Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

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September 28

computer organization

please answer the question with explanation

1>A DECIMAL NUMBER HAS 25 DIGITS.THE NUMBER OF BITS NEEDED FOR ITS EQUIVALENT BINARY REPRESENTATION ?

Here's a way you can approximate it:

$2^{10}=1,024$ so that means 10 bits gives you 3 digits (the first digit doesn't count, because it can only be a 0 or 1).

$2^{20}=1,048,576$ so that means 20 bits gives you 6 digits (the first digit doesn't count, because it can only be a 0 or 1).

$2^{30}=1,073,741,824$ so that means 30 bits gives you 9 digits (the first digit doesn't count, because it can only be a 0 or 1).

Continue like this until you get the answer (you may want to add a few more bits to specify the location of the decimal point). StuRat 19:17, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

The precise answer for an unsigned 25-digit decimal integer N is : log₂(N). However, what you probably meant is "what is the integer number of bits needed to represent the largest 25-bit decimal integer?" for this, the answer is rounded_up(log₂(10²⁵)), which is rounded_up(25*log₂(10)) Arch dude 01:00, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

2>THE NUMBER OF INSTRUCTIONS NEEDED TO ADD n NUMBERS AND STORE THE RESULT IN MEMORY USING ONLY ONE ADDRESS INSTRUCTIONS

3>Let A be set having 'n' elements.the number of binary operation that can be defined on A ?

4>A certain machine uses expandind opcode.it has 16 bit instructions and 6bit addresses.it supports one address and two address instructions only.if there are'n' two address instructions,the maximum number of one address instruction is---?

5>A COMPUTER USES A FLOATING-POINT REPRESENTATION COMPRISING A SINGNED MAGNITUDE FRACTIONAL MANTISSA AND AN EXCESS-16 base-8 exponent.what decimal number is represented bya a floating-point number whose exponent is 10011,mantissa 101000,and sign bit set?

6>suppose the largest n-bit binary number requires 'd'digits in decimal representation.then what is the relations between 'n' and 'd'?

You should probably read the instructions at the top of this page. Specifically, the one that says:

Do your own homework. If you need help with a specific part or concept of your homework, feel free to ask, but please do not post entire homework questions and expect us to give you the answers.

--Maelwys 14:18, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

first of all this is not my home work,if you can solve this problem then it will be great help,because i am very weak in co,so please

The 'do you own homework' mantra applies even if it happens to be someone else's! The problem is that this is simple CS and is quite clearly intended for the assignee to learn, not for them to pawn off on others. --Jmeden2000 15:25, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I thought the "do your own homework" was code for other Wikipedia users to answer homework questions with complete nonsense. --Kainaw ^(talk) 01:54, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Why do you say the first bit doesn't matter? How do you think the computer keeps track of sign? --froth^{T C} 23:31, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

keyboard - windows xp

I use windows xp. When I leave the computer idle for 5 minutes, the keyboard stops functioning. The num lock light in the keyboard glows, but if I press any key, it does not function. I surely think something is fault with windows settings. But I dont know what settings I should try and change. Should I go for setup and try, or should I try doing in control panel? where exactly should I try changing settings?

Thank you

I would guess the power management is set to go to sleep, hibernate, etc., after 5 mins, or that the display is set to go to screen saver, and that interferes with the keyboard. StuRat 18:54, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

If this is the reason, you can fiddle with these settings in Control Panel -> Display. Try turning the screensaver, hibernation, sleep all off, and see if that makes a difference. Good luck! — QuantumEleven 17:08, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

You might also need to turn off power management at BIOS level. Please check the manual that came with your Motherboard.

How to open Solaris screenshot rs files?

Hi:

How do I open the ".rs" files that contain screenshot images taken with Solaris's "snapshot" program? (Snapshot's interface seems to have that OpenWindows/OpenLook feel to it, so I surmise it's an ancient program).

Thanks,

129.97.252.227 17:39, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know, but if you are using windows, you might try Irfanview, it's one of the more popular image viewers that supports a wide variety of files. Alternatively, try The Gimp or ImageMagick

My guess is that .rs is "Sun-raster" netpbm probably includes a converter. --GangofOne 07:06, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

C++ sending input to another program

I'm trying to do 3 things:

1) Run an executable from my program. 2) Wait for it to ask for input and feed it input. 3) Check its output (at this point the executable terminates on its own)

How can I do this with C++? Is there any way to stream it input without actually giving the exe window focus and simulating keypresses or something? Also I'm totally at a loss as to how to check its output. Also will any problems arise with it terminating on its own?

The exe is written in assembly if it makes any difference to the I/O.

Thanks --froth^{T C} 21:20, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

The POSIX way to do this involves the system calls pipe(), dup2(), fork(), and exec*() (see fork-exec). Basically you set up a pipe to communicate with yourself, then copy yourself (fork()), then arrange for that pipe to be treated as standard input and output in one copy (dup2() and close()) and become the other program you want to execute (exec*()). Then the parent process can just sit and act like the other program's keyboard and screen with its copy of the pipe.

Two caveats: not all of these may be available on Windows (as I presume you are, since you mention an EXE), although it may depend on your compilation setup; also, some (but not all) old DOS programs (which an assembly program might very well be) sometimes behave very badly when their standard input is not connected to a terminal (the keyboard): typically they never terminate. (You can sometimes fix this by making sure the program is told explicitly by its input to terminate, as by including "quit\n" in the text you send it.)

The other progam terminating is no problem, except that if your program is going to do anything else (or you're calling many child programs), it should call wait() (or a variant) after the spawned processes die to clean them up. (It's okay to call wait() before they actually die, so long as you're sure they will do so; your program will, well, wait for them to exit.)

Does that help? (If you can use those functions but can't figure out how to do so, just ask.) --Tardis 22:36, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Addendum -- unless you want to use the direct functions read() and write() with the pipes, you'll want to make streams for them. In C, you can always use fdopen(), but there's no standard way to do it in C++ (aside of course from using the C library!). There are, however, common extensions to iostream that let you open a file descriptor as a C++ stream object. --Tardis 22:38, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

To do this in Windows, call the Windows API function CreateProcess(), declared in windows.h, with the STARTF_USESTDHANDLES flag set in the dwFlags member of the STARTUPINFO struct. The hStdInput and hStdOutput members should then be set to the reading and writing ends of two anonymous pipes, created with CreatePipe() (note you'll probably also want to set the wShowWindow member to SW_HIDE to hide the child process' window as per your requirement, as well as setting the STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW flag). As per the documentation, for this to work the bInheritHandles parameter must be TRUE. ReadFile() and WriteFile() can be used to communicate over the pipe. More information is available from MSDN, however you may have trouble following it unless you are somewhat familiar with Windows systems programming.

Password on USB Drive

I have a 256MB SanDisk Freedom.

I would like to put a password on it, just so that when I plug it into either Windows or Mac OSX, I need to enter a password to access it.

My optimum budget for this would be $0

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Omnipotence407 22:27, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Truecrypt is the first thing I can think of, but it supports only Linux and Windows, not OSX. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk)

Something works on Linux and not OSX? Weird. --Kainaw ^(talk) 01:51, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

If it's a U3-compatible device, just put it in, open the U3 menu, and select "set password" --froth^{T C} 23:28, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

September 29

Battery woes with technology

I've just gotten a new 30GB movie iPod, and I'm so excited! But I've received a lot of different comments about how often I should charge it. One person told me that I should let the battery drain all of the way to dead before charging it, and the other said that the iPod should be charged a lot so it always has some charge. What's the better idea? I've heard a lot more about the drain-it-all idea, but the person who constantly charged her iPod said she still has the same iPod from two and a half years ago and it works great. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 00:28, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

What type of batteries does it have ? StuRat 01:09, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Apple have a page about battery care in iPods, and a page about lithium-ion batteries in general. Also, see our article on Lithium ion battery. --Canley 03:59, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah, so I shouldn't drain it, according to the article. OK, thank you Canley. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 19:31, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

BitTorrent

I have been considering joining a BitTorrent project lately, but a question has come up that the project in question's FAQ that seems to be neatly avoided. Is BitTorrent file sharing legal, or not? I am under the impression now that it is legal as long as you do not sell the product, but I don't know. It would be nice to know the legality of BitTorrent before I engage in any activity with it. Thank you! PullToOpen ^talk 00:57, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

There is nothing illegal about BitTorrent. The legal question comes into copying software that you do not hold the legal copyright to copy. Yes, sharing files online is legally copying thing (I am amazed that people who are smart enough to use a computer claim "You can't copy files - they are just electronic ones and zeros"). If you do not have the right to copy something, it is illegal to copy it or to help someone else copy it. By sharing files on BitTorrent, you are either copying or helping someone else copy the files. It may not be what you want to hear, but the law couldn't be simpler. I'll never understand why it is so hard for people to understand that if you don't have the copyright you don't have the right to copy. --Kainaw ^(talk) 01:50, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

What he said. You fast one you. — X [Mac Davis] (SUPERDESK|Help me improve)01:51, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

That's incorrect. I don't have the copyright for Ubuntu, but I have the right to copy it. --cesarb 15:41, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

You do in fact have a license to distribute ubuntu, read the GPL. Anyway what you said makes no sense- "I dont have the copyright... but I have the right to copy." What? --froth^{T C} 19:03, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

He didn't copyright it, but he still has the right to copy. --Kjoonlee 03:29, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

It is apparent that some people don't take the time to read copyright before assuming they have a clue what it means to have a copyright - which is the shortened for of "to have a copying right". For example, I can write a book (which gives me the copyright) and then give a distributor copyright to copy and sell it. I'm not giving away my copyright (unless it is in the contract that I have to give up my copyright in a noncompete sort of thing). That is how Ubuntu (and GPL) works. The author has the copyright but gives it away to anyone who wants it with the GPL. --Kainaw ^(talk) 22:43, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

What sort of project do you mean? If you plan to help develop a Bittorrent client, such as uTorrent, that's perfectly legal. If you plan to help organise and maintain a Bittorrent tracker, such as Suprnova or Mininova, you may end up facing prosecution or at least the threat of prosecution.

Windows clock one our late

My system clock in Windows 2000 is one our late . I set it properly but the next day the same story. I do not have the "Automatically adjust clock for daylight saving changes" option enabled

What could be the problem?

Thank you

Try enabling it! Mabye your clock is automatically synchronizing itself every day or so, and since daylight saving is off, it shows winter time. That's my guess, anyway. —Bromskloss 11:56, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps uncheck the checkbox in the Internet Time tab (although that MAY be an XP only feature. Chris M. 14:39, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Disabling it can be bad; some things do not work correctly if your computer's time is incorrect (the one I heard of most recently is cookie expiry in web browsers). --cesarb 20:40, 30 September 2006 (UT

try making sure you have the right time zone.

Windows Update Issue?

A computer here worked fine on Monday. It sat idle all week (but did have Windows Auto-Update running). Now, it will not accept any USB thumbdrives. Was there a MS patch this week that restricts USB access? --Kainaw ^(talk) 14:02, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Updating this question, just found out it is Win2000 and a Sandisk Cruzer Micro 1GB. --Kainaw ^(talk) 14:33, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Accessing My Data In Another Country

If I have a bulky computer that I don't want to transport for study in another country, is there a set up that I could acheive to allow me to access data on my harddrives (if have five to total 800 GB so transport of data/drives not really practical) from a laptop in another country? --Username132 (talk) 15:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you really need all of it ? I think you should prune it down to just as much as will fit on your laptop. StuRat 18:11, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Try FreeNX --froth^{T C} 19:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

That gives "near local speed application responsiveness over high latency, low bandwidth links", which, I think, means that it reacts fast. But what you want is the other kind of speed, not reaction time but bytes per second, in other wirds high bandwidth. That is, if you don't just want to acces bits of the data from a distance, but transport it all. 800GB over the Internet would take waaaay too long. If cost is not a major issue, why not buy one really big hard drive, transfer it all to that locally and take that with you. 800GB is just possible now, or else buy two 400GB ones, which would also bring the price down from roughly 400 to 250 euro. dvd's would bring the price down further to about 150 euro (maybe even less if you buy bulk), but I know from experience that that would be way to cumbersome, especially chopping up the data in 5GB chunks. And of course it takes a whole lot of time and I don't know what price tag you put on your time. Whatever option you use, you can always try data compression (eg to make it fit on a smaller disk). I have no experience with that, but I assume that would also consuyme your precious time and you may have to unpack it again when you reach your destination. DirkvdM 08:30, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

If you want speedy transfer of nearly a TB of data, nothing will compare to the convenience of an external hard drive --froth^{T C} 16:59, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Sending emails tips

While sending emails to many people at once I use one of the receipients' address in the "To" field and other addresses on "BCC" field.Is there any way to send mails to different people so that the receipient may think that that mail is specially sent to him and not to others.Here i mean to say that in some cases in place of eg "Dear John" can i insert the receipients' name as a field eg "Dear {Receipient}.May be i could not put the matter exactly.Thanks

You put it plainly enough. You want to spam. There are many spam programs available on the Internet that allow you to do exactly what you are asking. --Kainaw ^(talk) 18:43, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

No spam programs needed, you can do this with Microsoft Office. Give it a list of emails and corresponding first names, and your form letter, and it can send out "personalized" copies of the form letter to every email address in the list. --Maelwys 20:10, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

That's jumping to conclusions. There's plenty of legitimate reasons why one would want to send emails to many people at once. Sum0 10:09, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but what's of questionable legitimacy is making them all look personal. NeonMerlin 16:25, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there are plenty of reasons. Just today, I got tons of offers for mortgages, viagra, baldness cures, fat reducers, a woman in my city who can't wait to meet me... I'm sure they are all legitimate. --Kainaw ^(talk) 22:39, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

There's those... or there's the actual legitimate reasons. I've used the Office Mail Merge function (that I referred to above) several times, when I had to send out personalized activity reports to 350 people, where each report had to reflect the activity of that specific individual. Mail Merge let me automatically pull the information (email address, individual's name, and associated records) from an excel database, create an individual email to that person, and send it, all at the press of a single button. It would've been days of work to do manually, and it certainly wasn't spam (though I had to send it out in batches of 50 an hour, so my ISP wouldn't think it was spam either ;-) ) --Maelwys 23:26, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

By the way, as you can gather by the comments here, if you are sending out bulk email you need to be very careful with your list management policies to avoid being misidentified as spam. This can result in your server being placed on spam blacklists, and thus many legitimate recipients will not be able to get your emails.

So make sure your email list is confirmed opt-in, as described by E-mail spam on Wikipedia. --Robert Merkel 01:40, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

My intention of asking was not sending spams.I really needed that help while sending greeting cards on the occasion of, say New Year, so that the receipient did not know that I have sent similar greetings to other people also.I wanted to make the receipient feel that it is special greeting sent only to him and not simple mass mail.It is not nice to blame others without knowing the fact. Mr. Kainaw.amrahs 17:35, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Nintendo "64"

What does "64-bit" mean in the context of describing a video card? Surely the N64 didn't have more than 4GB of dedicated video memory.. why else use 64 bit wide registers if not to hold memory addresses 64 bits long? --froth^{T C} 19:28, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

It's not only about having 64 bits to hold memory registers, remember a CPU/GPU is more than just a fancy switchboard (at times). More important to the N64 was the size of it's video processor, which was also 64 bits, and the MOST important was the width of the video bus which was 128 bits. An increased register size can make SIMD possible (for the cpu and gpu) at a low level, along with other math-intensive functions which are important to good graphic systems. They even touch on why strictly using a 64 bit cpu is bad for consoles, in Nintendo 64#Trivia.--Jmeden2000 20:19, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

You might be confusing the data bus with the address bus. IIRC, the data bus is how much data can move in/out of the processor in a cycle, while the address bus limits the amount of memory in the system. --Bennybp 21:34, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh I see.. one thing though, this sounds entirely wrong to me: "64-bit data uses twice as much RAM, cache, and bandwidth thereby reducing performance" ... if 64-bit refers to the register size (which would affect the address length), it only increases address sizes by 32 bits, not "twice as much data". If it refers to the width of the data bus, then it still makes no sense! --froth^{T C} 22:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Umm... why would any video card need to be 64-bit? Screen resolution is nowhere near that fine, and no video card is going to have more than the 4GB limit on 32-bit addresses. What would be the point? - Rainwarrior 17:24, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

That's true of address sizes, but apparently it refers to the width of the data bus (64 bits of data can be outputted every cycle) --froth^{T C} 16:57, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

The article on 64-bit shows that the term is pretty ambiguous. It looks like the term can either refer to the width of the various buses, or the size of some data types. IE a 64-bit data type can hold bigger values (2^64 possible values). I'm not positive what the 64 in N64 really meant, but from the N64 article (trivia section) it does look like it refers to the data type sizes, and that the buses are 32-bit. --74.69.54.30 20:15, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

In the beginning those bit numbers actually meant something. NES used an 8 bit processor, SNES used a 16-bit processor, PlayStation used a 32-bit processor. However, starting with Nintendo 64 (which actually had a 32 bit processor, if you look at the article), those numbers were simply used as a marker for generations and not any specific hardware issue (occasionally, the PS2 is referred to as a "128-bit" machine, but as you can understand, that makes no sense). This is also why it has fallen out of use, no one refers to the PS3 as a "256-bit" console or a "512-bit" console. Sadly, the days of measuring bad-assesness in terms of word size of the processor are over. Let's have a moment of silence........ Oskar 15:25, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

*nix root and overflow attacks

I've recently become interested in computer security.. one of the kinds of attacks I've read about is the buffer overflow attack. The attacker writes more than the allocated space for a variable so the input spills over possibly into code that's about to be executed. This allows the attacker to overwrite that code with code of his own, and this is called being able to execute arbitrary code on the target machine. Now what I'm confused about is that "running arbitrary code" is automatically associated with gaining root permissions. What about users on a *nix system that can execute any code that they want without any kind of fancy attack at all? In other words it seems like there should be a very difficult step between "running arbitrary code" and "gaining root permissions" but you never hear about that.

One idea that just occured to me is that maybe if the program you're attacking is running as root then your code will have root priviliges as well, but users can't execute any code as root. Is this correct or is was my original question valid? --froth^{T C} 19:56, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Ding ding ding! Convincing the system to run arbitrary code as root is a very fast way to complete control, whereas normal user level security protects against this attack. System binaries that will be executed as root are protected from editing by users, and any programs a user creates to run on the system will only have that user's level of permission. For an anonymous attacker to be able to introduce a binary (or part of a binary) for execution as root is a huge problem indeed. See Buffer overflow and Arbitrary code for more info. --Jmeden2000 20:39, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

The reason running arbitrary code is automatically associated with gaining root-level permissions is because of privilege escalation attacks. Because of the wider attack surface, there are usually more priviledge escalation attacks than remote arbitrary code execution attacks, and also the remote attacks tend to get more attention, for obvious reasons. --cesarb 19:56, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Tables by column?

Has there been any move to make HTML or MediaWiki tables where the cells are grouped by column, or not at all, rather than by row? This could (a) make it easier to shift cells down, when editing a table manually; and (b) tell screen readers to read the table sideways. It seems to me this could be done in two ways in HTML, if the standard were changed appropriately:

<table>
 <tcol> <!-- The current tcol is for formatting only, and doesn't allow any children -->
  <th> Column 1 Row 1 </th>
  <td> Column 1 Row 2 </td>
  <td> Column 1 Row 3 </td>
 </tcol>
 <tcol>
  <th> Column 2 Row 1 </th>
  <td> Column 2 Row 2 </td>
  <td> Column 2 Row 3 </td>
 </tcol>
</table>

<table rows=3 cols=2>
 <th row=1 col=1> Column 1 Row 1 </th>
 <td row=2 col=1> Column 1 Row 2 </td>
 <td row=3 col=1> Column 1 Row 3 </td>
 <th row=1 col=2> Column 2 Row 1 </th>
 <td row=2 col=2> Column 2 Row 2 </td>
 <td row=3 col=2> Column 2 Row 3 </td>
</table>

NeonMerlin 22:30, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I do not have inside information about the deliberations of standards groups, but my impression is that there would be a great deal of resistance among implementors. With such a table structure it would be necessary to read the complete table before setting the first row of it. The current table design tries to make that avoidable. To quote from the HTML 4.01 standard:

---

The HTML table model has been designed so that, with author assistance, user agents may render tables incrementally (i.e., as table rows arrive) rather than having to wait for all the data before beginning to render.

In order for a user agent to format a table in one pass, authors must tell the user agent:

• The number of columns in the table. Please consult the section on calculating the number of columns in a table for details on how to supply this information.
• The widths of these columns. Please consult the section on calculating the width of columns for details on how to supply this information.

More precisely, a user agent may render a table in a single pass when the column widths are specified using a combination of COLGROUP and COL elements. If any of the columns are specified in relative or percentage terms (see the section on calculating the width of columns), authors must also specify the width of the table itself.

---

Still, it is not out of the question. Even the current model can be forced to read the complete table to calculate column widths. (The difference is, the proposed model must always read the complete table.) Meanwhile, use a WYSIWYG editor to make the desired manipulation convenient. --KSmrq^T 05:19, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, tables could still be rendered piecemeal in the column-by-column model, only they'd proceed sideways.

Also, what WYSIWYG editor would you recommend? I've tried WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, OpenOffice.org Writer and FrontPage, and they all produce garbled, inelegant output that requires further manual editing. (Often, they will also throw away some of the existing formatting.) For instance, if I open the following file with OOo Writer,

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

<head>
<title>DMCI Game Development Club</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="default.css">
</head>

<body>
<table cellspacing="0px" cellpadding="0px" align="center" class="header">
<tr>
<td colspan=5><h1>DMCI Game Development Club</h1></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="tab"><img src="interface_images/tab.gif" class="tab" /><div class="tab">Active Tab</div></td>
<td class="tab"><img src="interface_images/inactivetab.gif" class="tab" /><div class="tab">Other Tab 1</div></td>
<td class="tab"><img src="interface_images/inactivetab.gif" class="tab" /><div class="tab">Other Tab 2</div></td>
<td class="tab"><img src="interface_images/inactivetab.gif" class="tab" /><div class="tab">Other Tab 3</div></td>
<td class="tab"><img src="interface_images/inactivetab.gif" class="tab" /><div class="tab">Other Tab 4</div></td>
</tr>
</table><table cellspacing="0px" cellpadding="0px" align="center" class="main"><tr>

<td class="hborder"><img src="interface_images/borderleft.gif" class="hborder"></td>
<td class="textpanel">

<h2>Welcome!</h2>
<p>This is your main panel. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.</p>
<p>Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.</p>

</td>
<td class="hborder"><img src="interface_images/borderright.gif" class="hborder"></td></tr>

<tr><td class="cborder"><img src="interface_images/borderbottomleft.gif" class="cborder"></td>
<td class="vborder"><img src="interface_images/borderbottom.gif" class="vborder"></td>
<td class="cborder"><img src="interface_images/borderbottomright.gif" class="cborder"></td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

and save it, without typing or clicking in any changes, it turns into the following:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
 <META HTTP-EQUIV="CONTENT-TYPE" CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
 <TITLE>DMCI Game Development Club</TITLE>
 <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="OpenOffice.org 2.0  (Win32)">
 <META NAME="CREATED" CONTENT="20060930;12015804">
 <META NAME="CHANGED" CONTENT="16010101;0">
 <STYLE>
 <!--
 TD P { margin-bottom: 0cm }
 H1 { text-align: center }
 -->
 </STYLE>

</HEAD>
<BODY LANG="en-GB" BACKGROUND="interface_images/background.gif" DIR="LTR">
<CENTER>
 <TABLE CELLPADDING=0 CELLSPACING=0 STYLE="page-break-before: always">
 <TR>
 <TD COLSPAN=5>
 <H1>DMCI Game Development Club</H1>
 </TD>
 </TR>
 <TR>

 <TD>
 <P><IMG SRC="interface_images/tab.gif" NAME="graphics1" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=120 HEIGHT=30 BORDER=0></P>
 <P>Active Tab</P>
 </TD>
 <TD>
 <P><IMG SRC="interface_images/inactivetab.gif" NAME="graphics2" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=120 HEIGHT=30 BORDER=0></P>
 <P>Other Tab 1</P>
 </TD>

 <TD>
 <P><IMG SRC="interface_images/inactivetab.gif" NAME="graphics3" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=120 HEIGHT=30 BORDER=0></P>
 <P>Other Tab 2</P>
 </TD>
 <TD>
 <P><IMG SRC="interface_images/inactivetab.gif" NAME="graphics4" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=120 HEIGHT=30 BORDER=0></P>
 <P>Other Tab 3</P>
 </TD>

 <TD>
 <P><IMG SRC="interface_images/inactivetab.gif" NAME="graphics5" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=120 HEIGHT=30 BORDER=0></P>
 <P>Other Tab 4</P>
 </TD>
 </TR>
 </TABLE>
</CENTER>
<CENTER>
 <TABLE CELLPADDING=0 CELLSPACING=0>

 <TR>
 <TD BGCOLOR="#eeddcc">
 <P><IMG SRC="interface_images/borderleft.gif" NAME="graphics6" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=1 BORDER=0></P>
 </TD>
 <TD BGCOLOR="#eeddcc">
 <H2>Welcome!</H2>
 <P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.5cm">This is your main panel. Lorem
 ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do
 eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut
 enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris
 nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.</P>
 <P>Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse
 cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat
 cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit
 anim id est laborum.</P>

 </TD>
 <TD BGCOLOR="#eeddcc">
 <P><IMG SRC="interface_images/borderright.gif" NAME="graphics7" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=1 BORDER=0></P>
 </TD>
 </TR>
 <TR>
 <TD BGCOLOR="#eeddcc">
 <P><IMG SRC="interface_images/borderbottomleft.gif" NAME="graphics8" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15 BORDER=0></P>
 </TD>

 <TD BGCOLOR="#eeddcc">
 <P><IMG SRC="interface_images/borderbottom.gif" NAME="graphics9" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=1 HEIGHT=15 BORDER=0></P>
 </TD>
 <TD BGCOLOR="#eeddcc">
 <P><IMG SRC="interface_images/borderbottomright.gif" NAME="graphics10" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15 BORDER=0></P>
 </TD>
 </TR>
 </TABLE>
</CENTER>

<P><BR><BR>
</P>
</BODY>
</HTML>

These render very differently, in both IE and Firefox. The former is CSS-compliant; the latter isn't, and causes quirks mode. (I can provide the external CSS I was using, too, if it makes a difference.) NeonMerlin 15:57, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Did you try Nvu or Quanta? --cesarb 19:45, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

The questioner appears to assume that you have to enter tables as:

<table>
 <tr>
  <td>top left</td>
  <td>top right</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>bottom left</td>
  <td>bottom right</td>
 </tr>
</table>

That is not the case. You do not need all the newlines. You are perfectly allowed to use:

<table>
<tr> <td>top left</td>    <td>top right</td>    </tr>
<tr> <td>bottom left</td> <td>bottom right</td> </tr>
</table>

Now, it looks nearly the same as it does on the page. --Kainaw ^(talk) 22:52, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Basic, low-level audio on Windows

I'm interested in coding a program (in C\C++ or Python) for some low-level audio control in Windows. What I mean is, I want to deal with the actual samples from the stereo output. I don't want to import sound files or anything like that, I just want to output audio based on direct manipulation of samples, which is what this program should do. Example, I want to be able to play a 440 Hz sine wave sound by just writing samples following the sine function over time (using the sample rate and the frequency to get the said 440 Hz)

Any suggestions on where to start? I'm not very experienced in either C\C++ or Python, but I just need a few complex and interesting projects to push my skills further. Thanks! - L.

All you need to do is to configure the audio device and push sample buffers at it - to synthesise waveforms, you quite literally just make up a sine wave (using, generally, the sin() function) that repeats at the rate you want (and hence the frequency of the sound) and with the amplitude multiplied up so that the sound is audible. On windows in C you'd probably use DirectSound, in Python you'd probably use Pygame. I'm afraid I don't have an example program in either, but below is a simple sin synthesiser which uses the unix /dev/dsp sound interface (which, incidentally, works fine in cygwin). Apart from the audio-device stuff there's just some very basic stuff that builds a waveform from the sine function before playing it. The code is a little more complicated than you absolutely basically need, as it has a simple envelope which fades the volume in and out for each note (without this you hear a nasty click at the beginning and end).

/* 
  playwave.c 

  Copyright (c) 2005 W. Finlay McWalter
  Licence: your choice of GPL, GFDL, or CCbySA

  Plays a given tone for a brief period of time, using the system's /dev/dsp
  interface.  Tested using cygwin (should work on linux too).

  Version history:
  v1.   Basic version
  v2.   Adds simple envelope (attack and release) to avoid nasty clicks
        between notes
  v3.   Change to 16 bit signed (LE) output (wow, so much better), and
        make envelope code more programmable.


  Notes:
  - Current build produces signed 16 bit 44100 Hz mono little endian raw PCM
  - Samples are appended to a file called "./outfile".  This allows importing
    the data into audacity and listening to it without the gaps imposed
    by multiple invocations of the program.

  Help on tone arithmetic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_of_music

  Programming notes:
    http://www.oreilly.de/catalog/multilinux/excerpt/ch14-05.htm
    http://davmac.org/davpage/linux/linux-sound.html
    http://www.4front-tech.com/pguide/audio.html

  Sample invocation (close encounters):
    rm outfile ; touch outfile ; ./playwave 440 10000 ; ./playwave 495 10000 ; 
    ./playwave 392 10000 ; ./playwave 196 10000 ; ./playwave 294 10000
  
*/

#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/ioctl.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/soundcard.h>
#include <math.h>

#define CHANNELS 1 
#define RATE     44100     /* samples/sec */
#define LENGTH   0.8f      /* seconds */
#define SIZE     2        /* bytes per sample */
#define NUM_SAMPLES_PER_BUFFER ((int)(LENGTH*RATE*SIZE*CHANNELS)/2)

// ENVELOPE FRACTION defines the proportion of the sample buffer that
// is shaped by the envelope function.  So to shape the beginning and
// ending 10th, set envelope fraction to 10.  ENVELOPE_FRACTION must
// be an integer.
#define ENVELOPE_FRACTION 3

int main (int argc, char** argv){
  int             audioDevice; 
  int             outfile;
  int             status;
  unsigned int    arg;
  int             counter;
  int             x;
  float           angle;
  int             num_samples_in_waveform;
  float           volume = 6.0f;
  signed short    buf[NUM_SAMPLES_PER_BUFFER];
  int             freq = 440;
  float           value;
  float           vol_multiplier;

  if (argc != 3){
    fprintf(stderr, "usage: playwave <frequency> <volume>");
    exit(1);
  }
  freq = atof(argv[1]);
  volume = atof(argv[2]);

  /* compute waveform */
  num_samples_in_waveform = RATE/freq;

  for (x=0; x< NUM_SAMPLES_PER_BUFFER; x++){
    angle = (2.0f * 3.14159f * (float)x) / (float)num_samples_in_waveform;
    value = sin(angle);

    vol_multiplier = 1.0f;

    // envelope: lead in
    if(x < (NUM_SAMPLES_PER_BUFFER/ENVELOPE_FRACTION)){
      vol_multiplier =  (ENVELOPE_FRACTION * (float)x) / ((float)NUM_SAMPLES_PER_BUFFER) ;
    }

    // envelope: lead out 
    if(x > ((ENVELOPE_FRACTION-1)*NUM_SAMPLES_PER_BUFFER)/ENVELOPE_FRACTION){
      vol_multiplier =  (ENVELOPE_FRACTION * (NUM_SAMPLES_PER_BUFFER-x)) / ((float)NUM_SAMPLES_PER_BUFFER) ;
    }

    buf[x] = (signed short)(volume * value * vol_multiplier);
  }

  outfile = open("outfile", O_RDWR|O_APPEND|O_CREAT);
  if (outfile < 0) {
    perror("open of opening outfile failed");
    exit(1);
  }
  status = write(outfile, buf, sizeof(buf));
  if (status != sizeof(buf))
    perror("wrote wrong number of bytes");

  close(outfile);


  // Now write that out to the audio device

  /* open sound device */
  audioDevice = open("/dev/dsp", O_RDWR);
  if (audioDevice < 0) {
    perror("open of /dev/dsp failed");
    exit(1);
  }

  /* set format */
  arg = AFMT_S16_LE;
  status = ioctl(audioDevice, SNDCTL_DSP_SETFMT, &arg);
  if (status == -1) {
    perror("SNDCTL_DSP_SETFMT");
    exit(1);
  }

  arg = CHANNELS;  /* mono or stereo */
  status = ioctl(audioDevice, SOUND_PCM_WRITE_CHANNELS, &arg);
  if (status == -1)
    perror("SOUND_PCM_WRITE_CHANNELS ioctl failed");
  if (arg != CHANNELS)
    perror("unable to set number of channels");

  arg = RATE;    /* sampling rate */
  status = ioctl(audioDevice, SOUND_PCM_WRITE_RATE, &arg);
  if (status == -1)
    perror("SOUND_PCM_WRITE_WRITE ioctl failed");

  status = write(audioDevice, buf, sizeof(buf));
  if (status != sizeof(buf))
    perror("wrote wrong number of bytes");

  /* wait for playback to complete before recording again */
  status = ioctl(audioDevice, SOUND_PCM_SYNC, 0); 
  if (status == -1)
    perror("SOUND_PCM_SYNC ioctl failed");

  close(audioDevice);
}

Here is something I cooked up a couple of years ago. It's shit, but it might give you some ideas. It creates a raw integer soundfile with no specific formatting or header information... Magic Window 15:34, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <math.h>

void SineGen(float step, int length, FILE *fp);
void NoiseGen(int length, FILE *fp);
void SquareGen(float step, int length, FILE *fp);
 
#define PI      3.14159265
#define S_RATE  44100          // Sample rate
#define B_RATE  32768          // Bit rate (16 bits = 2^16 / 2 = 32768)
 
int main()
{
    short unsigned int choice;
    unsigned int length; 
    float freq, step;   

    do
    {
        printf("\nEnter frequency: ");
        scanf("%f", &freq);

        if (freq < 1) 
        { 
            printf("Incorrect frequency.");
            continue;
        }

        printf("\nEnter length: ");
        scanf("%i", &length);

        if (length < 1)
        {  
            printf("Incorrect length.");
            continue;
        }

        printf("\n1. Sine wave\n2. White noise\n3. Square wave\n\nChoice? ");
        scanf("%i", &choice);

        if (choice < 1 || choice > 3)
        {  
            printf("Bad choice.");
            continue;
        }
    }
    while(freq < 1 && length < 1 && choice < 1 || choice > 3);
    
    step = (freq / S_RATE);                              // Converts frequency (Hz) into step size.

    FILE *fp;
    fp = fopen("wave.raw", "w");                         // Open the file, and write.

    switch (choice)
    {
        case 1: SineGen(step, length, fp); break;
        case 2: NoiseGen(length, fp); break;
        case 3: SquareGen(step, length, fp);                     
        default: break;
    }
    
    fclose(fp);                                          // File written, close.

    getch();                                            
    return 0;
}

void SineGen(float step, int length, FILE *fp)
{   
    int j;
    float sample, i;

    step *= 360;

    for (j = 0; j < length; ++j)
        for (i = 0; i < 360; i += step)                  // The pitch is raised by increasing the step size. 
        {
            sample = (sin(i * PI / 180)) * B_RATE;       // Convert degrees to radians for sin(), scale float to correct amplitude.         
            fprintf(fp, "%i\t", (int) sample);           // Cast to int for correct parsing by wave editor.                  
            printf("%i\t", (int) sample);                // Display as integers.
        }
}

void NoiseGen(int length, FILE *fp)
{

    srand((unsigned)time(NULL));                         // Uses system clock as inital seed.  

    int j, randsamp;

    for (j = 0; j < length; ++j)
    {   
        randsamp = ((B_RATE * 2) * rand() / RAND_MAX) - B_RATE;    // Generates random number between -B_RATE to B_RATE.
        fprintf(fp, "%i\t", randsamp);
        printf("%i\t", randsamp);
    } 
}

void SquareGen(float step, int length, FILE *fp)
{
    int j;
    float i;

    step = 1 / step;

    for (j = 0; j < length; ++j)
    {
        for (i = 0; i < step; ++i)
        {
            fprintf(fp, "%i\t", -B_RATE); 
            printf("%i\t", -B_RATE);
        }

        for (i = 0; i < step; ++i)
        {
            fprintf(fp, "%i\t", B_RATE); 
            printf("%i\t", B_RATE);
        }
    }
}

September 30

http://com etc.

Is there some term for domain names that consist only of the TLD, or the dotless URLs that result from them? How much are they worth on the open market? A lot of them (eg. http://com, http://org, http://net, http://gov, http://mil, http://edu, http://info, http://us, http://ca, http://fr, http://su) seem to resolve to Web sites. NeonMerlin 00:01, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

They don't seem to resolve to websites. My guess is that your browser is appending "www." and ".com" to them. It is a common feature nowdays, so you can type "google" and hit enter. ☢ Ҡi∊ff⌇↯ 00:33, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Also, if you're using FireFox, putting in a invalid URL will automatically get you the "I'm feeling lucky" link off of Google. In this case, com goes to Yahoo, org goes to W3C's website, net goes to MS's .NET page, and so on...—Mitaphane _talk 06:26, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

That can't be right, because http://edu takes me to Harvard (whether I type it in, with or without http://, or follow the link), whereas I'm Feeling Lucky-ing "edu" takes me to the Ontario Ministry of Education, and http://edu.com is a US portal to private colleges. But it doesn't work at all in IE; maybe it's just an obscure IE bug. NeonMerlin 15:31, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

It's firefox specific behaviour (so you wouldn't expect it to work in IE). Simply entering "edu" makes firefox go to the following URL: http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=edu , which does appear to be an I'm Feeling Lucky link. The difference probably is that going to Google's website invokes their geo-specific google, whereas a link straight to .com stays at .com. I'm guessing you're Canada, so your manual query is really using google.ca - the IFL for "edu" for it is indeed the OMoE. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:48, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

data transfer rate

for share trading i have 512 kbps internet speed with maximum 1000mb upload download how much time will it take

How much time will take to reach your upload/download limit if you start a transfer of a 1000mb file?

This depends on the definition of kbps & wether mb means Megabyte or Mebibyte, but assuming mb=MB=1,000,000 bytes= 8,000,000 bits and kbps = 1000 bits per second,

8,000,000x1,000 bits / 512x1000 bits per sec = 15,625 seconds ~ 4.34 hours—Mitaphane _talk 06:51, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Software Shutdown

How does the computer hardware(motherboard)distinguish between hardware and software?

I think that you are confused about what hardware and software are. This is an encyclopedia, look them up. —Daniel (‽) 14:29, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I think they mean to ask what is done differently for a PC shutdown request from software or from hitting a reset button. I don't think there is a diff. The button, when pressed briefly, typically sends the same software code. However, holding the button down typically just cuts power without doing a proper shutdown first. StuRat 14:49, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

real player playback

When playing downloaded trailers, image freezes but tracking bug continues across screen. How do I get correct playback?

You likely don't have a sufficient download speed to allow for live streaming video. You might be able to play it, without stopping, by replaying it after the jumpy version completes. Or, if there is an option at the site to download instead of doing streaming video, then do that. StuRat 14:44, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Google

Is something wrong with http://www.google.com? For the past few weeks, the Site has failed to load on at least 100 occassions, usually taking several hours to become accessible again. I'm concerned because I use It often, and am wondering if the issue is on my end, or Google's. Hyenaste ^(tell) 17:40, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Odd - I haven't seen any problems with Google... Does it only happen with Google, or other websites too? — QuantumEleven 18:37, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

OK then it must be an issue on my side. In a related question, what is 192.168.1.254? (I would Google it myself, but given the circumstances, I can't.) Hyenaste ^(tell) 19:13, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

It's a private IP address. --200.157.204.10 19:24, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I can confirm (from Bristol, England) that Google has been fully accessible for the last few weeks. I checked a few minutes ago, Google took 2 seconds to arrive - Adrian Pingstone 20:21, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

A few days ago there was a big connection problem was reported by Comcast users and Google servers. Perhaps it's happening again? ☢ Ҡi∊ff⌇↯ 03:57, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

My google homepage is loading slowly, but otherwise classic google is okay. --Proficient 07:30, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Meh. Everything's been good for me. — X [Mac Davis] (SUPERDESK|Help me improve)08:49, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I have comcast, and Google has been working fine for me for the past few weeks. Keesh001 15:58, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Google is Google. If it can't load, chances are, it's probably your problem. Maybe you lost your monitor.martianlostinspace 13:32, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

October 1

setting limits on family computer

I just bought a new family computer and need help on setting limits on the kids user accounts.

the goal is to not let the kids download harmful programs or get access to porn sites.

how do I do this?

I was sucessful at setting up an administrator and guest account but cant find how to restrict the guest accounts authority to download or go anywhere the web leads.

oed

Dear Oxford English Dictionary,

Maybe you could teach and trust your kids not to be susceptable to downloading harmful programs? In this time period, odds are, your kids know a lot more about the computer than you. For internet pornography, if you have got boys, they are going to see/read/watch porn and you aren't going to stop them. Girls? If it is not a very sheltered environment, they are just as interested. The best thing you can do is just physically keep an eye on their computer use, but usually the girls aren't as computer-spiffy as the guys. — X [Mac Davis] (SUPERDESK|Help me improve)08:48, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't agree with that advice. The amount of responsibility given kids should be age-appropriate. So, you shouldn't give a 10 year old total access to using a computer any more than you should give them access to guns, drugs, and alcohol. StuRat 11:26, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Some ISPs, like AOL, provide a suite of controls to set the limits on kids usage. The best advice, though, is to keep the computer in a common area, not the kid's room. Some computers can also be turned off with a key, giving you control of when they use it. If yours doesn't have this feature, take some vital component (like the keyboard) away and lock it up when you are gone. StuRat 11:26, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

The only way you'll keep them from installing malware is to not let them install anything at all. That or use linux. Also I highly advise you not to filter internet access. It's (in most cases) easy to bypass, it's inconvenient and annoying, and it often results in frustrating false alarms. --froth^{T C} 16:35, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

• I agree that I would not want my kids to download spyware, its just such a hassle to deal with, not to mention the fact that it can facilitate Identity Theft. Use Firefox, or Opera_(Internet_suite) and that will help quite a bit. A better solution that doesn't involve software is to teach kids some internet basics. AI STRONGLY disagree with the idea of getting filtering software for your kids. Any kid can just use a CGI-proxy that will bypass most filters, or various other methods. Keep the computer in a public place in your house and talk to them about internet usage. Better than being an internet fascist. If the idea of your kids having unrestricted access to the worlds knowledge is too much for you: Just google around for software such as Net Nanny. --AmitDeshwar 23:46, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

• Run a virtualisation system like VMware or Microsoft Virtual PC, and only let the kids use the virtualised systems. Every so often delete their VM and copy a new one for them. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:59, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

For avoiding malware, use a good browser (suggestions above) and make sure you have a running and up-to-date firewall and antivirus software running. For internet filtering your best bet is some commercial software (such as AmitDeshwar's suggestion). Ask your ISP, they often provide a filtering service (often for an additional fee), similar to one that large corporations use who want to restrict their employees' internet access. However, all filters can be bypassed, so note that there is no 100% foolproof technical solution. As others have noted, the only 'real' way is through education, talking with your kids, putting the computer in a public place and so on. Good luck! — QuantumEleven 13:07, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you all for your suggestions. Taking some of the advise, I had a talk with the middle boy and he showed me that I could set parental limits through the Norton software. I guess I'm over parenting.

OED

Another suggestion:

Sit down with your kids and give them some Internet safety tips:

• Don't ever give out their address online. At most give the name of the nearest major city.

• Don't ever give out their last name online. First name is OK, unless they happen to have a unique first name.

• Don't give out credit card info online.

• Don't give out birthdates online. Astrological sign is OK.

• Don't give out age online. This is a tough one, as kids will want to know each other's ages.

• Don't give out passwords online.

• Official looking emails that ask for personal info are called "phishing" and are a scam. If they get anything like that they should contact you.

• No downloading without your permission.

StuRat 23:32, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

The name goes too far.. I've mostly used my name as my username (not to mention my email address) since I started using the internet in elementary school. It just doesn't pose a legitimate risk. --froth^{T C} 17:16, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Shutdown command

How does the computer hardware(motherboard)distinguish between restart and shutdown command?

Please don't ask your question more than once. What you are probably trying to ask is "how does the computer hardware differenciate between a restart and a shutdown command, and how does a computer turn itself back on when it is told to restart". If you had asked the question clearly in the first place, you might have been able to get a better answer.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  09:19, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

How does the computer know to turn itself back on during a restart? --froth^{T C} 16:55, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmmmm... That is a good question. I will work on finding that out! --Zach 00:10, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

When you reboot, it doesn't turn off. It just goes back to the BIOS bootup sequence. That is why it is sometimes necessary to shut down (completely), wait, and then turn the computer back on. --Kainaw ^(talk) 17:00, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Missing posts

Has anyone else noticed posts going missing on these pages? Like you click on an item in your watch list by UserXXXX, and it aint there? Im posting this msg on all ref desks.--Light current 11:28, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

One way this can happen is if somebody deletes a section while you are viewing the page. Then, when you go to read the last section, say section 99, the software says "what are you talking about, there isn't any section 99, here's a blank section instead". (I hope you enjoyed my anthropomorphitization.) StuRat 12:06, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Now restored. See Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk#Archive_dump. --hydnjo talk 14:13, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Ping

Hi,

I was just wondering when I connect to an online game server, which is best. A high, or low ping value? Sorry i dont understand too much about computers, and knowing what is right might help me from lagging a bit.

Thanks for your time, Chris

A ping value represents how long it takes for a signal to get from your computer to the destination computer. So the lower the value, the less time it took for the signal, and the less lag you'll experience. --Maelwys 13:40, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Also you'll get different ping ranges for different games based on the efficiency of the protocol. For example, I rarely get pings of under 80ms in Halo, but my ping is regularly 4 or 5ms in counter-strike source --froth^{T C} 16:33, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Umm... First of all, "Ping" really refers to a user tool to generate ICMP packets, not a protocol in itself. The term has gained common parlance as a method of determining the amount of time it takes for a TCP/IP packet to get from your computer to another computer on the Internet because Ping is the command that you execute from a command line to make your Operating System specifically send these packets to a target host. Ping uses its own special packets, ICMP Echo Request and ICMP Echo Reply to determine the amount of time it takes to send packets to a remote host. Since ICMP is its own protocol, it is completley independent of what other services the target host is running. So the "efficiency" of another protocol, counter-strike vs. Halo, for example, has nothing to do with "ping times." In fact, if you were to install the Halo server program on the same host that is running the counter-strike server software, the ping times would be identical. Livitup 03:48, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Obscure Ancient Viking Computer Game Nostalgia

This recent BBC Viking Quest edutainment web game is, I believe, inspired by a 1980s edutainment computer game (possibly for the BBC Micro or similar machine found in 1980s UK primary schools) about Vikings raiding the British Isles. If you did really well at raiding English/Scottish monastries and sailing back to Scandanavia, you could get a Norse saga written about you. I remember wanting to play it at school when I was like 8 or whatever but some other kids kept hogging it and when they were done, I didn't know how to load it. It looked and played much better than the current BBC web version from my recollections. Does anyone know what the name of 1980s game is? Or even if its available online today? thanks!!!! Bwithh 14:04, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

There was an adventure game called "Viking Quest" for the Apple II, though I never played it so can't say more than that. However, if you saw it at school in the UK then it's much more likely to have been for the Beeb. One possibility might be "The Saga of Erik the Viking", which according to The House of Games (who give it an awful review!) was released for BBC, Spectrum and Commodore machines, though it was more pure game than edutainment. In terms of where BBC games might be available these days, your best bet is probably Stairway to Hell. Loganberry (Talk) 13:27, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the links. The game I remember was a text-based viking raid simulation game (e.g. how many warriors do you recruit for the raid, which route do you take across the north sea, which monastry do you want to rape and pillage etc.) rather than an adventure game like the Apple II game and Erik game you mention. I'll check out the stairway to hell site... Bwithh 14:33, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Embedding Flash movies and players like YouTube

Is there any easy way to create a Flash-emedded movie-with-player the way that clips on YouTube are embedded? I like the simplicity and relative reliability of the YouTube method (clinking to streaming WMV or MOV files often produces awful studdering effects depending on the setup of the home computer; the YouTube players are quick and have never given me trouble) but I'm not sure how to go about quickly doing that. This is a one-time operation so a quick hack or an inelegant solution is just fine. --Fastfission 16:00, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

If it's just a one time operation, and you don't mind if the video you're using is seen by anyone else, you can actually use the YouTube player and imbed it into an HTML page.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  16:03, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd rather not host the video on YouTube, if that is what you are suggesting. --Fastfission 00:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

If you import a video into Flash (not flash player) there will be a wizard that lets you choose options like streaming or download-at-once, what you want the play controls to look like, what kind of compression you want, where you want to store the flv file and the flv player swf, etc. But you do need flash --froth^{T C} 16:25, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll give it a shot. I have Flash 2004 but I haven't used it much. --Fastfission 00:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Free Office

Are there any MS-Office type programs (i.e. Word, excel and PowerPoint) that are free and 100% compatible with MS- Office.

Even MS-Office isn't 100% compatible with MS-Office (inter version compatibility isn't so hot). Try OpenOffice.org. Middenface 23:27, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

You can get Microsoft Office Viewers, which let you view MS PowerPoint, Word, and Excel docs for free. You can download it from here: Word 2003 Viewer

Excel 2003 Viewer

PowerPoint 2003 Viewer

These viewers allow you to view and print documents of the respective file types, but you cannot edit them. Hope this helps! Keesh001 16:15, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Have a look at Open Office[1]: this will open and save files in MS-Office formats and works quite similarily too.--Bjwebb (talk) 15:26, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

October 2

Microphone

I have a headset microphone and on my old PC I could hear my voice. I got a new laptop and went thru the same procedure that i did before and now it wont do that. Is there a way to download a driver for that? Thanks!! --Zach 00:13, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

No driver neccessary. If you're running windows, open the start menu and click run. Type "sndvol32" then enter. You should see a number of devices that your sound card can mix together. There should be a device that says, "Line In" it's probably checked as muted. Uncheck that and any device you connect to your sound card's line in jack will play when its connected. If it's not listed, go to options>properties. There should be a number of devices you can add to the mixer. —Mitaphane _talk 02:42, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Nothing is muted :( Ug, this is frustrating, thanks for your help tho. --Zach 21:25, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

IIRC, some sound cards have a "monitor" option, which does something which you describe. But some sound cards don't. It may be the case that your PC soundcard has the monitor option available, but your laptop soundcard doesn't. Though I haven't seen something like this for a while, so don't trust me 100% on this. Dysprosia 06:37, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Question: What kind of sound card/computer do you have?—Mitaphane _talk 01:14, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

ksh or bsh variables

I'd like to write a little script that copies a file from one directory to another, like this:

cp /home/<username>/alpha .

However, I don't know what the username variable is. Can someone help? --HappyCamper 02:11, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Try inserting `whoami` for your username. If it's someone elses, then you will probably need to specify that on the command line when you invoke your script (use $1). Dysprosia 02:49, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

cp ~/alpha .
cp /home/$USERNAME/alpha .
cp $HOME/alpha .

--Kjoonlee 08:24, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, this is really helpful. I'd like to ask, how do you get a list of these $ variables? And can you use the same syntax in a Makefile? --HappyCamper 11:37, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

If you've got GNU coreutils installed, you can run env to see all shell variables that have been set. I think some of these are provided by the shell. I used GNU bash to test. I'm a newbie when it comes to make, so I'm afraid I don't know if it works with Makefiles. --Kjoonlee 12:03, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Check the manual page for the shell you're using for variables that the shell provides. You can use whatever syntax your default shell uses in a makefile. Dysprosia 14:14, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Missing after posting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERCOMER

Hi, My question has to do with a post I sent in last month. The URL can still be found in Google, thus it must have existed at one point (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERCOMER). But it is now gone from Wikipedia. Could someone please let me know how this is possible? Do I have to resend everything?

Thank you.

ERCOMER editor —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ellenchan (talk • contribs) 12:52, October 2, 2006 (UTC).

Hello,

Deleted ? Maybe you should take a look at our policy (and deletion policy.)--193.56.241.75 11:31, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, your article was deleted, check the deletion log. It was written as an ad and didn't meet the Wikipedia verifiability criteria. You may be interested in what Wikipedia is not and your first article.

In future, the best place to ask about this sort of thing would be Help desk, and if you could sign your posts it would be helpful in keeping track of who said what. — QuantumEleven 12:03, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Computer won't change visual settings (win98)

I was trying to play a movie on an early version of real player, and it asked me to change the color quality, but now it won't change back... even after going to the menu and clicking on the different screen resolutions and color qualities. The computer just restarts and stays with the same qualities. Also how can i delete the Os on the computer (Still talking about Win98) format c/s/u doesnt seem to work.Sasuke264 15:35, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

For the second question, do you mean "How do I overwrite deleted files with binary zeroes to make sure nobody can retrieve the data ?" ? StuRat 15:46, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Looks like he wants to delete his OS, but format.exe doesn't seem to work. I always use a DOS boot disk to format my computer, or better yet, the install disk for the new OS that I want to install. Windows and Linux install disks (not upgrade) almost always format the hard-drive automatically (after prompting) before installation.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  03:41, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

actually i know nothing about the binary 0's and i do not have an ms-dos boot disk... All i have is a windows 98 boot disk and CD. What i am trying to do is if i can't fix my comp. i wanted to delete the OS(win98) and replace it with win98 therefore restoring the defaults. Thanks for any help you have given and may continue to give Sasuke264 15:08, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Simply re-installing Win98 (you can just insert the install disk while the OS is running) will allow you to format and restore all defaults.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  12:13, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Transferring files

I recently bought a new laptop and I want to get a large amount of data (in excess of 20 GB) from my old desktop onto the new laptop hard drive. What's the best way to go about this? The desktop only has a CD-RW so you can imagine I want to do this over some kind of network. Can I hook two PC's together by a network cable or do I need a router? Any suggestions are welcome...

While you can connect to PCs with a crossover cable (or a router/hub/switch), that is only the beginning of your problem. You will then need to get the two to talk to each other. Then, you have to give one permission to copy files from the other. Finally, you can move the files. It would be a hell of a lot easier to get a thumb-drive (they are at least 20GB now) and put the files on that. Then, go to the other PC and copy them back off the thumbdrive. --Kainaw ^(talk) 16:55, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Does your old laptop have a firewire port? --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 17:34, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes!

In that case, I'd recommend looking on eBay or somewhere for an external firewire drive. They're always useful for backups (in which case get a larger one) -- and we're talking like 50 cents a gigabyte now, it's really ridiculous. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 05:14, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

20GB?! Those cost hundreds of dollars --froth^{T C} 01:17, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

• Assuming you are using windows its dead easy. Buy a cross over cable from your nearest computer store. It'll probably cost you like 10 bucks. Then just plug the two computers together and windows networking will take care of everything. It should definately take less than an hour to transfer. AmitDeshwar 06:02, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

The other possibility is that if you have a router or a hub (both compys connected to the net at the same time) just transfer the files via Yahoo IM, ICU or MSN. Anchoress 01:54, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Password security

Is it possible to set an Username and Password for a folder.if so,how?

Thank you

Here's a fairly good guide for Windows XP; of course, you didn't specify the OS, so I'm just taking a guess that you're using it. If you want better security (XP accounts can be broken fairly easily), or want to secure files/folders outside of your "Documents and Settings" folder, then see TrueCrypt. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 18:07, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Converting .AVI to .MPEG

Hi. Does anybody know of a way I could convert a .AVI file into a .MPEG (or similar) file which could be edited on movie editing software. I have Adobe Premier and Windows Movie Maker. Thanks! Robinoke 21:17, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Premier should be able to open .AVI files. Do you not have the codec required (ie. can you not open the file with Window Media Player)? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 22:29, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

First you need to find out the FourCC of the avi you've got. Then download the appropriate codec. Finally download VirtualDub (which should come with several mpeg encoders) and change the video compession to mpeg (I actually recommend 2-pass XviD) then save the file. Voila! --froth^{T C} 01:13, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Guys! Robinoke 10:08, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Gmail

How do I view the IP of the person who sent me an email in Gmail? Thanks.

lots of issues | leave me a message 22:11, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

In the email, click More options, then Show original, and it'll show as: Received: from <hostname>

Also, just a note on your signature: it's probably better to use wikilinks (ie. lots of issues) rather than external links. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 22:23, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Minichess

I cannot find any information on 5x5 and 5x6 minichess - are they really solved or not? Any software implementations? The only info I did find was a short article in Hungarian that I can't read -

http://www.math.u-szeged.hu/~bognarv/minisakk.html

and a notice in Italian that further tournaments in 5x5 chess are cancelled because "the game was solved". By whom, when, how - no answer... 212.199.22.244 23:06, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

ISP bandwidth limit in Australia?

Answered

I was going to link my friend, who lives in Australia, to a movie clip online (One of a magician screwing up his act and spiking people in the hand if you must know). She told me right after finding out it was a movie that she couldn't watch it because she was over her bandwidth limit for the month(No, she doesn't run a server). I don't know much about this magical thing called bandwidth, and I don't want to know about it, I just thought that this sounded ridiculous. The company is called "Optus", and either she explained it badly, I have an even more limited understanding of the internet than I thought, or this company sounds pretty shady.

Could someone clarify this for me? Is this bandwidth limit a bunch of BS? Is this even a question? Razma Dreizehn 23:27, 2 October 2006 (UTC)Razma Dreizehn

Bandwidth cap. Most (all?) ISPs have bandwidth limits. Even if they do not advertise the cap it's usually mentioned in the TOS, though it could be as vague as "...an unreasonable amount of bandwidth...". Certain ISPs are worse for this, and ISPs in whole regions may follow one another. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 23:37, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I had a few problems not unlike what Consumed mentioned when I lived in Toronto. Rogers, which is the biggest and most popular fiber-optic ISP in the area temporarily bans all users it claims are "abusive, users who use their internet to a degree that it interferes with the connections of others", which basically means that they are not able to provide enough bandwidth to support their entire customer base, so they cut off the most active suscribers (I believe the representative I talked to after being cut off put me in the "top 5% of users", which means they're cutting off a lot of customers). You'll usually have much more luck if you switch providers, preferrably one that isn't bursting at the seams.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  03:38, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, thanks very much for the info. As it turns out, her little brother has a habit of downloading full length movies. 129.15.131.247 17:02, 3 October 2006 (UTC)Razma Dreizehn

Bandwidth is the limit a ISP gives ther customers. It is the amount of downloads you get per a month. Usually the more you pay for your internet the higher will be the bandwidth and speed of the internet. Bandwidth limits can range from as little as 100MB download a month to unlimited. Is your bandwidth is not unlimited however then once you exceed your download limit you have to pay extra for everything that is downloaded over your limit. *Note: everything you do on the internet (load this webpage) is considered a download be almost all ISP's. It is the information you download from your ISP's server.

October 3

Visual Basic Coding

In VB6, how does one extract text data from a webpage? For instance, if I was searching the HPI database, how would I get the program to extract the cars details from the following page, assuming that the numberplate is a variable, and so therefore are the car details? An example HPI page is here

View the source code of the web page. It is all text. Just pick through it and take out the text you want. Or - you can write a cool AI that knows how to view web pages and detect what is content and what is garbage, then slap a search engine on top of that and surpass Google as the kind-daddy of all search engines. Youth in Asia 20:17, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Audio / Video Capture

I wish to obtain software which will enable me to directly capture audio and video clips, or failing that audio only clips. I have the files I wish to capture clips from, although they are all in a variety of obscure codec formats and are too large to suit my purposes (hence why I seek to obtain clips). Is there a free program which I can use to directly capture audio or video from these files if I were to play them in Windows Media Player or a similar application, essentially like a screen capture for sound and/or video?

I'm pretty sure VLC media player can do that. Just play a file and stream the output to another file. I have never done it myself, but I have always been very happy with VLC. Jon513 16:28, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

There is a way to do it with VLC, but it's complicated and I don't know how to. I recommend Audacity for audio and Camstudio for video (both open source). --Russoc4 18:34, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

flashplayer doesnt have sound

I have a macintosh and flashplayer won't play any sound in flash content. What should I do? Ilikefood 22:57, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I occasionally have a similar problem with Quicktime as well as Flash, and worked out another program (Audacity, I suspect) had changed the MIDI settings. Try the following: got to /Applications/Utilities/Audio MIDI Setup, look under "Built In Output" - if it's set to 96KHz, change it to 44KHz, this has fixed several audio problems in the past. --Canley 02:18, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

October 4

Searching for a simple Small Business Program

I'm having an unusually and unexpectedly difficult time finding what I thought would be an extremely popular business program.

All I need is a simple accounting/invoicing program. I need to print my invoices in triplicate, and as this can only be done with a dot matrix printer, I spent a few hundred bucks (CDN) on what is considered the most reliable (as well as one of the last) ones on the market. While dot matrix is the earliest of popular printers, and one would imagine, the cheapest of all the versions, quite the opposite seems to be true. While laser and inkjet have dropped down in price quite drastically, dot matrix has actually gone up. In any case, I'll get to the dot matrix part later.

What really surprises me is the fact that a simple program that provides simple features like simple bookkeeping, as well as the ability to print invoices is so difficult to find. I can't understand it, but with all the programs created by MS, in particular those included in MS Office, they don't seem to have what would seem to be a program that is such a common need for small businesses and that I would imagine there would be such a great demand for.

Of course everyone needs a word processor, so there's MS Word. And spreadsheets are very useful, so there's Excel. Everyone uses email (though not necessarily non-web based email), so Outlook can be useful too (though not for me). Then there's Frontpage, Access and Powerpoint, which all have their uses, but not for everyone. What I don't get is why (if that's the case) there isn't a simple bookkeeping/invoicing programme. Does MS perhaps have this sort of thing available outside of the Office package? If so I'd really be grateful if any of you could point me in the right direction, as all MS programs seem to have their similarities, and once you're familiar with one, it's that much easier to familiarize yourself with others. And I realize, Access might be able to do what I'm looking for, but I'm afraid that it would involve way too much customization on my part that would only be way over my head. Does MS have such a product?

The problem is I'm stuck with this old DOS version of a programme I like, but it just won't work on my new computer. And these small software companies tend to offer terrible tech support. I bought their new "Windows" version of it back in '01, but the damn thing was so complicated I couldn't make any sense of it. Plus, they refuse to offer any tech support on the phone if you don't pay an arm and a leg. Neither could I make any sense of their user guide. So I basically went back to the ancient DOS version that suits my needs so well. Now they say that their programme is much more user friendly, but I'm understandably wary. Btw, their site is dynacom.com. They offer a trial version, and I'm downloading it as we speak, but there's another problem. The sales guy said that he doesn't even think it could work with a dot matrix printer, but he's not sure. (Thanks alot, you seem to really understand the product you're selling!). I really don't get why that would be a problem ... it's not a wiring problem, everything works by USB cable. In any case, I'm totally sick of this company.

Ideally, my first question would be whether or not MS has such an application, which would of course be able to work with a dot matrix printer. (Once again, I have no idea why MS wouldn't have created that sort of application ... it just seems like everyone would love to use it and it would sell itself). That would be ideal, as since I'm already familiar with other MS applications, I'd already be halfway to figuring out how to work this one. Failing that, though, I'm wondering if any of you can offer me any alternate suggestions. What does everybody use anyway? There must be some dominant, user friendly program by now! I'd be grateful for any suggestions any of you could offer (as well as any possible explanations for the mysterious "no dot matrix" facet of the program I'm considering buying now). Thanks to anyone who can help. Loomis 00:41, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Microsoft does indeed have a program (I am hoping this is what you need) Its called Microsoft Small Business Financials[2]. I would check there. Hope that helps!! --Zach 01:04, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Or Microsoft Money. (I use the personal version for tracking my own finances). Another seemingly popular option is Intuit's Quickbooks. As far as printing, I'd expect that your new printer came with a driver CD, or else the drivers are already included in Windows, so it shouldn't be a problem. The Okidata site was a little too annoying for me this afternoon. --LarryMac 18:38, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Try Microsoft Back Office. The problem with a dot matrix is they can generally only accept ASCII text, whereas most modern printers can also accept PostScript, HPGL, etc. So, if the modern program only prints in one of those formats, it won't work with a dot matrix printer. Why not just upgrade to a modern printer ? I got my printer/scanner/copier for under US$100. StuRat 02:08, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Stu, (and thanks Zach too!) but the thing is, my boss insists that he wants his invoices in triplicate, so when they sign for it, it goes through all copies. Don't ask me why. In any case, I've already "upgraded" to a brand new dot matrix OKIDATA, so at this point, I'd rather be able to use it. There are still quite a few folks that still use dot matrix, and I'm sure there'll always be a use for triplicate invoices. Do you think the above applications would support dot matrix? Thanks. Loomis 04:23, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about that. Check the specs with the vendors and see if they can export flat ASCII text files. StuRat 21:06, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I think most dot matrix printers in fact do have a (slower) graphics mode. If the program can output PostScript, you might be able to use ghostscript to convert it to the printer's format (using the printer's graphics mode). That's the usual solution on Unix: all programs output PostScript, and the spooler converts it to the printer's native format (unless the printer understands PostScript directly). --cesarb 16:52, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Overclocking failed -- CPU fan error

Answered

I have had a PC for a little over 3 years and am just now getting this error when I boot up. What can I do to resolve it?

I didn't set up the "overclocking" myself -- I wouldn't know how. It came that way from the computer shop, which is now out of business.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, TacoDeposit 00:43, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like it's overheating, are the vents clear and clean ? Try pointing an external fan at it and, if that doesn't do it, remove the cover. Replacing the internal CPU fan and/or general fan with a more powerful one should solve the problem permanently, if that's what it is. StuRat 01:52, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I opened the cover and it looks like there are three fans, two by the back vents and one over the CPU. One of the two fans by the back vents is not operating. Would that explain it? I'll have to get it replaced. Thanks, TacoDeposit 02:27, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds like the problem, you need to fix or replace that case fan. A single case fan is more standard, so I suspect that the computer shop that set it to overclock also installed an auxiliary case fan to compensate for the additional heat generated. If they did a half-assed job, perhaps some of the wires to the fan just came loose. StuRat 03:10, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Internet Explorer popping up

Everytime I open and use my PC the Dial Up Connection dialog box automatically pops up. I close the dialog box but it again pops up which is very annoying.Is there any way to stop that and use the Internet Explorer whenever i require?amrahs 15:39, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

There's a good chance that you have some sort of spyware that's trying to connect to the internet. Possibly a dialer, keylogger, trojan, etc. I recommend downloading an antispyware program and scanning your harddrive. Spybot (download) and Adaware (download) are amongst the most popular antispyware programs. If this doesn't solve the problem, try running an antivirus scan. ClamWin (download) or AVG (download) are two good antivirus programs.--Russoc4 18:22, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Private Investigator Service

Is there a Private Investigator Service tool/database on the Internet that PI's use to gather/share information? I was thinking about it and I'm sure there is some sort of national PI service already, but if not I thought it would be a good idea. --Kainaw ^(talk) 18:41, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Veronica Mars uses an awesome service that's like what you describe. She can totally find out anything about anybody! I love that show.... Oskar 20:38, 4 October 2006 (UTC) (I'm not helping, am I?)

There are online sites to do things like researching a person's background and criminal records. Of course, this is all stuff that can be done remotely. If you want somebody to be followed to find out where they go at night, that will require someone in the area and will likely cost thousands of dollars. StuRat 20:51, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Gmail Question

There is an option in Gmail to "always display images" from a certain sender, since images are by default blocked. There is also a way to restore the default after choosing this option by going to the individual email. However, I cannot find a list of "allowed" senders. Does such a list exist? thanks, -JianLi 20:52, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't appear that there is. If it's a big inconvenience for you, consider suggesting it using the Google help center, they may listen. I had a complaint about the way they didn't allow switching languages properly with multilingual accounts because I use English and Japanese on what is (usually) a Japanese OS, and a just a few weeks later they fixed it. Maybe coincidence : P.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  11:59, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I've contacted them. Thanks. --JianLi 02:28, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

serial number

where can i fined the serial number of my computer?

If it has one, it will be on a sticker of some sort on the case. Not all computers have serial numbers. For example, I built my own part-by-part. There is no serial number for the computer, but there is one on the motherboard, on the hard drive, on the dvd burner, on the video card... --Kainaw ^(talk) 22:23, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

It's usually stuck onto the silver plate on the back of the case if it's a desktop model, or big on the underside of a laptop.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  12:01, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

computer chess

Fourteen world championship computer chess tournaments have been held (from 1974 to 2006). I would greatly appreciate learning where the win-loss-draw percentages for these games have been compiled. Thankyou, Kaleideon

World Computer Chess Championship. Arch dude 01:37, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

October 5

Data base in computers

1]Wat are the Relation,Similiarities and Differences between MS SQL,ORACLE and MS ACCESS?Are these all different types of database?If yes then wat does it mean by saying so?

2]Is there any relation between MS SQL and SQL SERVER 2000?

3]Wat is the difference when we say Relational database, MS SQL,SQL SERVER and MS ACCESS

4]Is Oracle and MS ACCESS or MS SQL some language or is it a software in real that connects the front end of an aaplication or program with the data stored in the memmor,.Or is it a software for storing the data?if it stores data then how can data be modified or retrieved?

waiting for early reply

thank you

These questions make no sense. They all sound like homework questions as well... -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 02:43, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

They do make sense... mostly. I suggest you read up on database, relational database management system, SQL, Oracle database and Microsoft Access. That should answer most of your questions. — QuantumEleven 10:11, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

FTP server on residential nonstatic IP

I sometimes have a need to transfer large files over the internet. With some internet connections its not a problem to set up an ftp server. But i have a regular residential isp (roadrunner cable) and it seems that no other computer can connect to me via my ip address thats not directly connected on the same router. The ftp server is on windows xp and has options to change its listening port. I choose many different values other than the normal one and it still doesnt seem to make it work. If it is not known how to make it work, then why is it not working? Whats blocking it? The router, the isp, something else?--Technic 02:22, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Guide. You need to forward the port involved in FTP (21 or whatever you set) to the server computer. The router automatically drops connections that are not initiated by the computers behind it unless you do this. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 02:42, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

ahh I think i see whats going on, thanks. Ill try this out later.--199.98.20.227 04:06, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Any idea how something like aim works? that doesnt need a port forward or does it?

You only need ports forwarded if someone else needs to be able to see your computer from the internet. In the AIM case, you can see the AIM server, and the other person using AIM can see the AIM server. Nothing else needs to happen. On the other hand, in the FTP case, someone needs to connect to your computer directly. So you need to tell the gateway to forward certain requests to your computer. (Via port forwarding.) grendel|khan 17:42, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Disabling McAfee

My computer came with McAfee installed on it, but it's 90 day trial period has expired. Despite me deleting anything matching the McAfee search on my computer, I'm still getting these annoying pop ups a couple times a day asking me to buy it... How do I get rid of these?

Accidently, i hve lost my songs on my mp3 player.when i connect the player into my computer, list of my songs still there but when i want to play on my mp3 player its say NO MP3 FILES!..how do i fix this?and from the windows say's that i got problem with I/O device error..whats does it means??

OK, you should have uninstalled (from the Add/Remove Programs control panel) the McAfee software rather than just deleting any file that came up in a search for "McAfee".

What kind of MP3 player is it? Are you using a program to transfer the music to the player or are you just dragging the songs onto it? --Canley 07:20, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Online Search

When I search on the Internet, I often find millions of websites as results. So how can I know which websites are the ones I want? How can I search more efficiently on the Internet? How does online searching (I mean, in search engines such as Google) work?

I've heard that search engines counts each word to be searched separately. This means that if I type in the words "video telephone", it won't just show up websites with the words "video telephone". It will also show up websites with just either the word "video" or or the word "telephone". Is that true? If so, then how can I search in the Internet with websites with only both words together, "video telephone", being shown up?

60.241.148.65 03:40, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

If you put quote marks around a phrase, most search engines will look for that exact phrase. So if you just type video telephone, Google will search for video and telephone, but "video telephone" will search for that whole phrase with the words in that order. See Google's Advanced Search tips for more tips and ideas. --Canley 07:17, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Often, the trick is to do an initial, coarse search, find a few vaguely relevant articles, and use the most relevant to suggest additional search terms. For example, you are trying to find information about a particular General Powell. So you search for general and Powell. You find out from one of these links that his first name is "Colin", and then you do a more useful search for general and "Colin Powell", or just "Colin Powell", since not all articles on him will mention that he is a general. - Jmabel | Talk 22:03, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

CMOS Password

How does the dos executable for erasing the cmos password work???Also is there a program to create a new partition between existing free space other than the usual delete and make a new partiton?Also is it possible to transfer files between two computers using USB 2.0 ports; if yes then can we daisy chain all the computers in a network using USB?

1. It shouldn't - a DOS executable would not have access to the BIOS
2. Yes, see fdisk (or another disk partitioning programme, the more advanced versions can resize partitions, which I believe is what you want to do). Note that partitioning is inherently risky and you should always back up your data before starting.

fdisk can only delete and create new partitions. What you are looking for is a partition editor that can dynamically resize filesystems. gparted and PartitionMagic are probably your best bets. --WhiteDragon 14:31, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

1. Not really - there are some tricks you can do with a device that pretends to be a USB host to both computers, but it's difficult to set up and certainly won't replace a network. — QuantumEleven 10:06, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Well i have a dos executable that does just that...so was curious... And I would be really grateful if you could tell me which program resizes extended partitions.( c: is primary, d: e: f: are extended.)

IIRC there's some port that you can send data to on the cpu that will interface with the cmos. See here --froth^{T C} 14:18, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Recover Password

How can we get xp professional sp2 accounts password if we somehow login to the account?

No modern operating systems store passwords anywhere on the computer. Of course, dumb users and dumber programs may store passwords here and there, but that is not the question. A hash of the password is what is stored. Since hashes are one-way, there is no way to reverse the hash process and get the password. The common way to "hack" windows is to use Linux on a CD/Floppy and write a new password hash to the harddrive. Then, reboot into Windows and use the new password. --Kainaw ^(talk) 13:17, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

While this is true in general, windows uses a mindnumbingly stupid hash algorithm called LM hash, which can be cracked in seconds using a time-memory tradeoff. See Ophcrack. Oskar 14:59, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

/////////partition magic and DM would be helpful to resize the partition

Send packages in VB6

How do you send data (to LAN/internet computers) in VB 6.0? I can't find it anywhere on how to do it?! -Unreg usr

Check out Microsoft's MSDN site. Here's the entry for VB's network class. It should have the info (and examples of network programming) there. —Mitaphane _talk 01:25, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

That link is incorrect, as the user was interested in VB 6.0. The class is for the .NET Framework. You need to use the Winsock OCX control to send/receive. Splintercellguy 06:14, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Nanostray on Nintendo DS

I have a European copy of this game and on the spine of the box it has a pink/purple triangle where all the other games I own have a green triangle. Is this some kind of colour coding or just a printing error on the packaging?? --Ukdan999 15:58, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like you have the special Homosexual Edition, with all the ships wearing drag. :-) StuRat 22:22, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

apple mac or microsoft windows

Which is the better company, apple macintosh or microsoft windows? explain

I say microsoft, most PCs are using Windows. Tho I must edmit apple have better design (ipods etc..), but still you can't really compare them.

Trick question? Because you ask which is the better company but then you name two products. - Jmabel | Talk 21:59, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you asking whether apple/microsoft is better or are you asking whether windows/mac is better?Taida 22:27, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

It appears to be Apple/Microsoft. Neither Windows or Mac is a company. I think it is safe to assume that is less dumb to call the companies by their product names than to call either product itself a company. --Kainaw ^(talk) 00:21, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

It is a matter of opinion, there is no real answer. I like Apple products generally a lot more than Microsoft ones. Mac OS X pwns XP :) — X [Mac Davis] (SUPERDESK|Help me improve)03:41, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

See operating system advocacy. This is a very boring topic. What's better, Chevrolet or Ford? --Robert Merkel 04:00, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Anything is better than Found On Road Dead. Anyway back to the question depends on what you want to do for gaming I go for Windows. If you want graphic design or such go for a Mac. Whispering^(talk/c) 19:55, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you a student? A mac is definately a bad idea for computer science or even engineering students. For artsy or just general students, macs have a reputation for being good with video or image editing though similar products are available on the PC. Anyway, there's no distiction anymore since macs are now on x86 archetecture... it's a matter of whether you want to shell out a lot of extra money just so you can run OSX. Which personally I can't stand (also I think that the macbooks are ugly as el diablo) so I'd never get a mac.. anyway my thinkpad has specs identical to a $2000 macbook (actually my processor is 160mhz faster, same chip) and it cost only $1500. And the thinkpad has always been by far the sexiest laptop :) --froth^{T C} 00:30, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Wasn't the Thinkpad discontinued like 20 years ago? — X [Mac Davis] (SUPERDESK|Help me improve)09:41, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh c'mon, we all know that your thinkpad, although you may be proud, is a flimsy alternative to the MacBook (Pro). — X [Mac Davis] (SUPERDESK|Help me improve)09:41, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Traditionally black, ThinkPads feature innovations such as the magnesium or titanium composite, TrackPoint pointing device that allows the performance near that of a mouse, ThinkLight, an LED keyboard light put on the top of the LCD screen, solidly constructed full size keyboard (including the fold-out butterfly keyboard on the 701 models), the Active Protection System, a device that detects when a ThinkPad is falling and shuts the hard drive down to prevent damage, biometric fingerprint reader, dual wireless antennae that allow for more stable connections, and the Client Security Solution that allows for industry standard TPM encryption and password management to counter keyloggers. ThinkPads have a reputation for generally being solidly built, dependable, and innovative (ThinkPad which I've never edited) You're right it sounds flimsy I don't know what I was thinking... Here's some trivia from that page "The ThinkPad is widely regarded in the laptop industry and market as having one of the highest-quality laptop computer keyboards available." The thinkpad is the laptop used on the ISS. I have a 2.16ghz core duo, 1GB of memory, and a 128MB mobility radeon x1400 (which is newer than the x1600 used in macbooks). Flimsy and outdated, how didn't I notice? --froth^{T C} 17:55, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Anyway I'm a computer science student and a mac is just not an option for me.. surely you can see that thinkpads are among the highest quality "non macs" at least.. though personally I would say it's better than the macs. I could never go without my trackpoint and thinkpad keyboard --froth^{T C} 17:59, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Remote desktop

Is there a generic (unbranded) term for software such as Microsoft Terminal Services? I need to refer to it in the computer accessibility article. Right now I have remote desktop, but I see that is just a disambiguation to three branded products. We ought to have an article somewhere on this technology generally, not just on individual products. - Jmabel | Talk 21:57, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Is terminal services a remote desktop product? I.e. a program that lets you control a desktop from another computer in a window, like for instance VNC or microsofts remote desktop product? That kind of software is usually reffered to as either "Remote desktop" or "Desktop sharing" products. Oskar 23:08, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

October 6

Windows Media Player 10

How whould one remove Windows media players' online stores?

Every Time I open Windows media player it loads a list of online stores from some unknown server and then proceds to download the logos for the stores. Only problem is that 3 of the store icons are blocked by my filtering package.

This is getting annoying, everytime I open WMP, 3 error messgaes appear saying I tried to access sites I shouldn't have.

Any help would be apreciated.

--Kd7jit 00:29, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Arithmetic problem related to internet

I learnt arithmetic in primary school but I could never apply to any real situation such as the zero-sum game of money problem related to internet. If this is not the right place to ask, be grateful if you could answer with some pointers. Suppose that I visit a site such as Wikipedia and download one gb of information FREE of charge. Assume that the author of this information does not want any payment. Simple question: who pays for my FREE education?

a) Wikipedia has to run some hardware and to do maintenance with some donation or other revenue. By visiting Wikipedia, do I create a negligible amount of income for Wikipedia?

b) For the information to travel from US(?) to Australia, it requires some kind of hardware at the international level (satellites?). Does it mean that US government would charge the Australian government for transmission of information for using their satellites?

c) I pay for a broadband server which allows me to get certain amount of information? To whom my server would pay, Telephone Company or Communication Company, or Australian Central Server?

d) Who makes money and who pays for it when I get one gb of information free of charge?

I past my exam in arithmetic at primary school level but I can never add up. I understand that my questions are not well defined as a result of my personal ignorance. Please feel free to re-formulate them. Thank you in advance for your help.Twma 02:13, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I think you mean you "passed" you exam, or possibly "got past" your exam. StuRat 22:02, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

These are interesting questions, but they have nothing to do with arithmetic and mathematics. You should post them at the Computing/IT reference desk.  --Lambiam^Talk 04:37, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

International communication is for the most part not done by sattelite (sattelite communication is very, very expensive). You can get messages across the world by radio waves, or if there is a hard wire connection you can use that. (There is probably a wire-connected network that can reach Australia from the US, though I am not certain.) - Rainwarrior 06:31, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

To give you a short answer, the Wikipedia is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, which receives funding from private and corporate donations. So, no, you don't generate income for Wikipedia by looking at a Wikipedia article (in the early days of Wikipedia, there was consideration given to allowing advertising on Wikipedia pages to pay for costs; after discussion it was decided to go down the route of trying to fund it as a not-for-profit through donations).

The details of how the internet traffic is paid for are quite complex. In the United States and Australia, most of the entities involved are private companies (with the exception of Telstra, which is of course still majority owned by the Australian government, but who are trying to sell it off as fast as they can). To get a sense of how this all works, you can try reading our article on peering, but it may be a bit too complex. The Internet article may clarify some of the terminology for you. --Robert Merkel 06:43, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Rainwarrior is also correct, long-distance traffic on the Internet is mostly carried by cable, in even across oceans. There are multiple submarine communications cables between the US and Australia.

(First: yes, the principal Wikipedia servers are in the US. Florida, to be more precise.) You pay for your Internet access in some way; even if it's "free", it's part of a lease agreement (and is thus really part of your rent) or an incentive to get you to patronize a business or so. A good portion of your access fees go to a higher-level provider (a sort of "meta-ISP") that, perhaps, runs a network covering all of Victoria. They own all the servers in that network (so only have to pay electricity and maintenance for them, and possibly rent space), and either own or lease the communication lines between them (if leased, often from a phone company or similar organization). Part of the money paid to them (by numerous ISPs) is used to pay for a connection to part of the Internet backbone, a coalition of companies that own (or lease, of course) the biggest, most powerful routers and the major cables between regions and countries. Those major cables can put through, in many cases, multiple GB per second, and so while to you that gigabyte is a lot, it's okay that you only paid them A$0.05 for that day; 100,000 other people did as well. The note about peering above is quite correct, but is limited in scope; simply put, the top-level network operations companies in the world do not charge each other for transferring data; each collects its operating costs from its customers and two-way connectivity between major networks (including, possibly, doing most of the work of forwarding some particular packet from another company) is considered an even trade. Does that help? --Tardis 15:50, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

much more than "multiple gigabytes" per second.. --froth^{T C} 20:12, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

You might want to check out Category:Intenet Archetecture and peering --froth^{T C} 20:45, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to all friends for the free education to enrich my life.Twma 00:55, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Note that most of the value of Wikipedia is in the content, and for that, you can thank the millions of volunteers who have added to it. StuRat 22:04, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

HackThisSite

http://hackthissite.org

Anyways, on the third of the easy 'missions', I get stuck. I found out that the password is contained in a 'password.txt' file. However, I simply can't find it. I inputted in the file name into each of the respective sub-directories of the URL and none of them work. Help would be appreciated. Thanks. --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 05:03, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Lol, such an anarchist site. I haven't done the missions in forever. Splintercellguy 06:16, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll help in 2 hours when I get back from class. In the meantime check out my hts profile --froth^{T C} 16:46, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

All right take a look at the submit action of the form. The passwords.txt is contained in the directory for Basic 4 (the next challenge) since each challenge page is really nothing more than the "password correct" output of the previous challenge. If you still don't get it, here's the direct link. Try the app challenges they're much more fun --froth^{T C} 18:55, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Also if you need any help on any of the challenges I've completed (check my profile) leave me a comment on my profile --froth^{T C} 19:53, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

How to put an e-mail address in a wiki running MediaWiki software?

Anybody know how to put an e-mail address in a wiki running MediaWiki software so that when the user clicks on it, the e-mail address will open up the e-mail client?

e.g. on the following site I have an e-mail address but it is just shown as text, so the user has to cut/paste into their e-mail client (e.g. Outlook). Yuk

• http://treekee.com/tervuren/en/wiki/Police

On the page you will see the address, politie at tervuren dot be (note, don't reply with your answer to this address!! Post it here.).

80.201.216.248 10:33, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Link to a mailto: URL like you would any other time? Like this. --Tardis 15:02, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

CD rom

What is the use of Headphone jack and volume controll on the CD rom. Can i Use the CD rom as a CD music player without turning my computer on. If yes, Then How?

No, though that would be nice, it's not possible. There are motherboards that allow you to listen to CDs (only "real" CDs) without running an actual music player, but Windows must be running for most of those to work. I guess some people like to plug in their headphones into the front of the computer, directly into the CD drive. (EDIT: Actually, I may be wrong. There may be CD drives with hardware to play CDs built-in that need only a power source to play CDs, though I would be really surprised if there was. Giving it power wouldn't be easy, as that usually requires the computer to be on, but it's not impossible I guess.)  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  11:38, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

There are external CD readers for computers (usually laptops) that can act as standalone CD players. However, I have never in my life seen a case-mounted CD player that could work as a standalone player. The headphone jack on the front is for listening to the CD audio. Most CD readers do not have this anymore. It was used in the middle ages of home computing when most people couldn't justify selling a kidney to purchase a soundcard with a CD line in connector on it. Now, sound is mounted right on the motherboard with everything on it, so the jack, if there is one, is purely redundant. --Kainaw ^(talk) 12:20, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I used to have an internal CD drive that had "Play" and "Eject" buttons and a headphone jack (and possibly a volume control; I don't remember). So long as it had power (which could be arranged without even a motherboard present, of course), you could actually listen to things; Play was also "Next Track" and I believe Eject would just stop playing if you pressed it while it was playing. The CD jack is never equivalent to any other output, as far as I know; I believe it only provides the CD player's output, whether or not there is a sound card driving the other jack (possibly with the same data). --Tardis 15:07, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

On a system that I assembled about 7 years ago, the headphone jack on the CD drive was actually connected directly to the motherboard. It was, in fact, the exact same output as the regular speaker jack.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  04:14, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Washing machine vs. USB drive

While switching the laundry from the washing machine to the dryer I found a USB flash drive in the bottom of the tub. Luckily my wife won't be killing me for this as it's not mine and I didn't put the laundry in the washer. :-) So, what are the chances of my wife's flash drive working again anytime soon? Is this just something that can dry out and will function again? Dismas|^(talk) 14:05, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Mine went in the wash once. Just let it dry out and it'll be perfectly fine, as well as nice and clean. :-) CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 14:07, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

If the water didn't corrode anything (unlikely unless it was wet for too long), and it's not powered up while still wet (be sure to dry it throughly; putting it within a sealed box with silica gel or other desiccant for a while would be a good idea), it probably will work. --cesarb 16:37, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Or you could continue the cycle and put it in the dryer with the wet clothes like I did. Came out good as new, and only partially melted because it got stuck onto of the lint trap. Still works though. --Russoc4 03:14, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I too have witnessed many USB drives making it through the wash and dry cycles and working fine everafter. So long as the water is gone before it has a chance to badly corrode the USB contacts it will be fine. --Jmeden2000 14:37, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I guess there's a hidden disadvantage to having a device so small that it will fit into any available orifice. :-) StuRat 21:55, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

about dealership

i the resident of ramayampet medak district of andhrapradesh,india hereby saying that i want to have the dealership of smithkline beecham so that i can improve the sales.i will be happy if you could give me an opportunity to serve your company.

This is Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia. I suggest you contact a local office of Smith Kline Beecham. — QuantumEleven 14:30, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

How do these mistakes happen? Honestly I am stupefied --froth^{T C} 00:33, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Staging site in web development?

Is it true that a staging site can also be called a development site? Or is it slightly different?--Sonjaaa 16:48, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

A google search for staging site & development site seems to indicate "staging site" is the prefered term used in web development. But really both terms are general enough to be synonymous. If your curious about the addition of this information to the staging site article. I would look for a reliable source that specifically uses the term "development site". —Mitaphane _talk 03:41, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Staging sounds like a later stage in the development/testing process to me. StuRat 21:40, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Brain transplant for laptops

My laptop crashed but the harddisk survived unscathed. I'm planning to buy a new laptop, but I'd like to have everything on my old laptop on the new one in terms of software and settings. Is that possible? I've taken out my old harddisk. Is there any way to use it as the "boot" disk for the new laptop, so that I can continue using the old operating system, software, settings, etc as if nothing happened? I had Windows XP Home edition on the old laptop. Regards, deeptrivia (talk) 18:49, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

First, can the old harddrive physically fit in the new laptop? That may not be the case. If it can, replace the one that comes with the new laptop and boot up. If the two laptops are identical - no problem. If they are not identical, you'll have to mess with driver installs for the new hardware. If you are lucky, you'll be able to get the new hardware drivers installed. You may hit an impass and be unable to continue. --Kainaw ^(talk) 19:37, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

A laptop? Very very unlikely that you'll have success --froth^{T C}

Thanks. What's the most I can transfer? Software? Settings? My old laptop was a Dell Inspiron 8600 and the new one is an IBM Thinkpad T60. Both have Windows XP Home Edition. deeptrivia (talk) 20:14, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Backup is very complex and (in my opinion) quite poorly supported. And you're in extra hot water because you dont have a computer to back up from, just the hard drive. Basically your only feasible option is to buy one of these and hook up the USB to your new laptop. Make sure to find out what kind of hard drive it is. PATA is unlikely but possible; it's probably SATA. Once you plug it in, XP should mount it and it'll appear as a drive on your new computer. At this point you can copy the following things: documents, images, videos, binary installers (not the entire install directory on your old Program Files), basically any kind of file that you see on the internet will copy fine on your new computer (not settings or installed programs). When you have everything you want, right click the old drive and select Format. Format it FAT32 (or NTFS if you have files greater than about 4GB) and use your old drive as a portable hard drive! By the way, excellent choice of new laptop ;) --froth^{T C} 20:48, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

DNS rootserver IP list

Where is that file located in windows which is discussed in DNS_root_zone#Technical_details_of_root_server_lookup? How about *nix? I've seen a copy of the file but I don't know where it can be found locally --froth^{T C} 20:12, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, well the article specifically says the file is called "named.cache" in BIND. A quick search on google for windows "named.cache", hits up the path "<WIN DIR>\system32\dns\etc\" and for unix "named.cache" BIND hits up the path "/var/named" Hope that helps. —Mitaphane _talk 04:16, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

There's no dns folder in %WINDIR%\system32 --froth^{T C} 18:02, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you running a domain name server? Looking at the article it sounds like the file that is referenced is for domain name servers, not individual network clients. —Mitaphane _talk 05:54, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Clients would need the file if they're directly connected to the internet (not through a network or even a router). How else would they know how to contact the rootzone servers? --froth^{T C} 14:20, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Many netywork clients (such as your desktop PC) do not run a DNS server and do not query the root directly. Instead, they perform DNS queries via their ISP's DNS server, and just store the IP address of that server. -- AJR | Talk 22:28, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Right, that's why it takes some time for newly registered domain names to work every where; they have to propogate to all the various ISPs domain name servers (which cache the IP addresses). If you're curious, you can lookup your DNS server address with the windows command "ipconfig /all", or by loging onto your router(if you have a home network). —Mitaphane _talk 04:18, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

October 7

Mozilla search engines

So, I used to use the Mozilla search engine bar all the time, having added a lot of good ones. But one day, I found they were all gone. I can go to the "Add engines" link on the bar, which takes me to their page. But when I click on one, it asks me if I want to add it, I say ok, and it doesn't get added. The Javascript console says

Error: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80570016 (NS_ERROR_XPC_GS_RETURNED_FAILURE) [nsIJSCID.getService]" nsresult: "0x80570016 (NS_ERROR_XPC_GS_RETURNED_FAILURE)" location: "JS frame :: file:///C:/Program%20Files/Mozilla%20Firefox/components/nsSidebar.js :: anonymous :: line 174" data: no] Source File: file:///C:/Program%20Files/Mozilla%20Firefox/components/nsSidebar.js Line: 174

I've tried re-installing Firefox, but it doesn't work. Does anyone know what's gone wrong, and how I can fix this and get my search bar back? -LtNOWIS 00:54, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Most times these problems are related to your profile, which isn't cleared when reinstalling Firefox. Try temporarily disabling all extensions with the Safe Mode, or using a blank profile with the Profile Manager. --cesarb 21:15, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

What do the parts of an email address mean? Can the date or location it was sent from be deciphered from it?

Whenever someone prints out a hard copy of a hotmail, the bottom of the page has, for example, a string of letters and numbers like this:

Http://by119fd.bay119.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/getmsg?=5A6F0A5E-9874-4958-…

How much about the email is obvious from the address? Can you prevent this from being printed when you print the rest of the email? Is any part of it a code?

Thank you to any and all who wish to answer this for me, especially if you can give examples.

You can use scissors and cut off the bottom of the paper althrough I don't think it matters because you would need a password to get to your email adress.Taida 02:15, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Don't print sensitive information directly from your browser. Copy the information and paste it into your word-processor (e.g. MS Word) before your print it.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  04:22, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Turn off the footer, to remove the link! Do this with Page Setup from Print Preview (or elsewhere) in either browser. Dysprosia 04:37, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Http:// means retrive using Hyper Text Tranfer Protocol (HTTP).

by119fd.bay119 is the specific computer to obtain the information from.

hotmail.msn.com is the domain the computer is located within.

cgi-bin is the directory (folder) within the computer to look in. Note cgi-bin usually contains programs that generate web pages rather than just static files.

getmsg is the name of the file to retrieve (or in this case, the program to run on the server)

? means send the rest of the line to the program as an input parameter.

=5A6F0A5E-9874-4958 is a parameter to be passed.

The information above simply asks the web server by119fd.bay119 at hotmail.msn.com to to run the program getmsg in its cgi-bin folder with a parameter of 5A6F0A5E-9874-4958-… and show the result in the web browser. The information above does not contain an e-mail address, or any information about a user. E-mail addresses are in the form 'username@computername.domain' or sometimes just 'username@domain'. --Dave 07:40, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I've got a rediculously long counter-answer Dave. The URL follows this form:

PROTOCOL://SUBDOMAINS.DOMAIN.TLD.(implied dot)/PATH?QUERY_STRING

The protocol is the way the data transfer is handled. After the protocol the rest of the URL can be divided up into two parts: the DNS requests and the file request. The file request information is everything after the root zone (the implied dot). First the root nameservers are called to give the IP address of the TLD nameservers that correspond the the TLD in the request (in this case .com, which are verisign servers). Then the nameservers at that IP address return the IP address of the domain. That domain's nameservers return the IP of the subdomain. Then that subdomain's web servers are given the file request (PATH?QUERY). It opens (or executes depending on server settings- in this case executes) the file at PATH and makes QUERY available to it. Convention (used by most browsers and web scripting languages for handling GET) dictates that the query string be arranged like ?VAR=VALUE&VAR2=VALUE2&VAR3=VALUE3 though a simple string can often be used instead of all that syntax. The = in front is meaningless, though it may be a hack for interacting with whatever web software they're running. --froth^{T C} 18:38, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Question about wikipedia search engine

I was searching for Dina Babbitt, and got 2.7% relevance for Josef Mengele. The two are in fact related, but Dina Babbitt is mentioned no where in the article. How did a search for her turn up Mengele, then? Thanks --01:35, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:MD8iy5iNgScJ:www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/2006_09.html+Dina+Babbitt+wiki&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=9

he painted some pictures for him.

gooogogoggooggoogogoggggggggggglelleeelelellgogogo

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:S.CON.RES.54.IS:

I would guess there was some mention in the version used to build the search engine, and it has since been deleted. I often get Google hits that are apparently to content that used to be there, but is gone now. StuRat 21:25, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I thought, but I couldn't find any trace of it after going through several page histories. --02:38, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

african watering hole

is this really a live african watering hole or just some hoax?

mms://live.wildlife.wavelit.net/nk1957

Do you have any reason to think it is a hoax? It seems like a really stupid thing to make a hoax out of.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  04:10, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Erm, things are actually starting to get a little weird now.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  04:14, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

what happened!? ? I've been watching and nothing but exotic noises !

A large number of bison-like grazers (that's not cool that I don't even know my African animals) and zebras came out of nowhere to take a sip. It's probably just a "popular" water hole, but I wasn't really expecting a whole bunch of them to appear so soon.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  16:28, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

t-rex tissue

is this a hoax?

http://www.calacademy.org/science_now/headline_science/T-rex_soft_tissue.html

I think you should ask these sort of questions at the Science desk: WP:RD/S. Anyway, see Tyrannosaurus, especially the bits about "B-rex". --Kjoonlee 04:05, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

There is mention of T-rex "soft tissue" being preseved inside bones, I think that article is just incredibly misleading. No dates are given (a few months ago and Montana are the only things that are explicitly stated) and no references, sources, links, or other relevant details are given. The images, I must remind you, show a 3mm section of bone. Putting the specimin under high magnification creates strange results.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  04:08, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

If the article really mentioned "soft tissue" instead of "soft matter resembling tissue" then it would be an example of bad journalism. Anyway, read the Tyrannosaurus article for links that properly describe what was found. --Kjoonlee 06:08, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Under "Sexual dimophism" our article states, Only a single T. rex...has been...shown to belong to a specific gender. ..."B-rex," the...oldest known specimen, demonstrated the preservation of soft tissue within several bones. Some...has been identified as medullary tissue, a...tissue grown only in modern birds as a source of calcium...during ovulation.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  09:31, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Adsl Sharing

I have a dlink dsl-g604t modem/router connected to an adsl conection. recently i churned to a new isp (WiltIT) and found that although i could access the internet through the wireless connection, i could not access it from a desktop connected to the router directly by an ethernet cable. Before the churn i was able to access both ways with no problems. how can i get the desktop to access teh internet through the cable? 02:36, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the network settings on the desktop are misconfigured? Maybe DHCP settings on the router are incorrect? A little more specifics would help. Splintercellguy 07:58, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Wireless network adapter on Acer laptop

Howdy, fellow Wikipedians! I'm having a puzzling problem working with wireless networking. I've got an Acer Aspire 5000, which has a Broadcom 802.11g network adapter, and I'm running XP Service Pack 2. I'm able to find wireless networks, and the connection process partially works, but I'm unable to actually connect to the networks. I don't actually know exactly how long this has been a problem, or what I did that could have caused it as I infrequently use wireless, but I'm spending a few days at my mother's house, and I'd like to use her network. (Which is working properly -- I'm posting this on her computer -- and I have the password for, etc. I've logged in here before. I've also logged in previously on unsecured networks, but can't now, so I don't think it's her security.) What happens, step-by-step as I attempt to "repair network connection", it disables and re-enables my adapter, and connects, but it has problems renewing the IP address. It reports the network connection details with a physical address and IP address, a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 and blanks for default gateway, DNS server and WINS server. I've searched the Acer site; they have a simple guide that covers everything I've already done, and according to them, I have the most recent driver (3.100.46.0, which I can't roll back, so I assume it was factory installed). I can't do a system restore, because my restore points don't go back far enough. (Only a month, and I know I had the problem a couple of months ago). Any suggestions, requests for more info, etc. would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks! --ByeByeBaby 02:44, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm just guessing, but it might be that your mother uses MAC address filtering, ie it limits access to only a set number of MAC-addresses (every network card has a unique number that identifies it, a MAC-address, sort of like a serial number). Try logging on to your mothers router configuration and see if it is on. If it is, either add your own MAC address or simply turn it off while you are there. It could also be that the router is using static IP addresses, and not DHCP. Again, check the configurations and see if you can turn on DHCP Oskar 18:06, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Hot laptop

I got an old thinkpad for free and I'm having trouble with it overheating after a couple hours of use (plugged in). The fan works fine, though it doesn't seem to help much. I've already elevated it, and I use it in a rather breezy place, but is there any half-assed solution that I can pull out of a dollar store to help me get a few more hours of constant use out of it? I'm thinking along the lines of putting it on a cushion of styrofoam, tilting it at a 20 degree angle, etc.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  04:19, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Can you open up the laptop to get access to the CPU and heatsink? My old Sager laptop had an issue with overheating. It turned out to be the area where the fan was blowing air across the heatsink was clogged up with dust and crud. After removing it, the problems were gone. I'm betting your problem is the same. —Mitaphane _talk 04:38, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually yeah it could be just that simple. It's a 5 year old lappie and I'm sure the guy who used it before me wasn't nearly as careful with it. I'll go get my hacksaw and give it a shot.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  16:25, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately almost all older laptops have heat problems.. and 5 years is way past the life of a laptop. If you can stand the heat, you could just let it overheat- I read somewhere that old thinkpads are surprisingly good at operating in extreme heat. As for the comfort of your skin, you could try that fire-resistant oily foam --froth^{T C} 18:24, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Styrofoam isn't a good choice, as it's a thermal insulator. Instead, place it on metal "rails", so that air can pass underneath it, then point a fan at it. The metal will also help to draw away some heat. Old metal stacking inboxes might work well. StuRat 21:12, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok scratch the foam then. I've actually got it propped on some metal hangers now, but I'd probably get better results with something with more surface area, and more room for air to pass through. To Froth, I can't let it overheat. It's not that it's so hot I can't touch the surface (the keyboard is relatively cool, actually) it's that my OS starts stuttering after a couple hours of use, and eventually completely locks up if I don't turn it off or put it to sleep. I guess not all thinkpads are so wonderful!  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  04:13, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Guess it was a false rumor. What are you doing with it during use? Web browsing? Gaming? --froth^{T C} 05:54, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Nothing too hardcore. I have it propped up on a couple of water bottles now, and I put a big 2L bottle of gatorade on the keyboard when I'm not typing. Doing that extended my uptime another 30 minutes or so. Hah! Liquid cooling rawks.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  09:27, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

It's not just a problem with older laptops - my Acer laptop also has a tendency to overheat, especially if the ambient temperature is high. In addition to elevating it, I strongly recommend you get yourself a can of compressed air and liberally squirt it through the various openings on the laptop. Laptops (unlike desktops) have many very tight spaces inside, and these will get clogged up with dust surprisingly quickly, severely inhibiting airflow and cooling. Even better, open the case up (if possible) and continue blowing air through the innards to try and clear out as much of the dust as possible. For me this helped enormously, my laptop went from operating at near 80°C to under 50°C. Note that you'll need to repeat this every couple of months. — QuantumEleven 12:03, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Laptops, unlike desktops, are not designed to be "user serviceable". Thus, they are difficult to open and you may very well damage them if you try. I ended up with a torn paper cable (leading to the trackpoint) on my IBM ThinkPad, when I tried. StuRat 01:42, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Hey I ripped that thing out too but fortunately it had a nice plug instead of a direct wire so the plug just came unplugged :) --froth^{T C} 05:13, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Latex help - Section headings

Hi all. I'm creating a document in latex and I wanted to create a section that didn't have a number (ie. one that said "Introduction" instead of "1. Introduction). I used the \section*{} command I found on the web, but the problem with that is that it doesn't add that section to the table of contents. So I was wondering if there was anyway to have a non-numbered section that also appears in the contents. I am using the "article" document class. Thanks - Akamad 06:30, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

You might be able to get away with using \addcontentsline{toc}{section}{whatever} along with \section*{whatever}. A bit clunky, but it should work. --Pekaje 15:16, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that. It does the job well. - Akamad 09:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

icons in computers

ther are 4 main types of icons. Resemblance icons,exempler icons,symbolic icons,arbitrary icons. what are the difference among the 4? which are used in windows? what are the advantages of each?

Perhaps you could look at the article Icon, or look up the meaning of Resemblance, Exemplar, Symbol and Arbitrary? This is not a place to get homework answers. —Daniel (‽) 10:21, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Odd task manager window

File:Task manager odd.jpg

Here it is

My task manager Ctrlaltdel recently went like this. What can I do to put it back to normal?--Keycard ^(talk) 13:46, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Double-click the gray area to return it to normal. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 13:49, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Replace it with Process Explorer ;) It's much better~, it's free, and easier to use. Oskar 17:25, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

You mean the "NO INFRINGEMENT INTENDED"? ;-) —Bromskloss 17:32, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

java

is there any way to find how many times a particular class has been instantiated using programming logic not by manual counting.

Define a static variable in the class, and increase it every time you initiate a new class. Observe

public class ExampleClass {
    private static int numberOfInstances = 0;
    
    public ExampleClass() {
        //Initiate class
        numberOfInstances++;
    }

    public static int getNumberOfInstances() {
        return numberOfInstances;
    }
}

cheers! Oskar 17:24, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Is that thread-safe? This has of course to do with how the Java system handles the humberOfInstances++. Is it atomic? —Bromskloss 17:44, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure whether it's thread safe or not. It's been a couple of years since I programmed Java seriously, and even then I didn't use much threads. This should be fine, I think. I guess one could create a counter-class which has two functions called increaseInstanceCount() and getInstanceCount() that are both synchronized. Still, it is a bit overkill. Oskar 17:52, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Java makes no guarantees of atomicity (for anything other than the operation of synchronized sections and the new atomic variables in java.util.concurrent). Depending on the implementation that ++ operation might be MT safe, but its certainly not MP safe. From java 5 onward, if you wanted it to be MP safe and wanted to avoid the clunky synched sections, you could AtomicInteger.incrementAndGet() instead of ++. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:10, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Could you make the constructor a monitor to ensure thread safety? - Rainwarrior 15:33, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The standard way to do this is to define another, synchronized method:

  public ExampleClass() {noteInstance(); /*...*/}
  public static synchronized void noteInstance() {numberOfInstances++;}
  public static synchronized int getNumberOfInstances() {return numberOfInstances;}

(The reader must also be synchronized, of course!) Of course, a static synchronized method just synchronizes on the Class object for its class, so the constructor could just do that itself:

 public ExampleClass() {synchronized(ExampleClass.class) {noteInstance();} /*...*/}

but not

 public ExampleClass() {synchronized(getClass()) {noteInstance();} /*...*/}

since the constructor is called when subclass objects are instantiated and then you could have conflicts between an ExampleClass object and a SubExampleClass object being constructed simultaneously. (Rainwarrior: it would be useless to make the constructor a monitor in the method sense, because each constructor call would lock a different object.) --Tardis 14:49, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

binary to decimal or hexadecimal

if a binary number has n digit then what is the number of bits and digits of its equivalent decimal number or hexadecimal number or vice-varsa. can anyone help me by telling the logic and theory for solving this type problem.

This is easily solved with logarithms. Assuming a number n is written in base b. Then the number of digits is

$\log _{b}(n)$

rounded down to the nearest integer. Then conversion between different based logarithms is easy, see Logarithm#Change of base. You should be able to work from there yourself, but if you want more detail, you should probably ask at the mathematics reference desk Oskar 17:21, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

You are supposed to round up, actually. Hmm, mabye it's even more accurate to do $(\log _{b}n)+1$, and then round down. Anyone agrees? —Bromskloss 17:39, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Ahh, yes, silly me. You are of course correct, round up, not down. Oskar 17:46, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

As far as binary to hex, it is well known by most computer programmers (and computer graphics people) that four binary digits equal one hex digit. That is why hex is used so much to represent binary data. --Kainaw ^(talk) 18:57, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

If you just want a rough extimate, note that 2⁶³ is a 64 bit binary number, or a 19 digit decimal number, so it takes about 3.4 bits to represent 1 digit. --Gerry Ashton 21:09, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Modem and Hyperterminal

I have just bought a new laptop and decided to plug my phoneline into it. I diealled out using Hyperterminal and itworked but there is a constant beep over the entire call, how can I stop this?

yours, Christopher

The beep is your modem trying to signal another modem. While some modems can indeed be configured as "voice devices" (essentially as sound cards rather than digital communication devices) HyperTerminal won't automatically do that. Instead you want to use a (rather neglected) application called dialler.exe (launch it from the run option), which (if your modem is of an acceptable type) will configure things so that you can use the modem as an ordinary voice phone (assuming you've got something like a headset plugged in to your soundcard). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:22, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Citing an acceptance speech with BibTeX

What is the BibTeX format for citing an acceptance speech for an award, for example a Nobel Prize lecture? —Keenan Pepper 17:51, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Ooo, exciting! Are you going there? —Bromskloss 18:54, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Um, no. I want to cite one from 1906, and it's not for the invention of a time machine. —Keenan Pepper 19:01, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Nobody knows? —Keenan Pepper 02:32, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Reading from a source and outputing it to standard out in linux

I'm fairly new at using linux and I had a question. What is the command for reading input from a specified source on a filesystem and outputing it to standard output in linux? Specifically, I wanted to read a number of random bytes from /dev/random and printing it to the console. Oskar 18:47, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

cat - so you could say cat /dev/urandom. But urandom is a binary device, so it'll chuck out a bunch of nonprintables that will probably drive your terminal insane. You could use od to turn it into something legible: cat /dev/urandom | od, which you can simplify to just be od < /dev/urandom. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:52, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, use head to stop the flow of random numbers at some point. --Kainaw ^(talk) 18:55, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

So like cat /dev/urandom | head -50 | od? Yeah, seems to work. Thanks! Oskar 19:00, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I just realised that if you use head you don't really need the cat. Neat things, these unix terminals.... Oskar 19:03, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

od can stop itself - od --read-bytes=50 < /dev/urandom. By default od prints an address line, and the data in octal - a more useful invocation would be od -An -t x1 --read-bytes=50 < /dev/urandom which will display 50 one-byte random hex numbers. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:06, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

url

how do you register a new url?

I assume you mean domain name. Just search for a "domain name registrar". Note: it is not free and whatever domain name you want is most likely already taken. --Kainaw ^(talk) 19:42, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Haha, that's a bit of a generalization, don't you think? I have very unique wants.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  04:07, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

expanding opcode

can anybody help me by explaining the theory for solving this type problem

A certain machine uses expandind opcode.it has 16 bit instructions and 6bit addresses.it supports one address and two address instructions only.if there are'n' two address instructions,the maximum number of one address instruction is---?

if possible then please explain by solving this problem.then it will be easy for me to understand.

I am going to assume you paid some attention in class and you know that a 16-bit instruction with two 6-bit addresses is using 12 of the 16 bits for addresses. That leaves 4 bits for the function. You may have no 1-address instructions that begin with the same 4-bit sequence as a 2-address function. However, 1-address functions can possibly use 10-bits (16-bits minus the 6-bit instruction). That should get you to the point that you can calculate how many total 4-bit instructions there are. The 1-address instructions may use that total minus "n". But, each 4-bit sequence used by the 1-address functions may form many instructions (using the extra 6-bits). --Kainaw ^(talk) 23:18, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

October 8

header file

assalamualaikum

mau nanya tentang header file,,contoh-contohnya,,dan fungsi yang ada pada masing-masing header file?

trus apa yang dimaksud dengan control statement, kata kunci pembentuk control statement, and contoh sederhana control statement —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Niamp (talk • contribs) .

Hello. This is the English Wikipedia. Your question seems like it's in some Indonesian language. Try the Indonesian Wikipedia or the Malay Wikipedia. —Keenan Pepper 01:04, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

The user apparently first created an article "Function of header file" asking their question in English, which of course was deleted and the user was forwarded here to RD. The original question was apparently asked in English, though only good morning..I'm nhiya..comes from Indonesia..I have some questions..do you know about the examples of header file,,and then the functions of h... appears in the deletion log.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  04:05, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Office and Image editing software

Is there a free (in price) office suite and image manipulation program that is as good as Microsoft Office 2007 and Photoshop CS 9, respectively, available? Please do not say OpenOffice.org or GIMP, they're nowhere near as good.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 02:04, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

You're absolutely right. They are better. Listen dude, if you want to use Microsoft Office, no one is stopping you from going out and buying it. If you don't feel like paying for an office suite, and I don't blame you, don't talk trash about the best we have to offer. OpenOffice.org is one the highest quality open source programs avaliable, and is the de facto free alternative to M$ Office. The GIMP can do everything to a photo that Photo Shop can. If you want something as good as the original, get the original. The most I can offer you as a answer to your question is a toned down expression of my current state of rage, plus a mere suggestion for alternative programs, but I assure you, they are not going to be as good as OO.o or the GIMP. Abiword as a M$ word replacement and Inkscape as a vector graphics editor. You may also want to take a look at GIMPShop --Russoc4 03:42, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Questions like that used to upset me. Then, I wrote a program (I forget what program it was) and a few people wrote to tell me it was nice. Then, one guy said it was terrible because it didn't do what he wanted it to do. Before I was able to think about his complaint, another person replied that my program was terrible because it only did what I said it would do and it didn't do what some random moron on the Internet wanted it to do. Now, I remember that comment and read the question here as, "OO and Gimp suck because they aren't identical in every way to Office and Photoshop." It quickly goes from a comment about the opensource software to a comment about the questioner. --Kainaw ^(talk) 15:27, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Now, you can either not bite the questioner and understand that that was an objective question and not expecting any specific answer, or you can continue with personal attacks. Judging from my understanding of mob mentality, it'll probably be the second.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 00:05, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

How are all these n00bs getting such cool animated avatars?

Many people hae veryu cool avatars but i cant seem to find where they're getting such a variety from.--Technic 07:04, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

What avatars are you talking about? Are you refering to userboxes maybe? —Mitaphane _talk 08:14, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I think he is referring to message boards that let you have an "avatar" along with your username. There are many free download sites and many people just steal them from others. --Kainaw ^(talk) 14:24, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

If you Google for "avatar" you'll get many hundreds of sites with thousands of avatars. Most people don't make their own, but download theirs from one of these sites, or even from another user who had a particularly cool avatar... — QuantumEleven 11:47, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

And to be honest, it's not hard to make your own. All you need is an image editor that can produce animated gifs... such as The GIMP (each frame is a layer).--Frenchman113 on wheels! 00:08, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

duplicate fonts

Hello. I do a lot of graphics work such as newspaper advertisements, posters and the like. Therefore, I use a lot of different TrueType fonts, probably more than most people. I have many in my Windows^® fonts folder, but to keep the computer running efficiently, I keep a few thousand more on a disc for occasional use. Lately I’ve noticed that I have quite a few duplicate fonts on the disc under different file names. For example, “News Gothic” is there under the file name nwgthc.ttf as well as the file name newsg.ttf. And “Licenz Plate” exists as both licenz.ttf and l_plate.ttf. Those are just a couple of examples — I have found many others, and there are likely a lot I haven’t found. (I suspect this happened from acquiring fonts from different sources at different times, and not realizing I already had a particular font.) Anyway, while in the Windows^® fonts folder they show up under their proper title, on the disc they appear as just the file name. Is there anyway to determine which are duplicates without loading them all into the fonts folder (and slowing the computer down to molasses), and without opening each file and comparing them manually (which is time-consuming and I will still probably miss some). Thank you for your help. — Michael J 13:49, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

How about a Font-management program? While the article isn't one of our best, I'm sure it could give you a starting base from which to work off.Harryboyles 14:16, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Disable JS

How do I disable JS in IE? -- TheGreatLlama ^{(speak to the Llama!)} 13:59, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

You can't. Use Mozilla Firefox with NoScript. --Russoc4 15:36, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes you can. It's in Internet Options, advanced tab IIRC. By the way, firefox2 RC2 came out yesterday and it sucks big time.. might have to reconsider my ff fanboyishdom :( --froth^{T C} 17:28, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I thought so too, but I can't seem to find it.. And yes, it sucks, but because none of my extensions work with it. --Russoc4 13:41, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

That's actually fairly easy to fix. All extensions come in an xpi file that you download and install. Open that xpi file with an archiver (I think the format is just a zip file with a different name), you should be able to find a config file in there. Edit that config file (it's easy, it's just an xml file, and it's clear where the version numbers are) to allow Firefox 2.0, save it (in the archive), and then install the new, edited xpi. That should do it! Oskar 15:34, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Turning UT:GOTY into pure engine

Hi!

I have Unreal Tournament v436. Any way to turn this UT into a version without weapons etc. so that it is just the pure engine?

Greets,HardDisk 18:10, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

You can download the source code if that's what you mean. Take out what you think doesn't constitute the "pure engine" and recompile it. Not sure what you'd do with a compiled engine with no user input or game at all in it though... --froth^{T C} 22:53, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I want to remove weapons/health packs completely from game. HardDisk 13:54, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

PS: I have downlaoded the code, but as I have SourceSafe installed by mistake, I cannot view it:-(

Notepad it or open in an IDE then. Splintercellguy 02:41, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

what linux distro

I want command line only (and i dont want to download some huge desktop environment because I don't need it), with packages integrated (no separate downloading) that includes at least network drivers, g++ compiler, basic stuff. Also I've already tried ubuntu server but I can't get it to install on virtual pc.. so any others? --froth^{T C} 21:38, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I use Redhat or Fedora without installing KDE or Gnome. If you just want a small install, Knoppix is very small but does have a GUI. --Kainaw ^(talk) 21:44, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I use Slackware for which you can download just the bits you need (I get it from the UK mirror service, but there are lots of places). It is not the simplest to instal, but it is pretty straightforward and gives a fast lean platform to work with. Madmath789 22:01, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I've installed Ubuntu Server on a virtual machine under QEMU, and gotten it to work that way. You might also want to look into Debian, which is perfectly willing to install without X. To be honest, once you've installed your distribution, you probably won't care what you're running. grendel|khan 17:32, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

DVD to iPod

Does anyone know of a free one step windows program to transfer DVDs to an iPod compatable format? Also, I would prefer a fast downloader. I don't n eed HD quality, just good enough for an iPod video. Thanks. QWERTY | DVORAK 22:35, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Encoding is a tricky business. Personally I'd use DVD Decryptor to rip the VOBs, and then mencoder or ffmpeg (download) to go to mp4. --froth^{T C} 23:05, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

You don't need to rip the VOBs first if you're going to use mencoder. Something like mencoder dvd://1 -vf scale=h:w -oac mp3lame -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mp4 -of mpeg -o file.mpg ought to do the trick; fiddle with the options to get the desired effect. Dysprosia 01:25, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Isn't there a free one step program? I am just looking for a quick solution. QWERTY | DVORAK 00:39, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

That is a "one step program". You only have to run one program, albeit with a lot of options. Dysprosia 07:14, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Personally I use DVD Decrypter to rip the VOBs, then Videora to convert those to .MP4, which iPod accepts. It doesn't take very long, and after doing it once you'll get the hang of it.

mandatory password changes

what's the point? Everyone just adds one to whatever number's at the end of the string.

If someone gets your password, or even everybody's password, mandatory password changes mean that whoever has these passwords will find them useless the next time the mandatory password change occurs. Even adding one to the number at the end of the password means an increase in security. Dysprosia 07:21, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

That increase in security is assuming that people aren't writing their passwords down on sticky notes and putting them on their monitor since they have to change their password every time they just begin remembering what it is. --Kainaw ^(talk) 15:11, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Lost data in Microsoft Word

I just closed a Word document and accidentally clicked "No" when I was prompted to save changes. Is there any way I can go back to the last autosave file? Please help! Thanks in advance. --Grace 23:24, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, MS Word opens a temporary file which is named "~$<name of file>"(look at the directory of a file when you open up Word) when it autosaves. MS Word automatically deletes this file on exit of the program. However, I don't think file shows up in Windows Recycle Bin. You can try a deletion recovery tool, but depending on how long ago this was(and how MS Word handles those temp files) that file may be lost forever. —Mitaphane _talk 04:03, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I figured it out myself a little after I posted this question, but, for the benefit of others who might be asking the same question: Search for "autorecovery" on the Microsoft Office help website. You should find directions to the location of your autosave files. Saved my day! --Grace 05:17, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

October 9

iPod FS

Is there a freeware/open source HFS+ file system reader for use in Windows XP? In other words, I'm wondering if I can at least view the data on my Mac formatted iPod on my PC. Thanks. 68.39.175.57 00:42, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The standard open-source packages for reading HFS disks are hfstools and hfsutils, but I don't think there's an up-to-date Windows port, and I've never seen a Windows GUI for them. As far as I know, the only complete HFS+ file system implementations for Windows are MacOpener and MacDrive, both shareware. XPlay from MediaFour, makers of MacDrive, is an iPod specific utility and the cheapest of the commercial options at $30, free trial available. If anyone knows of free alternatives, I'd be interested to hear about them too. -CarelessHair 01:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Would something like vPod help? It looks pretty music-oriented, but it's free. grendel|khan 16:57, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

forcing X into 16 bit color from boot

This page says for running xubuntu on virtual pc, you have to force x window into 16 bit colors. I can do this by entering safe mode but I'd rather just pass it as a boot option and run normally. The parameter vga=791 doesn't work, nor does opening the vesa menu at the boot options screen and selecting 16 bit color. Thanks --froth^{T C} 00:54, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Replacing HTML span tags with old style markup

I have some files which use the <span> tag, and matching CSS, for all style markup (eg. span class="italic"). I would like to convert some of these tags to nice retro HTML 2 <i>, <b> and so on, for compatibility with non-CSS software (some word processors and ebook readers, particularly). Obviously, a simple search and replace would deal with the opening tags, but replacing all </span> with </i> would not be good, so I need to replace only the right ones. Could somebody recommend some suitable software (preferably free and for Windows), or, if this can be done with a regex, could someone give me an example? Thanks. -CarelessHair 01:22, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

If you're lucky enough to be fed valid XML you could try XSLT processing. As for regular expressions, they cannot cope with arbitrary nesting, but your inputs will not be arbitrary. The simplicity of the necessary regular expression depends on details of your input. It might be as simple as searching for <span class="italic"> followed by an arbitrary string followed by </span>, or it might not.

Incidentally, class="italic" is considered a bad way to use the class attribute. If you really want italics everwhere it appears, then use style="font-style:italic" or <i> itself, or (better) a symantic markup like class="booktitle" or <em>. And if you don't want italics everywhere it appears, then this is horribly misleading markup! --KSmrq^T 05:40, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion: XSLT might well be the tool I'm looking for, if I knew how to use it! Could you give me an example stylesheet that would turn span class="italic" and span class="bold" into <i> and <b> respectively? The files don't validate as XML (duplicate ids, no alt tags etc), but the tags are correctly nested, which I imagine is the important thing? Unfortunately, italics don't always appear on their own with no other spans around, so the simplest search and replace won't do the trick. Finally, just to clarify: I didn't create these files, I'm just having to deal with them! My reaction to seeing class="italic" was the same as yours: Eeep! -CarelessHair 08:21, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately for you, XSLT is defined in terms of XML trees, so the first stage in a tranformation is parsing the input into that form. And while the tradition in HTML was for browsers to tolerate almost anything, for XML the opposite approach was chosen. Either you must first clean up the input to produce valid XML, or you must choose a different method. Although HTML Tidy may be of some assistance in achieving validation, from your description a fair amount of manual intervention will be probably be needed as well. And it sounds like a simple search-and-replace may not suffice either. If the HTML parses acceptably, maybe you can use a DOM-manipulation approach (using JavaScript). --KSmrq^T 10:15, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Spell checker

How do you get a spell (or grammar) checker in a foreign language, such as Spanish, using Microsoft Word? zafiroblue05 | Talk 05:58, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

You can change the language Word is using by going to Tools/Language/Define Language/ and selecting Spanish. Then use the checker as you normally use it.--RiseRover|^talk 09:28, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Zipf's Law

Do computer languages follow Zipf's law?

It is highly likely. Some "words" in programming are very common. Others are not. It shouldn't be hard to pick out the most common word - "if"? Just do a word frequency counter on one of your own programs and see if it fits the Zipfian frequency. --Kainaw ^(talk) 19:43, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I doubt it. Even if you considered codified "language" to be words (for example considering == to be a word), it wouldn't follow human language patterns unless it was a very new programmer writing a very simple program and writing his code out in codeish english, like:

Repeat (Inc Counter) While Counter < 10
If Counter eq 7
Print "Seven"
Else
Print "Not seven"

Which is easily readable phonetically and probably works with zipfs law. The problem you're going to run into is variable names (which certainly don't follow that exponential rule of usage) and the extremely limited "vocabulary" that you might have trouble seeing a pattern from. --froth^{T C} 22:28, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Is there any ersearch on this?

I thought about doing it on my programs, but there's a catch - you have to tokenize the source code. I'm too lazy to tokenize the source code, so I didn't do it. --Kainaw ^(talk) 01:23, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

base 64 encoding?

To encode an image, by base 64 encoding, and to send it with XML files to somewhere else and to be decrypted there. Pls anyone give me a brief idea how to do? Is this done by built in functions or we hav to do that..I'm using Java to send XML files.

Try google and you'll find sites like this. --Kainaw ^(talk) 15:09, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

What is that thing on the end of cables (not the plug)

On some computer cables, there are cylindrical objects attached to the cable (see below)

The funny thing

What is it called, and what is it for?

Please answer my question on my talk page

Thanks Stwalkerster 16:00, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Maybe a 1:1 transformer that separates the signal from the DC power? - Rainwarrior 16:17, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Or no, if that's a USB cable, they are already separate (on a phone line though, something like that might be appropriate if you aren't using the telephone system's power). I don't think it's strain relief though, as the added weight would actually add strain to the cable; the strain is generally the worst at the ends anyway, which is where such a relief usually happens. Maybe it is some sort of device? Maybe a transformer to alter the voltage of the data itself? - Rainwarrior

Strain relief. Sorry, we don't answer in other places. --LarryMac 16:14, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The strain relief is the ridged rubber part at the end of the plug. The questioner appears to be asking about the large plastic tube on the cable. I have a USB cable in my trashcan that has one. So, stomp, stomp, stomp... It has a coil of metal wires inside of it. Also, the wire doesn't go straight through. It makes a loop inside of the plastic case. My opinion - it is for blocking RF interference. --Kainaw ^(talk) 16:37, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it is some kind of protection against interference, like Kainaw said. I got 2 of them with my camcorder and it said in the manual to attach them to the USB cable and the cable that connects it to the TV. There seemed to be graphite or something similar inside them to act as a shield. --Ukdan999 17:39, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

You guys have never heard of a choke??? --Jmeden2000 19:35, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's definitely an inductive choke, which is just a cylinder of iron (usually) that filters out AC noise. —Keenan Pepper 23:07, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

If you're sure that it's a choke, why doesn't someone add it to the article? Dismas|^(talk) 00:36, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, is there some way to make Choke (electronics) a findable article. If you know "a cylinder thing on a wire that inhibits some sort of frequency of electricity or eletromagnetic waves", how do you find the choke article? --Kainaw ^(talk) 13:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

What would you suggest? A redirect from a cylinder thing on a wire that inhibits some sort of frequency of electricity or eletromagnetic waves to Choke (electronics) ?? It's something you either know or don't know, I think you should suggest MFRs print 'choke (electronic)' on them as they are produced, or for minimum confusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choke_(electronics) ... just a thought. --Jmeden2000 13:58, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I would just like to clarify that I mean the cylindrical object with wire on either side as Kainaw says. It is on a USB cable and that is the only one on that cable. However, there are other cables at the back of the computer that have these things. One is on a DC power supply for the monitor (TFT LCD), one on the VGA cable, 2 on another USB cable, and another on another USB cable. As some of you have said, a choke to protect against interference sounds like a reasonable explaination, so I assume it works in a similar way to repeater coils on telephone circuits.

Thanks for your help.

Stwalkerster 15:26, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Jmeden2000, may be some note could be added to the cable page, to mention an electromagnetic interference as the noise source, and a choke as noise reducing solution. --CiaPan 18:26, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I have added a section per your suggestion. If anyone can think of other places where this info would be helpful, let me know. --Jmeden2000 19:17, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Cool! Now, when I search for "cable interference" I can find "choke". Thanks. --Kainaw ^(talk) 01:22, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

October 10

iPod

Is the ipod nano aluminum 8 gig a 5th generation ipod or is that just the ipod video?

From the iPod article: "As of 2006, the lineup consists of the 5th generation iPod that plays videos; the smaller, second generation iPod nano; and the display-less iPod shuffle. These models were updated in 2006." It's also explained in the article for the iPod nano. Dismas|^(talk) 06:10, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Dos Exec CMOS Password erase

I have already asked this question before,but what makes me ask again is that you said it was not possible to access bios through dos.BUT I HAVE AN EXEC which can do just that.SO I would really like to know how that works. Also we have bios update through dos, so is it possible to have a virus/rootkit implanted in the bios? if yes, how do we detect and remove it?

The bios isn't stored on CMOS memory. On most bioses (which are stored on flash chips- flash isn't cmos) it's possible to "flash" them, which means erase and rewrite them, to do updates. As for the virus thing, it's very possible but I've never heard of a virus that actually does it. IIRC there's acutually a BIOS feature on some BIOSes that validates bios flashes before allowing itself to be written to.

The BIOS interfaces with the data stored on the CMOS memory. The CMOS is powered by a small battery and keeps track of system time and settings used by the BIOS (like the boot password). You shouldn't try to interface with the CMOS on your own without the help of your BIOS (though technically you can by writing to index port 70h and listening on data port 71h) since it's so highly BIOS-specific. Whoever said it wasn't possible is just wrong --froth^{T C} 20:44, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

The CIH virus is an example of a virus that could corrupt the BIOS. Splintercellguy 03:12, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Seeking Info about Building Controlling Computer

Here it goes, We are a group of students who are working on our Senior Project, we are assigned to construct a Instructor Computer that will control all the PCs connected to a network domain, this Instructor PC will have Administrative rights on all the other PCs, and will be able to access them and do the required system setup. We are configuring this Computer to serve the instructors for teaching purposes. So we are wondering if anyone could provide us with useful information or links, and some details of some existing systems which would help us in implementing our project. Thank you in advance.

operating systems

what are the functions of a ready queue?

I'm rather surprised that there is no article on ready queue. So, I won't tell you to read the article. A ready queue doesn't really have functions. It is a holding area for jobs that are allowed to process. Normally, a long-term scheduler puts jobs in the ready queue when they are allowed to run and removes them if they are to be suspended. The short-term scheduler picks jobs out of the ready queue to run. The order depends on the OS. Usually, OS-design classes spend a good 2 months on job scheduling. --Kainaw ^(talk) 14:45, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

It is briefly mentioned in the CS article on scheduling. Operating systems manage a number of resources, including CPU time. Different tasks competing for CPU time each have dependencies on other resources. For example, a task consuming large quantities of data will depend on the next chunk of data being read from a hard drive into main memory, and until that data is available there is no point in scheduling the task to run; it is not "ready". Another task may be performing a peer-to-peer file exchange, and have everything it needs to process the next packet of data; it is "ready". The scheduling code will keep a queue of the tasks that are able to step up and do something useful at the next available window of CPU time; this is a "ready queue". --KSmrq^T 23:14, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

operating

what are the solution requirements to critical sections?

why are these solutions to the critical sections needed?

what does flushd do on a UNIX system?

what is a two paged table and how does it compare itself to the simple page table array?

what is buffering in input/output systems?

why is this buffering required in the input/output systems?

list a case where buffering in input/output systems has an advantage & a disadvantage?

hio ni ufala

I suggest you check your textbook, and in any case do your own homework. — QuantumEleven 13:41, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

LZMA

How can we implement LZMA compression in c++/c#/j# applications I downloaded the LZMA SDK but i could not understand anything from the readme. Can You please explain --Utkarshkukreti 09:54, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Free video editing software

Hi, I just need a free video editing program which is compatable with .MOV format. Any of you guys/girls know of one? I just wanna upload a video to YouTube, cheers!--Hamedog_Talk|^@ 14:38, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

.MOV is just a container, and I think VLC Media Player can output to MOV. For editing, there is a List of video editing software.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 00:11, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

You don't need .MOV format for Youtube. I'd recommend just using AVI--its an open standard and supported by all of the best video-editing programs. I use it for all my Youtube videos. For a codec, use Xvid or WMV9, but generally YouTube supports pretty much anything, though they will convert it to their own FLV format anyways once you upload it. — Dark Shikari ^talk/_contribs 13:33, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

These are not the answers I am looking for. I will give you the situation. I want to put a video on youtube. My camera records in the .MOV format. As Windows Movie Maker doesn't accept the .MOV format, could someone please tell me of a free piece of software which I can use to edit these videos. Thanks alot, Hamish.--Hamedog_Talk|^@ 12:45, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

List of video editing software. We're all volunteers here, and yelling at us will not get you faster answers.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 19:53, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't yelling at all, I was saying I these answers aren't what I was hoping for, maybe my question wasn't clear.--Hamedog_Talk|^@ 12:47, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Say, your camera records in lossy video? WTF, if I were you, I'd just return it and demand a refund.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 21:47, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Err, if it's just a normal P&S digital still camera, that doesn't really sound that odd. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:56, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

The list of video eiditng software might help. If none of those support .MOV, you jsut have to find a way to convert from MOV to something more editable, and then open that up. You can use VLC Media Player to do this, or through a million other methods, such as using RAD Tools. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:56, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Internet information

The internet blows my mind and I wonder does anyone know where all the information on the internet is stored?

On thousands of servers around the world. See Web server for an explaination. -- Zanimum 16:08, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Everywhere! You might want to look at the internet article, which explains a bit about how all the networks and servers interconnect to make up the whole thing. --LarryMac 16:08, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Google Video charging

How does an independent video producer charge on Google Video? I can't seem to find a page on their official site, describing how-to. -- Zanimum 16:04, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Checking out their upload page ([3]), it looks like the service is still in "beta"? They make reference to having to "verify" the video before selling. I imagine this is something they still need to work out for smaller independent producers. I would try finding an email to get further info, if you can't find the info on their site. —Mitaphane _talk 00:37, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Resuming an SCP transfer?

I'm backing up a machine that's on the other side of the internet. I have ssh access to this machine, and I'm using scp to copy its contents. However, it has a lot to back up; about 34GB. I'm getting about 100k/s, so it'll be done in four or five days, it seems. However, if something goes wrong, I'll have to start at the beginning, as scp will merrily overwrite all its previous work. I don't have the option of mounting the remote drive; if I did, I'd just use cp -vru source dest to take advantage of previous copying done. Is there any possible way of causing scp to skip existing files? (Or better yet, skip existing files which are not older nor smaller than the remote file?) grendel|khan 17:08, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Check out rsync, it can hash and cross check files for similarities before copying, so you can 'sync' one location to another without moving all new data. What kind of files are you backing up? It works really well for large groups of small files (like an entire server's filesystem), I imagine it may also work somewhat well for a large single archive file. --Jmeden2000 18:00, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I also recommend rsync (it can easily run over ssh, making things easier). --cesarb 18:59, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

The situation is an entire FS, not just an archive file. (If it were one large file, I'd have just used sftp, which supports resuming.) I ended up using SSHFS, which has the added benefit of handling symlinks. (Using scp just started duplicating things, which led to serious issues when there was a symlink to ".".) I think rsync requires a copy of rsyncd running on the server, doesn't it? The server in question is an old SunOS 5.8 machine that I can't install anything new on, and all I have to work with is its copy of sshd. grendel|khan 19:36, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

DVD to mpeg

I used a DVD recorder to transfer a home movie to a DVD. How would I go about taking the video and extracting it onto my computer as a MPEG file, to edit in Windows Movie Maker or iDVD on my mac? 38.139.33.66 17:23, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Mencoder can do the job, but it's a command-line tool. There are Windows front-ends available, but I have no idea whether they're mature enough to be useful at this point. --Robert Merkel 08:01, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Doom9 --Kjoonlee 23:14, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

help with internet

i use firefox as my main internet. but i am also signed up to a bt one that came with my bt broadband. whenever i open a webpage from something that isnt firefox, it opens up bt internet instead of firefox. how do i stop this happening? thanks --86.141.226.175 17:32, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

You're thinking of web browsers, not "internet". In any case, this should be easy to fix.

In Firefox (assuming you're using the latest version):

Click the Tools menu at the top, then Options.

Choose the General tab. Near the middle where it mentions Default browser, there is a Check Now button which you should click.

A dialog box should pop up asking if you want to make Firefox the default browser; click Yes.

If you're not using the latest version, go here and download it. The instructions I just gave will vary slightly for older versions. You should keep up to date anyways for security purposes. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 18:08, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks--86.141.226.175 18:39, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Exception handling in MATLAB

I'm solving a big problem that involves solving a boundary value problem for millions of different boundary conditions. For some of those conditions, the Jacobian of the system becomes singular, and my program (which uses bvp4c inside a loop) stops immediately. I want it to skip that iteration, and continue with other boundary conditions. Unfortunately, there's no way I know to check beforehand if the Jacobian will be singular. Is there any exception handling in Matlab at all? deeptrivia (talk) 19:07, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, so Matlab does have try and catch. I've been reference-desk-happy lately. deeptrivia (talk) 21:08, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Cheapskate question about internet cable

Oh knowledgeable and wise IT Wikipedians, I seem to have damaged my 50 ft internet cable's plug head enough that it now needs replacing (bendy bit snapped off and a couple of the little coloured wires are cut). Is it possible for a store to just repair this by fixing in a new plug head, or do I have to go buy a new one? Thaaaanks. Bwithh 20:26, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Assuming you can find a place with the appropriate connector (I'm assuming it's an RJ-45)and a crimping tool, it should be simple enough. Not sure what kind of shop you'd need to find though. If you lived nearby, I'd be happy to help, so keep that in mind for the next time ;-) --LarryMac 20:32, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like you are referring to a Cat 5 cable. They are not expensive. I would suggest buying a new one. You can replace the ends, but you will need to buy a Cat 5 cable crimper and a new end (you'll have to buy a pack - they don't come one-per-package). All in all, you'll end up paying more than just buying a cable. --Kainaw ^(talk) 20:33, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks very much guys! I'm not sure if its a Cat 5 or a RJ-45 (have to go home and check)... the wikipedia pictures look very alike to me. I'll bring it to the store tomorrow and see if they want to throw me out... Bwithh 20:44, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to be confusing. Cat 5 is the cable. RJ-45 is the connector on the end. A network cable consisting of Cat 5 cable and two RJ-45 connectors goes by both names and many others, such as "patch cable", "ethernet cable", "that blue cable with the fat phone plug on the end"... --Kainaw ^(talk) 20:52, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

If you can make friends with someone who does network cabling, they can replace an end in less than a minute with a part cost of almost nothing. However, if you do it yourself you will need to buy or borrow a tool, and exercise some care in stripping the ends and in wire order. [4] A basic replacement cable can be found for less than the cost of the tool. A few cautions are in order: Longer cables sometimes wind their way through awkward places, so extracting or running the cable can be the biggest part of the job. The older Cat 5 cable has been superseded by Cat 5e (with Cat 6 also available, though probably not worth worrying about here); be sure to get Cat 5e. Cables differ in construction details and quality, including solid or stranded, and booted or unbooted ends; the longer the cable the more it matters. In some circumstances building codes (or common sense) may dictate the use of more expensive plenum cables, to guard against the rapid spread of a fire. Color doesn't matter unless a facility is wired according to a consistent convention; but do label the ends so there is no later confusion about what connects where. --KSmrq^T 00:08, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Rays and lines in MS Word

Does anybody know of some sort of downloadable add-on for MS Word that would allow me to put a single or double headed arrow above two letters to indicate the notation for a ray or a line? User101010 22:03, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Have you checked the MS website? They have piles of stuff there. Anchoress 22:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry... I should have mentioned the fact that I checked there. I found one thing on MS that looked close but it was for Mac.User101010 00:59, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I answered this question at WP:RD/MA. --jh51681 00:47, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Hans Reiser

Hans Reiser, leader of the ReiserFS project, has been arrested today on the suspicion of murdering his wife. It's likely this article will get a lot of traffic once Digg, Slashdot, etc pick up on the story. Does anyone (attendees at OS conferences etc.) have a photo of him - Google images finds a few, but none look very like the one on his website. Also a few people should add the article to their watching lists, I think. Thanks. Viva Tibbles

Nice catch but this should probably go on WP:HD --froth^{T C} 22:10, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Debian and MSN

Say I'm using Debian, and I want to chat with my friends on MSN. I also want my microphone and webcam to be working. How do I do this? --HappyCamper 22:21, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Use amsn. Microphone, webcam, everything. --froth^{T C} 22:27, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

October 11

webmail problem

Ever since I started using Thunderbird (maybe as early as Outlook Express?), all the emails I get go through POP3 and for some reason doesn't appear in my webmail program (ISP provided; Cox Communications). I had no problems with that until I decided to view some of my new emails from a public computer through Thunderbird. Now the emails have disappeared. I can't access them from home, either through my client or webmail. Is there anyway I can view those 'lost' emails again? (By the way, the public computer I used is 'cleaned' every day)

Probably not — the nature of POP and IMAP is to collect mail from a server for local storage, although they each provide an operating mode where messages are copied instead of moved. (I tend to use webmail exclusively, despite its indirectness and clumsiness, precisely to avoid the problem of multiple computers with no way of knowing about each other's email caches.) If you talk to your ISP, there's a (slim) chance that they may still be able to retrieve a copy for you; on your own there's an even slimmer chance that the messages are there but marked read in some way. You can check this for POP by connecting to the server manually; see the article for how to impersonate Thunderbird. You just want to see if the server states that any messages exist at all. Good luck. --Tardis 14:56, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Transitioning from Win XP to Linux

I'm a high school student. I'm really good with computers and have a lot of experience with Windows, and am running XP Home, but only minimal exposure to Linux. I'd like to set up a Linux dual boot on the same hard drive as Windows (space is in abundance) on my home computer, and I'm trying to choose a distro.

My considerations are:

• A free distro I can get online.
• Ease of transition. (This includes minimal reliance on the command line. It also includes an installer program, preferably one that will set up the dual boot with little input. This doesn't necessarily mean overall ease of use.)
• Stability.
• Security from Internet threats.
• Performance (one of my biggest complaints with Windows). This includes making the most of my AGP card during 3-D gaming.
• Running the following cross-platform apps efficiently and reliably:
  • Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and eventually Sunbird
  • OpenOffice.org
  • Inkscape
  • The GIMP
  • NetBeans IDE for Java
  • LimeWire
  • BitTorrent
  • Battle for Wesnoth
  • Folding@Home
• Finding FLOSS equivalents of Google Desktop (searching, desktop widgets, sidebar organizer) and iTunes (including iPod syncing and reading all my .aac files).
• Finding FLOSS apps for 3-D modelling, Web design, bookkeeping, and chat on Google Talk.
• Letting the two OS's open each other's files. (My Windows XP partition is NTFS.)
• Accessing the Internet, a shared printer and files through a Windows 2000 PC on the LAN.
• Being able to use TrueType fonts would also be good, since I have quite a collection.

Things that aren't really issues include disk space and local multi-user support.

Can anyone suggest distros? Should I go with KDE or GNOME? NeonMerlin 03:23, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Try suse. Its installer is great (and yast makes retrieving/updating packages a breeze) though it tends to go a little overboard giving linux way too much hard drive space (totally configurable with nice GUI if you know what everything means). Probably the least stable of any distro I've used, but it comes with openoffice, gimp, wesnoth. Not sure about limewire but there are certainly bt clients available. for ipod you should look at gtkpod. Keep in mind that basically any distro will support anything another distro will support.. program support isn't a question you should be asking. I know theres a new linux tool that lets you mount ntfs, and IIRC there are a few windows hacks that let you mount some of the various linux filesystems. BTW you shouldnt be afraid of a command line installer; it's often more intuitive than a gui especially if it explains options well or walks you through the install. As for 3d gaming.. if you have windows installed don't use linux to play your games (excepting those nifty linux games of course like wesnoth and kconquer or whatever that anacreon clone is called), besides it's a real bear to wrestle with 3d card drivers in linux. I actually haven't used gnome much but KDE seems much more windows like and pretty while gnome is utilitarian. If the main reason you want to "switch" is for performance then rethink your decision.. a lot of performance bottlenecks present in windows are also problems in linux and of course oss can be just as poorly designed as proprietary and a lot of geeks hate linux just as much as windows.. don't expect salvation from all your computer problems, it's just a different platform. good luck --froth^{T C} 06:09, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I can strongly recommend Ubuntu. I know a freshman in high school with relatively little computer experience who was given a LiveCD, installed it, and has used it ever since. Its far easier to use than Windows, but at the same time can be extremely powerful for experts, as its based off of Debian. — Dark Shikari ^talk/_contribs 13:30, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

As for KDE/Gnome, I have been using KDE for a very long time. For the last two weeks, I've been trying to get used to Gnome - just to have a feel for what it is like. I have found very few reasons to prefer Gnome over KDE, but many reasons to prefer KDE over Gnome. However, I am coming from the point of view: "KDE allows me to do xxxxxx. How do I do that in Gnome?" If I was a seasoned Gnome user going to KDE, I'm sure I'd have similar issues. --Kainaw ^(talk) 20:00, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

IMHO, I'd suggest Ubuntu or Kubutnu (the KDE equivalent), and to download Automatix (or Easy Ubuntu) to more easily install video drivers / codecs / some applications / etc. It's easy as pie. I personally prefer GNOME because it seems more slick, but you can give Live CDs of both a go to see which you prefer.

Down the list:

• Most or all of the software should be easily installable in Ubutnu using the built-in GUI frontend for apt-get (Synaptic). You may have to add (or uncomment) the universe repository from your /etc/apt/sources.list in order to gain access to more applications, but that's easy.
• An equivalent of Google Desktop's search would be Beagle. The widget stuff can be done with different things, depending on the desktop / window manager. I don't know much in that regard, except that the KDE thing for the job is SuperKaramba, and Gnome has GDesklets (GNOME's is built-in, KDE's is either built-in or will be).
• Automatix has an insane number of iTunes equivalents builtin with stupid FLOSS names which I can't remember. It can also install GNUpod easily (part of its iPod collection), among things.
• Modelling: Wings 3d or Blender. Web design: err, it depends on what you mean by that.; Bookkeeping: no idea, and it depends on your needs ; Google Talk: see GAIM or any other Jabber client
• Accessing partitions: Captive NTFS is the most reliable on the Linux side (requires Windows' NTFS.sys, which is no issue as you obviously own it), though FLOSS drivers are being developed. On the Windows side, this driver.
• Accessing the internet is pie. Printers may be another thing, and it really depends on the printer itself, as well as how easy the deskop you choose makes it.
• To install truetype fonts, you need to follow these directions, specifically the ones at the top of the list. Yes, you need to use the command line. It doesn't hurt :P

Basically, Ubuntu + Automatix makes it easy. You're probably going to have to use the command line eventually with just about any distro, so it's nice to learn not to be afraid of it; however, Ubuntu is as minimal with it as you're going to get, so long as your computer configuration isn't particularily insane and you use Automatix to install any video drivers you need. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:01, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Ubuntu all teh way. --Russoc4 21:16, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I've been trying a similar thing. For some reason when i tried installing Ubuntu on my PC with a CD from it's distributor It has problems partitioning my harddrive(atleast i think so). I do not want to use partition magic or anyother software to do the partition. Can Ubuntu partition it from the installer it comes with on the CD? --Agester 01:14, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I have tried Ubuntu and it doesn't seem to give the same flexibililty as other distro's do. In general, there seems to be a move towards the ms philosophy of "don't worry, we'll do it for you" which works very nice if that is what yoo want but leaves you in the cold when it isn't. There should be both the simple fast ms way and the 'down-to-basics' way that is more traditionally the Linux style. Suse does this fairly well. Also, I've read in a C'T test that Suse is better than Ubuntu and Fedora at virtualisation, even giving the option of running WinXP in a Linux window, with vanderpool / xen. I haven't tried it yet, but given your goals it might be worth checking out. Btw, you should be able to get any distro online (I downloaded Suse 10.1). The only reason to buy it is for the ease of use, the support and possibly books that come with it. DirkvdM 08:18, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and I've tried both Gnome and KDE and I have a slight preference for KDE. But there are just too many little differences that might make a big difference to some, while being irrelevant to others. You'll just have to try them both yourself. If only there were a totally configurable desktop environment. What I dream of is every right click on a desktop feature giving me a link to a list of all the pieces of code that control that bit (possibly more user friendly than just the code, but it would be a start). DirkvdM 08:25, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

MS Word annoying me

OK, so I've got lots of customised auto-correct entries in Word to make typing easier. But some days, I'm typing away and I try to invoke one, but it doesn't make the correction I want it to. I look at the list and, what do you know, it's not there anymore. One day it was there, the next it's gone. Why does this happen, and is there anything I can do to stop it? Many thanks. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 09:27, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure you're always checking Auto Correct? Because there's also Auto Text, and they are similar in some ways. Auto Correct (and Auto Text) is one of the things that can be customised to individual templates, so is it possible that some of your entries are saved to custom templates and not to your universal template? Anchoress 09:34, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's definitely auto-correct I'm talking about. I think you're right about the templates being the problem, though. I probably saved the entries on one template, then created a new document from another template and that is why they are not appearing. Which seems kind of flaky to me - why don't they appear on all templates I use? Doh! Thanks for the help, anyway. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 09:50, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah they do it that way because one of the points of templates is to be able to do that kind of customisation, but it would be nice to be given a choice, like you are given with AutoText. I think you can copy the data from one of the concordance files to another, but I don't remember what they're called. Anchoress 10:06, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

varying duty cycle or width of PWM using vc++ program

How to vary pwm(on or off period) or duty cycle using visual c++ program at the lpt port for controlling DC motor?

can anyone give the code for varying width of pwm using vc++ program

also give the code in c,c++.......... please!

October 12

Graphics Card

I'm about to buy a new graphics card. It has to be AGP as i don't hav a PCI-E and can't afford a new motherboard. I want the graphic card to be able to play most games available now. Ive so far been able to pick the XFX 7800GS Extreme. Is this a good card? Will it performe better than my current Geforce 6600LE? IS XFX a reputable company? Thank for your help!

Check out Resellerratings.com & Froogle. At first glance, the card seems to have good ratings.—Mitaphane _talk 03:22, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Many games look better when played on ati or nvidia cards.. far cry played much better on ATI for example. With XFX you may miss out all the time (or you may just get what nvidia gets since xfx uses nvidia's chipset, I'm not sure exactly how it works) --froth^{T C} 17:19, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

XFX Geforce cards should just be considered nVidia cards. The chipset and the main electronics are the same, it's just the card itself and the assembly that's done differently. Some games do indeed handle better on either ATI or nvidia cards. However, since this card has to be AGP, nvidia is likely the best bet. Last I checked, ATI doesn't make AGP cards that are quite as good as the AGP 7800s, but have switched pretty much completely to PCI-E. As for performance, you might want to check out this chart (doesn't list the 6600LE, but I'm almost certain that it's slower than the plain 6600; note too that I don't recomment Tomshardware for anything but that chart :P). I says that the 7800GS+ is nearly 3x as fast as the plain 6600. No idea if the GS+ is close to XFX's GS Extreme but it's likely fairly close, so this should be a decent indication. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 17:33, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Active Desktop

Why does using active desktop for animations take up so much resources? For example, after this page loads, it runs at a normal framerate. However, if I put it on my desktop, it runs slowly, as well as slows everything down. --JianLi 00:50, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Active Desktop is not a critical process. It is primarily eye candy. So, it runs at extremely low priority. To understand how that affects speed, you'll have to get into computer scheduling theory. --Kainaw ^(talk) 02:47, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

getting files off qemu

I have some files I have on ubuntu server in qemu that I'd like to get to my host OS. What's the best way to do this? Is there any way to make a 100mb floppy disc image or something and mount it in ubuntu, then copy my files to it, release from ubuntu, then mount on my host OS? Or maybe a better way of doing it? Unfortunately the internet isn't exactly an option since I did a server install that didn't give me a web browser (and I don't want to download the iso again to get one). I think it loaded the right madwifi drivers (though ping doesnt work..) however it's a nightmare to set everything up for proxy. Any ideas? --froth^{T C} 05:12, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

The easiest way (if it's qemu's default "raw" image format) is to simply do a loopback mount of the image with the offset= option pointing to the start of the desired partition inside the image. The value to be given to the offset= option can be found by using /sbin/fdisk on the image, selecting expert mode, and printing the partition table; multiply the value at the Start column by 512 (the sector size) to get the value to be used. Usually the Start value is 63 (for the first partition), which means you should use -o offset=32256. The final command will probably be something like mount -o ro,loop,offset=32256 -t ext3 example.img /mnt. Don't forget to umount before running the image again. --cesarb 06:01, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Not only am I not using raw, but my host OS is windows XP. I don't think it's possible to mount the qcow (is that what it's called?) format since it's so tightly managed by qemu --froth^{T C} 06:23, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

You can use qemu-img convert to convert it to raw, and then mount it. --cesarb 20:25, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Then I have to install ext3 drivers for windows -_-. I guess this isn't going to happen --froth^{T C} 20:51, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE REFERENCE DESK

If you haven't been paying attention to Wikipedia talk:Reference desk, you may not know that a few users are close to finishing a proposal (with a bot, now in testing and very close to completion) which, if approved by consensus, will be a major change for the Reference Desk.

Please read the preamble here, and I would appreciate if you signed your name after the preamble outlining how you feel about what we are thinking.

This notice has been temporarily announced on all of the current desks.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  06:59, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

For convenience, I propose any reactions to this anouncement be limited to Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Miscellaneous#PROPOSED_CHANGES_TO_THE_REFERENCE_DESK. DirkvdM 07:57, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Creating a private online database?

Are there any good tools for creating a simple online database? I'd use Google Base, but I don't want my items indexable, and would rather restrict access to certain users. Don't need anything tubro-charged, just a simple list of items & fields. thanks. Please reply on my talk page. --ZimZalaBim (talk) 09:44, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

FreeSQL might be the sort of thing you're looking for. --Canley 05:08, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Which has more security holes than swiss cheese. Try MySQL and set up a local server (use dyndns). --froth^{T C} 06:55, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Swiss cheese has security holes? Dairy products with buffer overflows, who knew... By the way, who would implement network security with cheese anyway? Seems like it would get really smelly and sticky after a while :) Oskar 02:05, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

WIN-Modems

If my win modem cant be accessed using linux,is that just not a software/device driver problem? And also if newer versions of knoppix support visual basic runtime files(i saw it, but forgot the name) then wont this problem be over???

See ndiswrapper. --Kainaw ^(talk) 16:21, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

categorise the entire WIKIPEDIA

Is it possible to categorise the entire WIKIPEDIA subjectwise(computing,science,religion,etc) onto several DVD or BLU-RAY cds so as to benefit the entire world? Also just the links to images provided? Guess that would be easy as the information is already categorised.

Ever heard of Wikipedia-CD/Download ? ☢ Ҡi∊ff⌇↯ 10:34, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

That looks quite nice, however the article and its links don't appear to say how big the download is. The uncompressed files presumably take up around 700MByte. How big is the zip? -- SGBailey 21:44, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

DVD burner HD/BLU ray reader COMBO

Since DVD's are cheap and Movies are being produced in Blu-Ray/HD format, then why cant someone manufacture Blu-Ray/HD reader DVD/CD burner COMBO????????

Have you even read the BluRay article? They can. Here's just one example of one. —Mitaphane _talk 07:45, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I asked BLUray/HD READER...

VCD Format

I have a VCD and the formats of the songs are ".DAT". Are there any ways where I can turn it into some other formats (video or audio). Can it be converted to .mov or .mp3? Thanks!

Uh you could try using mencoder and doing something like mencoder dvd://1 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbr=600 -oac mp3lame -o vcd.avi --froth^{T C} 17:12, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

You can rename them to .mpeg and still play them, in any decent player. VCDs are MPEG-1. --Kjoonlee 23:11, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, you can use an MPEG-1 splitting program to split the VCD into tracks losslessly. You can even demux the audio and save the sound files as .mp2 files. This is the most high-quality way you can get individual files. --Kjoonlee 04:24, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Request help on converting hex strings on a page

I have a user subpage (85 KB) where I want to change the color hex strings that occur several hundred times on the page. If you might be interested in doing this or have suggestions on how to do it easily, please go to User talk:NoSeptember/List of Administrators#Note to color changer: where my request is explained in more detail. Thanks, NoSeptember 13:00, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

This is an interesting problem and it's been handled -very- badly. This is exactly what style sheets are for and it's going to take a clever stroke of parsing to extract just the colors from admins' names and change them the way you want. That or you could get the list all over again with new colors. --froth^{T C} 17:18, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Tell me more. Changing of the colors is going to be an ongoing process here, so if the page can be converted to make the process easier, that is an option. I am not sure why it would be so difficult for some sort of program to pick up every instance of a unique 6 character string and change it to another string of 6 characters. I am not a programming expert, but it seems like a straightforward thing to be done. The question is what is the easiest way to do it. If you see problems, please describe them for me. Thanks. NoSeptember 18:45, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I do not understand what the problem is. Copy the text to a text editor (like notepad). Use the replace function to replace the colors. Then, copy and paste it back to the website. --Kainaw ^(talk) 19:39, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah I see, just do a text replace. I was thinking that since those colors are used on the page already it would change them too, but actually looking at the html of wikipedia, it seems pretty modularized into linked style sheets.. so yes notepad would probably be a good choice. --froth^{T C} 20:31, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I tested it and it works. Problem solved. An obvious solution to those who know what they are doing, unlike me, one who rarely uses notepad. Thank you both for the help. NoSeptember 00:41, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Server Error

One of my servers (Gateway 9315) has the following error: "Initialize runtime language module." Any clues what that means? More specifically, how to fix it? --Kainaw ^(talk) 18:26, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Apparently it's having trouble getting past POST checkpoint A4. You might want to take a look through this thing --froth^{T C} 20:46, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

After waiting on hold for the afternoon, it turns out that it is not an error at all. After post, it just randomly throws out error messages whenever it feels like it. Great server design. --Kainaw ^(talk) 00:32, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

How to play OGG videos

Hello, I want to view some video clips hosted by Wikipedia, but they're in .ogg format. Is it possible for me to download a driver enabling me to view .ogg videos on Windows Media Player or Quicktime? Or do I need to download a separate program specifically to view these video files? It'd be a lot easier if files were just hosted as .mpeg. Thanks, NIRVANA2764 19:45, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Firstly, mpeg is a proprietary video standard, which ogg is a patent-free open standard for video and sound, so that's why Wikipedia uses it. Secondly i'd seriously consider ditching any current media player you have, replacing it with VLC Media Player. If you can find something that wont play, i'll eat my DVD collection... Benbread 20:43, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

VLC is bloatware. Install the ogg directshow filters if you want to use WMP. --froth^{T C} 20:49, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Personally I would recommend the Illiminable codec, but any .ogg codec will allow you to play the videos in the vast majority of players ( all those that use the DirectShow system ). Robmods 21:28, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

VLC isn't bloated, it's inredibly lightweight! Of all the media players available for linux, VLC is by far the lightest. MPlayer can't even compete. Oskar 10:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I have VLC media player, and I want to change the settings that determine what file formats VLC is the default media player for. I have searched and searched through all of the settings I could find, but haven't been able to locate it. Could anyone lend me a hand and tell me where to find those settings? Any help is appreciated. --71.117.44.209 22:26, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to have any option of doing that. Kinda strange, but you can still easily do this yourself through the OS. In windows, when you see a file that you want to change the association for, right-click and select "Open with..." (it might be called something else, I'm not entirely certain) and you get a dialog long list of software that you can use. There should be checkbox where you can select something like "Always open this type of file with this program". That should do it. There are more advanced ways, but this is really enough if you just want to change what opens a file. Oskar 02:00, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, Oskar. 71.117.44.209 02:12, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Pin Number Solver

Hey ya'll!

I'm after a very specific number or equation, used to crack numbered locks. It is used by repeatedly entering the number or equation - and, after continually entering the number, the door, lock, or other password opens.

I know that this number exists from an X-Files fan book, which covered series 1 and 2. In one of the episodes in series one and two, Scully and Mulder used this number/equation/code to get through a number-lock door. They had to repeatedly enter the number, and, eventually, they opened the door.

I can't say more than that, unfortunatly. However, if anyone has any other useful number/equation that does something similar to that, I'd love to hear about it. Scalene 22:03, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't x+1 work? First try 0000, then 0001, then 0002, all the way up to 9999. I don't know about the continuous entry mechanism though. I've never encountered a lock that just opens after entering the wrong code over and over, but I'm probably misinterpreting you there. Hyenaste ^(tell) 22:13, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

It could be. I don't actually know what the number is: I'm just trying to figure out what the number thingos special 'name' is. Scalene 22:27, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

EDIT: Found it. de Bruijn sequence. Scalene 23:34, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

October 13

domain functional level windows server 2003

why should I change my domain functional level ...what are the new features that are added ?

Wikipedia

whenever i save pages from wikipedia website it does not appear same as on internet.

how can i save so that it looks the same when viewing offline

File, save page as or something like File, save web page (complete) depending on your browser. Alternatively, download the wikipedia cd --froth^{T C} 06:53, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

that is what i do --Utkarshkukreti 13:26, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

• It doesn't work, without a monobook to refer to the page automatically loads in "classic" skin, in order to fix it, you need to save the source code to the page in question, and look for any links to monobook.js, the default monobook, and manually correct them to link to wikipedia's own servers, which only works while you're online, otherwise it will revert to "classic" skin--66.65.155.117 20:51, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

• Look through the source for anything containing @import "/skins-1.5/monobook/IE50Fixes.css?1"--66.65.155.117 20:53, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

HOW???--Utkarshkukreti 06:16, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

O in Opera

When I'm using Opera web browser, every so often the 'o' key stops working. It is fixed, I have found, by pressing 'alt' twice in a row. I haven't noticed any patterns as to when it occurs, and I don't think that I'm somehow pressing 'alt' accidentally. Does anybody know why this might be occuring, and how I could stop it forever? —Daniel (‽) 18:35, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your advice. I never realised that stopped it! Sorry, I can't answer your question....--martianlostinspace 13:30, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Sound too high-pitched in Windows.

I did a complete format and reinstall of Windows 2000 on this computer. The sound was fine before, but now it's too high-pitched, and additionally seems sped-up. (A 1:33 song will play in 1:20 on my stopwatch, for instance.) What could have caused this, and where do I look to fix it? The problem occurs in Sound Recorder on WAV files, in Media Player Classic on MP3 files, and in the Explorer preview of said WAV files. The sound card is listed as an "Intel(R) 82801BA/BAM AC '97 Audio Controller - 2445" in Device Manager; I'm using drivers I got from the Compaq website yesterday. 69.173.119.165 18:51, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't have the cure, but note that the increased speed would be expected to cause higher pitch. StuRat 23:05, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I have noticed this effect several times on "high speed" machines (1.5GHZ+) with "older" (pre Windows XP) operating systems installed. What is the speed and specifications of the machine?

How to enable windows task manager

All of a sudden after I restarted my computer I tried to open task manager but it said it was disabled by the administrator. I never disabled it that I can recall, and I can't find where to re enable it. If anyone knows how to reenable its use I would appreciate the information. I appreciate any help that is given.

Do you have access to the administrator account? If so, log in as administrator and change your account to one that has the rights to use the task manager. If you don't have access to the administrator account, complain to your computer administrator. --Kainaw ^(talk) 19:42, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

!!! You probably have the Win32.P2P-Worm.Alcan.a virus !!! Perform a system restore immediately, and follow any applicable instructions on the sites that the Google search has found. Unfortunately I got it so long ago, I can't point you in the direction of more helpful advice. Hyenaste ^(tell) 19:51, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm logged into the administrator account, this is a single user pc and I've never disabled it to begin with it just happened on its own somehow. I've searched with AdAware,Norton,NOD32,ewido,spybot, and zonealarm pro and the problem still keeps occuring. Recently I've had to kill all access to Internet Explorer because everytime it would open or try to open it would cause Windows Explorer to crash. I don't know what to do about the virus assuming that's what it is if I can't find it with any of these programs, if anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate it greatly. Thanks in advance.

None of those programs were able to remove it for me either. I had to actually go in and delete it from folders and registry (ugh). You may not have the virus though. To check, enter your computer via safe mode, and hit ctrl-R and type msconfig. Click the far-right tab and check for a program called KatchEm, or locate anything you don't recognise. Disable these entries (uncheck them). This doesn't solve the problem at all, but I think it does allow you to log onto the computer at least once normally. I would then run a total system search for .exe files that were created today (or yesterday, or from when you first noticed the problem). Check to see if you have several hundred similarly sized files. Also check your documents folder for hundreds of similar .exe files. (I believe the size is 851.7KB.) Hyenaste ^(tell) 00:26, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I would recommend that you download some of the tools from sysinternals, most importantly Process Explorer and Autostart. Autostart is FAR superior than msconfig, it will list everything that the OS runs at startup, including all the dlls. Process Explorer is a replacement for task manager, and it too is far superior. There is an option in it that says "Replace Task Manager" that replaces the standard task manager with it, so when you press ctrl+alt+del it comes up. It is also far superior to the standard program, it can TONS of things the task manager can't. You can verify the digital signatures of your legitimate software, it can list all the dlls a program is using, it lists all programs in a tree view so you know what started what, it can tell you the exact commandline a program used to start, it can give you many nice little graphs, and MUCH, much more. And, even with all of these great features, it is still really lightweight (only one exe), it's fast, it doesn't consume a whole lot of memory, it doesn't bog down your system at all. It's fantastic if you've got malware on your computer. All people with windows really should be using it. Oskar 01:51, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Ohh, and also, there are a number of other programs at sysinternals that greatly help with cleaning your windows box. If there is a file that is impossible to delete for instance, sysinternals provides a program that will set windows to delete it on startup. That will work on every file. You should check the site out, it really can help. However, it may still be impossible to get rid of certain very nasty malware, because sometimes they are just that nasty. To completely clean your system, you need either a system restore (which might not necessarily work) or completely reinstall windows. Oskar 01:55, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Runic alphabet in Unicode

I'm making the assumption that the Runic alphabet is part of Unicode (I'm quite sure I've seen something to that effect, but if I'm wrong, ignore the next question, just tell me it isn't). I found out it is, so I just need the answer to the next question. If I wanted to find it in Windows Character Map, where is it (or is it in it at all?) By finding it, I mean what part of "Group by" (I can get it via code searches already) Thanks. - ^Рэд_хот 21:37, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

That a character is listed in Unicode does not mean yet that your computer can display it. Most fots cover only a small subset of Unicode. So, you need to install either a font explicitely for runes, or a font that aims to cover the whole of Unicode. The latter is a neat thing to have, and there happens to be a good one designed as shareware project: Code 2000. See the link at the end of the article. Simon A. 08:29, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Runic letters are found starting at U+16A0. Perhaps the following will display for you:

ᚠᚡᚢᚣᚤᚥᚦᚧᚨᚩᚪᚫᚬᚭᚮᚯᚰᚱᚲᚳᚴᚵᚶᚷᚸᚹᚺᚻᚼᚽᚾᚿᛀᛁᛂᛃᛄᛅᛆᛇᛈᛉᛊᛋᛌᛍᛎᛏᛐᛑᛒᛓᛔᛕᛖᛗᛘᛙᛚᛛᛜᛝᛞᛟᛠᛡᛢᛣᛤᛥᛦᛧᛨᛩᛪ᛫᛬᛭ᛮᛯᛰ

Or try this page, which should always work. --KSmrq^T 10:22, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for those. By "I can get it via code searches" I was actually trying to imply I have a fonmt that supports it. It's just when I go to "Group by" I can't find it in any individual groups (I don't need it in a group, just wondering is all). But thanks anyway - ^Рэд_хот 12:30, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah. Instead of Windows Character Map, which indeed is incomplete, try BabelMap. --KSmrq^T 14:31, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Splitting AVI files

I just want to split films (AVI files) into smaller parts, and I am an absolute ignoramus as far as programming and software in general are concerned. I'm not satisifed with what I was able to achieve with Windows Movie Maker. Which of the available free video editing software would you recommend? Thanks, --194.145.161.227 22:37, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

If splitting videos is all you want, Avidemux can do that quite easily. It's free and open source. It can't do all that much, but it can split video files. Oskar 01:34, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that was exactly what I needed! --194.145.161.227 10:20, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

October 14

Frames Per Second - limits of conscious visual recognition

Question - what is the typical limit in Frames Per Second (or fractions of a second) of human visual recognition on a conscious level?

Background - trying to do an experiment in subliminal messages using home edited videos. Microsoft Movie Maker 2 appears to edit only at 7 FPS. I have found that when a frame is 1/7th of second, it is clearly visible to the conscious mind. I have scoured articles on how fast the image needs to be (including Wikipedia article on subliminal messages), but cannot find answer to above question. When shopping for a replacement consumer software package that allows editing in more detail, how many frames per second do I need to edit so that, when I insert the subliminal message frame, most of the viewers will not consciously perceive it?

For extra credit, any ideas on consumer software packages that would allow such editing?

Thank you in advance.

I'm in no way an expert on this, but from what I've read, when the numbers of frames per second are 24 or more per second, the human brain can no longer recognize them as individual images, only as a moving picture. That is why movies in movie theatres are at 24 fps (which curiously makes them a few mintues shorter when airing on PAL-television, which is 25 fps). However, I'm certain that the human brain can comprehend images at even higher fpses, whether conciously or uncounciously. That is, if a frame that is radically different flashes by in a 30 fps clip, you probably would notice it (even though you obviously couldn't recall what was actually in the frame). That is my guess anyway. I'd say try it with 24 fps and a few higher numbers and see the results you get. Oskar 01:42, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

This limit is known as the flicker fusion threshold, so see there. A similar question was recently asked on the Science reference desk: WP:RD/S#How many "frames" per second can our eye process?, so see there, too. We also have an article on subliminal message. Simon A. 08:35, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I too am no expert, but I am certain that I saw a documentary many years ago that stated that the human brain precives "animation" at 13FPS.

That's probably referring to the minimum framerate at which we can detect motion, not the maximum limit. 13 FPS is defianately visibly different from 60 FPS; you'd just have to try playing Battlefield 2 on my computer to figure that out :P. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 23:20, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Page views of websites

I want a few links in which I can see the total page views of top 10 English websites. If you dont know any links, I just want to know page views of three sites Yahoo, MSN and google ( all figures must be for global including USA)

The closest you're going to get are the alexa rankings. They are not very reliable however, but they will give you a ballpark number. See [5] [6] [7] Oskar 03:30, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

If, then, how, why

If integer(FOO/2) = FOO/2 then Print "EVEN" ElseIf print "ODD" EndIF Is FOO even or odd?205.188.117.12 14:38, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm confused. How is "integer FOO/2 = FOO/2" a meaningful if statement? There's no way to know whether FOO is even or odd in this case, because there's no meaningful initialization for FOO. Even then, I'm not that fluent in VB, but I don't understand why someone would want to compare FOO/2 to FOO/2, because it should always print EVEN, regardless of the initialization. Something like "if (FOO % 2 == 0)" would be a better choice (not sure how to do that out of C). Wooty 20:31, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

This is an extremely bad way to do it, but in some languages (depending on how it uses types), it might work. See he's using the function "integer()" which extracts the integer value from a float (ie, it floors it). So integer(3.5) = 3. Then for instance if you have FOO = 15, you get integer(15/2) = 15/2, or 7.5 = 7 which is false, therefore the number is odd. I used a similar trick on my old TI-83+ because it didn't have a mod function and it had only one type (a float). Still, in more advanced languages, this is a mindnumbingly stupid way to do it. There are two major pitfalls: if FOO is of type integer, FOO/2 might return an integer answer, thus the statement is always true, also if the integer function returns an int, there might be type error. And it's hard to read.

Still I don't know how VB handles types, but if I remember my BASIC correctly it's pretty liberal. So it might work. That is, however, not an excuse for bad design. As you would say in a c-derivative language, (FOO % 2 == 0) ? "EVEN" : "ODD" is a much better way to do it. Oskar 21:14, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

The even/odd distinction depends on FOO being an integer. (Is 3.14 even or odd? No.) Thus we use a bitwise operator; test if FOO And 1 equals 0. It's cheap and readable.

Here's an old trick along the same lines. To decide if an integer n is a power of 2, test if n equals n And -n. (The latter expression selects the low-order 1-bit in n.) --KSmrq^T 23:32, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

This is a clever hack if you are sure that the variable is an int. This might not be the case; even though the value obviously is an integer, the type might very well be a float. You might, for instance, want to know if 14.00 is even or odd. The way to reliably test that number is to do the mod thing. You'll get part of the manitissa if you do the binary and thing. Oskar 01:42, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

If the number is stored in a float, how can we know it's an integer? First, store it in an integer, then test. In fact, VB might even do the desired conversion automatically, since the And operator is not defined for "fractional" data types. The power-of-two test is clever; the even-odd test is neither clever nor a hack, but only an obvious use of radix-2 notation. Is it a "clever hack" to observe that a number written in decimal is divisible by 10 if the last digit is zero? I don't think so. --KSmrq^T 08:12, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

There might be many reasons why you would want to know if an integer float is even or odd, and converting it to an integer first is just a nuisance. You might have an application with a lot of mathematical operations, and you wish to keep variables consitently floats. You might get the number as a result of series of operations on floats, and you knew that the result would be an integer. I called your way a hack because it utilized a special property in how the number was stored, not a special property in the number itself. If a solution is equally good (infact, I believe that if you do the foo % 2 thing on an int, clever compilers will do the binary and thing), there is no reason to go with the more obscure and less clear way. Using "mod 2" makes the code more readable, it makes the code more understandable, it makes the code more portable and it is a more stable solution. Oskar 12:29, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Blocking ads in websites

Is it possible for websites to detect whether the browser is using ad blockers? And if the browser is using ad blockers, is it possible for that website to say a message saying ' you are using ad blockers; you cannot see this page' or something like that. Is this possible or is it ot possible for the website to do this? I would also like to know how many percentage of world Internet users block graphical ads in percent

Now why do I get the impression you want to spam the world with an infinite number of ads and keep them from blocking you ? StuRat 22:01, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

It is possible: use JavaScript to determine whether a popup window exists or not after requesting it to pop up. x42bn6 Talk 22:33, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

That would require the use of a popup window. And it what to do when the user removes it? And how would you distinguish between the user and the computer doing it? In either case, would you wish to send them such a message, basically telling them to fuck off? Not likely. You're talking about a potential customer (if StuRat's assumption is correct). Other than that, a user downloads a page and a browser then renders it. How it does that is something you ultimaltely cannot affect, once you've sent it. So you'd first have to get the viewer's cooperation and only then send the info. DirkvdM 07:05, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I think most scripts do this action immediately after a window is loaded, so technically a user can't, er, click it that quickly. Basically, JavaScript initiates a window opening call and detects if it exists or not, then closes the window in the next statement. A quick Google search gives you a script, by the way. x42bn6 Talk 11:53, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

That is true if one clicks. However, I use the keyboard and often remove the popup before it is fully loaded, by hitting the easy to reach 'esc' key the moment I see the faintest flicker that looks like a popup. Of course, I don't presume to be faster than my computer. :) However, it would be easy to make a popup blocker that adds a little delay. DirkvdM 05:20, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

But you were not asking about popups, but about ad blockers. As long as there is no feedback by a script, you can't tell how a page is rendered by the user. And if a script asks for a reply, the computer (at some level or other) could of course lie. Browsers do so all the time, pretending to be IE. DirkvdM 05:23, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Printing PDFs in a Different Color

I'm taking a college course right now that doesn't have a textbook; instead, everyone has to print out a bunch of readings for every class. It's taking a toll on my black print cartridge. For Word documents I don't need to turn in, I change the font to a different color (say, blue) because I rarely if ever print anything that needs color. Is there a way to print black and white PDFs, which most of the readings I have to print are, in another color like I do for my Word documents? Thanks. --Maxamegalon2000 17:17, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I wan't as much Information as possible on:

• World of Internet & unique websites,IT Buzzwords,Acronyms.
• Personalities-International,National,Local.
• Advertisements of IT and Communication companies.
• Software products,companies & brands,History of IT,humorous side of IT.
• Areas where computers have made an impact such as education, entertainment, books, multimedia, internet, banking, advertisements, sports, etc.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.95.5.64 (talk • contribs)

For all that info I suggest you read Wikipedia, one article at a time. If you have a SPECIFIC question, then come back here. StuRat 20:42, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Best way to send large files over internet

What's the best way to send a large file (~100-500MB) over the internet if you don't have access to a reliable server with that much space? The tech-saavy could set up an ftp/http server on their home computer, configure the hardware firewall, and send a link. Most people aren't going to be able to do this, however. What are the other options? Sending the file through AIM? Is there some good free third-party server for this sort of thing-- an Imageshack for half-gig files, for example? --Alecmconroy 19:34, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Best way? Learn to configure your router (http://portforward.com) and install a server (Apache web server). If there's anyone out there too stupid to look that up, they don't need to be sending their 500 megs of crap.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 19:59, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

www.megaupload.com goes up to 250mb, there are ones out there that go up to a gig. Wooty 20:26, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

You could always use bittorrent, even if you just want to send a single file to one person. Create a torrent from the file and register it to a free tracker and start your torrent-program and act as a seeder on that file. Then you can send the torrent (which is fine, since they're tiny) to every computer you want to download the file to and they can fire up their torrent software and download from the seeder. This method has a number of advantages: easy pause/resume functionality, it's free, it's very simple, as many people as you want can download it, don't have to worry about IPs and such (the protocol takes care of that), and the files can be as big as you want. If you want to send a really large file to someone, this is most likely the best way. You could use something like AIM, but the torrent protocol is much more sophisticated in transferring large files. For instance, what if you need to reboot while it's downloading? With bittorrent that isn't a problem, but it certainly might be with aim. Oskar 21:24, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Easiest and fastest for files over 100MB would probably be these temporary hosting sites. This list is from the good folks at 4chan/b/; I can't vouch for any of them being non-evil. Here they are, grouped by maximum upload size. grendel|khan 05:06, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

2 GB:
http://www.sendover.com/
http://www.snaggys.com/

1.5 GB:
http://www.megashares.com/

1 GB:
http://www.transferbigfiles.com/

700 MB:
http://www.depositfiles.com/

500 MB:
http://www.filefactory.com/
http://www.zupload.com/
http://www.spread-it.com/
http://www.mooload.com/

300 MB:
http://www.uploading.com/
http://www.sendspace.com/
http://www.bigupload.com/
http://www.rapidupload.com/
http://www.sharebigfile.com/

250 MB:
http://www.megaupload.com/
http://www.updownloadserver.de
http://www.xtrafile.com/
http://www.bonpoo.com/
http://www.filecache.de/upload

200 MB:
http://supload.com/sendfile

I would like to point out, in defence of my bittorrent solution: it will take the same amount of time to upload to one of these sites as it will to transfer the file directly (it's capped by your upload speed), and it is much more "stable". if you will. What if it takes 3-4 hours to upload and you accidentally close your browser? What if a cable is accidentaly yanked out, or your internet connection suddenly goes out? The bittorrent protocol was invented to be able to easily transfer large files over the internet. That was it's purpose. Oskar 12:32, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

October 15

Revert graphics settings

Is there a way I can revert back to my graphic settings from a previous date in Windows XP?207.200.116.65 00:35, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Did you create a system restore point? If so, you can use that. Alternatively, just go into the display properties (right-click on the Desktop and choose "properties") and reset things to the way they were before. Display settings are very simple to change. Or did you have a specific problem that can't be fixed so easily? — QuantumEleven 20:30, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

cartoon

I want to draw pictures, scan the minto my computer, and put them into a sequence as to look like they are in motion, like a cartoon. What is a good program I can use that's free. I have a MacBook and the latest OS from Apple. Thanks for any suggestions. schyler 03:38, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

GIMP? - Mgm|^(talk) 17:34, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I can't find X11 on my install disk. What files mus I open to get to it? schyler 17:54, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

You can do this sort of animation in iPhoto and iMovie, so no need for GIMP. Firstly, import all your scans into iPhoto. Then in iMovie, you set up a "slideshow" of the animation frames album, but you set them to transition really quickly, like three video frames a photo. iMovie plays at 30 frames a second so this means about ten images a second. You can play it slower by setting more frames per photo. --Canley 01:51, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

searching wikipedia from the MS Office Research task pane

hi,

how can i add Wikipedia to the MS Office Research feature so that i can search Wikipedia directly from the Research task pane?

thanks.

Xero

Sort or count by word

I have this page that I'd like to sort by color, and also count the number of times a color appears (each color has a 6 digit string, so this is basically a word sort and word count). Can this be done, maybe on notepad or something? Thanks. NoSeptember 14:59, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I use EditPad Pro (which you can try for free) as a text editor, it allows you to count the number of occurences of a word (by going on find/replace (Ctrl-F) typing in the search string and pressing count), but there seems no easy way to order the list, is this useful?--Bjwebb (talk) 15:11, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I whipped up a quick little program that sorted the list by date. Is this ok? Oskar 18:00, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

That is very very excellent :). I will link viewers of my list there. Could you run that program once a month (say on the 5th of each month (to allow for my usual month-end updating))? NoSeptember 18:18, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure, no problem. I should use your page as a source, I'm assuming? Oskar 18:59, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes. And if you are interested, you could do two versions, one with the semi-active list included, one without. We can dig through the history of your new subpage to find the version we want. And if this ever becomes a bother to you, just post the code on the talk page and we will find someone to do it. As for myself, I am completely non-tech savvy ;). 19:12, 15 October 2006 (UTC)NoSeptember

Allright, I added sections on semi-active, inactive and former admins. I'm putting a note in my calendar to update it every 5th of the month. If I forget, please remind me ;). The code I used is on the talk page. It's filthy, but it works. Oskar 20:20, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Low price computer

What is the lowest price pc, including monitor, that can be bought new?--Bjwebb (talk) 15:11, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

BJWebb lives in England - Adrian Pingstone 17:18, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

That depends entirely on what you want. You can probably get an old PC from someone who is replacing it, or from a company that's getting rid of old material, for very little (under £100). However, it probably won't run modern programs - if that's not a problem for you, then that's your best bet. Check out shops that assemble computers, they can probably point you in the direction of second-hand computer shops. — QuantumEleven 20:28, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

You might even be able to find a friend or coworker who is tossing out an old computer, and get it for free. The computer I'm typing on was given to me free from my brother's employer, as they were planning on tossing it out anyway. It's old (running Windows 98), but works fine, and I couldn't beat the price. StuRat 22:42, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I think maybe the previous two respondants missed the word "new" in the original query. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 05:30, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Are ex-demo PCs considered "new" for your purposes? If so, that might be a fruitful line of investigation: you might not get a box, but you will be sure the thing works! But I'd highly recommend getting hold of a (paper) copy of the weekly Micro Mart magazine - it's not much use for classified ads any more as they've mostly migrated online, but you'll find a large number of budget PC sellers advertising in its pages, though be very careful to check the small print.

However, I do think you're likely to struggle to get much below £300 allowing for the cost of a monitor and delivery. A recent Computer Shopper throws up the Aries Performa 5571N, which comes in at £295.95 inclusive and has this spec: AMD Sempron 2800+, 256MB RAM, 40GB hard disk, CDRW/DVD combo drive, 64MB integrated graphics, integrated sound and a 15" TFT monitor. As far as I can tell, you do not get Windows with it, but you can get hold of a copy of Linux for a few pounds by mail order. (Well, free if you download it, but that's a bit hard without a computer!) Loganberry (Talk) 23:50, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Why one of my speakers will eventually stop working?

It is very common for me to have my stereo+subwoofer or just stereo speakers to become forcefully "mono". Why is that? How can I prevent my new speakers from breaking down? Thanks.

This might be rather obvious, but just in case, you do realize that when you play mono music on a stereo, it still comes out as mono, right ? StuRat 22:38, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Well it still might come out both speakers but it'll still be only one channel of data. --froth^{T C} 20:03, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

If one of your speakers occasionally or frequently "cuts out", it's more likely to be a problem with the connection, not the speaker itself. Try rotating or jiggling the plug that connects the speakers to the subwoofer, or the connection to the computer. --Canley 01:34, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Shell32.dll cannot be replaced because it appears to be in use.

I need to update my shell32.dll to get a program working, but I cannot replace it because "another process is using it". What now? = Mgm|^(talk) 17:16, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

• Additional info: I'm using Windows98, so I'm not expecting support from Microsoft on this one. And I get the error message "HC.exe is gekoppeld aan ontbrekende uitvoer shell32.DLL:SHCreateDirectoryExA" which means so much as "HC.exe is linked to missing output shell32.DLL:SHCreateDirectoryExA". I found something about a fix but that was for a specific other problem with that DLL not mine. - Mgm|^(talk) 17:33, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
• I got a patch from them, but now the program crashes on start up. They're looking into it, but any smart insights are still welcome. - Mgm|^(talk) 19:49, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Rome:Total War -- Low budget alternative

I've tried Rome:Total War at a friend's place. My computer is very low end (around 700 MHz and very little disc space. Can anyone recommend a war game with a similar gameplay but a little less demanding on my system. I specifically prefer non-turn based games. - Mgm|^(talk) 19:49, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

• I don't mind low-tech or 2D setups. I do like historical battles (Roman, Alexander, etc) better than WWII. If you know of a free game, I want to hear about it as long as it is not turn-based. Non-free suggestions are welcome too. - Mgm|^(talk) 19:58, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, there are always the precursor games, Medieval: Total War and Shogun: Total War. Both were outstanding for their time, and if you overlook the somewhat dated graphics both still play exceptionally well (I used to play a huge amount of Medieval before getting Rome, and I can attest that it's excellent). — QuantumEleven 20:26, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Will those two really work on a 700 mhz computer with no graphics card? I'd recommend one of the classic 2d-rtses, Red Alert 2, Warcraft II, The Settlers III (fantastic game, but you have to have the patience of a small galaxy), etc. Oskar 21:01, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, check out the requirements on the articles. Medieval: Total War requires at least an 8mb video card, but that's still pretty low, and Mgm didn't specify anything in this regard. As Quantum said, it's a excellent game, and despite the low requirements you can still have some massive battles. It just looks somewhat dated compared to Rome:TW and Medieval 2:TW. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 00:01, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

My suck-ass trojan

I've just downloaded this trojan, ntdll.exe. It's not doing anything though. Occasionally, maybe once per day, I'll get a pop-up that explorer.exe has encountered a problem due to ntdll.exe, but that's about the extent of this trojan. None of my spyware scanners can find it. A search for executables created in the past few weeks comes up empty. What's up with it? Hyenaste ^(tell) 20:32, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Just because you aren't seeing anything happen doesn't mean nothing is. It's probably using your computer as a bot and either DDoSing people or sending spam using it. I'd suggest you download Autoruns and see what is starting when you put on your computer. Look for the exe there. Look where it's located, remove it from the list and the drive. This probably won't help you, but do it and report what you get (I'm assuming that you've googled for guides to remove it, yes?) Oskar 20:58, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Nothing unusual. I wouldn't even think I had one except for that occasional pop-up. Hyenaste ^(tell) 21:21, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

• Visit symantec.com and get a removal tool. You may not see it, but it may be exploiting a security leak and those can relay all sorts of info from your computer you do not want in wrong hands. - Mgm|^(talk) 23:33, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

October 16

Ethernet

how do we connect two computer using only an ethernet cable .both computer use win xp pro sp2.i need to transfer big files.--Utkarshkukreti 06:17, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

You will need a crossover ethernet cable. You can tell the difference between crossover and straight-through ethernet cabling by looking at the pinout at the ends of the cable. If you already have a cable, though, it is very likely a straight through cable, which won't work computer-to-computer. I've seen adapters before but it would probably make more sense to just get another cable and a switch which allows for network expandibility.

Aren't modern network cards able to automatically cross the wires if you are using the wrong kind of cable, or does that only go for switches and other such external boxes? —Bromskloss 08:37, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Crossover_cable#Networks_created_using_crossover_cables. I gather that it's most common in 1000BASE-T cards or better. Last time I attempted to do this it didn't work with a straight-through, but both cards were older 100 Mbit/s dealies. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 09:23, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Javascript Ticker

Ow wise wikipedians! I need your wise advise. i want to make a javascript ticker like the one on [[8]]. I would like picture in it and would like for it to be really easy to update. Do you know any good sites? can you help me? Oh and i use dreamweaver...is this ny help to me for projraming the ticker?

Place the text area in a div and give it a unique name ("ticker" for example). use document.getElementById("ticker") to acess the object. for example document.getElementById("ticker").innerHTML="Javascript rules" will change the text of the ticker to "javascript rules". Use a setTimeout() function (or setInterval) to change the text every few seconds. The site you showed also had a nice fading out affect. I imagine that they change the color of the text a few times before they change the text (docment.getElementById("ticker").style.color=some lighter color). The javascript has to change every time the page load so the server has to write the part of the javascript that contains the headlines. This would probally be in an array of some sort. If you didn't understand any of that pay someone else to write it. Jon513 16:51, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't necessarily have to be updated only on page load. News is like the perfect use of XML (and they probably have an RSS feed already so chances are XML files are already being built for each news story) so you just have to collabarate all the files together and use AJAX to download them in realtime! --froth^{T C} 20:02, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

New computer help

I'm kind of new at this so bear with me. I recently purchased parts so i can build my own gaming computer and ran into a little trouble. My motherboard (gigabyte k89f-9) does not have a DVI or VGA input. Now i never thought this would be an issue because my video card (7900gt) had the input. Until today that was, i realised that in order to use my PCI-E for monitor display i needed to configure it through the bios. Which i can't do because of the lack of VGA/DVI inputs.

I'm really confused and can't think of one possible way to fix this. Can someone please help with detailed instruction? : D Thanks in advance

You sound pretty screwed. Are you sure it has to be "configured" through the bios? What could there possibly be to configure? --froth^{T C} 19:58, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Hey mate you sure you got the right model? I don't think gigabyte k89f-9 is real...which is why you can't get it working...lol...more info and i will help you.

Your confusion is caused by believing there is something wrong. The motherboard came with a manual. Read it. Now read it again. If you now know the difference between input and output go to step 1 Install processor and heatsink+fan on motherboard, attach fan power lead to mother board, step 2 install memory, step 3 install m/b in case, step 4 connect up all the correct powerleads making sure they are the right way round step 4 install video card. At this stage we should have a working computer - no boot device yet but if we were to connect a keyboard and monitor to their output ports then power up we would be able to enter the bios (Press DEL key for setup). Note that the video works! It may not be 1024x768 but it works nothing special required. Now we can power off, connect the cdrom (set as boot device in bios, but don't bother with the cd-in lead. I never use it. YMMV) and hd. Power up, insert OS cd, install and go. Once you have built one the rest are easy! Best of luck --87.74.59.28 12:52, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Looking for forum host which offers Google Groups-like integration.

I have recently left Google Groups (I wrote the article) after someone forged e-mail headers and posted insulting messages to my group, and Google suspended my posting privileges, thinking I posted those messages. I have written to Google, but have not received a response.

I realised that the mailing list functionality of Google Groups is inherently insecure, and am looking for another website to host my group/forum. Nevertheless, I am attracted to the integration features of Google Groups, and I hope to find a new host that has similar integration features without the inherent insecurity of mailing lists.

These are my criteria for a new forum host:

• The forum must be hosted on their website, with URL http://forumname.forumhost.com or http://forumhost.com/forumname or something similar. I don't want to host a forum on my own domain; I don't have my own website.
• The forum should not be a mailing list. It should not be possible to post messages to the forum through e-mail. Posting through e-mail is the "inherent security risk" I mentioned, as anyone can forge e-mail headers and post to the group under an established member's name.
• The account I create with them should allow me to join/create multiple forums hosted on their website, unlike most forum hosts, where an account only grants me access to one forum. This will allow me to use the forum hosting website to meet like-minded people by joining/creating many forums based on my interests. They should have a searchable directory of forums for me to easily find those pertaining to my interests.
• The forum host should be compatible with Opera.

Please recommend me a forum host that meets my requirements. The more sites you recommend, the better; I enjoy trying out new sites and choosing which one I like best.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:36, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Computing /IT

I have Microsoft windows xp / vista service pack 2,when i give command/cmd in the run from the START menu,the computer restarted every time when i give this commnds. Any one pls clear this problem.

                         THANK YOU.

XP and Vista at the same time...? Is the command "shutdown -s"? ;) Benbread 18:42, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Online reading list (del.icio.us for books)

Is there a web 2.0-style reading list website anywhere? I want to be able to add books that I want to read to the list, and perhaps tag them and compare them to what other people are reading. Basically, a del.icio.us or rememberthemilk for books. Looking around, I haven't been able to find anything like it. Anyone know anything like this? Thanks! --Mary

Actually, I've now found one. LibraryThing seems to be what I want. If anyone else has good suggestions, though, I'd love to hear them. --Mary

ARPANET

what "language" did ARPANET "speak" in? -- 64.12.116.130 17:52, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Arpanet#Software_and_protocol_development covers it pretty nicely. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 18:00, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

permanent CPU usage in Quicklaunch bar

When I open up the Task Manager, the CPU usage icon will appear in my quick launch bar. Unfortunately, when I exit the Task Manager, it goes away too. Is there any way to keep that CPU usage icon in my quick launch bar for easy viewing? Hyenaste ^(tell) 19:10, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

(For WinXP) Open task manager, click the 'options' menu and check 'hide when minimised'. Then minimise task manager. It's sort of cheating, because task manager will still be running. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 19:29, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

And it's crappily designed, taking up 5MB of memory and consuming 2% of my cpu cycles --froth^{T C} 19:56, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Any solution to that issue, frothy? Hyenaste ^(tell) 19:51, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

windows preboot

Is there some list of programs that will be run in the next windows "preboot" (like the HKCU/Software/Microsoft/CurrentVersion/Run key for standard startup items)? By preboot I mean some kind of pre-windows-startup, not actually during the bootstrap process. If there's no centralized location then how do programs put themselves in preboot? Do they register themselves through some DLL? Ad-aware for example sometimes asks you to restart so that it can intervene before explorer starts to prevent malware from loading. Also I've seen a couple of products that supplement the windows login for security. How do they start before explorer? --froth^{T C} 19:53, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to recommend the same program I always recommend when it comes to windows startup, sysinternals Autoruns. It will list every exe, dll, or whatever that launches when windows does. It doesn't add stuff to it, but it gives all the locations where stuff is started automatically. You should be able to figure out how to do it from there. Oskar 20:02, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

ipmi_si

I am trying to install Dell OpenManage under a RedHat EL4 MP with a kernel of 2.6.11., but the OpenIPMI modules fail to build. We try to Google around, but it took as nowhere. I run the script:

srvadmin/linux/supportscripts/srvadmin-install.sh

The following output displays the chosen installation steps:

##############################################

 Server Administrator Custom Install Utility

##############################################

 Selected Options
  - All

 Dependencies
  - Server Administrator CLI
  - Server Administrator Web Server
  - Diagnostic Service
  - Storage Management
  - Remote Access Core
  - Remote Access SA Plugins

 Components for Server Administrator Managed Node Software:

   [x] 1. Server Administrator CLI
   [x] 2. Server Administrator Web Server
   [x] 3. Diagnostic Service
   [x] 4. Storage Management
   [x] 5. Remote Access Core
   [x] 6. Remote Access SA Plugins
   [x] 7. All

 Enter the number to select a component from the above list.
 Enter c to copy selected components to destination folder.
 Enter i to install the selected components.
 Enter r to reset selection and start over.
 Enter q to quit.

 Enter : i

 Default install location is: /opt/dell/srvadmin
 Do you want to change it?
 Press ('y' for yes | 'Enter' for default):

After pressing Enter, we obtain the following installation error:

Server Administrator requires a newer version of the OpenIPMI driver modules
for the running kernel than are currently installed on the system. However, a
"sufficient" version of the OpenIPMI driver RPM is currently installed on the
system. The OpenIPMI driver modules for the running kernel will be upgraded
by building and installing OpenIPMI driver modules using DKMS.

 - DKMS build module: Building "openipmi" module version 33.13.RHEL4.


Kernel preparation unnecessary for this kernel.  Skipping...

Building module:
cleaning build area....
make KERNELRELEASE=2.6.11.1 -C /lib/modules/2.6.11.1/build M=/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build.....(bad exit status: 2)

Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 2.6.11.1 (i686)
Consult the make.log in the build directory
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ for more information.

Error: Building of "openipmi" module version 33.13.RHEL4 using DKMS failed.
       Please resolve any errors and then execute this script again.

This is what the log displays:

DKMS make.log for openipmi-33.13.RHEL4 for kernel 2.6.11.1 (i686)
Mon Oct 16 16:02:33 EDT 2006
make: Entering directory `/tools/linux-2.6.11.1'
  LD      /var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/built-in.o
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_msghandler.o
In file included from /var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_msghandler.c:48:
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_kcompat.h:45: warning: static declaration of  'pci_get_class' follows non-static declaration
include/linux/pci.h:769: warning: previous declaration of 'pci_get_class' was here
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_kcompat.h: In function `pci_get_class':
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_kcompat.h:49: warning: implicit declaration of function `pci_find_class'
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_kcompat.h:49: warning: assignment makes pointer from integer without a cast
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_devintf.o
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.o
In file included from /var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c:80:
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_kcompat.h:45: warning: static declaration of 'pci_get_class' follows non-static declaration
include/linux/pci.h:769: warning: previous declaration of 'pci_get_class' was here
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_kcompat.h: In function `pci_get_class':
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_kcompat.h:49: warning: implicit declaration of function `pci_find_class'
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_kcompat.h:49: warning: assignment makes pointer from integer without a cast
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c: At top level:
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c:1042: error: initializer element is not constant
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c:1042: error: (near initialization for `__param_arr_addrs.num')
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c:1047: error: initializer element is not constant
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c:1047: error: (near initialization for `__param_arr_ports.num')
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c:1052: error: initializer element is not constant
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c:1052: error: (near initialization for `__param_arr_irqs.num')
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c:1057: error: initializer element is not constant
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c:1057: error: (near initialization for `__param_arr_regspacings.num')
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c:1063: error: initializer element is not constant
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c:1063: error: (near initialization for `__param_arr_regsizes.num')
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c:1069: error: initializer element is not constant
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c:1069: error: (near initialization for `__param_arr_regshifts.num')
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c:1074: error: initializer element is not constant
/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.c:1074: error: (near initialization for `__param_arr_slave_addrs.num')
make[1]: *** [/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build/ipmi_si_intf.o] Error 1
make: *** [_module_/var/lib/dkms/openipmi/33.13.RHEL4/build] Error 2
make: Leaving directory `/tools/linux-2.6.11.1'

Could someone help? Or point us to somewhere, where we could obtain some assistance?

Thank you very much.

--167.206.125.124 20:10, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Did you even try googling? [9] second result (direct link and a suggestion and a possible solution. In other words it may be trying to make the driver for an older kernel. Beats me why IPMI would be required for installation though.... at most it should be an addon --froth^{T C} 21:39, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

October 17

PICAXE programming under Ubuntu GNU/Linux

Hi,

So far, I have failed to find any substitute for the Programming Editor available for PICAXE programming on Windows. I tried to run it on Ubuntu with Wine, but it's really garbage.

So... Any substitutes under Ubuntu or rather Linux as a whole? Thanks.

--inky 05:27, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Um, have a look at gnupic.org to see if there's something suitable for you. --Robert Merkel 06:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Converting Google Video to mpg

Say, I want to convert this google video file I downloaded into an mpeg format. How so? — X [Mac Davis] (SUPERDESK|Help me improve)08:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

That is not possible, A Google Video file is a closed format. But you can download a Google Video file for a Sony PSP or an Ipod, I think you can convert those files to an other format. Tukkaatje 12:44, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if it currently exists, but it should be possible via video capture software. StuRat 13:36, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Naevius GVI Converter claims to be able to convert GVI files to the standard AVI format, though I know nothing about it and have never used it, so can't vouch for that. Loganberry (Talk) 14:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

By using regular screenshots, you can capture and re-encode the video. You can then capture the audio as it goes to your sound card. You'll have to get/write the scripts for that yourself though (since Google Video Player is a VLC fork, it should have an option to disable DX overlays).--Frenchman113 on wheels! 22:22, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Does Google rank pages by outgoing links?

I thought Google ranks pages by incoming hyperlinks.

Does the number of outgoing links also affect a page ranking?

What effect does this have on Wikipedia?

As far as I know the basic method involves ranking by incoming links, and it wouldn't make any sense to do it the other way around. I've heard that Wikipedia was granted an especially high rating by Google employees (and I assume many trusted websites are given similar treatment) which may boost articles to the top of the search even when there are few incoming links. I can't say I'm familiar with the methods that page ranking services like Alexa operate on.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  09:17, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I'd say only incoming links (weighted with the credibility of the linking page) have any effect. —Bromskloss 11:56, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

It is my opinion that the age of a website is also used by Google. I've had the same domain name, with an active web page, for many years - long before Google or Lycos or Alta Vista or Yahoo... There are very few sites on the web that link to my website. So, it shouldn't be considered much of anything. But, my site is spidered by Google (and Yahoo and MSN and Ask...) daily. Without the incoming (or outgoing) links to use as a basis for why Google considers my page worth spidering, I'd have to say it is the age of the site. --Kainaw ^(talk) 17:22, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

(As directed at the top of this page, please sign your posts using four tildes ("~~~~").

Automatic page ranking done well is what boosted Google to the top of Internet search engines. The original theory was published, so is no secret. However, any such system can be manipulated, and many folks have a huge financial incentive to do so. Therefore the details of what is done today are constantly changing, and not made public; here's the little Google itself says. Speculation abounds, some better informed than others.

And did it not occur to you to seek an answer to this question by searching the web? --KSmrq^T 04:51, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Image comparison script

We get a quite a few questions about identifying sources for pictures, and I swear I've read somewhere (popular science or something like that perhaps?) about programs/a program that index internet images (like google images does) and then compare them using some sort of algorithm to find similarities, and find duplicates.

I've found a couple pages boasting similar abilities, but only for small limited sets of images. Does anyone know of such a program?  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  09:12, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I've discussed just such a program at the Ref Desk before. It's quite difficult, as it would ideally need to be able to deal with the following:

• Different scale images.

• Different image formats.

• Different clipping. For example, a pic should be able to be matched with a close-up of one part of the pic, or two pics which have an area of overlap should be matched.

• Different color schemes, 32 bit, 24 bit, 16 bit. 8 bit, greyscale, and even black and white.

• Different aspect ratios.

• Mirrored or rotated images.

• The most difficult problem, likely requiring some form of artificial intelligence would be to match pics of the same object from different angles.

You could write a program to do all that, but it would take a long time to compare any two pics. If Google were to try to use it to categorize all their pics, the resources required to get this job done would be extreme. StuRat 13:27, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

If you've ever used a tool which implements the SiFT algorithm, you'd be pretty impressed at how good the feature recognition is. (It deals with stretched, squashed, sheared and rotated images, and image parts.) I wouldn't think it entirely out of the realm of possibility. You'd have to have a human on the end of it, but there are algorithms which can cut down tremendously on the amount of human work. grendel|khan 16:07, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

WIFI 2-way control with Pocket PC

Hello! I want to be able to control my Pocket PC from my desktop via WiFi. BUT: I also want my Pocket PC to send back images from its camera. Is there any easy way of establishing this 2-way control? The reason I want to do this is to control a robot using beeps emitted from the Pocket PC's headphone socket, but also see where it is going at the same time.

I have tried Microsoft Portrait, but that gives me no control of the Pocket PC. Please can you help me. I have also tried Portrait and MS Remote Command but that is a very slow process. Please can you help me! --212.56.97.238 11:35, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Best programming tool for beginner

Whats the best free programming environment for a beginner with no programming experience? It should due GUI stuff and create stand alone executables. Cross platform prefered.

What about Lazarus, which is based on the open-source Free Pascal and runs on Win32, Linux, MacOS, FreeBSD...? Lazarus is a clone of Delphi, which is itself based on Pascal. It's still a work-in-progress so may not be stable or complete enough for large projects, but on the basis of a few minutes' playing around with it I think it's quite good enough for learning on - and you also have the advantage that much of the huge volume of Delphi documentation will be applicable to Lazarus too. Loganberry (Talk) 14:38, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

If by environment you mean something broader than IDE, I recommend BASIC. Try FreeBASIC or PowerBASIC. --froth^{T C} 17:15, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

IMHO, a "beginner with no programming experience" should not be worried about GUI "stuff" and cross-platform executables to start with, but with learning programming. It's like asking what's the best driver's education program? It must allow me to drive an F-1 class Ferrari next week. --LarryMac 19:06, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree. Although, VB makes it pretty easy to do GUIs, if I remember correctly. Newbie easy. It's a very BAAAAD way to learn though, you should learn the basics first Oskar 23:35, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh yes, VB has ruined many an aspiring programmer's career. Learn it much later if you absolutely must, but otherwise stay the heck away --froth^{T C} 02:08, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

A beginning programmer needs to learn programming, which is an uncommon discipline. See Category:Educational programming languages for a selection of languages intended to help, most of which come with development environments and cross-platform implementations. Notable examples are Logo, Scheme, and ToonTalk, from the MIT tradition, and the Smalltalk family out of Xerox PARC.

Programming requires structured thought, structured action, and structured data. Daily life is not adequate preparation for these demands; in fact, most people give terrible directions and unsound explanations. A mistake in a single character in a program can cause it to fail — a daunting challenge when confronting a program requiring thousands of lines of code. Thus programming includes not only problem definition, method design, and program implementation, but also structured testing, structured diagnosis, and structured correction. A final essential is documentation, especially important in a large project.

Do not be embarrassed to begin with a training environment like Alice; the insights and habits gained there will be more important in the long run than wrestling with the obstacles of a “serious” implementation language like C++. And, paradoxically, the total time to mastery of C++ will likely be shortened by including this learning step. --KSmrq^T 06:57, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Odd first line on "database" entry page

I think this might be vandalism, but the first line on the entry for "database" reads like a nonsequitur. I don't have a user account and I'm not sure how to fix it, since when I try to "edit" the line doesn't even show on the edit page - only the published page.

Can someone check it out?

Thanks, A.Pacchia

Is this what you were referring to? Seems that it was caught in about half an hour. Well it seems fine now.. in the future use WP:HD instead of this desk --froth^{T C} 17:11, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

USB Cables

I am interested in controlling electricity in a usb cable. My aim is to send a small but significant voltage to a device the other end.

I understand that there are three main parts to a usb cable, a live wire, a ground wire and two twisted wires for data.

Can the two power wires be controlled from a computer?

I don't really know what to search for, Google has given me a list of USB based products which doesn't help much and any pages which are related tell me information I already know.

Could you suggest some online resources which would make this easier or explain how i would go about doing it.

Thanks very much

PeteL 18:28, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I suppose that actual functionality would depend on your USB controller, but the specification doesn't allow for any variation in power. You're better off just using the power lines for power and resisting it depending on what's on the data lines. USB uses differential signaling to reduce interference so you might want to read up on that before trying to design your own controller. Also the data lines are asynchronous so make sure it's not oscillating before addressing it to the resistors (or variable resistor). Or if I'm totally off here and you don't need variable power, just use the power lines and interrupt them when you don't need power (use the data lines to determine this) --froth^{T C} 18:54, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Have you looked at our USB article, and more importantly, some of the external links on that page? --LarryMac 18:59, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Nokia cell phone

i know this is not exactly a computing question but i hope one of you can help me out. i have a Nokia 3155i (Virgin Mobile edition). i know it can play MP3 and AAC because most of the ringtunes it comes with are in those formats. I am wondering how i could load my own MP3 music from my computer onto it and use it as an mp3 player. does it have a music player interface? i couldnt find it in the menus. Also, i know it only fits 12 MB. is there anyway to expand the memory?

They talk a little about connecting to your computer on their page, but don't mention sound files. You could always ask them. —Bromskloss 01:00, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

October 18

How does a PC find a specific web page on a server in another location?

When I type www.amazon.com and press enter, do electronic signals search the entire web. This may sound naive, but does a pulse go to China, Germany and look for it? I know the words are a pointer to a number but I just don't understand the path the electonic car takes to deliver the correct page. Thank you. This has been on my mind for a while.

Your computer sends "www.amazon.com" to your nameserver. You don't know what your nameserver is. It is provided to you by whoever is providing your internet access. The nameserver send back the real name for "www.amazon.com", which is 72.21.206.5. Then, your computer sends the request to the real name, which is easy to find. It is on the "72" network. From there, it is on the "21" subnetwork. From there, it is on the "206" subnetwork. From there, it is computer "5". --Kainaw ^(talk) 02:02, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Uh not exactly. The IP address is a unique identifier that's composed for four octets that happen to be separated by dots, they're not subdomains. See my answer to a similar question here. This is an extremely complex question and internet archetecture is a pretty mind-boggling topic. the ISOC has a lot of good articles about it if you're a member. --froth^{T C} 05:37, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

It appears you think subnetwork is a typo for subdomain. They are two completely different words. --Kainaw ^(talk) 16:10, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for thinking!

It happens “automagically”, using complex technology to produce miraculously simple results. The first part of the process involves changing a name to a number, which involves domain name resolution via the domain name system. In a common case like amazon.com, it is likely that the name can be resolved without external requests, because it has been seen before. The resulting IP address is like a street address for a postal service, an exact destination on the Web. Ever wonder how a physical package reaches its destination? Tracking sites for, say, UPS or FedEx show a series of intermediate steps along the way. The Internet uses packet-switching technology to accomplish much the same thing with electronic “packages”, sending the data along a path that is dynamically determined at each step by target and traffic. A large message will be broken into smaller packets, and each packet may take a different route; thus out-of-order reassembly is needed at the destination. At each step, local software uses large tables of connections, speeds, and reliabilities — all constantly updated — to choose where next to transfer the packet. If an accident or congestion takes out one path, another will be used.

Fortunately, all this resolving and routing can be done without any step requiring information about the entire Web. By keeping only local data about a small piece of the whole, each step can be quick and reliable.

In the famous words of Arthur C. Clarke, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” --KSmrq^T 07:49, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

ipod

Can you put video found on DVD on an ipod?

Yes, there are several tools to do this. With Windows, I tend to use the Videora iPod Video Converter. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:22, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

thankyou

Can't find mpdat.exe

Every time I turn my PC on, it gives this message. Is mpdat.exe an important file? Should I be worried it's not there? And how can I get it to stop saying that if not? Cheers --212.100.250.212 01:58, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Google says that mpdat.exe is bad stuff; more specifically, it's an IRC/botnet trojan. I'd run a full virus/adware scan, just incase. If you do have a virus scanner, it could be showing that message because it caught and removed the file. It could also be because the botnet operator decided to nuke the network, for whatever reason. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 02:02, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

It's done this for quite a while now and my scans haven't turned anything up. If the virus has gone then how could I get this message to stop coming up. It's the standard 'Windows can't find this file, you may want to search for it' box. I guess it's not going to be easy...? --212.100.250.212 02:09, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

It's showing up because Windows is still trying to run it. Try running msconfig.exe in the run box (Win+R). I'm still betting something is there though, or this wouldn't be suddenly showing (unless you had it all along and the botnet operator caused it to self-destruct). Is your AV up to date and everything? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 02:29, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah AV is up to date. Ok thanks for that command, I'm going to go through what is causing it. Thanks! --212.100.250.212 02:49, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Lanczos Resampling

Hi, I'm trying to put together a program that can resize images using the Lanczos kernel. I already have the code to convert the image to an array of RGB values. However, I'm not sure how to convolve this two-dimensional image with the Lanczos kernel. The article seems to indicate that there exists a two-dimensional formula for kernel. Does anyone know what it would be? Or I might be going about the problem in the wrong way. I would greatly appreciate any advice. Thanks. Austboss 03:57, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

A bit of guessing here. The one-dimensional thing was

$L(x)={\begin{cases}{\frac {2\sin(\pi x)\sin \left({\frac {\pi }{2}}x\right)}{\pi ^{2}x^{2}}}&-2<x<2,\,x\neq 0\\1&x=0\\0&\mathrm {otherwise} \end{cases}}$.

Is it unreasonable to believe that we would get the two-dimensional version if we interpret $x$ as the distance in the two-dimensional plane, rather than just on the one-dimension axis? —Bromskloss 09:48, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and another thing. Is this method considered to be the best for resizing images? We don't seem to have an article comparing different algorithms. —Bromskloss 09:50, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses, Bromskloss. I've been looking into this for several hours now, and I think I've figured out what I was doing wrong. Just in case anyone cares, I'll explain it here. To resample and resize a two-dimensional (or more, actually) image using a filter like this, you need only apply the one-dimensional version multiple times. That is, first resize one dimension of the image, and then resize the resulting "intermediate" image in the other dimension. Also, we don't have an article comparing them, but there has been extensive work done comparing various sampling algorithms. The Lanczos kernel, while not always the best, is generally considered to be a good choice when both computation time and image quality are considerations. Most image processing software uses this filter as the default. I'll probably try to update the article with this information soon. Austboss 11:40, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, one dimension at a time. Convenient. Why is it that one talks about two- and three-lobed versions but not higher numbers? I mean, wouldn't it be better to have as wide a window as possible? And which algorithm should one choose if computation time isn't a problem? —Bromskloss 12:34, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

The proposal to process one dimension at a time means working with a separable filter. That is, the impulse response H(x,y) factors as F(x)G(y). A Gaussian filter is both radially symmetric and separable, but it's special that way. Replacing a 1D Lanczos filter in x with a 2D filter in radius does not give a separable filter. However, for resizing purposes, use of two 1D filters gives a very good result quite a bit more cheaply. The education links at Rice University might be helpful. --KSmrq^T 15:36, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I think I see it. The circular symmetric function I proposed, needs to be shaped square for us to get the separable version, right? —Bromskloss 15:48, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Questions reguarding the Task Manager in Windows XP

One, whenever I turn on my computer, and I log onto Windows as the owner, and I press ctrl+alt+del to bring up the task manager, a window pops up saying "THE TASK MANAGER HAS BEEN DISABLED BY YOUR ADMINISTRATOR" with a red circle and an X in it. So I looked on Google to see if there were anyways to fix this, and I found that by running REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableTaskMgr /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f in the "run..." in my start menu, it enables me to view my task manager, but only for that current session of windows. If I logout or restart my computer, the task manager becomes disabled again. Please note that I am the only user on this computer, and I am the administrator, so obviously it's an error message that shouldn't come up. My question is, is there a way to permanently enable the task manager so I don't have to run that application to enable it every time I turn on my computer? Thanks.

And then my second question is, I use the task manager to terminate "owner" (as opposed to SYSTEM or LOCAL/NETWORK SERVER) programs that begin at startup. Is there a way to permanently stop these programs from running themselves whenever I turn on my computer? My computer has low specs and if I don't stop those programs immediately at startup then my computer functions very slowly. Thanks for answering my questions. --Ķĩřβȳ♥ŤįɱéØ 05:12, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

For your first problem try this. For your second question, run regedit and browse to HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run. These items on the right are startup items, just delete ones you don't need (but dont delete anything that you don't know what it is). Also look in the Startup folder in your start menu (both for you and for the All Users pseudo-profile) --froth^{T C} 05:28, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Or, for a somewhat less daunting way of managing startup programs, run msconfig (enter it into the run box (Win+R)), and click Startup. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 06:26, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Regedit seems to be disabled too (!) "Registry editing has been disabled by your administrator". Will the fix for the first problem fix this one too? --Ķĩřβȳ♥ŤįɱéØ 07:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, I ran that program at symantec.com and it said it didn't find anything. --Ķĩřβȳ♥ŤįɱéØ 08:31, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

It's definately malware, google around for a fix --froth^{T C} 14:15, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Shareaza's Advanced Settings

I'm trying to tweek them to get the most powerful searches, fastest downloads, and anything, and everything that fits along these lines, etc.. For example, I want to get as many possiblities in my bittorrent downloads, so do it make it 100% in BitTorrent.BandwidthPercentage. Like, what does that even mean? Help would be greatly appreciated. You can also reply on my talk page. Thanks! Danke!100110100 10:10, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

It means that you shouldn't use shareaza because 1) It's horrificly bloated and 2) Because it has poor bittorrent support. Many trackers will refuse to serve clients running shareaza; you're better off using utorrent. Oh and I guess that BitTorrent.BandwidthPercentage is probably the percentage of your bandwidth that is allocated to torrent traffic rather than other "networks" like gnutella which shareaza also supports. --froth^{T C} 14:13, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

html forms

i was making a form field bit for a web page and i got the

form action="MAILTO:email address"
method="post" enctype="text/plain"

i was wondering can i add anything/edit something that will allow me to control what the subject line of the email will be?--Colsmeghead 14:38, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you can. The body text too, in fact.

mailto:user@example.com?subject=This_is_the_subject&body=This_is_the_body

Remember to percent-encode any characters that need it. For example, if you want spaces (instead of the underscores I used), you use "%20". —Bromskloss 15:39, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, wait. You're using a form? Hmm, are you sure you don't just want an ordinary link? Like this:

<a href="mailto:user@example.com">Link text</a>

—Bromskloss 15:43, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I think he wants a form so you can type the message in the web page. First - that is a very dumb thing to do unless you really desire getting spam-injection in your web-based forms. If you want to do it, drop the "method='post'" so it is all on get. Then, add the subject as a hidden input tag and keep the textarea you are likely using as the body. --Kainaw ^(talk) 16:13, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

DFT bins

I often read terms like transform bin or DFT bin in papers concerning DFT and other transforms.. Can you explain me the meaning? --Ulisse0 16:44, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Version numbers

I've read the version article, but I have two questions:

1. What happens if I am at version 1.9 and want to release a new version with a minor update? What should the next version be called? Is version 1.10 understandable? Or would I have had to start with v.1.01 (the extra '0') all along?
2. The article says that the major version number only gets changed for major upgrades. But what happens if I keep releasing minor upgrades? No one upgrade is enough to say "this is a major upgrade", but version 1.7 (say) is by now really different than version 1.0. Should one arbitrarily say "now this version is different enough than 1.0 that the next minor upgrade will get the number 2.0"?

I'm not so interested in the marketing forces behind version numbers, just the general practice.

Thanks! --Sam

"1.10" is perfectly okay, and has been used in some circumstances. It should be pronounced "one point ten". As for major upgrades, it's entirely up to whomever releases the program. The convention on what constitutes a major upgrade varies wildly, but generally major UI changes constitute major versions. —BorgHunter (talk) 17:52, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I always thought if you have 10 updates at one level, then you don't have enough levels. I always used a three step version, MAJOR.MINOR.FIX, to avoid this problem. After I had 9 fixes, then I would put out a minor version. After I had 9 minor versions, then I would put out a major version. StuRat 18:00, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

But why would the random fact that we have ten fingers (i.e. that we have a base-10 counting system) have any bearing on when a program should have a major release? Capping a maximum of x updates at one level is something that ought to be decided by the specific program, not fixed by our counting system, I would have thought. No? --Sam

If I were using hex numbering, then I would stop at version F, I suppose. StuRat 21:56, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

NPROTECT folder

When I use various scanning programs, it scans a folder (apprently hidden) NPROTECT. So what is in there and why is it hidden? - Tutmosis 18:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you kidding me... --froth^{T C} 19:39, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Yea this was a crazy joke I thought up. Man that korean company sure explains why I have a hidden folder. Thanks. - Tutmosis 19:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Check the link again --froth^{T C} 19:39, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh... okay thanks. I tried google but my search wasn't as detailed and it just showed info on nprotect.exe. - Tutmosis 19:52, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Extending wireless range?

I live in Corpus Christi, where free wireless is being provided by the city. The problem I have is that there are four wireless access points surrounding me, but all four of them are just a little too far away for me to get access on my laptop with built-in wireless. Is there any way that I can extend my range so I can access them from inside my house? 69.154.49.244 19:43, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

You can get signal boosting replacement antennae quite easily from computer stores/websites, but they are usually for desktop PCs (the antennas themselves are detachable even if the wireless network card isn't). I think Laptop antennas are built in; if not, i'd like to know where to get one too. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 19:49, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Laptops with built in wireless cards do, indeed, also have the antenna built in, so you're kind of stuck there. There is, however, nothing preventing you from disabling the built in adapter and using a Pcmcia or Usb adapter, such as this one. Livitup 04:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Some registry keys

Got a virus or something a while back that screwed around with my registry. Although I removed the virus, the registry stands broken. An issue is that when I hit start, then {my documents, my computer, my network places, my pictures, control panel, my music}, nothing happens. So I navigated to an area in the registry: HKLM/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/StartMenu/StartPanel. I think the virus messed with the entries in there. Specifically, each folder (ControlPanel, MyPics, etc) has three subfolders (Hide, Menu, and Open) that might be malicious. Seeking guidance before I go and delete something. Hyenaste ^(tell) 20:03, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Do a Google search for "Tweak UI" ... install it, run it ... there should be repair functionality within it that might help with this issue. If I remember correctly, that is. :) A Google search for "repair Special Folders" might yield some results as well. Good luck! JubalHarshaw 20:17, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

TweakUI was fun, but the Repair Regedit didn't fix anything. Still checking Google for "repair Special Folders"... Hyenaste ^(tell) 20:41, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I've got Norton SystemWorks, which has a tool called WinDoctor (love CamelCase, don't they?). That would fix something like this. You could borrow a CD from someone and run it off the disc, but I think there is a similar standard Windows tool that would do the job, only I can't remember what it is called... CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 20:21, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Making money from web design

I'm reasonably handy with web design and CSS, and good at Photoshop too, and I'm sure there's some way to make money out of this but I'm not sure how. I designed a website for a friend's business which netted me a cool £80, but friends with businesses are not thick on the ground and so I need clients. Problem is, I have no idea where to start: I don't have the time or inclination to set up a fully-fledged web design company. Worth1000.com has corporate Photoshop logo contests, where companies pay you money to design a logo for them. Is there a similar thing for web design? Or have you any other ideas? Thanks.

(also, speaking of Worth1000's contests: these seem too good to be true to me. Not that I don't think they're genuine, but it just seems to me that only a small percentage of Photoshoppers are good enough to design acceptably professional corporate logos, otherwise everyone could do it. How easy is it?) Sum0 20:15, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

There isn't much money in "web design". The money is in "web maintenance". Get a hosted server that can easily hold 10-20 websites. Then, hit up a few small businesses that need cheap websites. You'll get a big payment for the initial design and then charge them every month to host it (and make minor changes). I have many clients who pay every month that haven't asked for even the smallest change to their site in years. Over time, you'll have a rather stable income that allows you to think about getting some kid to do your web design work and then you charge money and do nothing at all. --Kainaw ^(talk) 20:22, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Freezing and Jumbled Screen

I recently built a new computer. First build and is going horribly bad.

After finding out the RAM was bad I bought a new pair of sticks and now after getting the system booted randomly the system freezes and the screen jumbles/scatters. Also when I try to reboot the system via the front reset button the system is unresponsive. I am forced to turn off the system via the psu switch. When I turn the switch back on and try to turn the computer on it will not turn on unless i play around witht the motherboards atx connector at which point the system boots but their is no display and the system is unresponsive again. IF i leave turnthe main power off for 20 minutes then the system will boot.

I believe it may be a motherboard problem because my motherboard (asus m2n-e) is riddled with bios problems. I currently have bios 0402 installed and have maxed out the vdimm's to 1.95v. My RAM runs at 1.8v so there is alot of overhead.

Ram timings have been manually set to 4-4-4-8 2T. CPU frquency is at 220 mhz and cpu multiplier is at 11x. In addition the cpu voltage is set to 1.5625 V and is offset by 50mV. These settings have given me longest up time but the system does still crash.

The system specs include:

Amd 4200+ X2, Asus m2n-e, Asus en7600gs (256mb), Kingston valueselect 2X512 pc4200, Enermax noisetakeII 420W, 250 gig WD SATAII hd.

Thanks in advance Rahul.

Your problems sound somewhat like a PSU problem (though it could be a motherboard problem). You can test it with a paperclip and some duct tape as seen here. Unplug it from everything except for a fan or a light, then leave it running for a while and see if anything goes wrong. Safety first: make sure everything's unplugged when you insert the paperclip, cover it with duct tape for safety, and then turn everything on. I've no idea if this will definitely show up any problems, but it might help. Sum0 21:07, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I just tried another psu. ThermalTake TR2- 430 W. Same problem but now the jumbled screen wasn't as bad. The original display on the monitor wer scattered and the text was readable. Could my problem be that my psu is too weak for the job? The one i just tried is 430W and the last one was 420w.

nesting in css

when you nest in css, for example

body table { width:100% }

where that would make the width of all tables in the body 100%, can you do something like:

#myID table.myClass { ...; } thanks.

--66.193.5.99

LaTeX formatting

I've got a pretty nice-looking LaTeX document, with just a handful of tables and figures. So few, in fact, that it seems really stupid to have the List of Figures on one page and List of Tables on the other. Is there any way to stop them automatically creating a new page? Confusing Manifestation 20:51, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

October 19

Chmod < Linux < Internet < Computing

Hello I have read countless tutorials on the web about the issue of chmod on Unix-like computers.

Basicly you can set the permissions of a file or directory (by chmod'ing it) to control who can read, write and execute it.

A good explanation of this is here: http://www.phpdebutant.com/articles/CHMOD-777.php

What always seems to be lacking from any tutorial on chmod, that i have found, is exactly WHO is the 'user', 'group' or 'world'. (Or at least there are conflicting defintions.)

I have a website, which sits on the World Wide Web.

If i am right in believing many of these chmod articles - if i chmod 777 a file in the publicly accessable part of my server's file system (below my web root), this would mean that the World (or sometimes called 'All') can read, write and execute that file.

So, if i chmod a directory below my web root - does this mean that ANYONE can just upload files to it? or does 'World' in the chmod sense actually mean - anyone who has access to the inner workings of the machine that the file sits on?

So, in a chmod-sense who is World?

The reason why i'm trying to find this out is because i am about to use a dedicated server, which means that the only person who has access to the machine is me.

Therefore, should i worry about chmoding something to 777 in my document root, bearing in mind that i will be the only person who can FTP to the machine, login to the command shell, etc.?

I would appreciate any helpful definitive answers.

Notes about this question. Pre-empting some answers... In the tutorial i linked-to above it says that World includes websurfers. Yet, i find documentation of various PHP applications (which seem to be have been running well for years without problems) telling me to chmod 777 web-browsable folders as part of the installation process (and not saying to un-chmod it away from 777 after). See: http://fudforum.org/doc/d/manual.html#install.wizard.step1

So this kind of thing only confuses me more!

--Ronnystalker 00:09, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

File permissions on a *nix system always refer back to the account and group that own the file. You can view this information if you type 'ls -l' at the command line. You will see two names after the permissions column, the first is the account that owns the file, the second is the group that owns the file. These can be changed using the chown and chgrp commands. By default, if you create a file, the owner and group will be set to yourself, and your primary group. Where this comes into play as far as webservers are concerned, is that the webserver itself actually runs as, and accesses files, as a user on the system. Most webservers run under the guise of a special account, such as "apache" or "nobody" so that hackers can't access special system files via the web server. So, if you create a web page, and the user/group gets set to your own account and group, the webserver won't even be able to read the file when a client requests it. That's why most web files are changed to less strict permissions. If the webserver needs to be able to change a file, such as a simple database or something, then I could see using permissions like 777, though just 774 should be enough for most static web pages. I'm not an expert on web security though, so I'll defer that last bit to someone more qualified. Livitup 04:12, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Another note about "world". What that really means is "anyone who is not the owner of the file, or a member of the group that owns the file." So world includes the account the webserver is running as. If you place a script on your webserver that allows users to upload files to your server, then it would need a world-writable directory (or a directory the webserver's account owns) to put the files in. That doesn't mean that anyone in the world can just put files on your server, the webserver has to execute some kind of code to let them do it, either planned (in the case of our file-uploader script) or unplanned (hacking). Livitup 04:17, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Font Not Detected in MS Word

According to this article, MS Word does not support "custom" fonts which have been manipulated by a font program. I have a font I created in FontForge that I would like to use in MS Word. Does anyone know how Word can tell that a font is "custom" and if there is any way to override this? (I have Word 2004 for Mac.) --72.140.146.246 01:11, 19 October 2006 (UTC)