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February 6

getting out of Picture mode -- Vista

I clicked on Pictures, and ever since Vista insists on displaying ALL my folders in Picture mode. How do I make it display ordinary folders, with file names, dates, sizes, etc., instead of all that stuff that only pertains to pictures? (Yes, there is Windows "help," but TMI.) Many thanks in advance. --Halcatalyst (talk) 01:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Ending your question with doxtl;dr won't get it answered anywhere.. anyway as I recall the fix is obscure and involves deleting some cache file and some registry keys and disabling the folder autodetection, forcing every folder to All Items (unless you make exceptions specifically for the folders you want). I always have a hard time finding the fix after reformatting and a cursory look didn't turn anything up, try googling --:D\=< (talk) 04:06, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Ye gods, I'm not going to descend into the bowels of the machine. Anybody got higher level ideas? --Halcatalyst (talk) 05:20, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

In Windows Explorer click "View" on the tool bar and choose the display style you want, Icons, Tiles, Details, etc. Now click "Organize" on the tool bar and select "Folder and Search Options," click the "View" tab, select "Apply to Folders." Click "Apply" and "OK." Alternatively, you can click "Reset Folders" on the "View" tab to restore default folder views. —Wayward ^Talk 09:03, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

No, that definitely doesn't work at all. For most people that option does absolutely nothing except flip the bit saying the box is checked :D\=< (talk) 14:03, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

So, is there no (realistic) way out of this annoying situation? --Halcatalyst (talk) 21:33, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Firefox bug?

I noticed an interesting behavior in Firefox today. Clicking on a button (not a link) works fine the first time, however if you go back to the page, the page has to be reloaded. For example, a search on google: I enter some terms to search, click "google search." Once I'm on the results page, if I go back to the google front page, and enter new terms, the "google search" button does nothing (likewise the "I'm feeling lucky" button is useless). Reload the page and everything works again.

This is of course, not limited to google. The Wikipedia search does the same (in fact, every button I have tried thus far). Any ideas what might be the issue? Thanks, --TeaDrinker (talk) 04:21, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I can't reproduce this. What platform and version of Firefox are you on? — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 15:24, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

No, this actually occurs, but I have always assumed I can change some option to stop it. The problem is that when you go back to a page and press the same button (or any button for that matter), it simply does not respond. To solve the problem, just refresh/ reload the page ,and every thing is fine. This problem occurs mainly with WP when viewed under Firefox, and an OS of XP and possibly Vista but I am not sure. I have never experienced this problem before with IE, so I am guessing there is something wrong with Firefox parameters. Cheers! Λua∫Wise ^{(Operibus anteire)} 15:57, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem seems to occur only on Windows XP (haven't tried Vista). My home computer (OSX) does not have the same trouble. I know that refreshing works, although it is a bit of a pain. --TeaDrinker (talk) 16:51, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't doubt that it occurs, but I really can't reproduce it. XP SP2, Firefox 2.0.0.11 (en-GB), with and without extensions. Does this happen if you start Firefox in safe mode to disable all extensions? It's in the start menu in the same group as Firefox - it'll be labelled 'Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode)' — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 17:21, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Rather unsual because I have XP SP2, Firefox 2.0.0.11 as well. You do not need to do anything to reproduce it, simply open Firefox and go to a certain page ,e.g. trying editing this converstion, press save and then go back and try and see if "save" actually works the second time, although I'd prefer you do that in the sandbox cause if you have no problems, this will involve sending postdata which will create duplicate entries. The problem is quite annoying but not at all serious, but I repeat: Very Annoying!. Cheers! Λua∫Wise ^{(Operibus anteire)} 19:05, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I did try safe mode, which did not replicate the bug. After some experimentation with add ons, I found the real player add on to be at fault. When it is on, the bug crops up. Thanks for the help! --TeaDrinker (talk) 22:08, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

No problem. Looks like RealPlayer and another of their add-ons cause quite a few bugs in Firefox. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 00:17, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

MacOS fonts to .ttf

Looking for a free utility for MacOS to translate some of my bazillions of fonts to .ttf format so Povray can use them. (Years ago I did a few with Fontographer, but that was when I had a computer that could run Fontographer.) —Tamfang (talk) 10:26, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I've never used it, but apparently fondu does this. --24.147.69.31 (talk) 17:13, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that's useful. Something that actually converts PS fonts, say, to TT would be even usefuller, but I guess I'm not about to find that for free! —Tamfang (talk) 05:36, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Usefuller?? ugh. --24.249.108.133 (talk) 17:10, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

No sensayuma! —Tamfang (talk) 06:53, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Running a game in a Virtual Machine?

I have never used a virtual machine before, but I wish to play an old game called Interstate 76 and while it SORT OF runs under XP I lack sound, and was wondering if (seeing as the game has very low system requirements) I would be able to emulate a 3d accelerated machine under VMWare or whatever the Microsoft thing is. My machine is an AMD X2 4400+, with 2GB DDR400 memory, and an ATI x1950 Pro 512MB. What would be the best way of doing this? I have an old Windows 98 SE disk, and a bunch of free drive space but no idea which bit of software to use or if it is possible to emulate (is that how the machines work) a Direct3d card. Will I need drivers for my hardware but for Windows 98? TheGreatZorko (talk) 12:41, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure it depends on the virtualizer you use, but in many cases, no, you don't need 98 drivers to run on your host hardware, as the guest OS is not actually accessing your hardware directly. The virtualizer will access your host hardware through normal calls to it and provide its own virtual drivers for the guest operation system. So when it thinks it is sending a sound to your speakers, it is actually sending the sound to your host OS's sound system (which can send it to the speaker or ignore it or whatever you want it to do). Either Parallels Workstation or VMware Workstation should be able to do what you want. I've used Parallels mostly myself (though emulating XP on OS X) and easily get 3D, DirectX games of that vintage to run (Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament, even a stuttering Half-Life 2!). --24.147.69.31 (talk) 16:56, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

How to RUN a program in Windows

I killed some Windows file associations. Mostly those useless right-click functions such as "Open with Stupid App" or "Send to Boring App". However, I killed open by Explorer or its equivalent by mistake. Now whenever I click an .exe file, it does not execute the program. I am with my already opened programs.

How do I solve this problem without reinstall the Windows? -- Toytoy (talk) 13:17, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Hold down shift when you right-click and you'll get the elusive "Open with..." option that lets you choose any program. It also has a checkbox for remembering what you chose. -- kainaw™ 13:18, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

No, I cannot see it. I can open and execute .msi (setup program). Maybe I can get a Windows check program and install it and then let it run after installation. -- Toytoy (talk) 13:32, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I can create a new file extension, such as .fvhjgvjghv . I then double click it and I can select a program to open it. Now I can run just about every program.

Can you recommend a Windows utility that can repair bad file association? -- Toytoy (talk) 13:39, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Do an in-place upgrade if you're using XP :D\=< (talk) 14:02, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I might be wrong but I seem to recall some sort of file association repair being part of Tweak UI? You might give that a try. --24.147.69.31 (talk) 16:59, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I tried:

1. Open a folder and select Tools -> Folder Options -> File Types
2. All buttons are disabled (colored gray)

I ran Norton Windows Doctor, it fails to find this type of error. Incorrect .exe file association can't be a problem, can it? -- Toytoy (talk) 19:21, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Finally, I restored the system. Now it's OK and I am the happiest man on Planet Earth. Long Live Bill Gates! Thank you for your wonderful computer system. -- Toytoy (talk) 20:13, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

DirectX 10

Hello, Does anyone know of a safe (preferably tested) method of running DirectX 10 under XP. Yes, I know it is only for Vista, but there seems to be sort of a hacked version that would change its restrictive parameters to allow XP OS's to run DirectX 10 (rather it is the opposite, DirectX to run on XP). Well, I am particularly interested in Direct3D which seems to have improved greatly from its DirectX 9c. Ideas anyone? :) Λua∫Wise ^{(Operibus anteire)} 16:06, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I've yet to hear of a way to use DirectX 10 in XP, but I would love to find out, too. Useight (talk) 16:07, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Ways exist, but it's easier to just find a version of the game that's been hacked to work with DX9 :D\=< (talk) 17:06, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, no, they don't. Not as of yet, at least. You can convince some games to enable their extra 'DX10-only' features when rendering in DX9, but that seems to be the extent of it. Care to share your 'ways'? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 22:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

It isn't actually possible. There was a studio that was supposedly creating a way of doing it called Falling Leaf studios, and they required donation money to test the software. Now they have closed the project after releasing one single version that doesn't really work well at all. It should be noted that there is a difference between running Direct X 10 under XP and running Vista exclusive games (none of which require direct x 10) under XP, which is possible but probably not legal. The reference to "DX10 only" is probably to do with Crysis' Very High settings. Yes, it is possible to enable them under XP but they are only aproximations of DX10 effects used when demoing the game, and don't look as nice as actual directX 10, once the 1.1 patch has been applied TheGreatZorko (talk) 08:57, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Don't see what would be illegal there. EULA-voiding, sure, but good luck prosecuting anyone for a EULA violation in court. Just expanding a bit: the reason that those games are XP-playable with some effort is that they just use Vista's version of DX9, 9.0L. And that 'Falling Leaf Studios' thing was an obvious scam, I can't understand how some people actually donated money to it. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 00:41, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

windoz media player won't start and stop ripping, right?

Just checking to see if there is something I missed; I have a bunch of live recordings made on audio CDs, where there are like ten songs on each track, I'd like to transfer them to one song per track, (preferably something lossless like WMA). But I can't just let media player start ripping a track, then hit stop, can I? Need to rip the whole track and then need some kind of editing software just to break it into songs? <sarcasm>Gee, this is way more nifty than those old fashioned tape recorders with their start and stop buttons.</sarcasm> thanks. Gzuckier (talk) 19:18, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd try ripping the whole CD as one track (in as high a quality as possible, preferably a lossless codec although this will require seperate software) then splitting it into individual tracks using Audacity, a piece of free audio editing software. TheGreatZorko (talk) 08:53, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Sharing contacts in Outlook

I work for a helpdesk and I have several associates needing to share the same contact address book. One Associate updates and the two others need to access it. I know how to import/export but it seems to do that with ALL of their contacts and not just the one distribution list they need.

What i was thinking is having them save all the contacts in a shared folder on our network. It looks like it saves via a .rtf extension. However, I can not get this to work correctly. Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks, Kyle —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.75.245.130 (talk) 20:36, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Add a contacts Public Folder in Outlook; if you don't know how to do it, ask your friendly Exchange administrator for help —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.92.130.188 (talk) 02:59, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

rope!

Video games with realistic rope in them post The Hobbit (2003 video game) and ico. 'next-gen' examples especially please. I assume there are some, thanks in advance. (to myself - why don't all games have rope in them?).87.102.74.24 (talk) 20:46, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Most realistic rope? Garry's Mod :D\=< (talk) 21:29, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Garry's Mod rope isn't realistic at all. It clips through everything including world geometry - which it gets stuck in. Sure it pulls fine, but if I lay it over a box it just falls through. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 16:01, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Rope doesn't get stuck in world geometry, nor does it clip through it (the ground at least). But it clips through objects on purpose so it doesn't get stuck on anything- it's supposed to be a physics constraint :D\=< (talk) 14:44, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, rope is a wonderful thing, isn't it? But what exactly is your question on the subject of rope in video games? Do you want us to catalog all video games after 2003 that have ropes in them? Or do you want to know how they did it? — Kjammer  ⌂ 22:44, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I was looking for examples of better simulations of rope than the examples I gave - also in terms of the use of rope in gameplay - eg how about rope ladders, rope bridges etc..77.86.9.181 (talk) 17:29, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Anything that does something else with 'rope' other than (as the poster below points out) adding more links to the rope structure.77.86.9.181 (talk) 17:43, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I can't name any specific new games with better rope than Prince of Persia: Sands of Time as there isn't really much you can improve over it other than increasing the "resolution" of the joints in the rope. You might be interested to look at cloth physics, which are made by linking a large amount of "rope" together. There is a free game with fairly impressive cloth physics (if your PC can handle it) called CellFactor. TheGreatZorko (talk) 08:49, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

mmh maybe cloth physics could be used to make trampolines. Point taken about number or joints in the rope. Actually I haven't seen any games with flexible- rope in since about 2003. Conspiracy perhaps!77.86.9.181 (talk) 17:33, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Rope Simulation Technologies are being hidden and supressed by the governments of the world. Goodness knows what the terrorists can do with such technology. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 20:19, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I thought so thanks.

Resolved

making a computer work

i just found a computer on the street (in a computer magazine) and i like the design a lot but it's not to scale. how can i make it to scale (kinko's?) and where would i take it to find the parts that are missing, like case, monitor, hard-drive, ram, motherboard, etc, etc.

Thanky ou! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.72.147 (talk) 22:58, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Did you find a picture of a computer and you want to know where to buy it? Can we see the picture? —BradV 00:44, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Videos not playing fullscreen?

How can I get videos to play fullscreen on my computer. All that comes up is a black screen when I click the full screen button. I can get fullscreen with DivX videos but not youtube. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.148.85.137 (talk) 23:01, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid this isn't enough information for us to help you. Perhaps we will be able to help if you tell us which operating system and browser you are using. —BradV 00:48, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Do you have 2 displays connected? Look in you video card options e.g. Catalyst for ATI cards, and look for an option to swap display mapping. Once you find it, use it. I had a similar experience and that worked for me. 161.222.160.8 (talk) 21:19, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

February 7

Verizon Cell Phone accounts

My wife is having an affair with another man. I am able to watch her cell phone records and email including her work but cannot watch incoming calls to her work. I would like to be able to look at phone calls made from his cell phone that would tell me if he was still in contact with her. He has a Verizon acct. I would also like to check his email, to see if she may have another acct that I don't know about. He has AOL. Aside froom ethical or legal is either or possible? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.88.216.58 (talk) 00:58, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh yes, ethics and legality... mere trifles! I'd have an affair too if I was married to a paranoid control freak. --24.249.108.133 (talk) 00:20, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

How to select marker bits for data communication?

Hi friends!, I have posted it under Science and computing section too. Since this type of question isn't common in this discussion room, I'm unaware of where to ask.ok I'm doing a master project in SDR using vlsi-fpga. Well, now the main issue is that I use some predefined values infront of the data stream. Data from codec is 32-bits(Lch&Rch). I place few bits as marker in front of this audio data to denote the reciver the starting point of my data since data has to be exactly placed in lch and rch of the codec. a single bit reversal or mis-match causes serious noise.Now what happens is that data bits sometimes happen to be the marker value and mimic the marker. So the reciver when tuned on, considers that data bits as marker and starts processing from that point.so next to this action, all info becomes useless. No matter it helps if i increase the marker bits!. Simply it adds overhead only!...Is there anyway tat using a special marker can help in receiving the data without these problems?...Any other new ideas if you think, please suggest me...Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 06:54, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

You need a framing protocol, for instance HDLC. See Bit stuffing for the basic solution to the "data as marker" problem. Morana (talk) 07:45, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Looking for Team Fortress 2 sprays

Does anyone know where I can download the animated goatse and meatspin sprays for TF2? --90.242.167.38 (talk) 11:14, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

No, because we'd rather you not do so. I normally do not judge, but in the case of people like you I do. Considered yourself judged somewhat. Not that it changes anything. Have fun! (Hate to say it, but there is a way to download a tag by looking at it in game and entering a console command). 206.252.74.48 (talk) 15:21, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

That sounds like a good way to get yourself banned from a TF2 servers. APL (talk) 03:59, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Depends on which servers you play on.. a 25-minute-long ear-piercing shriek played over the voice chat would be unremarkable at a 4chan TF2 server. Try looking at fpsbanana for your sprays :D\=< (talk) 12:36, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I want to visit Windows XP land

So I can roll down the hills. Where?

BTW, why did someone almost instantly delete my question the first time I tried posting it? http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing&diff=189507204&oldid=189507089

66.91.224.203 (talk) 11:23, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Bliss (image) tells us that it's in Napa County, California, east of Sonoma Valley. Also your question probably got deleted due to an edit conflict or something. TheGreatZorko (talk) 11:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

No I deleted it because I thought it was a pisstake - I now realise that the editor meant the hills you can see on the windows XP desktop.... --Fredrick day (talk) 12:07, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

PCMCIA card ?

What is another name for a pmcia card? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.159.128.45 (talk) 13:42, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean pcmcia? -- kainaw™ 13:45, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Cardbus card. Slightly different, upwards-compatible technical standards. See our article. Atlant (talk) 18:23, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

PC Card, according to the article. —BradV 21:33, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Scheduled Task

As a scheduled task, how do i change the time that a (Windows XP SP2) computer waits to bring up the screensaver? --Shanedidona (talk) 13:55, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Right click on the desktop -> choose Properties from the pop-up menu, and select the screen saver tab. 's there. --Ouro (blah blah) 14:13, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

i know how to do that, but i want the waiting time for the screensaver to automatuically change at night and in the morning, every day --Shanedidona (talk) 21:19, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Write a program to change the value HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\ScreenSaveTimeOut in the registry. The value is in seconds. —BradV 21:36, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

You can do that with a .reg file, find one for something else and use it as an example :D\=< (talk) 16:12, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I am not trying to demean you but please make sure you back up your documents and stuff before messing with the registry. Kushal^t 16:44, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks :-) registry backup is always a good policy. --Shanedidona (talk) 13:59, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Second NIC card for Mac G5 Tower?

Anyone know of a Mac compatible PCI NIC card for a G5 Tower? I tried buying a cheapie NIC from a big box retailer, but Leopard Server's System Profiler couldn't see it and it didn't have any Mac drivers. The only one Apple offers is PCI Express based, which this G5 doesn't have. --24.249.108.133 (talk) 16:17, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Audio effects plugins

I'm just getting into audio editing and recording (specifically for a theatre production), and was wondering if someone could help me out. I need to create an effect in which it seems as if sound is traveling from the two back channels to the two front channels (right and left stay even throughout). I want to create the illusion that a train is coming from the right and left channel on stage and is moving into the audience via the back channels, with the train coming to a stop seemingly in front of the audience. I've already recorded the train approaching and stopping, but I'd really like to find a plugin or guide to create this effect. I have Audacity, ACID 6 and WaveLab 5. Thanks in advance, -Mysekurity 19:41, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, well the essential effect is using the pan control. This will make the sound 'move' from left to right or via versa by shifting its perception in the stereo field. However, you are trying to achieve a surround sound effect from the back of the auditorium to the front. This can be achieved depending on your Speaker management software/hardware at the theatre and the way the speakers are set up. I would recommend speaking to the venue technician about how to shift the audio from the rear up to the front fills.

For a simple solution, have some left wired speakers at the rear of the auditorium, some right wired near the front. Bounce your sound effect into a mono mix but still as a stereo file, then pan it from your left speakers ( rear ) to your right speakers ( front ) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.139.90.67 (talk) 15:18, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. The hardware logistics are being carried out by the venue; I just have to worry about the audio files (there are four channels on this particular stage--two on stage, two in the audience.) I found out how to do this in ACID: by using an FX Automation envelope for the pan, I was able to constrain the movement to the vertical direction, and drag to suit my needs. I just have one more big project that's bugging me. I need to create the effect of being pulled out of a dreamlike state, and want to feature a voice that is distorted and warped (much like in many films or Stewie in Petergeist) with a good deal of background noise. Can you recommend a plugin or settings effect to apply to the voice to create this effect? I'm thinking something along the lines of a slow flange or time distortion, though I could of course combine several to create the intended effect. -Mysekurity 08:17, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

A great classic effect is the backwards reverb. Record your vocals, then reverse them. Apply a reverb/delay ( not too long or it will sound muddy ) and then reverse the sound again. This will provide you with a scary 'wooshing' up to the words, like a ghost. You could then apply more normal reverb, subtle chorus effects can make it sound weird, and yes, a flange will help distort 'reality' 86.139.90.67 (talk) 12:43, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Do you have a favorite reverb or flanging plugin? I'm working with WaveLab, ACID, and SoundForge, and have access to Nuendo, Soundtrack Pro, and Soundbooth/Audition, so the program shouldn't be an issue. Anything I've missed? Thanks again, Mysekurity 20:53, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

• Hmmmm, i just use my outboard fx unit and the plugins available within Pro Tools ( dverb ) but any should do the job. Some can alter the tone quite dramtically, but nothing a bit of EQ cant fix :) 86.139.90.67 (talk) 23:36, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Can I do a tempo envelope on any of those? e.g. I want to have a sound start at normal speed, then slow it down (with or without warping). I'm thinking Nuendo might be best for that, but I'm not really familiar with it. Any suggestions? -Mysekurity 18:00, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Ipod to Itunes

How do i get the songs on my ipod on my mac??? can anyone recommend a free software? pleeeeeease? i'm going crazy trying to find a good one.--Yamanbaiia^{(free hugs!)} 21:38, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Look up online how to use terminal to show hidden files. the music files are hidden in invisible system files on your iPod. Ilikefood (talk) 21:59, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Once you find the directory the iPod is mounted under, the command ls -al will show you the hidden files in that directory. —BradV 22:32, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! --Yamanbaiia^{(free hugs!)} 01:10, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

That's what I would call "a really ugly way of doing it" (I know, I tried doing it that way once. It was made a little easier by the fact that if you opened the folder, then opened the music files, Itunes would automatically make a copy in its own music folder with a more descriptive filename.) Try getting a program called "Senuti". It's free and does exactly what you want to do (and, yes, is written for Mac OS X). Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 02:50, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia and my unfortunate IP exchange

I’ve got a bit of a problem. When I opened Wikipedia this morning (I was not logged in) there was a message alert. I have used my IP address a few times, but only when I forget to log in so I was surprised that I would have a message. As it happens the message was a warning for this disgusting bit of vandalism that was committed way back in October. None of my other IP edits were listed in user contributions. User talk:71.112.82.245 is evidently a different IP address than I had a day ago. It also appears that I’ve inherited the IP address of someone else. Looking back over the accidental IP edits I’ve made to User:S.dedalus/About me it appears that my IP has changed at other times as well. Anyway, I’m going to ask the person who helps me maintain this computer if he changed anything lately, but how could this have happened? I use a DSL modem if that helps. --S.dedalus (talk) 22:16, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems that you do not have a static IP address. There might be some cons on having a static IP address.

I know the system draws a lot of criticism for collateral damage; however, in your case, you have been able to log in. I am pretty sure that you are not limited in any way by which IP address you use, once you log in.

Your IP address is not visible to users or administrators without proper clearance. This is one of the advantages of creating an account in the first place. Kushal^t 22:23, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, if you don't pay Verizon for a static IP, they won't give you one - you'll get a new IP every N days (where N varies by ISP and sometimes by how the ISP feels about the traffic you do). It's an inevitable corollary of that dynamism that no-one (well, no-one who knows what they're talking about) will assume that, just because your IP was once used by a miscreant that you must therefor be that same miscreant. That's why we rarely block IPs for more than 24 hours. So you have nothing to worry about. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:30, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

You are not the only one. Recently someone complained about this in my talk page for a warning I did back in 2006. We used to have a bot that cleaned old ip talk pages after some time, but apparently it was disabled. That would be a good solution for this, but I cannot remember why it is not done anymore. Not deleting the talk page, just cleaning it up is enough. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 22:46, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, I see. So that’s why we still have so many IP vandals on the loose. Thanks, that’s a relief. I was afraid I’d become a zombie computer or something. :) --S.dedalus (talk) 23:02, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

RPC server time sync thingy

hello

ive tried to sync my computer time with the online one (control panel > date and time > internet time) by clicking on the 'update now' button.....but it says it cant as it cant connect to the RPC server....i need to get my computer time right as MSN messenger wont work if its wrong......help!

• windows XP normal edition
• in eastern England (if that makes any difference with regards the server thingy)

thanks,--The world tour (talk) 22:24, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand why MSN Messenger will not work if your clock is set wrongly. Try editing it manually to a reasonable current date and time. Kushal^t 02:51, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Alternatively In the mean time, you can use Pidgin (software) as other Wikipedians toll away to answer your question. Kushal^t 02:52, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

There are few different servers you can use if time.windows.com isn't working. You can use the NTP pool at pool.ntp.org, or one of the NIST servers [1]. If all else fails, try Googling UK time, or use this: 09:58, 15 September 2024 UTC [refresh], which is when you last reloaded the page. --Phirazo 04:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I suspect that the original poster was really talking about the RPC service. You can see the list of available services by going to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Services. You might try looking at the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) item there and trying to start it. (However, on my computer those options are disabled, so I don't know if that's normally possible.) Various search results suggest the RPC service gets disabled as a result of a virus infection. So my best guess is to get help investigating your computer for viruses. --Bavi H (talk) 06:27, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

what is YTIMG?

What is YTIMG.com? It seems that YouTube recently started using YTIMG. Does anyone know about it? Kushal^t 22:29, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like some sort of hosting server address. It is owned by Google according to its Whois entry, which makes sense (since Google owns YouTube). The name looks to me like an acronym for YouTube IMG or something like that—I wouldn't be surprised if it makes something easier for them to split up various functions done by YouTube into different servers with different DNS entries. Though it is a little odd. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 23:25, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think Yahoo! uses yimg.com (blasted Geocities advertisements!), so it might be more common than originally thought. x42bn6 Talk Mess 23:34, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I remember they did something like that. Not the same server, but probably the same idea. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 00:51, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Regards, Kushal^t 01:38, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I would still like to know why Google did this ... there is only one Google.com (well, there are addresses like gmodules.com and so on) I am not sure why Google or anyone else does that. Kushal^t 01:42, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Don't forget (ugh) iGoogle :D\=< (talk) 12:33, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't have anything against iGoogle as long as I can have the traditional google page (I don't really mind the ribbon.) Kushal^t 16:46, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

The reason big websites (Google, Yahoo, et al) do this is to make their web pages load faster. If you'd like a more technical answer to the question "why", I'll refer you to this site (#2 is particularly relevant): http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#cdn

VGA to Component hooked up to a 1080p television

I bought a VGA-to-component cable recently and hooked it up to my laptop. I was able to get a (not very good) picture from it at 1280x1024x32. I took a photo and uploaded it. The background (I had my laptop temporarily set at 800x600 I think) should be a black to blue gradient from the top to middle, and the bottom half is white/grey clouds. Obviously the color is off, and the picture is shifted. The green area you see on the right is inaccessible to the mouse pointer, an equivalent piece on the left is not visible, and the whole thing is shifted up by a few dozen pixels with junk in its place at the bottom. Is it possible to get an image (even if it's not 1920x1080) using this cable, or am I trying to fit a square peg in a round hole? My display drivers (nvidia) on my laptop have additional frequency settings like "front porch" and "back porch", but I have neither as I live in an apartment. Any ideas? --Silvaran (talk) 23:54, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, be aware from the beginning that VGA has a max resolution of something like 720x480 so you're not going to get anything close to maximum resolution there. Front and back porch don't refer to things in your apartment—see Front porch, Back porch. No clue if adjusting those will help. The color shifting is weird, though I've seen similar things with VGA converters that had something wrong with them (in my case it was clearly an analog problem—the LCD projector was outputting everything in hot pink except its own menu—and finally we realized it was the converter that was doing it). --98.217.18.109 (talk) 01:39, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

VGA connector is the appropriate article there, not VGA. Graphics cards using the VGA connector with resolutions like 800x600, 1024x768, and above have been around for a long time. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 07:23, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

You can't just get a VGA to component cable and expect it to work. You will need to find out what component refresh rate your tv will accept. Most likly your PC will need to output 24 or 25Hz on the VGA, which it probably can't do anyway.--Dacium (talk) 06:24, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

February 8

Web activity monitoring software

I'm looking for recommendations for software that allows me to monitor the web browsing activity of people on my network. Here are my preferences:

1) I would prefer to run this software from my Windows NT server and have it look at all the computers on the network. However I don't mind installing a program on every computer (Windows XP) in the office if it works and can send out a single report to me (email, e.t.c)

2) Logs both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

3) The reporting doesn't have to be complicated, I just want to be able to see a list of the most 50 popular sites or something similar to identify where people are going. Obviously time spent browsing and other statistics are a godsend.

Any suggestions? 91.84.143.81 (talk) 11:59, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Certainly not, I'm not going to help you spy on people... though I will tell you that it's a terrible idea to install something on each machine if you control the network. If your NT server (blech) is their network gateway then install your monitoring there :D\=< (talk) 12:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I didn't ask for your opinions on NT and I don't give a damn about your "anti-spying" agenda. I need to identify what sites my employees are visiting so I can stop them from going there during working hours. What people choose to do / say or what websites they visit in their own time is none of my business, but if they are being paid to do a job and instead of doing that job are reading personal email or posting on bulletin boards I want to know about it. 91.84.143.81 (talk) 13:18, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

If you wan't computer advice without some 'asswipe' telling you what they think then the way forward is to pay someone for that service. There's a slim possibility that someone here will actually resolve your question. Good luck.87.102.118.73 (talk) 13:52, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

lol internet rage. I'm certainly not being paid to do a job for you, so "what [I] choose to do / say ... is none of [your] business". Also what's your problem? Nobody's going to work for you if you're so strict about "checking personal emails" etc. And I still consider it spying even if they're being paid to work, though legally the owner of the local network can look in :D\=< (talk) 14:37, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Can I gently remind everyone that Wikipedia's no personal attacks, civility, and assume good faith policies are still in effect here? "Don't give a damn" and "asswipe" are not conformant to the spirit of those policies.

Atlant (talk) 14:54, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

When someone goes to a free help forum and asks for help on a particular subject, and the first answer is "You shouldn't do that, and even if you do it you are doing it wrong", and the OP responds with "I don't want your opinion", then, well, given human nature the OP isn't likely to get very much useful help on THAT forum from other readers, either. I have done what he wants for my clients, but then I was being paid, and after pointing out that there were moral issues I helped them with their need. This guy doesn't want to hear my free advice, either, which would be "Grow up, learn how to work with people instead of threatening them constantly. Hire someone to do things you can't do yourself. That way, you can threaten them if they don't do what you want. Free help only happens to people who are nice to the helpers. :) -SandyJax (talk) 15:14, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

who wants to bet that one of the most popular sites they look at will be wikipedia? Gzuckier (talk) 16:04, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I wish my workplace would seriously block it (*hint hint*). 206.252.74.48 (talk) 16:09, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Dear OP, Would you ban iPhones as well? Kushal^t 16:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Try an experiment. Print out in simple English in big letters, your computer usage policy. Also print out, in an A4 paper, a big sketch of an eye. Does not have to be fancy. Just plain black and white stuff. Put it in a conspicuous place near each computer. You will be surprised to see what a large proportion of the people will conform. After all, unless you are a really weird company with a really weird HR, chances are that your company is full of conformists. Kushal^t 16:33, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Here's a free one. Don't know if it's any good. To get a better Internet usage monitor, you'd probably have to pay for one. I've seen some ads for some, but I can't remember their particular names (they're in a PC World magazine that is sitting as reading material in my bathroom, but someone is in there right now). Useight (talk) 17:02, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

If you're still reading, Mr or Mrs 91.84, I would suggest doing a Google search for "web activity monitoring software". I got lots of results. As far as researching your specific additional parameters (runs on NT, etc), I'm going to leave that to you. I will mention that NT is probably not supported by Microsoft anymore, and current software may require something newer, like Windows 2003. --LarryMac | Talk 17:08, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Transparent squid can log all the HTTP requests, so a pfSense box from some junker PC, plus squid and lightsquid packages would do what you want, plus local cache. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:53, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

C# escape characters?

why do some escape characters in c# 2005 (i.e \f \v \r \b \0) respond incorrectly displaying strange symbols instead of performing their assigned tasks? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Supersonic8 (talk • contribs) 15:47, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Because PCs were too stupid to reserve the C0 control characters for control characters and instead used them for graphic glyphs.

Atlant (talk) 17:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

What's the context? Are you talking about the Windows console ("DOS prompt")? What are their assigned tasks? If you mean form feed, etc., then what's the assigned task of \0? What do the symbols look like? Do you get male and female symbols (♂♀) for vertical tab and form feed? -- BenRG (talk) 21:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

itunes7.6 my arse

hi all, whats the lowest form of itunes i can use with my shuffle? thanks Perry-mankster (talk) 16:02, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I know that 7.5 still worked a week or so ago since I used it with QTFairUse6 :D\=< (talk) 16:11, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

ITunes_version_history#Device_compatibility - 4.7 for the original shuffle, 7.0.2, for the new iPod Shuffle. Mac Davis (talk) 18:02, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

u is a geniuees, ta very muckle Perry-mankster (talk) 19:59, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

ISP upload speed percentage too low?

Hi wikipeoples. First of all, you should know I'm talking from a developing country where IT infrastructure is, well, developing. I recently upgraded to a 500k Internet plan (I know it doesn't sound like a lot to you, but I had a 150k until now), and I'm getting 50-60kB/s speeds on download, and 10-15 kB/s on upload. I called my ISP to ask what percentage of upload should I be getting for my account, and they told me they provide 80% of the "bandwidth speed" for download, and 30% for upload. Is this normal? Or does it sound like a rip-off to you? What are the percentage standards for speeds like this? (I hope it doesn't vary terribly from country to country...) Kreachure (talk) 16:08, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I know that ADSL does that. I am not sure why a cable company would do that. By the way, what are you on? ISDN? DSL? Cable? Please let us know. Kushal^t 16:26, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Cable does that because the "upload" channel is much narrower than the download channel.

Atlant (talk) 17:31, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. I'm on Cable, and the ISP also provides Cable television through the same cables, BUT they didn't mention that as a reason for the percentage when I asked. Even so, is having a percentage in Cable normal? Is having a percentage normal at all? Kreachure (talk) 16:49, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

This is typical. No matter what technology is used, there will be a limit to how many bits can be transferred per second. Your ISP will group users by either "home/personal", where you mostly download web stuff, and occasionally send back "gimme another page" messages, and download 100 emails, discard the 93 spam messages and read and delete 4 and reply to 3, or as "commercial" where the traffic is more balanced - there are surfers who mostly get traffic, but there are also servers providing content to the web. Your ISP/provider is giving you what they have found is best for home users. They have taken the available bandwidth, and told their routers to limit your incoming traffic to 70-80% of what's possible, and limit your outgoing to 20-30% of what's possible. You can ask for true 2-way access, or you can ask for higher bandwidth, but either will cost you more, because it costs THEM more to provide it. -SandyJax (talk) 17:41, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh boy. I guess I'll be doing either of those, otherwise my share ratio will go south and I'll get banned from trackers. Thanks. Kreachure (talk) 18:06, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Resolved

What's that element?

What is the page element that does the scrolling on http://www.volll.com/#section_main ? Mac Davis (talk) 17:55, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

The page is using anchor tags to scroll to the sections. Each of the four sections uses an anchor tag to define its location. For example, the one you linked to has a tag <a name="section_main">. This allows navigating directly to that section by using the url you posted, specifically that part after the # sign. If you look through the source for the different tag names it should be pretty straightforward. —BradV 20:26, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, yes and no. They have standard anchor tags there but they also use custom javascript to make it flow so smoothly. It's the function smoothto() in http://www.volll.com/js/volll.js. Basically it uses javascript to more slowly (and smoothly) move the position on the page by controlling exactly how fast and how far it scrolls in any given interval of time. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 22:27, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! That's the answer I wanted. 72.188.156.142 (talk) 23:35, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Nokia 7610 Memory Card Question

Hello I have a problem i format the momory card of Nokia 7610 because it was curropted.but it have many important msgs and i cant make backup.I want to recover the masgs from it which free software is good on doing so,and can i recover it back,ir if it is not suitable place plz direct me mobile forem.thankx usman khan —Preceding unsigned comment added by Usmanzia1 (talk • contribs) 18:27, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Lyrics websites

What website can I go to to search for a song by the lyrics? For instance, if I type in the word "addicted", it will give me "Aedicted to Love", "Hooked on a Feeling", "Her Eyes", etc.? The site http://www.lyrics.ch used to do this, but then the intellectual property police took it down and when it was reincarnated it became this German site that doesn't have this lyrics search feature. I need help with this. 67.188.22.239 (talk) 23:30, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I usually just google, however it would only work for sentences, not words. Suppose I know the author and a phrase, just googling for "phrase author lyrics" (for instance, a search for "within temptation" lyrics "come on" returns Ice Queen, the song I was talking about. If you don't know the band article, you may use a Google search on a lyrics site. For example, I know the song says "come on" but I don't know the group, so I could use site:somelyricsite.com "come on" lyrics. If you know the band name, though, it is a question of googling it. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 00:26, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried http://lyricswiki.com -- kainaw™ 01:22, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Coding Theory

I have recently been introduced to coding theory with an interesting application but I have a question regarding a concept I learned. Let's say that I am trying to transmit a small message, like 10011 but it gets corrupted along the way. So I decide to replace all ones with 11 and all zeros with 00. So my message becomes 1100001111. This is an error detection algorithm but not error correction. So in order to discover AND correct an error, I decide to replace 0 with 000 and 1 with 111 so now my message becomes 111000000111111. Now, this procedure can detect and correct errors (assuming that there is one error per block of three). I also read somewhere that this procedure can be used to detect TWO errors also instead of detecting one error and then correcting it. My question is, how is this possible? For example, I understand how the detection and correction of one error works, but how can this detect two errors? What if I send the original message as 111000000111111 and receive 11100011011? How can I tell that there are two errors in it (in the middle zero, going from 000 to 011)? For all the recipient knows, the original byte was 1 (going from 111 to 011) with only one error. Secondly, this algorithm triples the size of a message. The message will take longer to upload and download. Is this worth it? Thirdly, does this algorithm rely heavily on the fact that it is statistically impossible that you can't have two errors in the same triplet? Because if I send the message 111000000111111 and then receive 111011000111111, I can just fix the message to 11011. Just to let you know, I consider myself a above average computer user. I have some background in programming and I am a graduate student in Math so feel free to throw in as much math as required to explain this. Thanks! A Real Kaiser (talk) 03:46, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

It does detect two errors. If 000 becomes 011 (two errors), then you detect it as an error, do you not? It is not two-error correcting because of the reason you stated. --Spoon! (talk) 03:52, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

In case the above isn't clear: to say a code detects n errors means that if (at most) n errors occur, then you can tell that there has been an error. It doesn't mean that you can tell exactly how many errors occur. The code 1 -> 11 0 -> 00 is not two-error-detecting, because it's possible for two errors to turn 00 to 11 in which case you don't know there's been an error at all.

In answer to your other questions, the codes you're considering here are laughably bad. They make your messages three times longer, and as the length of your message increases, the probability of an undetected error occurring somewhere tends to 1. The cornerstone of coding theory is Shannon's theorem, which says that there is always a code which multiples the length of messages by some constant k (depending on how bad the communication channel is), and such that the probability of an uncorrected error occurring tends to 0 as the message length increases. Algebraist 12:11, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I think you've made a mistake here. With more repetitions the chance of an uncorrected error goes to 0, not 1. It's a very inefficient use of the channel, but it's fine if you have bandwidth to spare. -- BenRG (talk) 17:31, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I didn't mean 'as the number of repetitions increases', I meant what I said: 'as the length of the message increases' (for a fixed number of repetitions). Algebraist 19:03, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I figured I was missing something. Sorry. -- BenRG (talk) 14:51, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Codes with that level of redundancy can be useful in practice. NASA used a (32,6) Reed-Muller code for Mariner 9, which has an expansion factor of more than 5. This is a much more sophisticated code with much better error resiliency than the repeat-five-times code. Even massive repetition is sometimes used, though. An example is the P subchannel on CD-Audio discs, which indicates a track change by a burst of no less than 14,400 one bits. CDs are designed to tolerate a fairly high raw error rate, but even so this seems a bit excessive. Most players ignore the P channel and use the Q channel instead, which encodes much more information in a more sophisticated format but still relies on massive redundancy. The audio data uses cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon coding. -- BenRG (talk) 16:16, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

February 9

Wine / Ubuntu

hey..I am usig Ubuntu Linux...its fantastic!! i wanted to know, how to use Wine on it, I have not been able to download and install wine on it..pl help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidbreina (talk • contribs) 05:10, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

You can install wine using Add/Remove Software or using Synaptic under System | Administration. Or, if you need the cutting-edge releases that may not be fully tested for Ubuntu, follow the directions at http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb.

Once you have installed wine, you can install programs by downloading the .exe installer file and opening with wine. —BradV 05:52, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

how to run the application using wine?? please help!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidbreina (talk • contribs) 09:23, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

hey can u plzz temme how to uninstall the things that are installed using Wine?? thanks.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidbreina (talk • contribs) 09:47, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Under the main program meny in ubuntu, there should be a wine section where you can find an entry called "Wine Software Uninstaller". You can also launch it from the command line by typing "wine uninstaller". I'm very glad that you like Ubuntu! It's really neat, ain't it :D 83.250.205.56 (talk) 18:48, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much..It is really good..I wanted to Know how to play a VCD on the unbuntu OS, i tried playing using VLC..even that was not possible! Please tell me what to do, i installed totem player, and the error on it is "there is no input plugin, to handle the location of this movie". How can i play VCDs directly from the CD? please help!

Enable Medibuntu by following these instructions, do sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install w32codecs in terminal and it should work. Otherwise open it with totem and it should be able to find the correct codec now. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:15, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I did all that you have asked me to do..but still i cannot play (*.dat) video format on TOTEM and also on VLC. I want to know how to play that format. Pl.instruct me on the steps how to make the format ditected directly from the CD media. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidbreina (talk • contribs) 12:30, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Visual Boy Advance.

if it is loading in a sort of loop, like, first 1% then (insert random number from 2-99)% then 100% and then sometimes 101%, is there something wrong with it? and in that case how should i solve it?Then, when i try to close it and then open it up again, it says "loaded battery". i'm using version 1.7.2. (it's been loading for at least 1/2 an hour) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.156.88.207 (talk) 07:03, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The "Loaded Battery" message is normal after the first time you use a rom. It refers to the fact that many GameBoy cartridges have a battery that save information from one play to the next. "Loaded battery" indicates that the emulator has loaded this information from the disk (from a seperate file from the rom, but with a similar filename.) to simulate the battery functionality of the emulated cartridge. This process should be essentially instantaneous but the message should stick around long enough for you to read it.

As for the first part of your question, it is completely normal for emulators to fluctuate a little around 100% speed. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with how VBA reports this to the user, but is there a way to make it give you an average emulation speed? That would be much more valuable.

Also, be aware that if you're playing pirated commercial games, some of them may have copy protection that completely flummoxes the emulator. APL (talk) 17:12, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

SATA to PATA adapter?

Hi, I got an old pc with Intel Glly Board (details here)and P4 processor. I need a new hdd. The board doesn't' support SATA and Parallel ATA hard disks are hard to come by. Is there some sort a cheap adapter to fit a SATA hdd on to it?--Sagitter (talk) 11:58, 9 February 2008 (UTC)--Sagitter (talk) 11:58, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

You may be able to find a PCI card with some SATA ports on it. Useight (talk) 19:48, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Google Earth

If I put a geotag into a Wikipedia, how long before it appear on Google Earth? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Swithlander (talk • contribs) 12:41, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Google Earth / Google Maps comparison

I'm currently not using Google Earth because I'm quite happy with Google Maps. This question is about the "sattelite images" of Google Maps (which really are aerial photos, at least in populated regions), vs Google Earth. Has anyone here checked the two against each other, with regards to resolution at various locations, currentness of imagery etc.? I Did some googling and checked the articles Google Earth and Google Maps, but didn't really find an answer. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 13:30, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure they use the same data sets, though sometimes I have gotten the impression that they were not updated at the same time (for awhile things that would be "censored" in one—like nuclear reactors or the Vice President's house—would not be "censored" in the other. I don't remember the details though). --98.217.18.109 (talk) 15:51, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

virtual keyword in programming

There is a keyword called virtual in programming such as in Virtual function or in Virtual method table. Usually, programming keywords are straightforward for me to understand, as they are self-explanatory (such as const, goto, private...). But I don't see why someone came up with the keyword virtual for the actions this keyword implements. Has anyone an idea? Thanks, --Abdull (talk) 13:24, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The American Heritage Dictionary says it well - "virtual ... Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form". The virtual keyboard isn't a real keyboard - it works like one, but doesn't exist in actual fact. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:30, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The question was about virtual functions, not virtual keyboards etc. Virtual functions are functions which may or may not be defined in the class in which they appear, and they may be redefined in child classes, i.e. they are polymorphic. I agree that "virtual" is not a good choice of name for these functions. "Polymorphic" would have been better. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 13:41, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Wait until you get to static. :( --Sean 16:04, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

const is not as sensible a name as you think. C++ allows an implementation to treat a const int as really constant for optimization purposes (that is, the value can be cached), but it forbids an implementation from assuming that a const int * points to a constant int. That is, in code like

   extern void bar();
   
   void foo(const int * p) {
       printf("%d\n", *p);
       bar();
       printf("%d\n", *p);
   }

the implementation must reload *p after the call to bar, because it might have changed. If const really meant const, the conversion from int * to const int * wouldn't be type safe. Stroustrup, who introduced the const keyword, was originally going to call it readonly but changed his mind, I believe because const was shorter. It would make more sense if const int * was a pointer to a truly constant int, mutable int * was a pointer to a mutable int (like C++'s int *), and int * was a pointer to an int of unknown mutability (like C++'s const int *).

Regarding virtual, I wasn't able to find any official explanation from Stroustrup on the web, but I assume it came from the idea that virtual things "aren't really there". When p is a B*, it looks like p->foo() is invoking B::foo(), but if B::foo is virtual then it might really be calling something else. -- BenRG (talk) 17:06, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you all for your comments until now, especially for BenRG's Bjarne research.

BenRG, wouldn't it make even more sense if const int * always pointed to the same int (therefore, fixing the pointer), with this pointed to int being of unknown mutability?

I think your explanation for virtual could be what the inventors of the virtual keyword had in mind when they introduced it! --Abdull (talk) 11:09, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

A constant pointer to an int (you can modify the int through it but can't change which int it points to) is written int * const in C and C++. This does make sense in the context of C's less-than-wonderful type syntax. In the system I mentioned, int * const would be a constant pointer to an int of unknown mutability, which is written int const * const or const int * const in C or C++. Of course, if you're going to make a backward-incompatible change like that, you should also change everything else about C type syntax, which even K&R admit was an experiment that didn't pan out so well. -- BenRG (talk) 15:11, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Significantly Prettier and Easier C++ Syntax is one proposal along those lines. --Sean 16:47, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, it's trivial to avoid the extra load, if that's what you want:

   void foo(const int * p) {
       const int q=*p;
       printf("%d\n", q);
       bar();
       printf("%d\n", q);
   }

Any optimizing compiler worth a single bean will obviously optimize q out. --Tardis (talk) 01:59, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

PDF to HTML/DOC

Hello please tell me a free PDF to HTML or DOC convertor ,yes i know there are many but please tell me which i use for best output,I mean output has the same formating as the PDF.If some one has used.thanks....usman khan —Preceding unsigned comment added by Usmanzia1 (talk • contribs) 13:44, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Zamzar is a site that produces fairly accurate conversions. Unfortunately, the site seems to have developed pop-ups since the last time I visited, and it tends to spam your inbox something awful, so you may want to use a disposable email. I'm sure others will be able to name similar services without the disadvantages.--Kateshortforbob 15:28, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't care if you can toss 12 naked Scotsman off the Eiffel Tower - converting PDF to HTML is a BAD idea. Weasly (talk) 16:15, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, PDF is not meant to be converted back to editable format. If you know the author, you could try to ask them for a source file. It works much better. Kushal^t 19:55, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Network bridging...........

Hi...I have a laptop with a wireless network card. I use this to connect to other laptops in ad-hoc mode. I also have a wired LAN which I use frequently. Is there any way to bridge both the networks?? I know that wireless and wired LAN can be somehow bridged in XP but I don't know how to do that. Also is there a special way for the same in Vista?? I want to bridge the network so that I would be able to play multiplayer games with users of both the LANs simultaneously. Please help... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Piyushbehera25 (talk • contribs) 16:54, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

The control panel thing was good but I was not able to connect to both the networks simultaneously.Please suggest another way... I don't really understand what you're trying to do and how to help without more information about this game. Bridging is unlikely the answer you're looking for (Network Bridge for more details). Most games use a Client/Server system, whereby all the clients connect to a central server that hosts the game. So as long as you're the one hosting the game, and you can communicate with users in both networks, then there shouldn't be a problem, as the server app. should be able to communicate with all users (clients). The simplest solution to your woes is to put every user on the same subnet. By connecting to two networks, Window's routing table should be updated automatically to allow you to access both networks simultaneously (try testing with ping). It does not however allow users from one network to communicate with each other without a network bridge or router. Tetsuox (talk) 10:08, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Ya I tried that but it does not work always(although the subnet of all users are equal) especially if there is a user running Vista i.e. if I host a game server users of any one network not both are able to see it...how to solve this problem. I also want that users of both the networks be able to connect to each other(I wanted to know about network bridge for that matter). Please suggest some method..

Opening URL in links with an external program in Firefox

I have an unorthodox way of listening to mp3-files in my web-browser: I open them using a little script that starts downloading them (using wget) and then opens the partially downloaded file in VLC (which starts playing instantly, while the file is downloading). I'm using xubuntu, btw. I do this for several reasons: I have a slow connection and intermittent connection to the internet so I can't just stream them, because then the audio-file would be choppy (the sound would go out when there is too much traffic, and it would tie up my connection for the length of the sound-file, not the length of the download). If the connection shuts down, it continues playing for as long as it has downloaded, so I can fix it without the file stopping playback. And as a plus, I have all my clips I've listened to in a neat directory, if I ever want to listen to them again. This solution isn't for everyone, but it works very well for me, and I really like it.

However, it has one drawback. When you click on a link to an mp3-file in firefox, it downloads it and then opens the program you've assigned to deal with mp3s. This is obviously not what I want, I would like it to just send the URL to my script so it can download the thing (and start playing immediately). Right now, what I do is that I right click the link, press "Copy link location", and use the command line to launch the script. It's not a huge hassle, but it would be fantastic if I could tell firefox just to do that on its own. Any ideas about how to accomplish that? 83.250.205.56 (talk) 18:42, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I think it is possible to write a small program that will start the download in wget and open the downloading file in VLC once the percentage count reaches a certain number. However, you could also try to set Firefox to open .mp3 with the external application wget and then manually open the file with VLC. What do you think? Kushal^t 19:52, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I wasn't entirely clear about what I want. This is the script I use (it's called "mp3player", due to my total lack of originality):

#!/bin/sh
wget -c -O ~/mp3s/`expr match "$1" '.*/\(.*\)'` $1 &
sleep 7
vlc -q ~/mp3s/`expr match "$1" '.*/\(.*\)'`

(the regexes simply strips away everything before (and including) the last slash)

So if i want to play an mp3 with the url "http://example.com/somemp3.mp3", I type in "mp3player http://example.com/somemp3.mp3", which launches wget, starts downloading it (or continues downloading it, if it was interrupted, hence the "-c"), sleeps for a few seconds (so that wget has time to resolve and download a small chunk), and then starts up VLC. My download speed is poor, but it's still higher than the mp3s bitrate, so it can start directly, pretty much. However, if I set firefox to open mp3-files using it, firefox will download the entire thing to a temporary location and then opens it with my script. I use this mostly for podcasts, so that can easily take up to 20 minutes. What I would like firefox to do instead is to not download the file, but instead send the url directly to "mp3player", without downloading it. As I said, right now I copy the links location and open it using the script, but I would like that to be automatic.

I was toying with the idea of making a custom protocol handler (like "mp3://example.com/somemp3.mp3") that launched the file and then writing a greasemonkey script that converted all the links in a page that ended in "mp3" to that way, but I couldn't get the protocol to register, even though that should be pretty easy. So I'm wondering if someone else has a suggestion 83.250.205.56 (talk) 20:25, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Check out Template:Websearch, which lets you configure an external download manager. Also, "basename" does the same thing as the "expr" you're doing. --Sean 22:36, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Even simpler than basename: in bash, which "sh" actually is on your system, you can write ${1##*/} to strip up to the last slash without even using backticks. --Tardis (talk) 16:18, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Mozplugger should be able to do what you want. You'll need to edit a config file, but if you can write shell scripts the config syntax should be no problem. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:33, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

PDF Files

Does anyone know how to do this ... or even if it can be done at all? Say that I have 10 pages in a report ... Pages 1 through 9 are in a single PDF file ... and Page 10 is a single page in M.S. Word. Can I somehow bring that lone Page 10 from M.S. Word into the PDF file ... so that all 10 pages are all included in one single document? If so, how do I do that? Or is this something that can't even be done? The long story short is ... the first 9 pages are coming from one source ... and they (all 9) can be converted into a PDF file as a whole unit. And that last page (page 10) is coming from a different source ... and it can also (separately) be converted into a PDF file. But, the ten pages as a whole unit cannot be converted into a PDF file as a whole --- since they are coming from different sources before PDF conversion. So is there a way to join together somehow the two separate PDF files into one file, with all ten pages together? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:19, 9 February 2008 (UTC))

There's [Pdftk] which is free software, and of course the commercial Adobe Acrobat if you want a user-friendly interface. 84.239.133.86 (talk) 20:34, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

What about printing off the pdf and the word, and then shoving the 10 pages back through the scanner. Or is that just way too analogue? Joesydney (talk) 02:11, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's pretty analogue, especially when there is PDF merging software available for free. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 16:34, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all the replies. Number 1 ... I never knew that there even was free software available to do PDF merges. Good to now know. Number 2 ... No, I would never even consider the "analogue" re-scanning of 10 pages. It's a much longer document, and the 10 pages was just a hypothetical example for the purposes of this question. Thanks to all for the input. Much appreciated. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 22:59, 10 February 2008 (UTC))

Thanks to 84.239.133.86 for the link to Pdftk. Exactly what I've been looking for myself. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:22, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Thinking of switching to an Imac computer

Good afternoon,

I presently do home office work (MS Office) and some image manipulation on a pair of home based PC's...a laptop and a desktop. Netwoked wirelessly. The desktop is 7+ years old. The newer laptop recently died and was resuscitated.

Seeing as how the desktop PC will need to be replaced, and a history of occasional PC related difficulties (yes it IS still running after 7 year) what advise can one give about switching out both computers to MAc's? I'm told they are more reliable.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.206.194.206 (talk) 21:12, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Hardware is a commodity these days. There's no reason to think a Mac would be more or less reliable than some other brand if you're talking about hardware. The OS is another story- many people think OS X is more stable than Windows, but even Windows is getting better all the time. I've had a Mac for a couple years now and I can't say it's perfectly stable- it has crashed on me a couple times that I remember. The best reason to switch to a Mac would be if you prefer them. Have you tried one lately? If you like it, go for it. If not, you already know Windows can do the job you need done. Friday (talk) 21:17, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Also try out a more user-friendly Linux distribution like Ubuntu (Linux distribution) in addition to the two, you might end up liking Ubuntu more than either of the two proprietary systems. --antilived^{T | C | G} 22:54, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Um, but of course if anything goes wrong you'll not only not have anyone to turn to for help but you'll be stuck recompiling the kernel on your own. Linux is free if you believe your own time is worthless. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 15:37, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

This is getting off topic but why are you recompiling the kernel anyway? I don't think you get any more help in Windows or Mac, for once I have no idea where to ask other people that has as good a SNR as Ubuntu Forums. I just had to reinstall Windows (last reinstallation: September) because it randomly throws "destination unreachable" and break my internet, and I had to spend the whole afternoon chasing drivers, updates, useful apps (Firefox, foobar, AVG etc.), integrating them using nLite (believe me it's even more of a hassle doing it other way around, installing drivers twice) and didn't finish until 8pm. Then I reinstall my Ubuntu (haven't reinstalled since Dapper days, so that puts it nearly 2 years), and I have a usable system by 10pm. Which wastes more time? --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:52, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Macs are decent hardware, in a solid, well-built, and (usually) attractive package. OS X itself is also far closer to idiot-proof than Windows as few malware applications target it; from what I've seen that's almost the only reason people have less malware issues with it these days, as the vast majority of that crap seems to actually be executed by the user. In any case, if all you're doing is light computer usage, a new Apple computer is going to be overkill. Just get a used one, or a cheap non-apple PC. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 09:41, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I would say the only reason for getting a Mac is preference. If you would prefer to get a Mac, by all means, please go ahead. The operating system is well packaged. Even though there are some kinks that need to be ironed (such as running applications natively on Intel chips), there are workarounds to them. However, before getting a Mac, please look at other alternatives, most notably, Ubuntu. Kushal^t 23:28, 9 February 20 08 (UTC)

• Ignore anyone who says 'Macs are more media friendly/better spec/better machines' etc. They are very similar to PCs these days. The BEST reason for switching to mac is if you like the way it is organised/ the way the OS works. I use macs and I like the way the folders work, the way it does operations and the logic behind OSX. Please use a mac, try some stuff out, and if you find yourself more at ease, more productive, etc, then make the switch. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.139.90.67 (talk) 23:40, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The main reason that Mac hardware is thought of as more "solid" is that there are a relatively limited number of configurations possible. With a PC, there are unlimited configurations as there are many "clones" being sold out there (one OS has to deal with an infinite number of possibilities), but because Mac hardware is developed in a proprietary way by the people who develop the software they have more control over exactly how each system is set up. This proprietary model, though, is what makes Macs more expensive than PC equivalents.

I've never had trouble with Mac hardware except in laptops, which can be more difficult in general as they are more susceptible to damage and danger than desktops.

The OS is pretty stable. I'm trying to think of the last time I had a kernel panic on this machine—I'm not sure I ever have. (My last machine, a laptop, had a faulty logic board—a common complaint with iBooks—and I got them all the time.) Individual programs, of course, sometimes crash (none more than Firefox, dare I say it), but I suspect that has as much to do with the programs as it does the OS, if not more.

On the whole I'd say the big advantage of Mac desktops is that they are very easy to run. Much easier than any Windows machine I have ever owned. Programs do not get installed in strange places, you are usually able to figure out almost immediately where everything is and should be, and you won't ever end up in the situation where suddenly you find that two dozen little widgets have colonized your computer without you knowing it. You don't, at the moment, have to worry about viruses or spyware. (With a Windows machine, you can spend a lot of time making sure that doesn't happen. Again, it depends on how much your time is worth and whether you are confident in your ability to keep up with the maintenance. Obviously the very computer savvy people who will write replies on here will probably have no problem with it; I have found that the average person, however, cannot keep up and thus sees real system slowdown very soon after getting online.) If you buy 3 years of Applecare with it (I recommend it) then you really don't have to worry about most hardware-related problems or software-related problems. If these things are valuable to you, then I'd recommend getting a Mac. (While a Linux machine can satisfy some of these requirements, in my experience they require doing a lot of nuts-and-bolts work to maintain, playing around in bash and knowing how to compile packages. If those very words sound scary to you, then you should probably avoid it as an OS. It's a great thing for hobbyists but I'd point people who don't have that much free time to other operating systems.) Macs cost a bit more but you do get something for the money. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 15:47, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

recording music on a dvd blank disc

i want to place some music on a cd. i don't have any blank audio cds but i have some blank dvd-r (16x). can i put misic on these and use them in my cd player?68.11.133.123 (talk) 21:31, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Not likely, a CD player has a CD reader, not a DVD reader. The machine would not know how to read from it, and would just spin it at different speeds (just like when putting a DVD in a CD reader). -- ReyBrujo (talk) 21:35, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

If your player supports DVD-Audio then you can probably burn a DVD-Audio disc. If it supports something like MP3 then there's a chance it might be able to read files off DVDs. But CD audio definitely not. The CD format was designed at a low level for audio, and computer data (CD-ROM) was layered on top of that years later. The DVD format was designed at a low level for computer data. So CD audio is a kind of "unformat" which has no DVD equivalent even in principle. -- BenRG (talk) 22:53, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Linux

I am look at putting "distribution" of the Linux OS on a Dell '98 or '95 with a Pentium III processor. There are a long list of "distributions" and I have no idea how to choose which one I should use. Maybe some of you will have some knowledge in this area and could recommend which I should get? Thanks, Zrs 12 (talk) 22:33, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Xubuntu. --antilived^{T | C | G} 22:52, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Do you have the link at which I could obtain it? Zrs 12 (talk) 23:08, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Antilived gave you the Wikilink to Xubuntu. However, let me give you the link to the selection page at the xubuntu website. Just choose which mirror you are closest to and download it. Hope that helps,

Regards

Kushal^t 23:22, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Yep, got it. Downloading it right now. Thanks, Zrs 12 (talk) 23:29, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Great! Kushal^t 02:52, 10 February 2008 (UTC)  Done

I use xubuntu as my primary OS and my computer's not at all underpowered.. xfce is supposed to be lean, but it's not a miracle worker on ancient hardware like blackbox is. Try fluxbuntu :D\=< (talk) 13:49, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Unreal Engine 2, 2.5 and 3 system requirements

What are the system requirements to Unreal Engine 2, 2.5 and 3 respectively? I can't find them online...

Also: any simple stripped-down version I can level-edit and walk around in just to see what it looks like? I'm thinking a couple of megabytes... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.91.85 (talk) 23:50, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The Unreal Engine itself doesn't have any system requirements because its basicly just a set of tools for creating a game. Its how those tools are used that define the system requirements for a game. Game engine has a list of open-source game engines you can use, since the Unreal engine is commercial and unavailable for private use (unless you can pay them ungodly sums of money, probably six figures). Be aware that its a bit more complicated than level-editting and without a background in programming its likely to be slow going. Mad031683 (talk) 17:01, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

sound direction software

Hi. I remember stuff for macs that sends any sound to anywhere. For example, itunes could go out the built in speakers, and a skype can go through a wireless headset. Anyone remember?81.150.247.152 (talk) 23:59, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

AirPort? —BradV 03:29, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Its more likely that it is a third party application. Kushal^t 06:54, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

• I dont know about Skype, but Apple released airtunes http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/ which will wireless beam your iTunes to any jack input connector. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.139.90.67 (talk) 12:10, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

There should be a software workaround for this. I am thinking along the lines of: Skype can talk with the computer over Bluetooth and iTunes can use the built in speakers.

Isn't the audio hardware that comes with most Macs (which could vary depending on model, of course) good enough to allow two channels of communication? Kushal^t 15:11, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Correct, Kushal, it was 3rd party. This is a macbook. "I am thinking along the lines of: Skype can talk with the computer over Bluetooth and iTunes can use the built in speakers." Correct. That's what I mean.81.150.247.152 (talk) 23:47, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

February 10

sharing

i recently installed a friends hard disk as a slave to compliment my 80 gb.am on xp.anytime i try to access media file from the new hard disk i get an error messag "1072867d in module 'gen_ml.dll' read off adress 00000028" but it eventually plays the file.could it be a sharing violation or what? 2.is a serial bus type of connection faster than a parallell bus?i thot serial ought to be faster coz nowadays hard disks are usually using sata coz its faster that pata?but our teacher explained that parallel is faster coz there more chanells in pata so more workload passes through unlike sata where its one data character at a tyme thus taking more time, 3.i usually use the gpedit.msc route when my task manger is disabled but now when i type gpedit.msc>admin templates>win components...... i cant see the options to eneble my task manager and other stuff especially incase of a virus threat which disables my task manager or folder options? 4.incase i want to see my password from sam in my pc when is it located or from the registry? 5.i recently saw an ad on my local paper where a guy claims he can actually by pass a nokia security code in a minute.and he wont need any tools just type a sequence of buttons on the keypad.is it a hack or a hoax?is it legal or is it just a flaw in nokia phones? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.89.177 (talk) 09:28, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

RuneScape

When doing the quest Dragon Slayer, after you defeat Melzar the Mad, what's the best way of killing the Lesser Demon? 124.181.26.71 (talk) 09:51, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

In my humble opinion, you should bring with you the best food you can afford, preferably lobsters or swordfishes, a strength potion with 4 doses (it should say Strength potion (4)), along with a rune scimitar/battleaxe and a rune chainbody. Before attacking, remember to drink a single dose of your strength potion (only one) and after that, start fighting the Lesser Demon using your weapon on accurate mode, since it automatically gives you 3+ Attack. Theorically, you should be able to come out victorious without any major inconveniences. Note that your current combat level is also definitely important, I would strongly suggest a 40+ combat with a decent defence level in order to continue doing the quest. Good luck to you, and hope this helps. 201.253.128.250 (talk) 23:38, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Definitely not, swordfish is awful and you didn't even mention scallops :D\=< (talk) 13:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

*.dat video format on Ubuntu.

i cannot play (*.dat) video format on the media player od ubuntu both TOTEM and also on VLC. I want to know how to play that format. Pl.instruct me on the steps how to make the format detected directly from the CD media.I have already installed the w32codecs and also the Mediubuntu to the very latest update, i have all the gstreams installed..but still all the media player fail to detect the *.dat format. please help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidbreina (talk • contribs) 12:36, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

.dat is a generic term for a data file, so the actual file could be almost anything. Can I ask for a little more information? One of the DVD files is a .dat. Lots of video games also name files .dat. Or the file could easily be a common format which is named incorrectly.

To find out what the file actually is, use the command file whatever.dat - this will guess at the file type. Another method is to look at the first few bytes of the file, known as the file's "magic number" or "type code". You can show this with the command hd -n 32 whatever.dat. --h2g2bob (talk) 19:04, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

If this is a Video CD, then the .dat file is MPEG-1, for which you certainly have a decoder. But it is not a file in the ordinary sense, and can only be read by low-level access to the disc. I think most media players can handle Video CD, but you probably need to point them to the whole disc and not to the .dat "file". -- BenRG (talk) 19:11, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes i am talking about the video CD, even if I point out the whole disc then it says that its not being able to handle the source. So i don't quite no what is happenin...are you using ubuntu too..if you are what media player do you use and does it detect the video CD directly?? i think you need some kind of codec for it to detect a Video CD...pl tell me if u know any! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidbreina (talk • contribs) 19:46, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

vlc vcd:///dev/dvd should play a VCD in the DVD drive. --h2g2bob (talk) 23:46, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I like mplayer better, just install and open mplayer, right click and click "VCD/Open Disc". --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:44, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Don't VCDs use ISO 9660 filesystems? The .dat file should work fine if renamed to .mpg or if you open it in a program that can handle MPEG-1 files. --Kjoonlee 17:36, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

The MPEG data is stored in mode 2 form 2 sectors, which have 2324 bytes of user data. Video CDs are a mix of 2048-byte and 2324-byte sectors, which would be tricky to deal with in a filesystem implementation. It may be that some implementations have support for reading the .dat file directly, but it's not automatic. -- BenRG (talk) 02:19, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

From personal experience, I know that VLC plays .dat files on the hard disk as well as Video CDs on Windows XP. A question to the OP, did you try the Video CD on other computers? Could you try other Video CDs in the computer? Kushal^t 03:10, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Is iPhone too big?

Given most windows phones have 2.6 inches, is iPhone a little big? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.124.67 (talk) 13:40, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

That only depends on your preference. --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 14:27, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

wireless internet not connecting(2)

Hey I'm just wondering if anyone can help me out with connecting to a wireless router.

I'm in France and in our apartment we have a Neuf box. I can connect to the internet with the LAN cable but not wirelessly. The other 2 people in the flat can connect wirelessly with no problems. we have a network key, which i know, but it still wont connect with that. We phoned the Neuf company today and they couldnt suggest anything except that there may be a problem with the anti-virus software I use. I use the free edition of AVG and i uninstalled it and tried to connect, still without succes. At home in Ireland I can connect without problems and I connected successfully in a hotel in France last week. I can also connect sometimes to another unsecured wireless network in our apartment block, but that one is usually out of reach. Therefore I conclude that the problem is with my laptop, am I right? If anyone can help it would be gratefully appreciated!

Thanks Emma —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.204.86.139 (talk) 19:51, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Emma! You need to supply more info to get a good answer. The term "Neuf box" is not universally understood. I googled it. The best hit I got was this one, but unfortunately, my French is too rusty for me to make sufficient sense out of it, although I did understand that Neuf is one of the leading French ISPs. You have not stated which OS you use. You have also not stated explicitly whether the problem is that the "Neuf box", which I presume is the wireless router in question, is not detected by your laptop at all, or if you can see that it is indeed detected, when you enter the "network key". If the latter is the case, what error message do you get? I presume the the network has a name, which should be visible and have a decent signal strength when you try to connect wirelessly. Therefore, it should be easy for you to see if it is detected. If you can confirm that the correct network is detected, and you enter the access key, and receive no error messages, there ought to be some indicator (such as an icon in the systray) that you are connected. If you appear to be physically connected, but still cannot connect to the internet, there might be a DNS problem. To check this out, you might try to connect to the router itself, by entering its ip-address in the address bar of your browser.

However, before doing this, check out if you can correct the problem simply by resetting the router (Neuf box?). Turn off its power, wait a couple of minutes, turn it on again, wait a couple of minutes, and try to connect.

If you are a Windows user, you can obtain the ip-address of the router as follows: Ask one of your flatmates, who has succeeded in connecting, to open a command line prompt, and type "ipconfig". Make a note of what your standard/default gateway is. It's the third ip-address in the output. Let's say the default gateway is 192.168.0.1. This will be the IP-address of your router. Then enter, in the address line of your browser: http://192.168.0.1. If you get some sort of login screen, you are physically connected to the router, and you probably have a DNS problem, i.e. your PC does not know how to translate URLs to ip-addresses. You can verify this by typing for instance http://64.233.167.99, which should open up the Google search page. If all of the above works, you might try opening a command line prompt on your PC, and enter "ipconfig /renew", and make a note of whether this succeeds or results in an error message. If you get no error message, but still cannot connect by entering URLs, you will have to check out the network settings in the control panel. I hope this helps, but as you can see, I had to make a lot of assumptions. If you provide these crucial details, you are more likely to get a good answer. When you get error messages, write down the exact wording. Googling error messages very useful for solving such problems, but you need the exact wording to get the hits you want. Good luck! --NorwegianBlue ^talk 21:03, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. And sorry if I didnt explain properly,I'm not so good with computers so thought i mentiond everything. I Tried everything you suggested but nothing has worked. Yes I'm using Windows and yes the Neuf box is the wireless router. The router has a name but when i type i the network key it says "Please wait while Windows connects to the NEUF_4118 network" for 2 minutes then just goes back to the network list without connecting. I can get onto the routers IP address thingy by entering in it's IP address into the address bar in the browser and i can see all the connections, the network key, IP addresses and everything. I entered the google IP address and that worked fine. I did the command line prompt for "ipconfig/renew" which worked. but still no luck with connecting wirelessly. I have tried looking at the connection settings, but why should there be a problem with these if i was able to connect to a woreless network in a hotel abt have had no problems at home with it??

Thanks again!!

Ok, if you can access an external web page, such as Google, by entering its ip-address, then you've narrowed the problem down. The problem is that your computer cannot access the DNS server, for some reason. Check out your control panel settings. There should be an icon called "Network" or "Network connections" (I have a Norwegian XP-version, so I'm not sure of the exact naming of the control panel applets in English). Clicking on the icon will open a folder-like window representing your network cards. If there's more than one (which is likely, one for the wireless and another for the wired connection), you'll have to figure out which one that needs modifying. Hopefully, this will be obvious from its name. Double click the icon, then click "Properties". The window which then opens has three tabs at the top. The first one ("General" in Norwegian) will probably be selected, if it isn't, select it. There's a list with drivers and protocols in the middle of the page. The list has a scroll bar at the right. Scroll until you find "TCP/IP". Click once, to highlight it. Then click the "properties" button below the list. Another dialog will open, and there will be two sets of radio buttons. The top one controls whether your router will give your PC an IP-address automatically (using a protocol called DHCP), or whether you want to set it up manually. Don't change this one, since it obviously is working OK. The bottom one tells your PC which IP address it should send a request to for translating a URL (http://www.google.com) to an ip address (http://64.233.167.99). This is where you probably have a problem. Before changing anything, make a note of what the origninal settings were. The first selection ought to work (it's called something like "Receive DNS server address automatically"). If this doesn't work, change to the second selection (called something like "Use the following DNS server address"), and enter the IP-address of your router here. Then, in a DOS prompt, enter "ipconfig /renew". If you still are out of luck, have one of your flatmates check out their PC's network settings. You don't want to mess up their network connection, so make sure that they exit all of these dialogs using the "Cancel" button. When you've made a note of their settings, copy the settings to your PC, save them, open a DOS window, and type "ipconfig /renew" again. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:14, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Security on Linux

Real amateur question here.... I'm primarily a Windows user, but I have Ubuntu installed on one computer. Do I need to get myself some sort of anti-virus software to run under Ubuntu? If so, can you recommend a package that will work for me? ike9898 (talk) 15:56, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

It's unlikely you'll need anti-virus software for Linux, but if you do need one, there's ClamAV, which is the only one I've heard of. x42bn6 Talk Mess 16:12, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

All you really need is to keep up to date with the security patches. This can be set to install automatically, but I think the default is to alert you like this. A quick google shows this page on psychocats.net, which has a very good set of pointers. You generally don't need to worry about a firewall, the Linux one is called iptables. --h2g2bob (talk) 18:36, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

This link was VERY helpful; exactly what I wanted to learn about. Thx! ike9898 (talk) 23:30, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

If you want to configure the firewall on Ubuntu, install the program Firestarter using Synaptic. —BradV 21:16, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I really hate firestarter, if you know what you're doing then you don't need a gui, and if you don't then firestarter just completely screws everything up :D\=< (talk) 04:48, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Avast runs on Ubuntu, if you want to try that.--ChokinBako (talk) 08:16, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Navigating to a specific website using a keyboard shortcut

Like many wiki-addicts, I like to visit my watchlist... constantly. Compulsively. All the time. Using Mozilla Firefox, what's the easiest way to set up keyboard shortcut (or "hot key" or whatever it's called) that will automatically take me to my watchlist? Note that I do not want to make my watchlist my home page; I merely want to quickly navigate there from any other website, without using the mouse or multiple keyboard strokes.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 17:27, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

If you are using Firefox, you should be able to download this onto your Firefox browser. Go into options (right click, options on icon) and set your shortcut to a number (for example, I have CTRL-1 for the Main Page, CTRL-3 for Articles for deletion, etc.) STORMTRACKER 94 ^{Go Sox!} 17:45, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

The add-on works very nicely. Thank you.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 18:37, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

xbox

are video games like xbox, playstation and wii played in TV or computer? Why? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.118.138 (talk) 17:39, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you asking whether people use TVs or computer monitors as a display? I imagine it's some of each, altho TVs are probably more common. They all come with cables to hook to TVs. I think you'd have to buy an extra cable to hook it to a monitor. Friday (talk) 17:42, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Gamecube,Wii - TV

PS1, PS2 - TV

XBOX - TV /(monitor possibly i think)

XBOX 360 - TV/Monitor (monitor preferable)/HiDefTV possible (on some models with HDMI)

PS3 - TV/HiDef TV (using HDMI cable or component cable) (HiDef preferable)

Why?... 87.102.81.140 (talk) 15:02, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

MSN TV or WEB TV

I heard MSN TV or web TV has 640*480 VGA resolution. Are all TVs manufactured have the same 640*480 resolution (excluding LCD/Plasma etc) irrespective of whether they are PAL or NTSC standard? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.118.138 (talk) 17:48, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

According to Technology of television, Cathode ray tube televisions "do not have a fixed native resolution, they are capable of displaying sources with different resolutions at the best possible image quality." I imagine that 640*480 was chosen to optimize bandwidth requirements. Kushal^t 12:49, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Many cameras eg webcam/mobile phone/video on digital camera record video in VGA resolution,, if not most...87.102.81.140 (talk) 15:07, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Java Script

Hello!
I have a bit of a basic problem with the java script I have; I was trying to use addOnloadHook( function() where I append text upon clicking on a certain tool bar button, and it did not work. I have tried to look at friendly's welcome script but it had too many parameters I did not need. I am novice at java script to say the least, and I would appreciate if someone could help me with this-perhaps providing the script needed if it was short :)- I know this should be simple enough, and I am quite sure that I have nothing wrong with the procedure (bypassing cache, importing scripts from their locations, monobook.js, etc.) so the problem must be with the script I wrote. Thanks! P.S. I know I should perhaps I ask this on Village pump, but you guys are faster.... :) Λua∫Wise ^{(Operibus anteire)} 18:22, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

--Ryan (talk) 19:22, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Parsing HTML with PHP

How can a parse a youtube page's html in serverside PHP to get a link to the video? Like the .flv file? Thanks.--Ryan (talk) 18:25, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

You can get the HTML page inside a string and get the relevant values using regular expressions. It's the easiest and quickest way. — Kieff | Talk 18:51, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Heh, "easiest" is all in the eye of the beholder, unless you are speaking from the computer's viewpoint. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 19:08, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm new at this. Could someone give me an example?--Ryan (talk) 19:22, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

This page seems to explain how to do it. You don't need to parse the HTML at all, from what I can tell; you just need to use the video id to get the SWF URL and from that grab the FLV id. The coding examples given are in Actionscript but from the step-by-step description you should be able to do it with PHP pretty easily; it is mostly string manipulation. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 00:43, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Laptop Hard Drive RPM's

I have looked at the hard disk drive article on wiki and it talks about rpm's in harddrives however i am wondering in anyones opinion what would be the best RPM's for a harddrive. I am looking to buy a laptop that i really like however it only has 4200 RPM's--logger (talk) 22:27, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

For laptop hard drives, 4200 RPM is somewhat slow (but cheaper), 5400 is typical, and 10000 is high performance and more expensive. "Best" is subjective-- you have to decide if the lower price is worth lower performance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.92.130.188 (talk) 01:01, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

All depends on what you want to do with it. For general computing use and portability, 4200 rpm drives are great. Easy on the battery, and don't get as hot as the other flavors. If your laptop is primarily going to be a 'portable desktop' feel free to spring for the 5400 or 7200 rpm drives. Unfortunately, you take a battery life hit. In my experience -- expect to lose 1/2 hour to 45 minutes compared to a 4200 rpm drive. Cdgibson (talk) 04:34, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

February 11

Software for Information graphics

What are some software programs/tools/packages that can be used for creating high quality information graphics, statistical graphics, etc? I consider myself to be an advanced Excel user (though not much into VBA yet) and a fairly competent MATLAB user. Are there other programs that can be used for data visualization? --Saket (talk) 05:02, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

A reporting tool like Crystal Reports has powerful charting and query/formula capabilities... Sandman30s (talk) 09:04, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Check out IGOR Pro. —Wayward ^Talk 12:43, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Check out R (programming language) along with this book, the book's website is here, with sample graphs and associated code. It's quite time-consuming, though, to get the graphs exactly like you want. To get you started, if you have an Excel table with variable names in the first row, the easiest way to copy it to R is via the clipboard. After you have copied it from Excel to the clipboard, switch to R and enter:

          mydata=read.table(file="clipboard", header=TRUE)

If your country settings use a decimal comma, you'll need to type

           mydata=read.table(file="clipboard", header=TRUE, dec=',')

It's often a good idea to add

           mydata=read.table(file="clipboard", header=TRUE, as.is=TRUE)

as well, otherwise string variables will be converted into factors. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:00, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

RuneScape II

whats the best place to practice range if you have just started ranging and not a member??? 124.181.26.71 (talk) 06:27, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Linux Uninstall

I installed Ubuntu on my Vista machine and was very happy with it, so I decided to try other Linux variants and installed PCLinux. After this installation, I couldn't get Ubuntu to work (PCLinux works fine). Anyway, I have decided that I don't want PCLinux, so how is it possible to erase it and get my partition back into the Vista environment, as I seem to remember devoting 7GB to PCLinux?

Any help would be appreciated.--ChokinBako (talk) 08:13, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Open vista, right-click Computer, manage, disk manager. Delete the pclinux partition and expand the vista partition into it (if it's not contiguous you'll have to use gparted from the ubuntu livecd and expand it into your linux paritions). Then boot from the ubuntu livecd and update-grub from the command line :D\=< (talk) 13:43, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

"Update grub from the command line"? How exactly do I do that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Givnan (talk • contribs) 14:34, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

In Linux (regardless of the version) type "cd /boot" and you should be in the boot partition. If you have multiple linux installs, they should be sharing this partition. Typing "ls" should show you a directory named grub. Type "cd grub" and then "ls" and you should see a file called menu.lst - which is the menu you see when grub is booting. As root, edit menu.lst (ie: "nano menu.lst"). Each menu item has a listing that looks like:

title MyLinuxIsTooCool (2.6)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.img

The title is just what you want to call it. It can be anything. Root is the drive containing the kernel and initrd image. Kernel is the kernel file and options to go along with it. Initrd is the initrd image.

What apparently happened is that installing PCLinux overwrote your menu.lst file, erasing or altering the entry for Ubuntu. That basically means that the PCLinux installer is junk. Since anyone with a computer and spare time can make their own Linux distro, you end up with many junk distros. I prefer to stick with either Debian-Ubuntu or Redhat-Fedora. They have a lot of developers to help keep the distros useful. -- kainaw™ 14:44, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Lot of info, thanks, but how do I get rid of Linux? --ChokinBako (talk) 14:53, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Size of email message

I received a short email (in Outlook) with a Word file attached. The file was 1MB but Outlook states that the size of the entire email (including attachment) is 3MB. Clearly the brief email can't be 2MB large (can it?!) so why is Outlook telling me that the whole thing is 3MB? --Richardrj ^{talk email} 09:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Binary attachments are usually encoded in Base64, which takes 4/3 times the size of the file, not including line returns that are necessary in the Base64, which add more size. That alone should does not account for why it is 3MB. But is part of it. --Spoon! (talk) 10:43, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps that number is how much disk space Outlook uses to store that mail? Considering that this is the company that made an exit menu a 43-man project, this would not be too surprising. --Sean 18:40, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Mac data recovery (moved from Language desk)

Software advance tool to recover lost, deleted, corrupted mac data. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.177.154.109 (talk) 10:45, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Alsoft's "Disk Warrior": http://www.alsoft.com/.

Atlant (talk) 13:08, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

USB Connection

Hello. I want to connect two PCs (a desktop and a laptop, both with Windows XP) using an extensible USB cable with adapters, connecting them directly by USB ports. It's possible? It'll work? Do I need a specific program to transfer files? Or it can damage the PCs? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.255.9.38 (talk) 13:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

You can't connect two PCs using only cables. You will need a USB bridge, but they don't seem to be very common. I'd go for using Ethernet (RJ-45) (8P8C) cross cables, or regular Ethernet cables hooked up to a common router/hub/switch. Or wireless. --Kjoonlee 17:27, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Without a USB bridge, connecting a USB port of a PC directly to another PC's USB port can damage the computers. USB.org - FAQ: Cables, Connectors, and Networking --Kjoonlee 17:32, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

You could also use a serial cable to connect the two PCs via their serial ports (if they both have one), but it will be a slow connection. 128.187.0.164 (talk) 18:53, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I tried to do this once but one of the computers didn't have a serial port. One other thing is which program to use; is there any freely available software for Windows which supports serial/parallel transfer? --Kjoonlee 19:36, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

OpenGL

My brother is trying to install a game and is getting the following message relating to system requirements.

"OpenGL : Failed : Intel -1.3.0 -Build 4.14.10.4396

Required: Non-Windows Generic OpenGL 1.4.0 drivers"

Is this a hardware issue, or one that can be fixed just using software? --Omnipotence407 (talk) 23:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

This sounds to me like a driver issue. Download the latest drivers for your graphics card. It is also possible that game only runs on a unix environment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arcoain (talk • contribs) 03:05, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like it has an integrated Intel graphics chip. These will simply not work with 99% of 3D games. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 06:23, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

psp feeder

Hello, I am having a big problem with this program demo I downloaded.I would appreciate it if you reply soon cause I only have 4 more days of the demo.At the begining it ask me what "letter" psp I have , my first problem begins here I didnt know what that ment or how to find it out so I just choose "E" (note:I have a silver psp). Then I wanted to put my dvd into my psp. So then I connected the psp to the computer using usb then I put the movie in.And i clicked "import video". It told me that the movie was in 5 parts and it will convert and put in the videos one at a time. And then when it was finished it was shown on the computer as these pictures from the movie.When I clicked playback, it didnt when I checked my psp ,NO MOVIE!! note: my psp has a memory card. If possible can I have step by step instructions. I appreciate your help alot. Any advice given is needed. Thank you so much for your time, sorry it's so long.(Superawesomgoat (talk) 23:54, 11 February 2008 (UTC))

February 12

PSD to Vector

I made a vector logo in Photoshop for a friend to be printed on a t-shirt. I downloaded a font from DaFont that he does not have. I want to leave him the flexibility of scaling the vector as big as he wants, but Photoshop won't let him do that properly if he does not have the same font that I downloaded. Without him having to download that font, is there anyway I can compile all the layers in Photoshop into a vector and send it to him so that he can re-scale to however large he wants? Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 02:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC) Not exactly: Keeping the font as a vector (essentially, a bunch of equations) requires the font, which contains that data, so, without out the font, he will need to use a static image. Fireworks may allow you to convert this into a vector anyway, although, I'm not positive. In short, no, he will need the font, because you can't just convert an image into a vector (to my knowledge). Arcoain (talk) 03:10, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, there was Adobe Streamline and you may find Adobe Illustrator still has enough of that capability to do it.

Atlant (talk) 13:07, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

wireless router disk

Hi everybody! Where can I download a "setup disk" for a linksys wireless router (model WRT300N)? I don't have the disk. Thanx everyone! xxx User:Hyper Girl 13:39, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Have a look here, check your version. For 1.0 and 1.1 the setup wizard is available for download. Tell me if it worked. Cheers, Ouro (blah blah) 14:20, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Ouro. It only lists a "Data Sheet" "User Guide" and "GPL Code". I'm version 2. I've also found something called a firmware update, but its in .bin format. Am I supposed to compile these or something? xxx User:Hyper Girl 14:26, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

There's an old Chinese saying: Check your user guide for Upgrade instructions. --Ouro (blah blah) 14:29, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

(I didn't want to be rude - but that's what the release notes for the firmware update say.) --Ouro (blah blah) 14:41, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, maybe I'm being incredibly naive here. I've got this router a friend gave me. No cables, no disk, just the router. I've got a power adapter with the right volts and ampage (12v 850mA) and the lights come on. Next I connect the router to my PC (win xp sp2) via a network cable and Windows detects it as a "local area network". Now what? How can I use it to connect to other wireless devices? How do I alter the routers SSD and other settings? As far as I can tell I need the setup disk to install the right software to do these things, right? Or am I completely missing something? I really do appreciate your help Ouro. xxx User:Hyper Girl 14:58, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Unix Commands

Hi there. I'm trying to do some revision of UNIX, and there's something i'm not sure about, if you had the following command:
echo "My name is Jac" >> temp,
does the temp file have to already exist?, what happens if it doesn't? Thanks--Jac16888 (talk) 14:10, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Shot in the dark: it gets created. --Ouro (blah blah) 14:20, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it will create the file. If the file already exists it will append to it. -- kainaw™ 14:23, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Well now i feel stupid, thats pretty obvious. I hate all this command line stuff. I do have another question, i created a directory in unix, but when i try and view the permissions, using ls -1 "filename", i get no response, or error message either. What am i doing wrong. Thanks--Jac16888 (talk) 14:54, 12 February 2008 (UTC)