasn't at the time of the change.

Afterwords I did do a Windows update and 2 upgrades were installed: KB890830 and KB951748. Those patches did not look like the fix to my problem to me. My anti-virus software was up to date and I did a scan with no problems found.

I can put the page back like it was, but I am very concerned as to how and why this happened. I wouldn't think it would be a virus - wouldn't it do more than modify the 1 page and in a silly way?

Does anyone have any ideas about this?
What would make a page say just "core-project" (no quotes)?

Thanks--Wonderley (talk) 06:57, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Have you done checked the logs? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 08:34, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

You have server logs, yes? Those will tell you what happened. My bet is that you had some sort of vulnerabilities in your page and some bot found them and exploited them. Couldn't give you more info without more info on the page, the server, and the logs. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:19, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks so far. I didn't even think about the logs. I just assumed that if it was hacking, logs wouldn't show it. Also, I do not have FTP running - but I better double check that. The only thing I see suspicious in the log is this activity.

18:58:32 202.134.73.148 HEAD /Default.htm 200
18:59:07 202.134.73.148 POST /_vti_bin/_vti_aut/author.dll 200
18:59:07 202.134.73.148 GET /Default.htm 200
19:00:11 202.134.73.148 HEAD /Default.htm 200
19:00:13 202.134.73.148 POST /_vti_bin/_vti_aut/author.dll 200
19:00:14 202.134.73.148 GET /Default.htm 200
19:00:36 202.134.73.148 HEAD /Default.htm 200
19:00:39 202.134.73.148 POST /_vti_bin/_vti_aut/author.dll 200
19:00:40 202.134.73.148 GET /Default.htm 200

"POST" sure does look like trouble to me. How about you? However, I didn't think that was possible. As for vulnerabilities on the page it should be just basic html. However, I use Front Page 2000 and like all Microsoft Products it adds stuff that I don't think necessary.

What are the extra sub directories like "_vti_cnf" and "_vti_pvt"? I assumed FrontPage made those. Maybe I am wrong about that? I do not have a "_vti_bin" directory on my web site.

I'm going to see what I can find based on this info but I wanted to get this out to you ASAP. Thanks again. --Wonderley (talk) 18:24, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Well it seems that those _vti_bin/... files were accessed successfully since your server returned code 200 (HTTP OK)... Nimur (talk) 22:21, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

It also seems like those are FrontPage utilities for web-based site maintenance... Nimur (talk) 22:23, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Firefox not sending Cookies to DTA

Resolved

I'm trying to download files that require me logged in, and so I need to cookie in order to download it in an external programme. I have done some packet captures and the cookies are missing from the HTTP headers in DTA when it's running natively in Linux, whereas the same configuration in wine works flawlessly. Is this a bug in Firefox or is there some hidden setting that I do not know of? --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Turns out I need to allow 3rd party cookies in preferences... --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:35, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Citing sources in LaTeX environment

I'm a LaTeX noob and I spent the last couple of days learning how to convert my MS Word document into LaTeX. Tables excluded, it was fairly easy, however the bibliography is still missing. What's the better approach to produce the list of sources? Right now, I have about 30 sources cited, but the document will grow until about 100, perhaps. Can you help me? Thanks in advance for your replies. 85.243.132.126 (talk) 10:17, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Maybe bibtex is what you're looking for? You can do a bibliography by hand, but if you have 100 sources to cite BibTeX is a better bet. 79.71.24.204 (talk) 11:56, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I've heard about it, but how can use it? I download an applet to build my database, create a file with it and inclue it in the .tex file? 85.243.132.126 (talk) 12:12, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Try reading some of the tutorials linked at the bottom of the bibtex wiki page. Basically you install BibTeX on your system (it's possibly already there, especially if you're using MiKTeX), put \cite commands in your tex file where you want the references to appear, create a sample.bib file with the details of the references in bibtex format, and put \bibliographystyle{plain} \bibliography{sample} where you want the bibliography to appear. You then run the tex file through bibtex and latex a bunch of times, and the resulting output has a nicely formatted bibliography.79.71.24.204 (talk) 12:54, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'm using MiKTeX, and I understood the mechanism you explained, but how can I manage the database and create the .bib file, i.e., introduce the authors, titles, years (and so on...) of each work and create a file with all that information inside? Does MiKTeX carry any applet to help me performing that? 85.243.132.126 (talk) 12:59, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

The database is the .bib file. Either create it by hand using the examples in the bibtex page etc., or find an online reference database that will spit out references in bibtex format e.g.mathscinet and look up your references one by one, or find someone you trust who cites the same sort of references you do and ask for a copy of their .bib file. I haven't used MikTex for some time so I can't tell you what it does, but the .bib file is just a text file so you can certainly edit it in whatever you currently use.79.71.24.204 (talk) 13:06, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

websense

i had asked for help on how to beat websense.i can't access WIKIPEDIA. aNY HELP would do trmendously —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.178.109.246 (talk) 10:20, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand your question - If you can post the above message then you can access wikipedia. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 17:59, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, he/she could be using another computer or someone else's account to post a message. This is obviously a problem with a restricted account at school or work. We don't/shouldn't give information on hacking... Sandman30s (talk) 21:31, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

This has been asked before. Astronaut (talk) 18:08, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

notability - beagle board

Before I create the stub, (or someone else beats me to it), I would like to ask your advice - Is an article "beagle board" worthy of an article or not?87.102.5.5 (talk) 14:25, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I would say be bold and go for it. A quick glance at Google shows a few sources and certainly enough information for a stub. Worst that can happen is someone disputes its notability or merges it into Texas Instruments OMAP or similar. Gandalf61 (talk) 14:53, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Article now under construction... please wait a moment.87.102.5.5 (talk) 17:23, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Nokia 3220 as modem

I will be acquiring a laptop and setting it up with Linux (probably Kubuntu) in the near future. I have a Nokia 3220 and will be buying a Bluetooth USB device to transfer data between the phone and laptop. Can I use the phone as a modem? If so, will the use of Bluetooth create security issues? NeonMerlin 15:16, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

1. Yes, most phones allow using them as a modem, but with Bluetooth it might be slower.

2. No, I think Bluetooth is secure enough.

--grawity 17:45, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It might be technically possible - TBH I don't know - but try this site. However, unless the modem call is within your call package, using your cell phone as a modem could be astronomically expensive. eg. here in the UK, I get charged about 10p/minute to call a "free" 0800 number because only numbers starting 01, 02, 03 and 07 are within my call package. Astronaut (talk) 17:47, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

What is the name of that little image next to the URL?

On Wikipedia it appears as a "W" on google it appears as a "G". What is it called and is there html to personalize the one on your website? --217.227.110.149 (talk) 16:27, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Its called a favicon. Here's a useful page on them. - Sorf^ane 16:43, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

For more extensive personalization, this might be of interest. Algebraist 16:51, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

That is awesome :D - Sorf^ane 16:56, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

MP3 player for audiobooks

I am looking to buy an MP3 player for my mom to listen to audiobooks, and I am looking for some hints. It needs to have a simple interface and doesn't need much 'fancy' functionality (she's not the technophile I am :) ), and needs to be able to resume long mp3 files at the moment they were stopped. Bookmarking would also be helpful. Does anyone have any suggestions for what model / ranges I should be looking at, or what other criteria I should consider? Thanks muchly in advance! — QuantumEleven 16:51, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Email forwarding and storage size

Hi. Let's say I create a Yahoo email accoount and a Gmail email account. I insert each other email address to forward every email received to the other account. That is, an email received to the Gmail account will forward it to the Yahoo account and vice versa. If now I use one of them and send an email to the other one, will it loop forever? Will there ever a time when the email storage reach full capacity if it loops forever? Now, maybe they've set a limit to the number of emails you can receive per day, which will stop the infinite loop. If I start sending a 10MB mail (the maximum allowed I think) every day, will the storage of my Gmail or Ymail ever get full? This article says that Yahoo! Mail offers unlimited email storage capacity. Is that really true? What if I keep uploading/sending emails to that Yahoo! Mail account every day. Will it never get full? Thanks for your answers. 132.206.22.13 (talk) 18:02, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

E-mail loop talks about the first part of your question. Your second question is more complicated. Of course there is a limit to how-much space exists on Yahoo's servers, but I think if you dig deep enough into their terms and conditions you will find a clause that lets them cut you off if your usage is outside of what a reasonable person would use. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 19:19, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

AFAIK, as far as Google is concerned, they will slap your wrist and cut you off for a few hours to a few days. ONE (or even twenty) 10 MB mails a day will most likely not concern either Google or Y!. Their servers are [hopefully efficiently] scalable and they can just add more storage to their servers when they need to. Gmail yet does not have unlimited storage and I don't think it will anytime soon, since they have started selling/renting storage. As J Smith said, Y! has its limits but sending one 10 MB email should not harm them. Moreover, since you are a paying subscriber (how else would you get forwarding in Yahoo!?), they will most likely not terminate your email if you consistently send out low numbers of huge emails. I am not sure about attachments but if you have a 10 MB attachment going back and forth between yahoo and Google mail, the servers should be smart enough to just link you to the same attachment as to not spend more storage space. Kushal (talk) 00:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Digital_signal_processor#Architecture

"Bit-reversed addressing, a special addressing mode useful only for calculating FFTs"

I understand (I think) fourier transform - but can't see how bit-reversed addressing could be useful here.

What exactly does 'bit reversed' mean in this context? What sort of FFT would use this?87.102.5.5 (talk) 18:55, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

There's some discussion of it here. (I probably can't be much more help than that, sorry.) -- Coneslayer (talk) 19:20, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

It says "Bit reversal is the permutation where the data at an index n, written in binary with digits b4b3b2b1b0 (e.g. 5 digits for N=32 inputs), is transferred to the index with reversed digits b0b1b2b3b4 "

But the relationship between 11001 and 10011 is obscure mathematically (to the extent of being psuedo random) - can anyone give a simple explanation of this (I can't find any relationship to factorisation either - does this have something to do with it?)87.102.5.5 (talk) 19:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Can anyone tell me that it's very complicated (or am I reading high-fantasy-bullshit?)87.102.5.5 (talk) 19:32, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

It's not too complicated. The FFT is divide-and-conquer: you do a recursive FFT on the n/2 even-numbered inputs and another one on the n/2 odd-numbered inputs and then combine the results. If you're doing an in-place FFT, then the outputs of the sub-FFTs will be in the same place as the inputs. In particular, the DC components for the even and odd half-FFTs will be at addresses 0 and 1 respectively. From those you derive the DC component of the full FFT (their sum), which goes at address 0, and the "Nyquist frequency" component (their difference), which goes at address n/2. In general, from half-FFT results at 2k and 2k + 1 you produce outputs at k and n/2 + k. This is hard to do in place. It would be easier if your inputs had been ordered so that the even-numbered ones were first, instead of mixed with the odd-numbered ones. But the same argument applied to the sub-FFTs implies that within the even-numbered ones, the multiples of four should come first, and so on. In the end the most efficient arrangement of the inputs is bit-reversed. This only applies when the size of the FFT is a power of 2. If it's a power of 3 then you reverse the digits in base 3. If it's a mixture of primes then you do a mixed-base digit reversal (or use a different algorithm). -- BenRG (talk) 20:46, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

ok I think I understood that - (every thing except why I'd split into two FFT's in the first place) - but you explained the part I wanted. Thanks87.102.5.5 (talk) 21:28, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Connecting "Directly" to the Internet

I read somewhere (I don't remember where) that it's possible to connect "directly" to the internet (without going through an ISP) but that the equipment needed to do so is expensive. Still, I'm curious about how this would be done, so...how would that be done? Digger3000 (talk) 20:39, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

You can't steal "some internet" like you can steal cable. Connections the Internet backbone are all owned by companies that then lease them to(EDIT: or have agreements with) smaller other companies, then to smaller, etc. Could you give us their exact quote so we can figure out what they were trying to say? --mboverload@ 21:57, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

From Internet:

Aside from the complex physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the Internet is facilitated by bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts (e.g., peering agreements), and by technical specifications or protocols that describe how to exchange data over the network. Indeed, the Internet is defined by its interconnections and routing policies.

--mboverload@ 21:57, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

:I agree with mboverload. To visit a web site, you need to translate its domain name (e.g., en.wikipedia.org) to an IP address (e.g., 208.80.152.2). For that, you need a DNS server. There are free DNS providers that you can use. The next thing you would need would be a DHCP server to give your computer an IP address. I know of no free DHCP providers. In order to use an ISPs servers, you have to register your modem with them. Otherwise, access will be denied. Further, if you connected a modem to your TV cable line, you might also need permission to pass through their routers.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 22:09, 5 August 2008 (UTC) [banned user]

It's not even that simple. You have to convince some company to carry your traffic before you can even consider connecting to their dns/dhcp servers. Unless you're a massive ISP (and hence can do a Peering arrangement with the other ISP), you're not going to do that for free. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 22:28, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Weird that you included DHCP on your list of requirements. DHCP is not required to connect to the internet. It exists only as a convenience. It is entirely possible to set up a network so that everything DHCP provides can be done manually just by calling up your network admin and typing in some numbers. APL (talk) 23:15, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I think the main mis-conception here is that there is specifically something out there called "the internet" and that your ISP is somehow a gateway to it for you. It's not. Your ISP is actually part of the "the internet." Actually, unless your within a LAN, your computer is part of the internet as well. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 23:34, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, so I guess my question is, is there any way for me to have internet access (like I do now) but without going through an ISP? I don't care if it's free or cheap, I just want to know if it's possible. Digger3000 (talk) 00:12, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

No. Let me put it another way. The internet is composed of computer networks that communicate with one another. The owner of each network has an agreement with at least one other network owner on the Internet to allow data to communicate between the two networks. An ISP is just any organization who is already part of this interconnected network, and provides a connection to their network (and by extension the whole Internet) to someone else. That's it. And there is no other way onto the internet; you need to come to some sort of an agreement with an organization who owns a network that's part of the Internet in order to connect to it. That organization, by definition, is an ISP. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 00:33, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

There are two ways to answer this question :
(1) "ISP" implies a commercial business. You could connect through a part of the internet owned by a different type of organization instead. A military base or a university, for example.
(2) If you don't like that answer, you may prefer to read about Internet Backbones. I suppose it would be theoretically possible to somehow hook your desktop up to one of those if you could jerry-rig together the proper equipment. However, there isn't a single, central backbone anymore, there's a bunch, and these backbones are either part of ISPs or one of the ISP-like organizations I just mentioned above.
So, you see, we're back to C. Crustacean's comment that there is no single "Internet" that you can connect to. It's just a large collection of equipment owned by ISPs and other similar organizations. Even at its very core the internet is made of ISPs. Your question is sort of like asking if you can look at a forest without looking at any trees. APL (talk) 02:47, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I think the simple answer is that The Internet is not a series of tubes. There's no water main to connect to. --mboverload@ 03:06, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Digger3000: I think the closest you can get to what your wanting is leasing a T1 (or better) digital line. At this point your less an individual paying a subscription fee and more an entity buying a particular guaranteed connection. I speak with experience when I say it's a very very different kind of relationship. So Digger, what exactly are you trying to accomplish? We might be able to better help you with more information about your goals. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 03:56, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

A friend said "omg theres a free way to get internet" and he wanted to know how. The answer is there is no way and to to beleive so is because of a lack of understanding about how the internet works. --mboverload@ 04:11, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the way I read it, he's looking for a way to connect with only set up cost, and further usage is free. Is it possible to SET UP a personal ISP (albeit at high initial cost)? --WORM | MЯOW 07:57, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

In theory. But 1) You'd still be connecting to one or more other ISPs. 2) Since you're not a Tier 1 network there would be ongoing expenses for those connections.

We're back to a basic concept. To connect to "The Internet" you need to have a connection to one or more ISPs. This is true if you're a home user. This is true if you are an ISP. This is even true if you're AT&T. The internet is made of ISPs.

Obviously, someone like Comcast buys a much fatter pipe than you or me. APL (talk) 13:29, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

How to convert/use documents from StarOffice5.2 in Microsoft Word?

I have just moved from a WinMe computer, where I used StarOffice5.2, to an XP computer that has Microsoft Word installed. Is there any converter that could convert my hundreds of letters from StarOffice format to something readable by Word please? 78.151.119.134 (talk) 21:11, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

:Have you tried OpenOffice.org? It can open .sdw files and save them in the .doc format. It's free, too.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 22:15, 5 August 2008 (UTC) [banned user]

"The source code of the suite was released in July 2000, creating a free, open source office suite called OpenOffice.org; subsequent versions of StarOffice have been based upon OpenOffice.org, with additional proprietary components.[2]" - From StarOffice. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 23:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

That being said, both StarOffice and OpenOffice should both just have a "Save As" feature with .doc as a choice. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 23:31, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I should have been clearer - I have hundreds of letters to convert, I am looking for somthing that can convert them in a batch rather than repeatedly loading and saving then in OpenOffice etc, which would take days. Even something that could just crudely convert them to .txt files by stripping out non-text characters would be better than nothing. Thanks. 89.242.82.124 (talk) 11:47, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

After some more websearching I have found this OpenOffice macro that can (it says) batch convert between all different formats supported by OO. http://www.ooomacros.org/user.php#95532 I have not tried it yet. It is said it will not go through sub-directories though. And in case the .sdw files need converting into OpenOffice format first, from http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOoAuthors_User_Manual/Migration_Guide/Sharing_Files "To use OpenOffice.org to convert a lot of files, click File > Wizards > Document Converter." I would still be interested to hear of any stand-alone conversion programs. Thanks. 89.242.82.124 (talk) 13:25, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Do not want to use any "user accounts" in WinXP

I have just moved to an XP computer after previously using a WinMe one, and I hate the needless complexity and pointlessness of having to use accounts for different users and statuses on the computer, which just gets in the way. Is there any way of using an XP computer without any accounts please? Thanks. 78.151.119.134 (talk) 21:20, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Well you have to have at least one account. Set yourself up as administrator and you don't even have to experience the ignominy of logging in with a password, although a password would be preferable for security. Go into Control Panel and Users and delete all other user accounts. I have a guest account as well, without which one enters a world of pain if you want to connect to/from other computers on a network/workgroup/domain. Sandman30s (talk) 21:37, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

If it doesn't automatically log you in after doing that, and you still get the welcome screen, then there's one other step. Click start, run, type in control userpasswords2 and hit OK. The option for auto login is in there. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 00:41, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

"sharing" dsl connection between 2 computers

first, waht does it mean when 'sharing' a dsl connection? does that mean both computers are able to surf the web at the same time, or only that one computer can surf the web at one time, while the other can connect to the internet at a differnt time? also, i have a win98FE computer (with no ethernet ports) and a vista laptop... if i wanted to network them to share a dsl connection (with one dsl modem) would i need to get a network card for the win98 computer and would i need a router as well? thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.24.181.191 (talk) 17:17, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

August 6

computing medicine

information on the topic computing medicine —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.237.155.17 (talk) 02:16, 6 August 2008 (UTC) the use of computers and IT in manufacture of medicines —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.237.155.17 (talk) 02:21, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

You fail to understand how college courses work. Your teacher is looking for the answer and its wording from the book. In addition, your question is so insanely far reaching as to make it meaningless. Thats like me asking "Information on fish in the ocean". --mboverload@ 02:30, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Try computing & medicine and get back to us when you can narrow the scope of your question. Thanks, ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 03:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

This google search returns some seemingly useful links. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 12:24, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Swf file?

I recently downloaded a game and the computer was unable to play it. The game is a " .swf" file. What kind of program do I need to play this game? (Keyboard387 (talk) 04:46, 6 August 2008 (UTC))

The file extension ".swf" is usually associated with Flash. To play the game, open the file using your a browser. If you have the flash plugin installed (most computers), it should work, otherwise you will be confronted with a blank page. Rilak (talk) 06:30, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

If you don't have flash installed you could try this - a portable swf player that doesn't need installing. - Sorf^ane 08:41, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Media Player Classic can play SWF files, though for the full effect play them in your browser. Turbotanker (talk) 10:25, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the predecessor to Flash was Shockwave, so "swf" was taken to mean "Shockwave Flash." OtherDave (talk) 11:42, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

What is this chatroom layout type?

I need someone to know what this chatroom layout type I seen on a website is. Here is a picture what the chat layout type is like: http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h241/sirdrink13309622/Eucromozz/000k.jpg?t=1218000933

Can you tell me what this chat layout type is? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sirdrink13309622 (talk • contribs) 05:41, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

As far as I know there isn't any classification system for chartrooms. I'm not really sure how to answer your question. Perhapses if you can explain kind of information your actually looking for or what your trying to accomplish we can help you more? ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 19:21, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Transferring audio from tape to mp3

i want to transfer some audio cassette songs to computer(mp3 format). (in otherwards to copy a radio program in computer?). Could you recommend any free software and how to do it. Thank you 124.43.33.70 (talk) 08:42, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

You need one of these a 3.5mm patch cable. (You probably already have one.) Just plug one end to the line out of your cassette player, and the other end into the line in of your computer and that's all the hardware setup you need to do. The best software for this would be Audacity. This tutorial will explain how to record tapes in Audacity. - Sorf^ane 08:50, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Search Field with Autocompletion

I would like to include the Wikipedia search field with autocompletion for Wikipedia article names into a website. How can I do that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.37.70.39 (talk) 09:31, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

It requires some coding on the backend. See AJAX or use the MediaWiki source as guidance. --Sean 14:06, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I found out that a query should look like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=opensearch&search=a&namespace=0
Some example solutions are offered by Jim Roos, Javascript Examples, and BrandSpankingNew. I will try their solutions... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.37.70.39 (talk) 13:04, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Gadgets

I ask this question at the help desk yesterday here, this is what I asked:

“ Hi there, I'm not too sure if I should ask this here or at the Computing Reference Desk, so if I've picked the wrong place people feel free to move my question over. My question is about the Gadgets in My preferences; is it possible to run the scripts under Greasemonkey? I have a local Wiki and I'd like to use the scripts without installing, because I regularly erase it and start a new installation. It would be enormously helpful if I could run them from my Firefox browser using Greasemonkey to avoid having to reinstall the scripts each time. Thank you for your help. ZapThunderstrike (talk) 18:29, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

If you know how to write JavaScript, all you have to do is find the relevant page with the source of the gadget (not sure where they are though) and copy-paste it into a Greasemonkey file, telling Greasemonkey to execute it on your wiki's URLs. The only problem I could see is that the JavaScript is written for this installation of Mediawiki, so it might reference some things specific to this wiki. Calvin 1998 (t-c) 18:33, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I did try a simple copy and past with the Live Clock, Twinkle and Navigation popups but none worked. I'm quite new to Greasemonkey and I know nothing of javascript, so it would be great if someone could provide a link to a site to explain how to do this; I don't expect anyone here to write an entire script for me, though I'd be eternally grateful if someone did :) ZapThunderstrike (talk) 18:38, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

”

Nobody at the help desk seemed to know so I'm hoping someone here will be able to help. Many thanks for taking the time to read and for (hopefully!) responding. ZapThunderstrike (talk) 09:54, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Hotmail Contact List

Hello, The thing is, when i send mails from Windows Live Hotmail, the Contact List i get on the right side of the page, includes all my Contacts(entitled Everyone). So my question is, How can i change it to Favorite only. Thank You.82.194.62.220 (talk) 09:54, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

refresh

I'm looking for a way to refresh the page I'm viewing every five seconds or so. How can I do this? Turbotanker (talk) 10:24, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

You don't say which browser you're using but this extension will do it in Firefox — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 11:07, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks but it's not compatible with FF 3.1 I've looked over the other addons but none seem to be great. Is there some HTML code I can add that would make a page reload upon viewing regardless of the browser? Thanks a lot everyone :) Turbotanker (talk) 11:19, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

This HTML will make Google.com reload every 15 seconds:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<html>

<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="15;URL=http://www.google.com" />

</head>

Just change www.google.com to whatever page you like, and 15 to the amount of seconds you want. Save it as reload.html, then open in your browser. - Sorf^ane 11:59, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

One comment, though: Trying to read a page that's constantly reloading could be quite annoying, as they tend to blank out the entire page, then redraw it one item at a time. If they used a more intelligent redraw, and only replaced items which have changed, then a reload wouldn't be nearly as disruptive. StuRat (talk) 13:20, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks guys, unfortunately that code only loads google once after 15 seconds and doesn't load it again. Turbotanker (talk) 13:51, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

The reason is actually that it's reloading www.google.com, which itself does not have the extra "refresh" meta tag. As soon as the first reload is completed then you won't ever see another reload. Tempshill (talk) 03:43, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Assuming you have access to the source of the page you want to auto-refresh, just put the second-to-last line in the head of the page and change http://www.google.com to the URL of the page itself. I agree with StuRat though - if this is a public-facing page, this can get very annoying. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 15:27, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Firefox has its own timelapse reload built right in. Just right click the page, go to reload every, and then choose the amount of time that you need. hope this helps. Sish (talk) 14:14, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't have such an entry on my right-click menu (Firefox 3.0.1, Windows). Perhaps you have an extension like ReloadEvery installed? -- Coneslayer (talk) 14:26, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah you are right, I never realized it, but that feature is part of TabMixPlus. Sorry for the confusion. Sish (talk) 14:29, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

One other option, download XuMouse: [5] which can click or move the mouse every 5 secs or more, set it to click every 5 secs, then position it on the refresh/reload button. This assumes you don't need to use the mouse or scroll the page between reloads, but has the advantage of working in any browser. StuRat (talk) 16:14, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Here's a simple replacement to the code above that will load and auto-refresh an external site:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<html>

<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="5;"/>

</head>

<body leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" bottommargin="0" rightmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0">

<iframe src="http://google.com" width="100%" height="100%" border=0></iframe>

</body>

</html>

It's not perfect at all—it doesn't quite fit the window (for no good reason the "100%" height is calculated based on a size other than the inner window dimension, which is dumb), and it's in an iframe meaning that there is an internal scrollbar, but if what you're looking for is just a quick way to have a page get refreshed regularly, it'll work in a pinch. There are other ways to do it. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 17:30, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Which Apple was the first to have 3D graphics?

The last time I asked this question, someone with this IP address: 87.102.5.5 removed my question and rudely left a message on my user talk. Before you blindly remove my question again, please take the time to look at the following: my user page and my contributions before assuming that I am some primary school student who wants someone to do my homework.

I'm asking because I want to know without all the seriousness of the more formal research that I do for other computers. So, once again what Apple computer was the first to have 3D graphics? Was it made by Apple or by a third party? What was it capable of? Thanks. Rilak (talk) 11:05, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

(1) What do you mean by "have 3D graphics"? There were demo programs for my Atari 400 that showed 3D-looking balls bouncing around on a checkerboard with 3D perspective, but the computer and operating system did not have any features to specifically support such graphics (e.g. 3D acceleration). (2) If you're asking about "Apple computers", then how could it be made by someone other than Apple? -- Coneslayer (talk) 11:50, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

"3D graphics" means that the computer should be capable of generating 3D images through hardware assisted acceleration - eg. an option board with a geometry engine. As for "If you're asking about "Apple computers", then how could it be made by someone other than Apple?", I was referring to whether there were option boards that were made by a third party (if Apple didn't make any themselves) that could have given an Apple computer 3D graphics capability. Rilak (talk) 12:17, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Once again - please define "3D." It is clear that you know what you mean. So, let me explain why your terminology is vague... I can go watch a movie. I see one person standing close to the camera and one standing farther away. It looks 3D since I can see depth, even though it is on a flat movie screen. However, if I say that I went to a 3D movie, you will assume that I am talking about a movie where I have to wear special glasses that trick my eyes into believing that the images are closer to me than the screen itself. So, 3D has two completely different meanings - even in computers. It can mean that something has an apparent depth (like a driving video game that makes the road get smaller, giving the impression of distance) or it can mean 3D through optics that trick the eyes into seeing images in front of the screen. Which 3D are you referring to? -- kainaw™ 17:28, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Surely the question is about the sort of 3D acceleration hardware we all have in our graphics cards nowadays. I don't know the answer, but almost certainly the first cards were very expensive add-ons which only worked with a small number of very expensive software products (probably for Macs, but I wouldn't rule out an Apple II card). This article says that the first Mac to ship with 3D hardware was the Power Macintosh G3 (beige), and that the first hardware-accelerated 3D games for the Mac came out in 1996-7. Apple has never developed its own 3D acceleration hardware to my knowledge—they get it from third parties like ATI. -- BenRG (talk) 19:41, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Rilak explained the question - he's asking what was the first GPU of some sort that was on a Mac. My memory is very hazy on this point and I ran out of time doing a couple of quick Google searches, but I'm pretty sure it was on a NuBus board and it was probably a Rage chip or even a ViRGE chip. As a Nubus card it would have physically fit into many Macs starting with the Macintosh II, but you'd want to look at the required-minimum-hardware list once you locate the card. I think it came out before the Power Macs, and I think it was intended for CAD programs. Side note, the first Mac with "accelerated video hardware" of any sort was the 8*24GC (the asterisk in the name was actually a big circle, impossible to type, unfortunately) video board, but this had to do with bit blitting and not polygons. Tempshill (talk) 19:48, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies... So it seems that Apple only really started to have 3D graphics capabilities in the mid 1990s, and there were third party addons that existed before that. I'll check out the external links now. As for the definition of 3D graphics, I don't understand how there can be two definitions of the term 3D... its like calling a drawing of a person a statue because it has shading and depth... Rilak (talk) 06:43, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Now you are being even more confusing. It appears you are referring to a two-dimensional display with advanced shading to create the illusion of depth as "3D" which means "three dimensions". There are three dimensional displays for computers - ones that display images in front of and behind the screen - so they are displaying in three dimensions, not two dimensions with some fancy shading. So, you are using 3D to refer to a drawing on a screen as a statue because it has shading and depth. -- kainaw™ 12:13, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Umm... Did I say that a drawing on a screen is a statue because it has shading and depth? And I don't think I'm being confusing. In fact, you have all confused me for the past day or so with, "My 8-bit microcomputer is capable of displaying a picture with shading, thus giving the illusion of depth, therefore it has 3D graphics." But its just displaying a bunch of differently colored pixels from a framebuffer! As for 3D displays, does StereoGraphics not refer to such display technologies as stereoscopic, not 3D? Rilak (talk) 07:50, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

PHOTO RESOLUTION

i received some photos by e-mail. Those are too small(dimension is 150x113). and not clear. How can I convert them to normal size(1280x960)? Thank you.124.43.33.70 (talk) 12:07, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

If they have come to you at 150x113, you will not be able to get anywhere near viewable pictures at 1280x960. (See Raster graphics) Have you tried click on the pictures? They may currently be a thumbnail of the full version. - Sorf^ane 12:13, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

You'll need to ask your friend to e-mail you the original versions of the pictures before they were shrunk down to a 150x113 resolution. It won't work to use Photoshop (or some other image editing program) to increase the resolution to 1280x960, for the same reason that if you take a little photo out of a magazine and make a copy that's the size of a whole wall, you won't get to see extra detail in the photo - it'll just look blurry and blocky. Tempshill (talk) 19:53, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

wii power saves problem

I have a wii power save thing and ive downloaded cheats for some games. But for some of my games like need for speed prostreet and mario kart wii when i go to SD memory and try copying the cheats to wii memory it say i have to play it before i can download but i have play them bought alot. Second some games like need for speed carbon if i try to download cheats for the SD to the wii memory it says i cant because i alredy have the data. Is there a way that i can download the cheat without having to deliet my game (i know you can have more then one file on it so could i make the new data with the cheats on it in file 2)?

thank you --76.235.210.66 (talk) 15:58, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Wii menu update 3.03 rendered those useless. Rgoodermote^{Not an admin}  23:33, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Tabby question

Is there a way to reposition the tab bar in Opera so that it's below the address bar ? StuRat (talk) 16:06, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes - Sorf^ane 17:32, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll give that a shot. StuRat (talk) 19:18, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

PATCH PANEL AND SWITCH

WHY NETWORK CARDS (PATCH CARDS) ARE CONNECTED TO A PATCH PANEL INSTEAD OF TO THE NETWORK SWITCH DIRECTLY. WILL IT HARM THE NETWORK SPEED? WHY SUCH A METHOD IS FOLLOWED ? IF NETWORK PATCH CARDS ARE CONNECTED DIRECTLY TO NETWORK SWITCH COST ON PATCH PANEL COULD BE SAVED KNOW ? WHAT IS THE NECESSITY TO HAVE A PATCH PANEL IN BETWEEN?123.201.56.67 (talk) 16:11, 6 August 2008 (UTC)G.CHANDRASEKAR.

A patch panel is just a place where one cable meets another, like an extension. It has no active components and has negligible effect on the signal. So it does no harm to the network performance. Patch panels are a convenience - they allow you to control how all the building's wiring is done, in one place. Remember that not all the cabling goes to the same switch - you can have multiple switches (to implement separate domains or networks, or for failover reasons). And the same cat-5e cabling can carry things other than ethernet - it can carry proprietary digital telephony, analog telephony, and hookups for security systems and security cameras. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:45, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Also if I have cat-5 cables coming right out of the trunking and connecting straight into the switch, and I accidentally snap the tine on the modular plug, I either have to re-pull a full length of cable (which is a lot of bother) or cut the plug off and manually crimp another one on (which is a pain to do on a well-lit bench; it's downright horrid in a cramped cable closet). If, on the other hand, I break the tine on a patch cable I can just bin that cable and replace it with another, at little cost and in no time at all. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:48, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Plus patch panels are easy to label (there's a little flat area above each socket); labelling cables isn't nearly as nice. And the patch panel keeps like connections together (assuming it was wired sensibly), so (say) all the connections on the first floor are in one area, all those on the second in another. With just bundles of cables you've a much tougher job keeping everything neat and all like things together. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:51, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I can attest to how important the labelling is... I once spent a week crawling round on my hands and knees, looking under the floor panels with a torch, and all because the fool who slung the network together in such a hurry had done a sloppy job. Even though they had used a patch panel in the rack, they hadn't labelled anything!! Perhaps the worst work task I've done in the last 10 years.

I took the liberty of removing your email address. This page is highly visible across the internet and regularly swept by spam-bots. Astronaut (talk) 17:33, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

This is really the key point - the patch panel is, strictly, unnecessary. But having it makes for easy, smart, and safe maintenance into the future. When setting things up people so often concentrate on the initial capital cost of something, but forget that the cost of downtime in the future, or of someone's time in figuring out what's what, greatly outlays almost every possible capital cost. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:44, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

DNS reverse lookup

This particular address, 193.219.61.11, reverses to cache.dns.lt (yes, it is a DNS server), but when I use gethostbyaddr("193.219.61.11") in PHP or Python (on the same machine), it returns "litnet-p". Why? (I'm using the OpenDNS servers.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grawity (talk • contribs) 18:06, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Is it in /etc/hosts? --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 18:44, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, actually it was there... sorry. --grawity 15:29, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Dev-C++ Compiler

Why for a console apllication, does the Dev-C++ compiler automatically set the parameters for the int main function to int argc, char *argv[]. Why is it not just int main() instead of int main(int argc, char *argv[])? Thanks, Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 18:23, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Because you get your command-line arguments with those parameters. The first argument is in argv[1], the second in argv[2] and so on. argc-1 tells you how many arguments in all. argv[0] what the current program was called as. --Sean 18:34, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

You have to be careful with terms here - Dev-C++ is an Integrated development environment; a typical install uses gcc as the compiler. With that in mind, your question is a bit unclear - are you asking about the automatic "fill in the function signature" thing some IDEs do, or about how the compiler (gcc) behaves? I'm guessing the latter (?). gcc lets you to declare any function with any type you think best, and if that's not the correct one it's a problem for you. main() is typically declared with argc and argv to carry the command line arguments given to the program (see Argc#C and C++), but if you declare the function just as main() then nothing bad will happen. If, however, you decided to declare main() to have some other arguments (ones different to argc/argv, the format used by the process setup code) then you'll get nonsensical results. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:38, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the latter. I was asking about why those parameters are used. Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 19:05, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Setting up Linux router / web server on home network

I'm going to have the following network setup:

Linux box with two ethernet cards, one connected to DSL modem on bridge (eth0), PPPoE authentication, and the other connected to a hub which has my home wireless router connected to it (eth1).

Now I'd like to put up a simple firewall and I've read a simple way to do this is to only forward packets from eth0 to eth1 that originate from eth1. How do I do this on linux? Is this an effective enough firewall? (keep in mind that my linksys router will also have a firewall, so I don't need anything all too fancy on the linux box)

Second, I hope to have a sip server, streaming music server, and web server on the linux box. So for packets heading to eth0 I would enable all those applicable ports, in addition to any packets originating from eth0 or originating from eth1. Is this correct? Again, just a simple firewall to make it a little harder for folks to get on my linux box.

Third, what is the best distribution for what I'm trying to do here? Looking here I was thinking Red Hat but I can't find it for download...

Maybe slackware or ubuntu?

Thanks, -Wikindeling (talk) 20:15, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

My computer has Gentoo Linux and uses iptables and dnsmasq for this. The Gentoo Wiki describes how to configure something like that at [6]. MTM (talk) 20:42, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

It may be too fancy, but Smoothwall is brilliant at this task, and you get loads more features. But if not, I would suggest Debian. - sorfane 18:46, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Problem defining a boolean operation

Resolved

I need to define a boolean operation, using NOT, AND, OR, and XOR operators, on ten variables, such that the operation returns TRUE if and only if one of the variables is true, and FALSE in all other cases (including more than one variable being TRUE). Using OR between all variables makes the operation TRUE if at least one of the variables is true, and using XOR makes the operation TRUE for all cases where an odd number of the variables are true, while that's not what I need. Is there any way of doing it? Thanks,  ARTYOM  20:43, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, of course. One way is to use disjunctive normal form: '(the first is true and the rest are false) OR (the second is true and the rest are false) OR ... OR (the tenth is true and the rest are false)'. It can probably be done more efficiently if you want to minimize the number of operators for some reason. Algebraist 20:47, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

For example, you can cut that down from 189 operators (above) to 100 with '(one is true) AND (NOT (two are true))' where 'two are true' is a disjunction of 45 pairwise conjunctions, one for each pair of variables. Algebraist 20:50, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

The best I can do is 39 operators. -- BenRG (talk) 21:45, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, minimizing the number of operators would be preferable. BenRG, could you explain how you were able to do it with 39 operators?  ARTYOM  22:02, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

The general form is

$((x_{0}\vee x_{2}\vee x_{4}\vee x_{6}\vee \cdots )\oplus (x_{1}\vee x_{3}\vee x_{5}\vee x_{7}\vee \cdots ))\ \wedge \ ((x_{0}\vee x_{1}\vee x_{4}\vee x_{5}\vee \cdots )\oplus (x_{2}\vee x_{3}\vee x_{6}\vee x_{7}\vee \cdots ))\ \wedge \ \cdots$

or in other words "(the indices of the TRUE variables all have the same least-significant bit) AND (the indices of the TRUE variables all have the same next-to-least-significant bit) AND ...". I don't know if this is optimal, but the gate count ($n\lceil \log _{2}n\rceil -1$) does look kind of lower-boundish. -- BenRG (talk) 22:29, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Does this absolutely need to be written as a boolean operation ? It seems much better suited to traditional programming:

COUNT = 0

DO I = 1 TO 10

IF (VARIABLE(I) = .true.) COUNT = COUNT + 1

END DO

IF (COUNT = 1) THEN RESULT = .true. ELSE RESULT = .false.

StuRat (talk) 07:11, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks StuRat! I didn't think about loops before, because I was trying to do this in a PHP script, and I am just a beginner in it. But it turned out to be pretty easy to implement. Thanks again!  ARTYOM  14:04, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

You're quite welcome, glad I could help. StuRat (talk) 19:14, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

A neutral name for a XP user account?

I do not like having to use user accounts in XP. So I am going to set up a new account (with admin status) and delete the rest of them. Even after setting up the computer so that I do not have to log on, I will still see this name frequently. Ideally I would have no name, just "". I do not like the word "user" for example as it has negative connotations. What neutral names could people suggest that I will not start to dislike in a few years time? Thanks. 78.147.11.61 (talk) 22:56, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

"Account", "Computer", "Default", "Root", "Me", "Myself", "I", your first name, your last name, a random first name (who cares if no one named Rudolph ever uses the machine?), "Blank", "_" (an underscore), "XP", "This_username_intentionally_left_blank". (No guarantees that any of those will be accepted as valid XP user names). What you're not going to dislike is a few years time is an intensely personal matter. What I sometimes do in these situations is just string together arbitrary letters and numbers: "myp234", "kno6", etc. -- 128.104.112.147 (talk) 23:21, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

"Admin" and "Administrator" as well. -- 128.104.112.147 (talk) 23:23, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Obligatory "running full time as administrator especially in XP can be a major security risk" comment. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 01:05, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

As an aside, I named one of my hard drives "Moloko" (Milk) and another one "Korova" (Cow) in a witty little Clockwork Orange reference. Why not do something like that—pick a book you like, pick something out of it, name it after that. Your next computer you can name something else in a similar theme. It'll be fun. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 01:08, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

IMO, you should get accustomed to utilizing a user account to reduce the security risk. Tempshill (talk) 03:16, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Guys, its windows xp we are talking about. whatever microsoft may say, it is still not designed to work like Unix. Kushal (talk) 05:48, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Largely due to lazy programmers, but yeah, I wouldn't run Windows on a non-admin account. 24.76.161.28 (talk) 10:01, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I always set the account and computer name to "Windows", or if that is unavailable "Owner", so that when you log onto open Wireless networks you don't raise suspicion by having "John Doe" or whatever pop up on their computer. Besides, if you start to dislike your account name you can always change it, can't you? 20I.170.20 (talk) 13:11, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm wondering how "user" has negative connotations. It's a standard term in the computing word, so how could it be taken offensively or anything? Dismas|^(talk) 17:32, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Drug user? Using someone selfishly or unethically? 20I.170.20 (talk) 18:41, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

There are a lot of standard terms used in the computing world that aren't all that hot. Master and slave jumpers? I mean, it's pretty clear that a bunch of nerdy white guys came up with terms like that. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 18:28, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but we are talking about "user" - this isn't just a techno-nerd phrase any more. "Username" is an extremely common term, even in regular parlance. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 19:17, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Restart indent. Guys, all he is asking for is a random name for his user account. Not what kind of crack he prefers. Just use the Administrator account and delete all the other accounts EXCEPT Guest (disable) and HelpAssistant (Disable). --mboverload@ 19:49, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Must be an excessively broad interpretation of what McGruff said --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 19:53, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Malware Transfer

Sorry to ask two questions in one day, but my friend is having a serious security issue. He was on MSN messenger trying to help someone get rid of bloodhound.exe (a keylogger). He sent them hijackthis.exe and they ran it and saved a log file. They tried to send him the log file via MSN messenger. It would almost get done transfering and then say "Error: Cannot read from source file or disk.". This would abort the transfer. The icon would show up on his desktop but it was not a log file, it was a .lnk. When he tried to open it, Norton would pop up and say, "Name: bloodhound.exe, Count: 2, location: (somewhere in temp)". Then they tried just copying and pasting the text from the log file to MSN messenger and sending it that way. He copied and pasted the pieces of the log file into a .txt file and then tried to save it. Norton again said "Name: bloodhound.exe, Count: 2, location: (somewhere in temp)". How could this copy and paste of text send a program. Remember, this is just the text of the file, not the file. This has us stumped. Thanks in advance, Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 23:00, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I can't tell you how that happened but I can tell you how to remove the spyware. Download the software here to remove it. A simple google search would have shown you how to. Rgoodermote^{Not an admin}  23:44, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, getting rid of it is not the problem. I did google it. I just want to know how it happens. Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 01:13, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Bloodhound is Symantec's heuristic virus/malware detection technology. No program is being sent. The HiJack this log probably has some string in it that is known by Norton and is thus blocked just to be safe. Also, it could be that the virus is some how piggy-backing on the file transfer, however unlikely. In my opinion your friend is confused about what is causing the alerts or you are missing an important detail. --mboverload@ 01:24, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

August 7

k3b can't find files to copy

I'm running k3b 0.12.14 under Kubuntu DD. Both are old, I know, but k3b was working well till yesterday. Because Kubuntu DD is old, I want to replace it, and before doing so I want to copy lots of stuff onto DVD. k3b seems to work well at the start, allowing me to copy (or seem to copy) stuff from various directories to its list of stuff to be burned. But when I tell it to go ahead and burn, nothing happens for some time, whereupon there's a long list of files that can't be found, whereupon k3b either burns the remainder or announces failure (penguin on red background).

There seems to be nothing wrong with those files that can't be found: I've looked at several (at their original locations), and there they are as expected. And if there's some intermittent problem with the hard drive, it's not a problem that has manifested itself in any other way.

I can't quote (or google for) the exact error message in the normal way as I'm using a Japanese interface. But it's close to "[filename] can't be found. Skipping". If it does crap out (penguin on red), it does so with an additional message close to "the size of the resulting image file cannot be determined".

I tried breaking the process into two: first creating the DVD image, then burning the DVD. For the first disc (of a series of three or four), this worked well. For the first stage (creating the DVD image) of the second disc, I'm getting the same file-not-found messages.

Tips? -- Hoary (talk) 07:06, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

PS since it worked the first time, I decided to keep doing it the first time, as it were: close down all other applications, reboot, and start afresh. The second time, writing to the image worked like a charm; but when it came time to write, the DVD drive didn't believe that there was a disc inside it -- a problem I used to have years ago with another drive/system but that's new to me here. This talks of trouble with automounting; I suppose I should rack my brains and work out how to disable that. -- Hoary (talk) 11:08, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

k3b has trouble displaying accurate error messages: for example, I had it tell me that I didn't have permission to access the CD burner when the actual problem was a corrupted disk image. There should be a button somewhere called "diagnostic log" or similar that displays a list of the commands k3b is running and the results they produce. Clicking that will tell you what's really going on. --Carnildo (talk) 20:07, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

ANTISPYWARE 2008 Help!?

Alright, this has gotten out of hand. Just today, I discovered that I had Antispyware 2008 installed on my computer, and I get constant reminders of it. I didn't install it myself, nor do I know how exactly it was installed. Ever since I discovered it, I tried to remove it. At first, I thought that removing it would be easy, but I can't seem to be able to delete it. I've tried Spybot, Adaware, Malwarebytes, and other programs to try to delete it. I searched on google on advice to delete it, but couldn't find an answer.

It is a scam as an antispyware program, and I can't even delete it. I didn't even download or install it. It keeps on flashing up pop-ups all the time, creates trojans, and spyware/malware/adware, as well as creates a pop-up on the internet browser every 3 pages. It's really annoying, and I have to find out how to delete it. Please help me.76.201.22.87 (talk) 07:10, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Googling brings up loads of hits; this is just one of them. -- Hoary (talk) 07:40, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I've searched this topic on google, and it didn't give me the information i wanted.

I don't understand. Google for it and you get oodles of tips. I imagine that some or perhaps all of those at Youtube are humorous rather than informative, but what's missing with the others?

See also this, above. -- Hoary (talk) 09:21, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

What time to domain registrations usually drop?

Just because I am curious, when do domains whose status is pendingDelete usually drop from their registrations? I did research, and found out that it is on the sixth day after being in that status, though I have not found any sources that specify the time at which the drop actually occurs.

I would greatly appreciate any information that is provided. ~Sarah~ \\// 137.155.2.17 (talk) 08:48, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

".com domains get deleted around 1-2PM EST on its 6th day after 5 days of pending" (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum25/2409.htm) - Sorf^ane 08:57, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Windows, Wikipedia pic of the day as wallpaper

Does anyone know of an app that will let me set Wikipedia's picture of the day, or Commons' picture of the day, or any similar repeatedly updating picture as a wallpaper in Windows? Am I going to just have to get off my ass and cook one up for myself? 24.76.161.28 (talk) 10:00, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I've created a almagamation of a few apps that takes the latest commons pic of the day at 1280x1024 resolution from here and then sets it as the desktop background. Just run run.cmd whenever you want to update your wallpaper, it will always take the latest one. Download You can choose out of these resolutions: 200x150, 400x300, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200 - just edit run.cmd in notepad and change "1280x1024" to one of those. Hope that helps! - Sorf^ane 10:32, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Similarly, I'm looking through the whole front page, and the picture of the day, and it looks to me like it updates as 12AM UTC, which is currently 7PM or 8PM EST (it changes for daylight savings time). You could have a task automatically run the command at that time of the day. But, if you're a programmer, you probably already knew that. Magog the Ogre (talk) 19:04, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like what I was going to do. Use a batch file to: wget the picture, and then feed to a third to apply it as a wallpaper (uh, and now, looking at your download, you did exactly that 0_o). That works. I'm going to have to mess around a bit though, because I want to get APOD working too, and the current app to do that with is closed source and 16-bit (I'm using x64 vista). APOD's image URL changes. Not particularly difficult though; I could probably just do a bit of greping or something to extract that. 24.76.161.28 (talk) 05:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Problem displaying non-roman character in svg file

Hi. I've got an svg file with a capital omega ($\Omega$) in it, which I added using Inkscape. In Inkscape it displays fine, but in Firefox (2) or IE (6, SP2) the omega shows up as a black box. Do I need to tell Inkscape to save the font with the file, or convert it from a character to a shape - or something? A copy of the image is here (but the problem's definitely nothing to do with my having uploaded it to Commons).

Many thanks in advance! Olaf Davis | Talk 15:48, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Flowed text shows up as black boxes on mediawiki. Click the object and select "convert to text" from the text menu. It's nothing to do with the fact that it's a non-roman character; just the way you added it. --Random832 (contribs) 16:38, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Olaf Davis | Talk 16:44, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

OLE Drag and Drop Failure on VB6, but only with Vista

I have a custom control which makes use of OLE drag and drop. In Vista or not, it works properly when placed or dynamically generated on a simple form. When placed inside a specific program's context, the resultant compiled exe file does not support drag and drop in Vista but does on XP. Note that the compiled exe file is willing to accept drag and drop if the source is text dragged from a VB6 IDE window. The first intuition with such a behavior that something is wrong within the custom control seems to be less likely both because testing shows that the drag/drop events are not firing at all and also because the control works fine except in the specific context I am dynamically generating it in (which is not so easily explained without providing scads of source code). Any advice is appreciated. Thank you. --72.85.235.162 (talk) 17:01, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I've had this problem for days, but suddenly realized it was actually merely a conflict of privileges.

--72.85.235.162 (talk) 20:34, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Windows XP and CD-ROMs

All of the CD-Roms I an using that still work under WIN 98 SE and worked under Win XP at one time no longer work under XP. The name and properties of the drives show up correctly and XP says they are working and the eject function works but XP simply can not read any disk they contain. What is going on here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.162.249 (talk) 17:31, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

If they read before on your machine, and are no longer reading properly, I would have two guesses:

1) Your CD-ROM drive is not working properly. Try reading other CD's on the drive.

2) The CD's are busted. This might happen if they were all stored in the wrong place, though it doesn't seem as likely.

It seems pretty unlikely the XP would stop being able to read any CD formatted in 98SE; I may be mistaken, but I believe they use the same file allocation system. Try out reading other CD's on the drive, and if that works, then could you tell us if it's able to read the file system at all on the disks, or if it just can't run the program? Magog the Ogre (talk) 19:00, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

The drives are shown to be working by every possible means of configuration or status except for the "This device is not ready" message. On other devices years ago I found the problems to be the switch of sensor for closing the drive to be dirty or not working. If I could disable this in software then the drive might work. When any CD is inserted the green led flashes quickly for the CD Roms and the red led flashes quickly for th CD RW drives so it looks like the drive knows it has a CD but XP does not. What about diagnostic software? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.162.249 (talk) 11:35, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the problem might be in the software or in the BIOS (I would suggest messing around in the BIOS if you know how). I would normally suggest starting up the computer in DOS, though this is a fairly complicated operation in XP, and I don't remember how now that I'm using Vista. If you have a startup disk, you might try putting it in the drive, though you'd have to check the BIOS to make sure it's looking for startup disks on the CD drive before the hard disk. Has the CD worked before on this machine? You might even have a slave/master problem on the drive. Magog the Ogre (talk) 22:28, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

IRC

When I try to go to this address ([7]) on FF3, it tells me that it cannot open the page because the protocol (irc) is not associated with any program. Therefore, I tried to open it in IE7. Every time I try to open it in IE7, though, the browser crashes and it prompts me to send error reports. What should I do to access this page? Also, why is it crashing IE? Thanks in advance, Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 20:59, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, it looks like by installing the add-on ChatZilla in FF3, I am now able to use irc. However, I would still like to know why it is crashing my IE7. I would also like to know how it gives me the correct name. Does it go on what profile FF is registered to or what? Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 21:28, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

IE doesn't appear to recognize the extension on my machine; apparently IE recognizes it on yours for some reason. Perhaps a poor piece of software associated it with IE, but never properly installed. Magog the Ogre (talk) 22:31, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Free SMS-email gateways?

Are there any free services that will allow me to receive e-mail by SMS or send e-mail from SMS? My mobile carrier is Primus Canada, if it makes a difference. NeonMerlin 21:14, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I checked SMS Gateway, but your carrier was not listed. A Google search didn't turn up anything either. It is possbile that your carrier doesn't offer the e-mail service. But that's just your carrier. You could try [8] though. WikiY ^Talk 21:49, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Schematic Editor

Can anybody identify what program or schematic editor was used to draw this? It doesn't look like Eagle. I think Eagle shows VDD and GND pin separately. WikiY ^Talk 21:54, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

My educated guess is OrCAD, Bunthorne (talk) 00:42, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

ps3 sound issues running ps2 games with hdmi audio

I have an older model 60 gb ps3 with the hardware emulation for ps2 games. I use the hdmi cable for both audio and video, which works fine for ps3 games, but when i run a ps2 game on it i receive a terrible crackly bastardized sound output. When i use my component cable to run ps2 games, however, the audio and video work perfectly. My only gripe is my tv, an olevia 227v, is an unholy pain in the ass to cycle between component and hdmi, and i was wondering if anyone had come across these sound issues in the past and had any ideas about fixing it.

Thank you so much!

24.88.103.234 (talk) 21:59, 7 August 2008 (UTC)Tim

AVI file playable by Quicktime player only

I have been using Mathematica to make visualizations and recently figured out how to export a series of images as an .avi file. However when I go to play the file in VLC, it comes out all scrambled. But it turns out that Quicktime player can play the file just fine. I send the file to GSpot and it tells me the codec name is "BI_RGB Raw Bitmap" and that I do not need to download any codec.

Is the file actually an .avi or is it a .mov in disguise? How can I get VLC to play the file (I am pretty prejudiced against quicktime personally and would rather not use it)? Thanks for your help. (EDIT: I would upload the file here but wiki doesn't allow that file type - if anyone can suggest a place to host the file that doesn't require an account I'm all ears)Man It's So Loud In Here (talk) 23:02, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

RapidShare --mboverload@ 00:54, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, here is the file: [9]. Man It's So Loud In Here (talk) 01:43, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

It's a proper AVI file. You've probably found a bug in VLC's handling of raw RGB (uncompressed) video. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 02:19, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

The file is actually broken; its fourcc is zero instead of the correct 'DIB '. I changed the fourcc to 'DIB ' and it worked in VLC. So this is partially Mathematica's fault, but that's no excuse for VLC failing to handle it. Regardless, uncompressed AVI is not the format you want to use—it's very inefficient. (Zipping your file reduces it from 15+ megabytes to half a megabyte.) I recommend converting it to an animated GIF, which is the best widely-supported format for this kind of animation. It looks like Mathematica can export animated GIFs directly: [10]. -- BenRG (talk) 02:34, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Broken? fourcc.org lists 0x00000000 as the correct code for raw RGB. I don't see "DIB " anywhere in the list. MPlayer and ffplay played it correctly with the all-zero fourcc; they don't recognize "DIB ". Do you have any supporting documentation for your idea that "DIB " is correct?

Regardless of what went wrong there, it is definitely a good idea to compress that video before asking anyone else to look at it... unless you're going to ask someone to fix that VLC bug --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 02:57, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Considering there are about 10 billion basic VLC bugs, I doubt it's even worth mentioning... VLC is some pretty lousy (free) software IMO. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 18:31, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I would love to hear any suggestions for better ones. I'm in charge of the laptop images and right now we include VLC on all the systems. --mboverload@ 23:29, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

There are plenty that perform better but don't cover as many filetypes or are "free software". Personally I'd rather deal with codec hell that a player which crashes almost constantly on every system I've used it on doing such simple operations as "seek". --98.217.8.46 (talk) 01:33, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Eh, our goal is to make them stop complaining they can't view something, which is why I choose VLC. It's simple to support and although the interface sucks, it remains basic enough to be useable without any training. Mostly because it avoids codec hell. --mboverload@ 01:41, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

If you are interested in alternatives to VLC, you might want to check out GOM Player. --Kjoonlee 13:07, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

August 8

now i've done it...

so I installed linux on my PC, and when it loaded I realized there was no GUI...so I rebooted to try to get to GRUB to load XP, but nothing is showing up on my monitor now. I'm getting the no-signal after turning on/off the monitor, unplugging and replugging the power, unplugging and reinserting the data cable, all this and no-signal.

Even put in a Vista boot CD and nothing. Help please? Wikindeling (talk) 01:36, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Maybe the Vista boot cd is messed up. Did you install from a LiveCD version of linux? Also, what distro did you install? Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 02:06, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

No signal even on post? Try resecuring the video card (remove, reinsert)? 24.76.161.28 (talk) 05:10, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I thought i was ruined there, I left it be for an hour and then tried again and the screen pops up. Odd...I don't get it. electronics, for all their fundamental logic, are flaky. -wikindeling Wikindeling (talk) 20:05, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

norwood micro tv-monitors

I have a norwood micro model#LM3020tv. My grandson pushed some buttons and now it flashed a series of colored screens over and over, when you press any button it say "self test mode". how can I get out of this mode.

please help zed —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zexdarique (talk • contribs) 02:11, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried removing the power source for a few minutes? Rgoodermote^{Not an admin}  03:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Apparently they tried this: [11], although I don't know if it has batteries that need to be removed, as well. StuRat (talk) 18:56, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I searched for a manual. Looks like Norwood was formerly a brand of CompUSA before they were liquidated. I don't see any support for Norwood on the new CompUSA site. This appears to be an OEM product, probably Chinese— it was made for CompUSA. Is there an FCC ID number on the back of th emonitor? --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 16:54, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

windows 98 unicode

My friend is using windows 98. Can he enable unicode in 98? He has installed the fonts. what else should he do? Thank you. 124.43.53.96 (talk) 07:14, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

My hazy memory of 98 tells me that the simple answer would be no. Even if he's got the fonts needed for Korean, Chinese, Pali, etc., I don't think there's any way he can input in them. So just what is it that he wants to do? (If "all sorts of things", then he'd be better off using Win NT or a successor, or of course GNU/Linux.) -- Hoary (talk) 08:00, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

You can, actually. There is a special download from microsoft that enables even a 95 to have basic unicode, though you'd have to use firefox as internet explorer in those windows will still not be unicode compatable even after the update. 212.85.21.254 (talk) 12:17, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

You have to look at this on an application-by-application basis. As far as I know (and contrary to what 212.85.21.254 wrote) Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office versions from the last decade have full international support on Windows 9x, including IMEs. Firefox should display international web pages, but I don't know whether it supports the IMEs. Most small apps won't support Unicode at all, and localized versions will probably display gibberish on screen. Also, last I checked, Windows 98 doesn't support filenames with characters outside your locale, and there's nothing any app can do to change that. -- BenRG (talk) 13:35, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Firefox bookmarks toolbar

Hey, is there any way to get more than one line on the Firefox bookmarks toolbar? So far I can only have one line with a button at the end which shows a vertical list if there are too many items to fit on one line. Regards—Cyclonenim^T@lk? 10:34, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Go here and install stylish (an excellent extension). After restarting Firefox click the "Load into Firefox button, and then press the save button. There'll then be two rows which will wrap automatically. (You actually inspired me to do it myself ;) ) - sorfane 11:14, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Haha, thanks :) —Cyclonenim^T@lk? 11:25, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, where is this "Load into Firefox" button? Nevermind, it was the "Load into Stylish" button ;) Cheers again —Cyclonenim^T@lk? 11:28, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Customized sluggishness at a website?

I have visited a North Carolina realtor's website that, among other things, offers beach property for rent. On my PC (Intel Core Duo, 1.73Ghz, 2G RAM), the site takes literally minutes to load. On my wife's PC, which shares the same wireless internet connection, response from the same site is typical of most web sites. We're both using Windows XP, and we both use the same anti-everything package (ZoneAlarm Security Suite v 7). Her PC is a year or so newer than mine, but I doubt the processor is all that much different. I don't get anything like this sluggishness on other sites. Any suggestions for reasons why? (I tried bringing the site up just before I started writing this question, and even with the side trips to check my processor speed, the damned thing hasn't loaded yet...) I can paste in the site, but (a) didn't want to seem to spam and (b) figure it's problem my problem, not theirs. OtherDave (talk) 14:23, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Without seeing the site, it is nearly impossible to do anything except make wild guesses about what the problem could be. -- kainaw™ 18:00, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

And even seeing the site, there are really too many variables involved to properly troubleshoot the issue in this kind of venue. Oh, btw, 1 year can make a huge difference. See Moore's law. The only thing I can think to suggest is to make sure your computer has all of the windows-update patches. There have been a few that have dealt with the load-times of javascript, etc. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 19:10, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I knew about the variables... it was just a shot in the dark, hoping for a likely quick suggestion. Ordinarily our two PCs perform sufficiently alike that I don't think that's the difference (though I could be wrong). This is http://www.bluewatergmac.com/ the site]. I'm not a hacker or someone who'd build a computer from scratch, but I have installed or replaced internal drives, memory (including SIPPs), and CPUs. OtherDave (talk) 19:41, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Obtaining Adobe flash as a non-admin for Mozilla Firefox

In not so long ago days, it used to be possible to click on Install missing plugins and install flash player as a non-admin on Mozilla Firefox on MS Windows XP. However, as I have lately seen, Firefox simply redirects to the Adobe website now. Is it still possible to install Adobe Flash for Firefox as a non-admin? If so, how? Our IT has already installed Adobe Flash for IE7 and I would hate to bug them repeatedly for such a trivial task (as I know it amounts to a lot when hundreds of people start calling them to install tens of plug ins for them). Kushal (talk) 14:37, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I have this problem at school It took me a log time to find a workaround but I eventually found one out.

1. Download the latest Flash xpi.
2. Change its filetype to a zip file (thats all xpi files are), by renaming it.
3. Extract flashplayer.xpt and NPSWF32.dll to %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Plugins\.

Just restart Firefox and it should now work. - sorfane 15:39, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Awesome dude. It worked flawlessly. (Just opened Youtube.com to confirm, had to reply to thank you before anything else) Thanks a lot. Kushal (talk) 16:30, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks from me, too. -- Coneslayer (talk) 19:18, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

turn off WIN XP "device not ready" open-door detection

I have other CD drives that had a dirty door-open switch but this drive has an optical switch I can't repair. Is the a setting in the registry that I can use to turn this off so the hard drive can be used again? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.162.249 (talk) 16:38, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately this is handled by the drive firmware and there's nothing the OS can do about it. Even if there were a hacked firmware that ignored the switch, you wouldn't want it because the drive has no way besides the switch to know that the door is closed, and it would try to spin up the motor and turn on the laser with the door open or a disc partially inserted. I think your only choices are hacking the hardware (replacing the optical switch with a manually operated one, probably a bad idea if it's even possible) or getting a new drive. -- BenRG (talk) 19:22, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Where can I buy a DVR in Detroit ?

I'm looking for a walk-in store that carries a DVR which can record HD TV. I'd prefer one that can record 1080p at the full frame rate, but would also like to know about lesser versions. I have trouble finding this using the Internet because many say they "support" 1080p, but this could mean they downconvert and then store at a lower resolution and/or reduced frame rate. StuRat (talk) 18:14, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

There are no HDTV broadcasts in 1080p. --LarryMac | Talk 18:22, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Right, but there are TVs that support 1080p, so I'd like a DVR with the same capability for when 1080p is broadcast in the future. I'd also settle for 1080i support or less, if that's all I can get. StuRat (talk) 18:39, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for those broadcasts. But anyway, as far as I know, the only standalone DVR on the market now is the TiVoHD, which is widely available, but that requires cable service (and CableCards, won't work with a converter box). Dish and DirecTV have DVR offerings, but of course they're tied to satellite TV. And cable companies have their POS offerings. The other option I've often heard suggested is a DVD recorder with digital tuner, and I have read that Philips offers one with a hard drive. --LarryMac | Talk 19:14, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

A tuner card would work. Do any of those support full resolution/full frame rate recordings of 1080p or even 1080i or 720p ? StuRat (talk) 19:39, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Need translation of Wikipedia link to page (error page?) in Chinese

Dear Wikipedia Reference Desk Volunteers,

On the Wikipedia footnote pages for the Wikipedia entry about Scientology, one of the links leads to a page in Chinese. The page cannot be translated using Windows "translate this page" funtion (at least I haven't had any luck!). It is possible it is an error page because of the http 404 in with the Chinese text. I am a reference librarian and it is a patron who would like to know what the page says. "Microsoft" is the only word in English on the page. We attempted to contact the Taiwan government, but have had not response. Microsoft is unable to help us. We are hoping someone at this Wikipedia Reference Desk might be able to assist us by translating this page. The link/URL is: http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/5-gp/yearbook/22Religion.htm

If this posted twice, I apologize. First time...

CHB Library (talk) 19:02, 8 August 2008 (UTC)Reference Librarian, Connecticut Library

Yes, it is a 404 error page. It says that the page cannot be found. However, archive.org has an old version of this page here. The page is predominantly in English, but there is some Chinese scattered here and there. bibliomaniac15 19:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

doc -> pdf converter

I'm looking for a reliable, freeware *.doc to *.pdf format converter, or a way to do it using office XP or similar common programs. Thoughts? --Shaggorama (talk) 19:25, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

My company has throughly tested and approved PrimoPDF for use by all our employees. Its kind of slow but there are good options. --mboverload@ 19:44, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

PDFCreator should do the trick too, and its free. Kushal (talk) 20:07, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Just a warning: .doc files are extremely complex, and no there is no software out there other than MS Word which actually interprets it perfectly. I do believe the newest version of Office converts to PDF, though of course it isn't free. I also think Open Office also does it, though I'm not sure. Magog the Ogre (talk) 22:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I thought that PDFCreator just acts like a printer emulator and so thought there should be no problems with using it. I have not noticed any significant problems myself but thanks for the warning, Magog the Ogre. The OP will keep it in consideration when determining his expectation level should [s]he decide to use PDFCreator. Oh, by the way, MS Office 2007 exported PDF files are larger than usual and can usually be made smaller with third party software. Kushal (talk) 23:04, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I tend to use CutePDF Writer, which has always worked quickly and efficiently for me. And yeah, that's correct, Kushal; Word handles the original .doc file, it's just that the PDF converter catches the output instead of an actual printer. Personally, I've never encountered a situation where the PDF file doesn't look exactly the way it does in the original Word document, either with CutePDF or PDFCreator. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 23:47, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

One of the programs of Adobe CS3 is Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional. It can create PDF's from documents, webpages, images, etc. It's not free, but it's one of those common programs.  ARTYOM  22:27, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

That's not only not freeware, it's probably one of the most expensive options you can recommend for something as simple as printing to a PDF! Acrobat Professional is totally overkill for that sort of thing. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 01:29, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

It's just that a lot of people installing common Adobe software (Photoshop, for example) only use the programs that they need, and never notice the other useful programs in the Adobe package that have been installed as well. I didn't notice that I had it myself for quite a while. Besides, Acrobat is probably the best software to use for creating PDF's, mainly because it's PDF file format creator's own product.  ARTYOM  02:06, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Acrobat creates PDFs just like all of the other PDF-makers out there. Making a PDF from a Word file is not difficult; there is no reason to use Acrobat Professional unless you are going to really use the additional features it has. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 03:53, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

OpenOffice. Not only is it freeware, it's also open: free as in beer and speech. It's a huge, awkward program, so if you like MS Office you'll feel right at home! And you don't need a malware-prone OS to run it, either. -- Hoary (talk) 05:50, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Hoary, you made me smile when you described OpenOffice. Thanks. By the way, Microsoft Office is much bigger and much more clunkier than OpenOffice even though it does not have to have Java Runtime Environment baggage to carry. I think I still stand by my original conviction that if you just want to soft print PDF, PDFCreator is the way to go. Kushal (talk) 16:28, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

August 9

Boot Problem

I've been hired to repair a Compaq 1540DM laptop manufactured around 1995. It boots, checks its memory ("32768 KB OK") and then starts beeping, like this: "beep [pause] beep beep [pause] beep beep beep." I looked in the Compaq troubleshooting manual and it doesn't mention that beep sequence.

When I first started on it, it gave an error about there being a non-system disk and asking me to remove it and to press any key. I downloaded a program to reset the BIOS and set up the system from HP. It booted into setup from those floppies, but they didn't fix the problem. I also have some Windows 3.0 floppies, but it said that they weren't system disks, either. So, I tried an MS-DOS boot floppy, but it froze at the end of the memory check. Now, it doesn't give any errors, even without disks in the drive. It just freezes and beeps after the memory check. I can't even reset the BIOS now. Does anyone know what the problem could be?

Here are the beeps. Sorry about the background noise:File:Beeps.ogg

--Rljkngt5ontj 4uih5kb(;) 56 (talk) 09:41, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

IIRC Compaq use a series of "beep codes" to indicate various BIOS fault conditions. If it's not in the manual, a google search might help, but it depends on what BIOS you have. Astronaut (talk) 12:36, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Manual. Has some bleep codes, but not this one. --h2g2bob (talk) 15:53, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

DVD+RW question

I bought a pack of 10 DVD+RW disks to use to backup the photographs I had taken over almost two years. The discs claim to hold 4.7 GB each. My own system (Fedora 9 Linux) however could only write about 4.3 GB to each disk. I did this, but when I later read the discs back, only the first 3.8 GB or so of each disc can actually be read. The rest merely reports I/O errors. Why is this happening?

Also, what happens if I re-record the pictures over the discs? Is the old data simply wiped out or is it still somehow available there? If I re-record the disc with less data than previously, does the extraneous old data stay there, or get erased, reverting that part of the disc's physical surface to "shiny"? JIP | Talk 11:34, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

The disks hold roughly 4.7 gigabytes (billion bytes), which is roughly 4.38 gibibytes. The abbreviation "GB" is commonly used for both. If you're getting I/O errors, it's likely the disks are defective. There's huge variation in the quality of recordable DVDs, and the higher quality disks aren't widely sold (because they're more expensive, and most people care more about price). It's also possible your drive is broken, or doesn't like that brand of disk. I'm having trouble understanding the questions in the second paragraph—do you want the data to be erased or to remain available? In principle one could erase and rewrite only the inner part of a disk, but in practice no one does it and there's no software to support it. -- BenRG (talk) 12:04, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I want the data to be erased. I want it to be exactly as if the previous data wasn't ever written there in the first place, only the current data. JIP | Talk 12:05, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

That's what will happen, or what should happen—if the disks really are defective I suppose the erasure process could fail part way through. In practice it doesn't matter since when you rewrite the disk you'll write a new file list which won't reference the outer edge of the disk anyway, regardless of whether there's anything left over there. I would worry somewhat about the unreadable region creeping inward in the long term, but as long as the disks are only for backup and you test them every couple of months it should be fine. -- BenRG (talk) 12:33, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

USB Printer cable

Hello, I recently got a Lexmark Inkjet printer (also a scanner and photocopier). However, in all my glory, I do not have the USB cable for it. I looked at its connector and it looked like a standard port. I looked up RadioShack's website and it was USD thirty something. Newegg had one for USD 11.98 including shipping. Am I missing something here? Is there a lot of difference in these cables? Where could I find a good deal on USB cables? Please let me know. Kushal (talk) 13:34, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

$1.95 from Amazon.com. I think thats the cable your looking for - a USB A - B - sorfane 13:56, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Radioshack, Officemax, etc., sell them at extremely high prices for no reason other than the fact that non-techies don't know where to buy them cheaper (and techies usually have a dozen extra ones at home anyway)—it's pure profit for them. So buy them online. The quality will be identical. The only variable aspect (other than the specifics of the cable connectors, of which there is a tiny variety), is the length. Make sure you don't buy a 20ft long one if what you really need is 3ft, or vice versa. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 14:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that looks just like what I want. The price is not expensive at USD 4.95 (USD 2.00 + USD 2.95 shipping). Thanks to both of you. I will need to think how long a cable I will need. hmm ... Kushal (talk) 14:34, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Not sure where you are, but in the U.S. you can get them at any big box store (Wal-Mart, etc) and many discount stores (Big Lots, etc). --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:31, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I am in continental USA. Thanks for the tip, Gadget850. I will look for it at our local Wal-Mart. If Walmart can match Amazon's price of USD 4.95, I'm sold. Kushal (talk) 16:23, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I need to see this web page.

Hi dear,
There have been great answers to some questions down here so I have faith someone might be able to help.
I forgot a website I used to know for looking up mobile, land-line telecommunication information - with just three letters or so - all kind of mobile phone network.
For instance, if a phone number is typed in website's search box, the result generated brings up the the telecommunication's name, if the number checked is real or not and other helpful infos.
Expecting to read from my Internet hero. King^Sol —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.62.208.2 (talk) 14:20, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

411.com seems to fit the bill for US numbers — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 17:37, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

pentium 4 and core 2 duo

are they equivalent? or is one better/weaker than the other?--Loopy76 (talk) 16:51, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Nope, the Pentium 4 is a single core processor, while the Core 2 Duo is a multi core; so the Core 2 Duo is the more powerful processor. - sorfane 16:53, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Old Games on modern computer today? how will it work?

How are Computer-games like "Pharaoh", "Zeus - Master of Olympus" and "Emperor - Rise of the middle kingdom" likely to fare on my computer??? they are a bit old games, released in around 2000.

My computer has :

- WINDOWS VISTA basic - Intel core 2 duo - Ati radeon graphics (I take it that's the graphic card even though I'm not too knowledgeable about these things...)

It ought to be said that a similar game like "Caesar III" (an old favourite of mine released in 1998 meant for only windows 95 and windows 98) didn't work on my previous computer with Windows-XP.

I want to order one or two of these games mentioned and play on my vista computer, but I'm unsure if it's wise buying.. maybe I risk buying games I can't run on my more modern computer.

So anyone who is more knowledgable about system requirements and such for games, I would appreciate hearing some thought and opinions.

Thank you :)