Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 November 14

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November 14

Diagnosing Inverter vs. Backlight Lamp

The backlight on my laptop monitor isn't working. From what I've been able to find, this is a fairly common problem that can be caused either by the power inverter or the actual florescent lamp. Both parts are pretty cheap on ebay, but I'm not sure I'm up to the task of replacing the lamp myself if that turns out to be the problem (apparently it's a difficult fix), so I'm trying to figure out if there's some way to tell from the symptoms which part is to blame before I start ordering things or taking things apart, instead of just bringing it in somewhere.

The problem started out gradually. Once in a while the backlight would suddenly quit while the computer was on. After a while it started going out more frequently, especially when the monitor had just been turned on after being off for a while. The screen would start out flickery, and then often go out. It got worse over a month or two until now when it gets turned on it stays lit for only a second or so before quitting. I've been using the computer with an external monitor since it became unusable. If anyone has any tips on making this diagnosis I would appreciate it. Rckrone (talk) 04:06, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Another possibility is that it's the wires going from the power supply to the backlight. Since those are in the part of the laptop that bends when it opens and closes, they will tend to fail. On my laptop, I have to open it an exact amount to get the backlight, any more or less and it goes black. I agree that laptops are far from being "user serviceable". So, that leaves you two options, as I see it:

1) Take it in for "professional" service.

2) Continue to use it with an external monitor, basically as a desktop computer. If you really need a laptop, buy a new one. StuRat (talk) 03:51, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Well if it's just the inverter I'll replace that myself. And if there's really no way to tell for sure that it's not the inverter, then I'll probably try that anyway (it's only $12). But if there is some way to tell that it's not the inverter then I'd prefer finding that out before I spend a lot of time messing around with it.

I'll check the wires too. Thanks. Rckrone (talk) 05:35, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Try the inverter first since it's dirt cheap. When a backlight goes out, the screen will mostly likely have a pink hue first. If you have to replace the backlight, replace the whole LCD panel since most of them make getting to the ccfl tube a rather treacherous task. New 13" LCD panels can be found for about $120, and be sure to try to find the one for your model to ensure connections are all placed properly. If you aren't comfortable fiddling with lots of delicate connections and the puzzle that is laptop assembly, you are best off taking it to a professional. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 16:01, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Redundancy in volume knobs

So I've got a usual of three volume knobs my computer is using. There's Windows volume, speaker volume, and then the volume of the application in use. Is there a real functional difference between them all? Or is it just a meaningless redundancy? 69.77.250.210 (talk) 04:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Obviously one affects the volume for every application including the system volume, one affects the Windows or system volume only and the other affects the volume of the application only. Incidentally the main/speaker/whatever volume sets the limit, if you try to increase the volume of an individual component past this it will move the main volume panel. There are obvious reasons why you might want to adjust each volume individually (or even mute them) as well as the overall volume. For example earlier I was watching a recording from a satellite receiver which had a very low volume because the connection had come lose. I turned up the players volume to max and my speakers. However occasionally when I received messages on my Live Messenger it was very loud as was my system volume when I was doing something on my computer for a while. I could have turned down the Live Messenger and system volume to stop this (I wasn't watching for long and forgot about this so didn't do it). Incidentally if you have multiple applications runnign with sound, you will see multiple applications in the volume panel. (I presume we're talking Vista or Windows 7 here since Windows XP and earlier had different things.) You're welcome to test the various volume bars if you want to see how they work any more. Nil Einne (talk) 06:36, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean by one of them setting the limit? From what I can tell, the different volumes just multiply (although I guess they may not be linear). --Tango (talk) 03:08, 15 November 2009 (UTC) Forget that, I understand. You are interpreting the question differently. I think the OP is referring to the volume control in the application itself, the volume control in the Window's system tray and the physical knob on the speakers themselves. --Tango (talk) 03:10, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, I'm using Vista and had never seen that per-application volume control thing. That's really cool! --Tango (talk) 03:12, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

web site hosting

Just asking those of you out there who have your own personal website which provider you use. I'm interested in starting one myself and would like to get a few tips. Thanks! -- penubag  (talk) 06:41, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm using a Polish service related to onet.pl, however would love to finally set up my own server at home in 2010. Productwise I get 150 MB of web space, for which I pay about EUR 16 once every two years. They have a bandwidth limit, which I do not know, however, and have never exceeded. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:00, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I have seven web sites. I've tried using free hosting services, but they were unreliable and slow. Now, I only use paid hosting. GoDaddy is the cheapest I've used at $4.99 a month, but the GoDaddy servers seem to go down a lot. They're also slow and there isn't a toll-free support number. My favorite hosting company is Network Solutions, but they're expensive at $9.29 a month. I've never seen their servers go down and their technical support is excellent. I've also heard good things about Host Gator. They're cheaper than Network Solutions, but they're more expensive than GoDaddy. (They say that hosting is $4.95 a month, but that's only if you get it for three years or something like that.) They only offer Linux hosting. Linux hosting would work if you use PHP or Perl for your server-side scripting, but I use ASP.NET, so I always get a Windows package. If it has to be free, consider asking your ISP if they offer free hosting. If you're a student, ask your school, too. Those two options tend to be reliable, but they usually don't offer any server-side scripting (e.g., PHP, ASP.NET, etc.)--Drknkn (talk) 10:42, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Second that. About £30 a year is the cheapest you'll get good reliable hosting with facilities like databases. Plus a couple of extra quid for each web address you want to use. It isn't a lot of money and and if you have problems you can move it somewhere else and keep the name. How much do you value your own time? How much do you spend on a computer? How much do you even spend on electricity for your computer? Dmcq (talk) 12:51, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't spend that much time but would like to start to get more involved. Before I spend any money, I want to be sure that I will though. -- penubag  (talk) 22:57, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

What about nearlyfreespeech.net? (I've never used it.) -- BenRG (talk) 13:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Depending on the service you want, you might look at Storm (http://www.storminternet.co.uk/). I run 3 sites with them and I'm generally pretty happy. --Phil Holmes (talk) 13:39, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

bluehost.com and dreamhost.com are pretty popular for cheap hosting. I have used bluehost extensively and found them reliable, with very generous quotas (I never come close to hitting them), and good technical back-end (scripting, databases, decent tech support, easy creation of virtual domains, etc.). $10/mo. or so for hosting you don't have to worry about. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:30, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all your suggestions. I think I want to go with free hosting, even if unreliable until I'm sure I can make a proper website. I'll definitely look into the others you guys mentioned after I feel I have the hang of it. Do any of you recommend any free hosting? -- penubag  (talk) 22:51, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I use a combination of Freehostia and Byethost. Freehostia has more downtime than Byethost, IMO, but Byethost redirects 404 (and maybe others) to what looks like a spam page, and has popups in their "panel". Thanks, gENIUS101 23:44, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Visual problem ATI card

When I play e.g. Crysis and Modern Warfare 2, visual problems appear. There are different problems with both games. After 1 h gameplay Modern warfare 2 my computer renders some textures blue, and the weapon in the hand gets invisible...With my old nVidia GeForce 8500 GT card everything worked fine, but when I put my new ATI Radeon HD4870 card in my computer, visual problems appear(texture problems). Here are my computer specs. ATI Radeon HD4870 512 MB, 3 GB RAM, 600 GB SATA, AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+. I have installed the latest driver and I have SP1, I have reinstalled Windows from scratch...I have tryed everything!!! What is the problem? --81.227.64.180 (talk) 13:44, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Many graphics cards do not support ECC memory. When they get warm (e.g. after an hour of gameplay), spurious thermal-related errors can cause single-bit-flips and similar data errors. These are usually non-permanent hardware malfunctions due to overheating, but they can also indicate more permanent damage. One option is to improve your cooling situation (running the computer in a colder environment, or improving its airflow into the case by adding fans). Alternately, you can investigate whether the spurious errors are caused by some other software effect. Nimur (talk) 14:59, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

A software called 'ASUS Smart Doctor' is included with my ATI card. In Smart Doctor it is possible to check the temperature of the GPU. And it always says 50/55 Celsius, even after 1 h Crysis, wich is really demanding for the GPU. And I do not think that this is more than the GPU can handle. Before I had another computer case, in which the graphics card barely could fit. Then I hade a lot more severe problems. After 1 h Crysis on that computer, the entire system crashed. When I shut down Crysis, miscoloured pixels appeard as a layer above the entire screen, and eventually I got the blue screen of death. I couldn't use the computer for days! --81.227.64.180 (talk) 15:29, 14 November 2009 (UTC) Sometimes it looks like a dead window, every object repeated. --81.227.64.180 (talk) 15:34, 14 November 2009 (UTC) Everytime Modern Warfare 2 crashes it stands "Create2DTexture(Different texture names)failed:8007000e = Ran out of memory", so everything are texture problems... --81.227.64.180 (talk) 17:56, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

You may solve the problem by underclocking the core clock/memory on the graphics card by ~%10 using RivaTuner or similar. Rjwilmsi 18:03, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Updating drivers in Ubuntu - difficult?

A comment a while ago from SteveBaker said that updating drivers in Ubuntu was very difficult. This is the only thing making me hesitate before adopting Ubuntu instead of Windows. But I've since read that SB uses a very old version of Linux. Is it difficult to update drivers in recent versions Ubuntu? If it is, could not an expert write a program to make it easier? 89.240.203.81 (talk) 14:23, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I've been using Ubuntu for five years, and with the exception of the video driver, I've never consciously changed, installed, or uninstalled a driver. Things just work. Almost all the drivers one needs are either part of the kernel or one of its associated modules, and are packaged by Canonical and distributed using their apt-based package system, such that one really doesn't ever worry about them. The only exception is, as I've said, the video driver, for which I use Canonical's repackaging of the non-free (that's non-free-software, but still costs-no-money) nVidia video driver. Installing that was simply clicking a couple of buttons, and it's kept up-to-date automatically. So my personal experience has certainly been that, to the trivial extent that I've ever had to think about drivers on Ubuntu, it's been considerably easier to manage them than on Windows. I think I have a fairly broad range of devices that "just worked" when plugged in - accelerated video, audio, usb storage devices, ipod, HP printer, canon scanner, no-name webcam, small-brand USB voip phone, DVD burners, keyboards, mice, PATA and SATA disks (and RAID cards for both), tape drives, and a generic (tesco's) usb<->memory card interface dodad. My only counsel would be to avoid an ATI video card, the drivers for which aren't very good. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:14, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually I did have one driver problem; using Netgear USB 802.11 adapters is a pain (one has to jump through hoops installing the windows driver inside the NDIS wrapper framework, a procedure for which one does have to pretty technical). The wireless adapters in laptops have never, however, caused me any issues. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:22, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it depends on the wireless chipset - some of them have helped the Linux community make good drivers (Atheros), others haven't (Broadcom). I've downloaded and compiled CVS daily snapshots of drivers when the ones I was using were buggy... but I don't think I've done that in a couple years now. Anyway, in general, keeping your drivers updated is quite simple, and much easier than Windows. Indeterminate (talk) 09:10, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

In Windows, if all you want is the latest WHQL drivers that MS releases, they'll be automatically installed by Windows update if you've set it up properly. How is Ubuntu easier? Nil Einne (talk) 19:58, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Maybe SteveBaker doesn't know what he's talking about. --Belchman (talk) 20:54, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

If that's the case he usually fakes it pretty well. --Sean 22:19, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

That's why I said "maybe". --Belchman (talk) 15:00, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Any grammar checkers available for free?

The only thing that makes me cling to MS Word is its grammar checking. Is any available in a free wordprocessor or stand alone program please? Since detailed sets of AI grammar rules exist, then why hasnt anyone written a grammar checker? 89.240.203.81 (talk) 14:35, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

A grammar component for OpenOffice has been in development, but is not ready for release. Some plug-in extensions also exist, like LanguageTool, which has pre-set and extensible rulesets. Nimur (talk) 14:54, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Although this fails to address your question, I'd disrecommend using any sort of grammar checker. IMHO, the one in Word is more trouble than it's worth.--Leon (talk) 07:39, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, absolutely, second that. Much better to read the text carefully yourself after a good night's sleep or let a knowledgeable friend read it for you than use any computer grammar checking software. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:11, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I am a professional Technical Author and checking grammar in Word documents is a big part of my job! I would wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments about the Word grammar checker - I never use it and some of its suggestions I disagree with. The only useful thing is it highlights instances of 'which' that should be 'that', but if you've got to check the text manually anyway then you would pick that up. You can never beat a good proofreader, although never try and proofread something you have just written, as it's easy to miss things. As somebody else said, come back to it the next day or get somebody with good proofreading skills to check it (preferably the latter, as a fresh pair of eyes always tends to spot things you miss!). GaryReggae (talk) 12:52, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Linux Distros & Wi-Fi Compatibility

I've got Ubuntu 9.10 and am having no problem with it at all. However, I would like to put another distro on my computer as a dual-boot. I have tried some others, and am having trouble getting one that works with my wireless adapter. I am pretty sure (though possibly mistaken) that if Ubuntu has a compatible driver (which it does) then they all should, as they are all basically Linux. However, I have no way of knowing this without downloading each and every one and trying them out. Is there any way that I can find out which driver my Ubuntu distro is using so I can just download that and try it out on each new distro I try? --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 16:18, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

lsmod lists the modules (including kernel drivers) that are currently active. My Acer's onboard wireless is driven by the iwl3945 driver - unfortunately lsmod isn't very expansive about explaining what each module is, so you need to do some googling to know what's what. You can also do modprobe -l | grep wireless to list all the modules wireless modules available; very likely only one of those will appear in your lsmod output. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:31, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

In /sys/class/net/(your interface's name, eg eth0)/device/driver/module/drivers there's a directory name that contains the driver name. I feel there must be better ways to find it out but I don't know any. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 20:10, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

publishing an application

Dear Friends, From the early days of visual basic(and basic) i liked to make small but useful applications.Many of my applications are highly preferred in my organization where I work.Going further ahead, I like to make these applications available on the web.How can be that done in such a way that the end user can only input something and get the results on the web? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.199.163.218 (talk) 16:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not really understanding what you mean by "that the end user can only input something and get the results on the web"? Are you asking about distributing an application in general on the web? Uploading it somewhere with a page describing it and what it does will help people find it (Google will eventually index the page if it is linked to from any other page). --Mr.98 (talk) 16:31, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

If you simply mean an application that takes its input from, and gives its output to, a user accessing it with a web browser, then that's simply a web application. There are innumerable frameworks for writing these; if you're familiar with Visual Basic already, then Visual Basic .NET is probably a straightforward parth for you to take. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:34, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

If you're hoping to port an existing windows-gui VB app to being a VB.NET web app, you'll probably find that quite a lot of rewriting is required. While the core-logic will move over pretty easily, the web's GUI paradigm (HTML/CSS/JS/DOM) operates really quite differently from the Windows GUI paradigm (windows/events/resources etc.) so the gui code (and really the interactive app's "main loop") will need to be rewritten. There may be bridge logics that people have written to fake a win-gui paradigm on webapps, to facilitate porting, but I couldn't easily find one for you. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I also started out with VB.NET. I later transitioned to the web using ASP.NET. You can create ASP.NET web pages using Visual Basic.NET inside Visual Studio or Visual Web Developer Express. The VB is converted into HTML, JS, and CSS and sent to the browser. If you're better with Visual Basic 6 or earlier, then you could also try regular ASP. It uses VBScript (or JavaScript if you prefer, but I digress).--Drknkn (talk) 14:27, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

speakers with no plugs, only bare wires?!

So I have two medium bookshelf speakers that only have the +/- leads in them ... I never bought speakers by themselves before -- usually you know, when I get them they have things like a jack or a plug or other reasonable things. So I apparently need something like an "amplifier" -- but why do they all cost so much? I pretty just need a connection from a headphone/aux jack into the speakers, so any recommendations would be nice. John Riemann Soong (talk) 18:34, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

You can get the appropriate TRS connector from an electronics supplier like Radio Spares (RS), Radio Shack, or Maplins. You common the two ground connectors (the cables for each speaker that aren't coloured, or are colored black or white or blue) to the sleeve element inside the connector, and the remaining two (one from each speaker) to the tip and ring terminals respectively (all the order does is change which is "left" and "right"). Carefully solder the whole thing and you're done. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:15, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

You might find that this connection to the headphone/aux jack does not give you the volume that you were expecting, and this is when you need an amplifier of some kind, but any old amplifier with an aux input and speaker output will do the job. People often throw these out if they are fitted in an old radio set or an old record deck etc. The wires to the speakers can be any old wire (as long as it is not too thin and long), but take care not to short the output. Dbfirs 22:47, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

John, directly wiring the aux jack into the speakers will probably result in a very weak sound. You're probably thinking of "desktop" speakers with built-in amplifiers that plug right into their source with no problem, but that doesn't seem to be what you bought. APL (talk) 00:01, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The sound will presumably be the same as what you get through headphones (that don't have batteries). Imagine putting headphones on your desk and trying to listen to something through them - it's not going to work! --Tango (talk) 03:17, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Buy an old amplifier or receiver on craigslist or from a garage sale. You can probably find a fairly nice one for 20 bucks or less. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 11:18, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Or see if you can send back the speakers and get the type you intended to get - that way you don't have to do any soldering. --Tango (talk) 11:21, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think connecting up an amplifier requires any soldering... --antilived^{T | C | G} 01:18, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

It does if your speakers only have bare wires. You need to solder a connector onto them. --Tango (talk) 01:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Nah, many (most?) amps have connectors on them that take bare wires. I don't know what that kind of socket is called, but it either pinches the wires in some sort of spring-loaded clip fashion, or it screws down on them. Either way, no soldering required. APL (talk) 16:58, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I would say definitely most. In fact I've only ever come across a few amplifiers that have something else and IIRC even that could still accept bare wires. In fact I think someof the screw down ones are the kind that can also function as a socket Nil Einne (talk) 13:37, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

bittorrent client help

ok guys i use bitcomet as my bittorret client. i previously had a netgear router that i had to port forward because it was blocking bitcomet. i just bought a belkin router and i had to do the same thing with it. im thinking of changing bittorrent clients since i cant access my wireless printer since when i port forward i hav to set a static ip which messes up the connection to the printer. just wondering if anyone knows if utorrent is blocked by routers like how bitcomet is.--Uponneeds99 (talk) 18:42, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

ahhh i figured it out; im using a wireless router and a corded router. its the corded router thats blocking bitcomet, doh. stupid d-link. the corded router itself must be blocking p2p stuff...--Uponneeds99 (talk) 19:35, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

use utorrent —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 19:51, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

uTorrent can work fine without a static IP. It just doesn't always have optimal incoming connections without one, if that makes a difference to you. I'm not sure about BitComet. —Akrabbim^talk 02:39, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

A script language for doing things with blocks of text?

Is there such a thing please? Specifically I would like to be able to replace a few strings in text-fileA (taking the replacement strings directly from the user). Then insert the text from file A adjacent to each block of text in text-fileB with appropriate page breaks, then send file B to the printer. 78.147.25.95 (talk) 21:24, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I can't think of a scripting or programming language (bah, no distinction) that couldn't do that; text processing and string manipulation is pretty much basic for every language. sed, python, perl, turbo pascal..., anything will do that. How you want to implement that "directly from the user" thing is important; if you want a nice GUI then perl and python are obvious options. But couldn't you just use a text editor's "search and replace" function? -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:31, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

The important thing is, is there anything that could do it easily and compactly without pages and pages of code please? I'm beginning to think Rebol. 78.147.25.95 (talk) 21:35, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

All of the above. Rebol is, despite the endless din of those who abuse this page to promote it, not that special. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:00, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Word processors will commonly include this facility for form letters. No coding needed. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:01, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

What about the classic languages that I dimly remember - like awk and others? 78.147.25.95 (talk) 22:26, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Regular expressions are best suited for text manipulation, and most modern languages -- Java, Visual Basic, C++, Perl (etc.) support them. They're essentially a simple language for text manipulation and you embed them inside a program written in another language.--Drknkn (talk) 22:46, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I understand that this may not be a scripting language, but it should work. It's in Visual Basic.NET. I don't mind if you don't use it. It wasn't much of a problem for me to put it together, anyway. I created a new Windows form application in Visual Studio and double-clicked on the form. I could have also created a console application if I didn't want a GUI. If you use it, make sure that you have a file named input.txt in the same folder as the .exe. All it does right now is replace any Ts with Fs:

Imports System.IO

Public Class Form1

    Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        Dim _file As New Printing.PrintDocument
        Using (_file)
            AddHandler _file.PrintPage, AddressOf Me.PrintPageHandler
            _file.Print()
        End Using
    End Sub

    Private Sub PrintPageHandler(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal args As Printing.PrintPageEventArgs)
        Dim _sr As New StreamReader("input.txt")
        Dim _sw As New StreamWriter("output.txt")
        Dim _txt As String

        If _sr.Peek <> -1 Then
            _txt += _sr.ReadLine
        End If
        _sr.Close()

        _txt = _txt.Replace("t", "f")

        _sw.Write(_txt)
        _sw.Close()

        Dim _font As New Font("Microsoft San Serif", 10)
        args.Graphics.DrawString(_txt, New Font(_font, FontStyle.Regular), Brushes.Black, 50, 50)
    End Sub
End Class

--Drknkn (talk) 23:40, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I'll write what you want to do in perl super fast... but you need to be more clear about what you want to do. Shadowjams (talk) 10:40, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your kind offer. For all the things marked (*) I would like to be offered the choice of choosing a file as input or typing the text into a text box(es) myself. I would like to be able to click on a 'button' on my desktop or program menu to start the program. Then I choose which 'boilerplate' text I want to use (*). Then choose which content I want to replace the "gaps" in the boilerplate text with (*). Then get the addresses to send the resulting letters to (*), including saving these addresses to a file if needed. Then adding page breaks and sending the text to the printer (with the option of printing one or two copies - one for sending, one for filing), and saving copies of the resulting letters to file. The point of this is to be able to do something quickly and without requiring the various minor decisions and thinking-load and waiting time that using a word proccessor would entail. If it takes 10 minutes with a word processor then I would put it off until I've got time to concentrate, which might be days of delay. If it takes one minute with this then I'd do it right away. Thanks. 84.13.173.43 (talk) 11:37, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you can make forms in Perl. I already made a program that does half of what you ask above. It's in Visual Basic. If you want, I can soup it up, put it into a form, compile it into an .exe, and upload it for you to download. You'd need the .NET Framework installed to run it, and that's about the only drawback. That's assuming you're using Windows. (Which you are, right?) It's either that, or using mail merge. I know that mail merge is built into MS Office and automates form mailings. But, a custom program might actually be a little more intuitive, ironically.--Drknkn (talk) 14:22, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Your not going to be able to do what you want with a scripting language. They are, by definition, sequential languages that do not work by "clicking buttons." You can still achieve the same result, but you'll be typing in a lot of prompts for manual input. Perl would work if used in an .hta file on a computer with Perl compiled. To be honest, it sounds like you need to use an object oriented language if you want buttons and forms and such. However, those languages are compiled languages and require an expensive program to compile them; except for Java. You can usually find a cheap/free Java compiler and it would allow you to do exactly what you want and use regular expressions as suggested above. I think that's the best way for you to go. However, if you don't mind typing entire file paths and not actually "seeing" the program on your screen, then VBScript would be the way to go.TParis00ap (talk) 14:36, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, Microsoft has free compilers and IDEs for several .NET languages at htttp://microsoft.com/express. Thanks, gENIUS101 16:06, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Good call. I forgot about that.--TParis00ap (talk) 16:15, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Ahem ahem, your definition of a scripting language is weird. Eg perl can be object oriented and can do guis. It has bindings for quite a many graphics libraries. For example gtk, which is about as portable as java for your average concerns. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 15:04, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, your right, a few scripting languages like Perl, VBScript, and Javascript can be object oriented. Generally they are sequential though. I still think Java is going to suit him best though. VBScript and Javascript need the HTTP application engine and I am not a strong Perl user but I think you either need to run it on Unix or have a Perl engine install on a Windows system.--TParis00ap (talk) 15:32, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Domain registry

So... what's the cheapest place to register a domain? (sorry, this is the first time that I try to register a domain so I have no idea). --Belchman (talk) 23:10, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Depends on what TLD you want to use. There are cheap TLDs (German avg. prices: .de 12 euros/yr, .com 24 euros/yr) and not that cheap or simply ridiculously expensive (.mobi). 93.104.53.57 (talk) 03:00, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Are you trying to just register a domain (e.g. just reserve the name "yourdomain.com") or are you also looking for hosting+domain (e.g. being able to actually upload a site at "yourdomain.com")? Godaddy has pretty cheap domains ($11/yr for .com, $10/yr for .org or .net, $1/yr fr .info), though there are probably cheaper domain registrars out there. If you are looking for hosting, many cheap hosting companies come with a free domain if you buy hosting with them (see the links earlier on this page about web hosting). --Mr.98 (talk) 03:08, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to know both, thanks. --Belchman (talk) 10:44, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Check out the discussion earlier on the page, it goes into some possibilities for hosting. After figuring out what you want to do for hosting, then figure out your domain registrar—again, knowing that many hosting companies will throw the domain name in for cheap or even free if you are buying pay hosting. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:37, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

24euros / yr is not a good rate at all. At least not nowadays. APL (talk) 03:57, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Even 12 euros ($17 USD) a year is pretty expensive by US standards for just a domain name! --Mr.98 (talk) 15:37, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Upon calculation I decided not to reveal how much I pay for one of my domains. For another one (.net) I have to give EUR 8/year. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:13, 18 November 2009 (UTC)