Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 December 14

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December 14

Persistent shift/ctrl/alt/win keypress popups in Vista

Hey all,

Here's a problem that is driving me nuts. I recently started using Windows Vista -- a move I'm not entirely pleased with, but that DirectX 10 support kind of decided the issue for me -- and for whatever reason, whenever I hit shift, ctrl, alt or the Windows key, a small yellow tooltip-like thing pops up on the screen with the name of the key in question written on it.

Presumably, it's some kind of an accessibility setting, but I swear I've gone through every single thing in those settings a dozen times. Everything should be turned off, but I still can't make it stop. Ditto for the keyboard settings. Not only do these popups distract me and, by this point, drive me into a state where a red mist seems to descend over my vision, but more importantly, they're also extremely inconvenient: when I work in Photoshop and try to do some detailed work with the selection tools, this goddamn thing pops up and covers the thing I'm trying to work on for as long as I keep the shift or alt key held down. The thing here is, of course, that those are vital keyboard shortcut keys for Photoshop, without which you can't really even do the work. Now, admittedly, I can just move the canvas a little and work around the spot that's claimed by the popup thing, but, seriously, it's driving me nuts. Google has revealed that others have complained about this, but no one seems to have found a solution.

Good people of Wikipedia, save what little there is left of my already questionable sanity. Help me out before I lose all control and just start biting my keyboard and crying in impotent rage -- it's a small thing, I know, but it's so very, very annoying. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 01:22, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

You haven't got a graphics tablet plugged in, by any chance? Windows enables its Tablet PC features when you install a graphics tablet, and these tooltips are apparently a feature of the tablet PC input panel. You can disable all tablet PC features by going to the control panel and searching for 'windows features'. Select 'Turn Windows features on or off' and uncheck 'Tablet PC Optional Components'. You might require a reboot after you click OK to get rid of everything. This only affects Vista's tablet stuff (handwriting recognition etc) - your PC will still recognise the graphics tablet and all your buttons and pressure sensitivity will still work fine. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 02:03, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I do have a graphics tablet plugged in, as a matter of fact, and this was exactly what I needed to fix the problem. No wonder I couldn't find it from the accessibility settings! (I now realize that the problem also only occurred when I was using the graphics tablet -- or when I had placed the pen on top of the tablet, even if I was using the mouse at the time -- which explains why pinning the problem down was so difficult.) It's ridiculous how incredibly annoying that was. I was about half an hour away from turning into some kind of a terrible rage-fueled man-beast and running buck naked into the cold Nordic night, howling at the skies in my anguish and disemboweling with my bare teeth any poor fools who happened to cross my path. It would've been a pretty reasonable reaction on my part, so you probably saved some lives here tonight, Matt.

Seriously, you're awesome. Thanks! -- Captain Disdain (talk) 04:27, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Lol HP Lovecraft would have been proud of some of these passages! Sandman30s (talk) 20:08, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, hell, no, Lovecraft's in a league of his own. I mean, I'm a writer by trade, but I know my place. =) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 01:49, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Is this idea taken (meta-music account)?

I'm thinking of making a website but want to know if it's been done before. Is there any site out there that keeps track of your authorized (as in $$$ used) purchases from various music/video stores like itunes/amazon/zune using various APIs? Other features are unimportant. Does anyone know of a site that does this? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.84.49.100 (talk) 03:21, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

itunes does this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 18:02, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

SoundEdit 16 files

Are there any current audio apps that can read layered Sound Edit 16 files? --71.158.216.23 (talk) 06:44, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Booting into Mac System 7.5 & 8...

What are the newest Macs that can boot into System 7.6? System 8? 8.5? (I'm talking real boot, not Classic) --71.158.216.23 (talk) 06:45, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Generally, the newest Macs that support a given version of the OS are going go be the ones that shipped with it (or the last ones that shipped with an earlier version). After a bit of trolling through Mactracker's database, here's what I came up with:

Mac OS 7.6: the January 1997 PowerMacs (5500, 6500, 7220, 7300, 8600, and 9600) (note that these can also boot 7.5.5; the 7220 can even boot 7.5.3)

Mac OS 7.6.1: PowerBook 2400c and 3400c

Mac OS 8.0: the beige PowerMac G3's (desktop, mini-tower, all-in-one, and server versions), and the first- and second-generation PowerBook G3 ("Kanga" and "Wallstreet")

Mac OS 8.1: second-and-a-halfth-gen PowerBook G3 ("PDQ", aka speedbumped Lombards)

Mac OS 8.5: first-gen (bondi blue) iMac

Mac OS 8.5.1: Blue&White PowerMac G3 (& its server version), 5-flavor iMacs ("Life Savers")

-- Speaker to Lampposts (talk) 02:11, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

creating a string in PHP

My PHP book is not as clear as it might be, or maybe I'm simply tired. I want to display an image randomly chosen from a series with names of the form hilbert##.png, where ## is an octal number. In Python I'd write

"hilbert%02o.png" % randrange(48)

How do I say this in PHP? How do I ensure that a leading zero is not omitted? —Tamfang (talk) 08:28, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Use the C-style specification that Python is attempting to mimic: $image = sprintf("hilbert%02o.png", rand(0,48)); -- kainaw™ 14:53, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Been awhile since i've done PHP, but can't you just do

$image = "hilbert" . decoct(rand(0,48)) . ".png";

To me, that's easier, but then again I never liked that C-style so much. 83.250.202.208 (talk) 15:01, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that will guarantee the leading zero. Better to use sprintf, which can do that quite easily. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 19:39, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Kainaw! —Tamfang (talk) 23:24, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Keyboard Layout

What keyboard layout do I have? I found this keyboard in a cupboard downstairs. I´m living in the Netherlands, but they layout is not Dutch. The keyboard is very heavy and branded ´Tulip´. Here is a photograph [1]

That looks like a standard US English keyboard for Windows PC, to me. It's a bit blurry, but the only thing different from mine I can make out appears to be the Euro symbol on the 4 key. Is that just written on with marker ? StuRat (talk) 17:09, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, I wrote that on with marker shortly after appropriating the keyboard. :D My previous keyboard was mulfunctioning. I've just switched to the US layout and everything appears to be operating normally. Thank you very much for your help. ----Seans Potato Business 17:42, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. StuRat (talk) 18:52, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Resolved

Puppy Linux manual install

I got the .iso of Puppy linux and since my optical drive went out I made a bootable USB drive. I partitioned my hard drive and copied all of the files on the USB drive to /mnt/hda3 (from Damn Small Linux. This computer is too old to boot from USB). Then I edited menu.lst and with the following:

title Puppy-Linux
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3

I found that it is on (hd0,1) because I have 2 ext3 partitions and 2 NTFS partitions on that computer and DSL is on one of the ext3's so (hd0,1) is the only other ext3 partition on the disk. When I select Puppy-Linux from GRUB, it gives me error 15 (file not found), after that, I boot into DSL and check, and lo and behold /mnt/hda3/vmlinuz is there. So, why am I not able to get this to boot? TIA, Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 18:25, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Update: I changed root to (hd0,2) and now it is getting farther in the boot process. However, it is telling me "no setup signature found". What does this mean and how can I fix it? Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 19:40, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Googling the error message gives 26,000+ hits, maybe some of those will be helpful? Grub version differences was mentioned in one of the first hits. And of course, you did a grub-install, right? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 22:55, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I did a GRUB install. I did look it up and tried to update GRUB. First, I tried apt-get, which said everything was up to date, which it wasn't (I had GRUB 0.91), so then I tried to use .deb packages. It wouldn't let me install the dependencies because it said that something already on the system would conflict with the new libc6 (I didn't have the latest one installed, which was a dependency). Now, just a while ago, I tried using MyDSL browser. It seemed that this succeeded, but when I rebooted it gave me an error 15 on DSL. Obviously the only thing MyDSL did was overwrite my menu.lst (which it in fact did). So now, I am trying to fix by broken menu.lst from liveCD and am having to guess at which root (hd0,*) to use. Any advice? TIA, Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 03:22, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I thought you said your optical drive (which I interpreted as CD drive) was broken. First some general advice (which may be a little late now, but anyway): before getting too creative with things that might affect how your computer boots, it's a good idea to backup the master boot record, like so:

To save the MBR to a file (this contains the partition table too):

dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr.bin bs=512 count=1 

Check that the file is valid by doing a hex dump: the two last bytes should be 55 AA

To restore the MBR, without restoring the partition table:

dd if=mbr.bin of=/dev/hda bs=446 count=1 

To restore the MBR, including the partition table:

dd if=mbr.bin of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

If I've understood correctly, you want your DSL partition to be the one that grub is installed from. If you've got a working CD drive, I would suggest downloading the super grub boot disk. It will boot just about anything, and once you're back into linux, you can fix the grub problem. Be aware of one potential problem: The partition table has four entries. Sometimes, when you delete and recreate partitions, the order of the pointers in the partition table may not match the physical layout of the disk. For example, the first entry points to first partition, second entry points to fourth partition, third entry points to second partition, fourth entry points to third partition. This isn't really a problem, but it can be confusing when trying to go from (hd0,1) to hda1 notation. My impression from experimenting with this, is that the (hd0,1) notation reflects the physical layout of the disk, whereas the hda notation reflects the order of the pointers in the partition table. You can see if there is a mismatch by running cfdisk. If there is a mismatch, the partition hames (hda1, hda2, ...) will be shown in a different order than what you would expect. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 08:09, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Multiple interfaces and ambiguous method calls

In C# or Java, if class A has two distinct methods DoSomething(iFoo x) and DoSomething(iBar x) where iFoo and iBar are interfaces, what happens if I call A.DoSomething(Thingamajig) and Thingamajig is of a class that implements both iFoo and iBar? NeonMerlin 19:27, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Why don't you try and see? ;-) Method overloading is resolved at compile time, so if there is an ambiguity based on the types at compile time, the compiler should give an error, IMHO. --71.106.183.17 (talk) 20:46, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

At least for Java, that's what it does. To resolve the ambiguity the programmer has to explicitly cast Thingamajig to either iFoo or iBar. 87.114.128.88 (talk) 20:51, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

.swf

Hi, I have Adobe Flash Player installed and yet my computer doesn't recognise swf files. When I click "open with" I can't find Flash Player in my Program Files folder, but the Flash Player download section of the Adobe website says I already have Flash Player. What should I do to open these files. Thanks.92.1.80.167 (talk) 20:05, 14 December 2008 (UTC)</

Usually Flash Player is a plugin for your browser. So you don't just run it by itself. You have to run it through your browser. (i.e. "open with" your browser, or put in the local address of the .swf in the address bar of the browser). --71.106.183.17 (talk) 20:44, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks 92.6.220.85 (talk) 21:40, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

You can generally download a stand-alone Flash Player as well. They can be really helpful (and tend to start up a lot faster than a new web browser). Washii (talk) 05:15, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Adjusting the size of the pages i download

Hi - when browsing, the pages are always too big - don't fit the screen - I have to scroll left and right to see it all; I'm continually having to zoom out to make the page the right size. Is there a way I can set my Firefox browser so I don't have this problem?

Thanks Adambrowne666 (talk) 20:59, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Change the resolution of the monitior. Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 21:48, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Holding the CTRL key and pressing the + or - keys or rolling the scroll wheel on the mouse will scale the page up and down. -- Tcncv (talk) 03:36, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Tcnv, but it doesn't last - I have to do it again every time I log in. Forgive my ignorance, Zrs, but how do I change resolution? Adambrowne666 (talk) 12:47, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Try using Opera for reading. Scaling up or down is very easy Phil_burnstein (talk) 20:08, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I second the Opera suggestion. You can turn on their "Fit to Page" option, or adjust the scaling... and the options will stick. --Mdwyer (talk) 01:32, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

To change screen resolution:

1. Right-click on desktop
2. Select "Properties"--."Settings". You'll see a nice little drop down menu with the available settings. There's other options but the screen may end up looking real weird if you mess with them. :P--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 04:14, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Graph union in Excel

In Excel, if I have labeled adjacency matrices for several graphs that aren't disjoint, what's the easiest way to generate the adjacency matrix for their union? NeonMerlin 23:06, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

You can just add the matrices together, then the number will indicate how many link there are between the nodes. The hard part will be to make the node indexes match. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:12, 16 December 2008 (UTC)