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May 4

opengl program crash

hey I am a newbie at opengl programming in fact just started.. I got this program to compile under VS2008 but it crashes at glClear():-

i have included gl.h, glut.h and defined GLUT_DISABLE_ATEXIT_HACK

void display(void)
{
    glClear (GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);
    glColor3f (1.0, 1.0, 1.0);
    glBegin(GL_POLYGON);
        glVertex3f (0.25, 0.25, 0.0);
        glVertex3f (0.75, 0.25, 0.0);
        glVertex3f (0.75, 0.75, 0.0);
        glVertex3f (0.25, 0.75, 0.0);
    glEnd();
    glFlush ();
}

void init (void) 
{
    glClearColor (0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0);
    glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
    glLoadIdentity();
    glOrtho(0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0, -1.0, 1.0);
}

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    glutInit(&argc, argv);
    glutInitDisplayMode (GLUT_DOUBLE | GLUT_RGB);
    glutInitWindowSize (250, 250); 
    glutInitWindowPosition (100, 100);
    glutCreateWindow ("hello");
    init ();
    glutDisplayFunc(display); 
    glutMainLoop();
    return 0;   
}

it crashes at glutMainLoop() while doing a callback to display(). Commenting that line produces a crash at glFlush(). I am using windows vista with ATI drivers. Bobatnet (talk) 12:12, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

It looks like all you need to do is swap the buffers. Opengl works by filling one buffer while the other is displayed and then switching them. So, your display method should look something like this:

void display(void)
{
    glClear (GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);
    glColor3f (1.0, 1.0, 1.0);
    glBegin(GL_POLYGON);
        glVertex3f (0.25, 0.25, 0.0);
        glVertex3f (0.75, 0.25, 0.0);
        glVertex3f (0.75, 0.75, 0.0);
        glVertex3f (0.25, 0.75, 0.0);
    glEnd();
    glFlush ();
    glutSwapBuffers ( );
}

If you forget to do this, your window won't display what you want, and it will look like it crashed. Leeboyge (talk) 23:54, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Tried that but it still crashes. Actually, it stays on screen for some seconds and then it crashes. Also, the code is copied from the red book as I am just learning opengl. So, may be the code is right ?!! Bobatnet (talk) 04:47, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

That's really strange. I am assuming that it compiled correctly with no errors. If so, it may just be a Visual Studios thing. I am actually not using VS. I am using Cygwin to compile with gcc, and I am using the GLUT library directly. Here is all of the code I used to test yours:

#include <windows.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <GL/glut.h> 
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

void display(void)
{
    glClear (GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);
    glColor3f (1.0, 1.0, 1.0);
    glBegin(GL_POLYGON);
        glVertex3f (0.25, 0.25, 0.0);
        glVertex3f (0.75, 0.25, 0.0);
        glVertex3f (0.75, 0.75, 0.0);
        glVertex3f (0.25, 0.75, 0.0);
    glEnd();
    glFlush ();
    glutSwapBuffers ( );
}
 
void init (void) 
{
    glClearColor (0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0);
    glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
    glLoadIdentity();
    glOrtho(0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0, -1.0, 1.0);
}
 
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    glutInit(&argc, argv);
    glutInitDisplayMode (GLUT_DOUBLE | GLUT_RGB);
    glutInitWindowSize (250, 250); 
    glutInitWindowPosition (100, 100);
    glutCreateWindow ("hello");
    init ();
    glutDisplayFunc(display); 
    glutMainLoop();
    return 0;   
}

I compiled with this:

g++ -g -Wall test.cpp -l glut32 -l glu32 -l opengl32 -o test

This gives me a white square centered on a dark red background. If yours is crashing, I can only guess that it may be something to do with linking the libraries or with Visual Studio. You should have no problem running on XP or Vista. I am running on Vista right now, and it works just fine. Leeboyge (talk) 06:32, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

May 5

Playing foreign DVDs on a PC

Two questions about importing US DVDs to play on a UK PC. Firstly, I've got two DVD drives in my computer. Is it possible to set one to Region 1 and the other to Region 2 (or, alternatively, would setting them to Australian make them play any Region, since Australia has banned the use of Region coding)? Secondly, will the computer play NTSC format just as easily as it does PAL? Laïka 01:37, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you should be able to set them to different regions. No, setting to Australia wouldn't work; if what you say is so, their DVDs aren't region encoded, so any Aussie DVDs you get will work in any region, but the Australia region will not work with any DVD. (You can get drive firmware hacks that ignore region encoding, though). And yes, PAL and NTSC will be fine with any normal DVD-playing software. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 01:45, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think Australia has actually banned the use of region encoding of DVD discs, but manufacturers of standalone DVD players were warned by the ACCC that making players which only played Region 4 may violate the Trade Practices Act - pretty far from a ban. If you set your PC drive to Region 4, then it would not play Region 1 DVDs (Region 4 is also used in the Pacific Rim, Mexico and South America and so would be unaffected by Australian law). Bear in mind that a lot of UK Region 2 discs are dual-encoded to work in Region 2 and Region 4 so that the distributors can save money on mastering the DVD and use the same press for the UK and Australia. And yes, in answer to your original question, you can set one to Region 1 and one to Region 2. --Canley (talk) 06:20, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

If you use VLC Media Player, you shouldn't have to worry about region codes at all. --LarryMac | Talk 13:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

A small word of caution though. Many modern computer DVD drives have firmware that willspontaneously change the region, but only up to five times - then it's locked into the last region it switched to. There might be some firmware hacks to get round this, but I've no idea where to find them. Astronaut (talk) 14:18, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Name of a sorting algorithm?

I would like to know the name of a sorting algorithm. When I did some work in an office sorting papers, I used a method similar to this (although modified for a desk without space for 20-odd stacks of paper).

First, sort the items by first letter (digit, byte, whatever). Do this by making 26 (or 10 or 256 or however many) piles, one for each distinct first letter (or digit or whatever, I'm just going to say "letter" from here on). Now gather up all these piles so you have one big pile with all the items sorted alphabetically by first letter. Now you use recursion. Take all the A's from the top of the pile and put them into 26 piles according to the 2nd letter of the name. Then you take all the Aa's from the top of the pile and sort them, and then take the Aaa's and sort them, and so forth recursively. Once you're through with the A's, you sort the B's, C's, and so forth, and this also applies recursively: you finish sorting the Aa's before tackling the Ab's, etc. If at any stage the number of items is so small that it would make more sense to use e.g. bubble sort for that stage, do so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.134.229.107 (talk) 03:11, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

It is called a bin sort. -- kainaw™ 03:21, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd call it MSD radix sort. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 04:51, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Computer beeps

Hi, my computer gives long beeps and through that alternating high-low beeps (and ofcourse won't do anything else). According to the beep codes, the first one should be something wrong with my RAM and the second that something is wrong with the CPU. I cleaned the CPU fan (which appeared necessary) so it might well have been overheated. Is there something I could still do myself that could possibly still fix this? Emil76 (talk) 08:46, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Removing and re-inserting the RAM modules very often fixes RAM issues, even if they are inserted correctly (and it doesn't hurt to double-check that they are, indeed, inserted correctly). The same can work for the CPU. Is it a computer that has worked before? Otherwise it could also be that the CPU is incompatible with the motherboard, or that you need to update the BIOS. By the way, it takes time for components to overheat, if it was a fan issue I doubt you would see it at boot. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 09:43, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer. The computer has worked before. It just happened one day, so it's quite unlikely that the RAM got loose or something, but I did check that (a few times). You say "the same can work for the CPU", you mean that I could get the CPU out and try to reinsert it? Emil76 (talk) 09:57, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you should try reinserting the CPU (preferably wearing an antistatic wrist strap, or else taking some other precaution). Try clearing the CMOS memory. I assume you have two RAM modules (perhaps more) - try booting with only one module attached (the one closest to the CPU, in a mainstream contemporary motherboard). If you have compatible RAM and CPU available, try putting them. It might also be a PSU issue. If the problem persists after checking all that, your motherboard is probably dead. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 10:24, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

If it was a siren beep (high-low-high-low...) then you most likely overheated. Once that happens, you run a high risk of damaging the CPU. If all your efforts of cleaning and remounting the hardware fail, look into getting a new CPU. -- kainaw™ 12:11, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Make sure that your cleaning of the fan didn't short circuit or break the solder tracks on the motherboard. Make sure you didn't disturb any of the jumpers on the motherboard. You didn't remove a small piece of foil? Astronaut (talk) 14:30, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers. I'll have to do some studying first on how to remove the cpu and reinserting it or inserting a new one. Never did something like that before :) Emil76 (talk) 19:24, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

We can try to help if you tell us what kind of CPU \ motherboard you have. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

BLAST one sequence against database and return a hit for each sequence in the database

Hi, I'd like to BLAST a small sequence that is in most, but not all of the sequences in my database. I'd like to return, at most, one hit per sequence in the database. Any idea on how to do this? (the -v and -b parameters are set to greater than the size of database. The -K parameter may influence this, but it's not necessarily what I want.) Anybody have any suggestions? THanks. --Rajah (talk) 21:50, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean you wish to return the best match of all the sequences in the database? If all of your sequences have exactly the same subsequence to your query, then BLAST will not be able to distinguish between them. Rockpocket 22:12, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

First, I would compile BLAST as a module for my database (ie: a MySQL module). Then, I could run a query like: "select sequence from mytable where blast('AGAT',sequence) limit 1". That gets one hit from the database for the little sub-sequence if the BLAST function returns true. It would be trivial to expand this to handle multiple sub-sequences or wrap the query in a script that performs it over and over for each sub-sequence. -- kainaw™ 00:54, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

May 6

The Sound of Thinking

What is the cause of the clicking sound that is made when you ask a computer to do something laborious? I'm not referring to the increase in fan speed but rather the apparently non-mechanical tck. Tks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stanstaple (talk • contribs) 00:19, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

It appears that you are referring to the hard drive clicking sound. It makes that when it moves the magnetic heads around to read data from the platters. If you get a lot of it, it is very likely that you don't have enough memory in your computer for what you are trying to do and your computer has opted to use hard drive space as temporary (and extremely slow) memory. -- kainaw™ 00:48, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Also note that this is hard drive specific. My main hard drive barely makes a sound, even under a heavy load. My secondary, on the other hand, makes the clicking noise you mentioned. Leeboyge (talk) 00:56, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

And if it's a louder than usual click or a very high pitched squeak you should back up your data. See click of death and head crash. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:24, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Am I the only one here whose skin crawls when they see the photo in the head crash article? Horrifying stuff right there. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 18:58, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Once it is seen, it cannot be unseen. Paragon12321 (talk) 20:34, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

C File writing

I am starting to use C programming language to write into files but I'm having a little trouble finding out what formats do different files take. Is there a good resource for this type of thing?Bastard Soap (talk) 08:02, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I mostly use Google. The first hit I get for file formats is www.wotsit.org, followed by Wikipedia's very own file format article (has many links to additional info). If I wanted a specific file format I'd search the web to find the official spec, tutorials, hints, sample implementations, etc. Weregerbil (talk) 08:54, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

http://filext.com/ is the one I use the most. Or use Wikipedia - everything from .ace to .zip. --h2g2bob (talk) 21:18, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Why not have Enter, Backspace and Delete options on mouse or on Toolbar

Why must I have to get my right hand off my keyboard onto the mouse to position the cursor in order to highlight text for formatting (such as copy / paste or deletion) and then have to GO BACK to the board to use the Enter and Delete keys to tidy up the text. If these basic options were available on the mouse, then it would mean I could minimise hand movement between mouse and keyboard. If the hardware is too costly, it should be possible to access these through icons on the toolbar. And make them BIG icons. What say you, techies? And I would like a credit for this if my idea is taken up, plus about a million dollars. American. Myles325a (talk) 08:18, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Shift key is your friend, shift+end then delete will remove the whole line from the cursor's position. Or otherwise use your left hand to press backspace/delete. Or you could use cut which you can either use the icon or ctrl+x and not having to move your left hand at all, just don't paste the content. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:24, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

And, higher end mice have additional buttons which I believe you can program to emulate any keyboard button you want. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 12:20, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

While I don't really thing having all those things on the mouse is a good idea (imagine how easy it would be to accidentally delete files; weigh that possibility against the possible advantages), I do agree that it would be a lot more useful if certain buttons were on the left side of the keyboard in order to facilitate having dedicated hands (left is for typing, right is for mouse things). When I do work on my own application GUIs I have experimented with this a bit, so that for anything other than real typing you can use dedicated hands. It speeds things up tremendously, in my experience. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 12:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

You mean like the keyboards used to be on Sun Microsystems computers? The extra ten keys on the left of the main keyboard were: Stop, Props, Front, Open, Find, Again, Undo, Copy, Paste, and Cut. And Macintosh keyboards used to use F1 through F4 as Undo, Cut, Copy, and Paste (and may still do so). The hegemony of PCs has meant a lot of good ideas have been discarded.

Atlant (talk) 13:09, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

KDE already had "Clear" and "Go" buttons on toolbars for many years. See the two buttons around the location bar in Image:Konqueror_on_Knoppix_5.11.png. --Juliano (T) 21:34, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

As a side note, some programs already have icons for cut, copy, and paste. Microsoft Word has had them on its toolbar for quite some time now. Leeboyge (talk) 06:27, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

OP myles325 responds. Thanks guys, some good points there. I am touch typist (type with all 10 fingers and without having to look at keyboard – cool huh?). All touch typists know that keyboards are designed by peck and stabbers who have no idea of what REAL typists need. The Shift key is duplicated on the left and right sides of the keyboard as a hangover from manual keyboards when it was made the task of capitalising letters on the left and right sides of the keyboard easier. I cannot see how duplicating the Ctrl and Alt keys on both the right and left of the space bar is anything but a waste of valuable keyboard real estate. And the return key should be bigger. And why is Backspace buried on the extreme left of the numbers line – this is one of the most used keys on the board. And why is its twin, the Delete key not even found on the main keyboard space? It would be used 10 000 times for every time a ^ { } ~ are used. Logically, the Delete and Backspace keys, crucial for navigation, should be together. I just used Backspace about 300 times typing this. It should alongside the Spacebar and triggered by the thumb. So you use the Spacebar to move the cursor to the right and then, seeing that you have misspelled the word you just typed, you use Backspace to delete that word. Does that make sense? Myles325a (talk) 08:00, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

You could redefine the keys with AutoHotkey or something similar - so you could make AltGr send a Backspace, and perhaps change the right-hand Windows/Start key to Delete. For making the keys bigger or smaller, you might want to have a look at the IntelliKeys, for which you can define your own layout. The only problem with that is that it doesn't have keys as such, only a flat sheet, so you may miss the feel of the keys. AJHW (talk) 15:00, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Soft spam: a golden business idea?

Why are so many people posting comments for driving a little bit traffic to their websites? Is it so a good business? In almost every forum I see comments like: "Hey, nice idea, but site xyz.com has a better concepts". Normally not following the flow of discussion. 217.168.0.115 (talk) 10:30, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

It's called comment spam, and is usually done by robots, which is why many forums require you to solve a CAPTCHA before posting. --Sean 12:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I think Ars reported a few weeks back that Hotmail CAPTCHA was broken into. Kushal (talk) 02:55, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

While getting people to click on the link is a small part of the plan, the overall plan is to get search engines to rank their pages higher because they show up in so many places. Of course, the big search engines rarely index message boards (for this reason), so it doesn't work. -- kainaw™ 13:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

There's also the "nofollow" property for links, which is also meant to make this kind of spam unproductive for the spammer. --Sean 19:59, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

It is probably aimed at a different audience altogether ... maybe they are actually targetting individual visitors to the page rather than the search engines. Kushal (talk) 02:51, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

wireless passwords

What method would be best for finding out the password to an encrypted wireless internet connection? My computer is running windows and I am a linux idiot.Makey melly (talk) 12:22, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean hacking into someone else's wireless connection? My guess would be to just use a dictionary attack—most people choose really simple, easy passwords for that sort of thing because they are afraid of forgetting them, they plan on sharing the password anyway (with other users in their household, for example), and they are unclear on whether the stakes are high or not. If you mean find out the password on a router that you have set up and forgotten it, it depends on the router, but the easiest thing to do is to just do a factory reset. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 12:30, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

This might be useful. Algebraist 14:07, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Try this never used myself, but hey, its what your looking for --Nick910 (talk) 14:39, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I used the aircrack suite to test the security of my own networks. The conclusion I came to was that with really secure passwords I could crack WEP in about 70 hours on a pretty modest laptop, but that WPA is uncrackable assuming you pick a good password (i.e. not one that can be found by dictionary attacks). -- Q Chris (talk) 14:47, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

As far as I know, WEP should be crackable in far less time. I might not be recalling this exactly, but using a tool that exploits WEP efficiently can result in it being cracked in under 1 minute. WPA, however, requires a plain dictionary/brute-force attack, and with a sufficiently powerful key it is impractical to crack. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 00:16, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Aircrack claims to be able to do this using an injection attack (i.e. it sends various packets to the router, which disrupt the handshake, leading to repeated exchanges). My wlan card does not support injection mode, so I had to use passive mode (i.e. just listening to normal conversations). The wlan also had a very low usage (wife and daughter, daughter for a few hours only, wife checking email). Most of the 72 hours was not useful capture but just waiting until sufficient handshake packets were obtained. -- Q Chris (talk) 08:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

IANAL but it might be illegal in some states in the US, including Texas. Please stick to open wireless connections (mine is open too, except for the router config itself, which is password protected). --Kushal (talk) 02:53, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Help in checking website fine print updates

Hi, I've signed up for a couple of sites and nearly all of them that happen to have lengthy fine print say that they can change it however they want, anytime. Some provide update dates, but none point out where the changes are. Kind of tired of pasting sections at a time to MS Word's "Find" function, does anyone know of a site where I can copy-paste two bodies of text and will show me the difference? Thanks. --24.76.248.193 (talk) 12:40, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

This kind of utility is usually called a diff. Here's an online version. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 12:47, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

removing my email address from a webpage?

an old newsgroup post i made has somehow been archived on the http://www.lliure.info/ website. the post contains my email address in open text. this website lists no webmaster name or details that i can contact to have my email address removed (i'm not even sure what type of site it is). how can i go about getting my address removed from the site? thanks. 86.31.34.35 (talk) 14:40, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Information.. you can't redact from the internet .froth. (talk) 15:58, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

The WHOIS information for lliure.info does provide some contact information for the guy who owns the domain, which may or may not be correct. But if this is a case of someone archiving something that you or someone else put on the internet, .froth. is correct: once it's out there, it's out there. It ain't ever coming back. Even if you could talk this guy into removing it from his site (and chances are that he'll just ignore you), it's going to be on Google Groups and numerous other archiving services. That's just how it is. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 17:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry. I wish I had better news but services like way back machine, which are very useful at other times, are in the way too. However, not all is lost. If you are determined enough, you might be able to get every major involved party into deleting your information. Please try to be polite and mind not to threaten them with legal action or anything silly. Good luck! Kushal (talk) 23:28, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I am extremely skeptical that anyone could get the mere mention of an e-mail address removed from all of the various online archives out there, especially if a case couldn't be made for this being exceptionally important. (That is to say, "I'd prefer to not have my e-mail address known to the public" wouldn't qualify, whereas "this leaves my company vulnerable to criminal activities" might -- not that I can think of an instance where a single e-mail address could realistically cause such a situation.) And even if you could pull that off, that doesn't mean that the same information isn't also archived somewhere else that isn't publicly known at this time, but which ends up online later on, so you might very well have the same problem all over again next week, next month, or five years from now. That's just the nature of the internet; once you put something out there, chances are that it's going to stay there for as long as the net exists. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 01:12, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Streisand effect - 206.126.163.20 (talk) 02:28, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Windows command line question

Today at work, I tried something as simple as deleting every .txt file in every subdirectory, in the Microsoft Windows Vista Business Edition they make me use. I thought a simple del *\*.txt in the Command Prompt would work. But no - Windows said it could not parse the arguments. On Unix, rm */*.txt works perfectly, and I thought it would be simple enough for Windows also to understand. Did I do something wrong, or is it just another sign of the inadequacy of Windows's command line? Is there another way to do it in Windows, short of handling each subdirectory by hand? JIP | Talk 16:59, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Cygwin ought to handle it. --Prestidigitator (talk) 17:22, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I thought so too, but then thought installing Cygwin would be overkill for such a simple task. But if there's no other way to do it in Windows, then it will have to do. JIP | Talk 17:25, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

It's got nothing to do with inadequacy (perceived or real), it just isn't how the syntax for the del command works. I'm not a Vista user myself, but the following has always been true for all previous versions of Command Prompt, so I'm going to boldly assume it hasn't changed. What you want is the /s switch, which has the del command also include subdirectories -- so you would type del /s *.txt from the root directory of the hard drive in question, and it should delete every .txt file from that hard drive, provided that they aren't read-only. For more information, del /? should provide you with help. In general, it's probably a good idea to glance through the help file or manual before you do anything involving the delete command. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 17:27, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. This seems like a fundamental difference between the two operating systems - in Unix, wildcards are handled by the shell itself, so what works in one command works in another. But in Windows, the command line passes the wildcards over to the individual commands, which then have the responsibility of handling them. This is also why rm * does not cause an "Are you sure?" question under Unix - but might result in a "Command line too long" error message. JIP | Talk 17:35, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

There are shells for Unix and Linux, such as zsh, that asks you confirmation for commands such as rm *, among other things. --Juliano (T) 22:32, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh. I was answering generally to the request of making it more *NIX like and consistent so you can actually get things like this done efficiently on the command line. The exact command you entered wouldn't work in *NIX either for what you want to do (remove all files ending in '.txt' somewhere under the current directory). rm */*.txt would remove all files ending in '.txt' from the current directory's subdirectories. It would even miss files in the current directory (the directory name '.' is not included in expansion of '*', though it would be when expanding '.*'). You'd actually want something like find . -name '*.txt' -exec rm -f {} \;. Note the single-quotes on the name option value; that is because, as you say, the '*' wildcard is interpreted immediately by the shell in the current context. We instead want the find command to be able to expand it for each path it evaluates. The '-f' flag is just in case you are in a shell that will by default ask for a confirmation of each file, or in case you have an alias such as alias rm='rm -i ' defined like I do. --Prestidigitator (talk) 23:29, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what bearing this has on your question, but Windows Powershell seems to be the way ahead for Windows command line stuff, not that it will rid you of the "wish this were Unix" feeling. It's still rubbish, just not so rubbish as cmd.exe. --90.198.200.119 (talk) 18:04, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Notwithstanding command line, you could have done a search (right click) of the folder you wanted to find all txt files in. You can then select all and delete from the search result window. Sandman30s (talk) 21:24, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

GIMP question

I am using the GIMP, and I have a .png file, consisting pretty much entirely of white, black, red, green, and blue. It is not exactly a clean cut between only five individual RGB colours, but pretty near to it. In other words, other than the white, the black, red, green, and blue also have a few "lighter" tones for anti-alias reasons. How can I remove the red, green, and blue from the pictures while keeping the black in? I have tried various methods of colour selections, but they always either fail to remove all of the red, green, and blue tones, or remove some of the black tones too. JIP | Talk 17:40, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I would probably start with the Threshold, Levels, and Curves tools (Tools -> Color Tools or Layer -> Colors). Transform anything with a Value below a certain threshold (or do color channels independently) to full value (white). There might be some kind of filter or script that will do it by saturation instead, which I think would be more ideal, but I think this is a good place to try first. Good luck! --Prestidigitator (talk) 21:21, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh. Or if you don't care WHAT grayscale value each pixel winds up as as long as it is greyscale, you can convert to grayscale (Image -> Mode -> Grayscale) and then possibly back again (Image -> Mode -> RGB/Indexed...). You could then (while the image is grayscale) convert to pure black and white with no gray pixel values in between using the Threshold tool. When you are done, try the Histogram dialog to see if you have what you wanted. --Prestidigitator (talk) 23:41, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Another idea to try: Decompose the R/G/B channels into layers (Colors → Components → Decompose..., select "RGB" and check "Decompose to layers"), then set the blending mode of the two upper layers to "Screen" (or maybe "Lighten only"). Or do the same with "CMY" instead of "RGB" and use the "Multiply" blend mode. (This will give you an inverted image.) The latter may work better if the colors you want to remove are indeed close to the additive primaries. You can play with the channel mixer if you want more control: the basic idea is to eliminate the colors one at a time, by choosing a channel mix that maps the unwanted color to white while preserving the black-white axis unchanged, and then blending the results together. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 00:42, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Taking an image grab of a movie file

Hi all

What's the easiest way of taking a 'movie still' or image grab from a compressed video file?

Simple screen grabs on Windows and Mac come up black.

What d'you think? Joshua.c.j (talk) 18:37, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

From our Screenshot article, 'One way these images can be captured is to turn off the hardware overlay. Because many computers have no hardware overlay, most programs are built to work without it, just a little slower. In Windows XP, this is disabled by opening the Display Properties menu, then clicking, "Advanced", "Troubleshoot", and moving the Hardware Acceleration Slider to "None."' --LarryMac | Talk 18:42, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

VLC also has a nifty screenshot feature. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 18:52, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I can do them just fine with VLC, just to confirm. asenine ^{say what?} 00:21, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks everyone! Joshua.c.j (talk) 11:11, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Disk Partition

Hey Guys, I am trying to format my hard disk and make a clean reinstallation of Windows XP SP2. However, I have already partitioned my hard disk in 2 halves. I tried to delete one of them using the Computer Management, however, instead of merging it with the system partition, it remains unallocated. Does someone knows how to merge these two partitions? Do I need to use a special software (a free one if possible)? Or will they merge when I reinstall XP? Thanks again Eklipse (talk) 19:42, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

The Windows XP installer has a built-in partition manager and formatter. Since you intend to completely erase and format your drive, you will have no problem deleting all current partitions, creating a new partition spanning the entire disk, and installing Windows on it. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 20:59, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes this is a good idea. However, DO partition again when installing XP. This time, choose a smaller partition for XP (for example 20 gig) as Windows folders tend to get fragmented very fast. Install your smaller or integrated programs into C and your larger, data-intensive programs into D. Sandman30s (talk) 21:22, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I tried to install XP, but when I got to this step and tried to delete Partition1, I got this message:

Setup is unable to perform the requested operation on the selected partition. This partition contains temporary Setup files that are required to complete the installation.

and when I choose to set up Windows XP on this partition (without deleting it), it warns me that I'm installing multiple operating systems. Strange... Eklipse (talk) 21:51, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I think I solved it. I should've changed the BIOS settings to boot from the CD. It is now in the process of formatting and installing. I hope it will go with no problems. Thank you guys. Eklipse (talk) 22:11, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

WMV to 3g2 converter

I am looking for a wmv to 3gp converter, but I cant seem to find a free one that works. Does anyone have any suggestions? --Omnipotence407 (talk) 21:56, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Try mediacoder it is available here[1]. It has got a very wide range of video/audio conversion capabilities and is under active development. Bobatnet (talk) 21:46, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

One the Mac, Quicktime Player Pro (with WMV Quicktime Components) can convert to 3gp. There's even a preset for it. Two clicks and you are done! Not sure how QT Player handles WMV on the PC side, though. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 17:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

May 7

Trying to edit a video

Hello! My friends and I just finished filming the stuff we needed for our school project. We filmed everything on a camcorder which recorded on a DVD, and now I'm trying to use Windows Movie Maker to edit that DVD. To my utter disappointment, Windows Movie Maker doesn't accept the DVD files. This is what they show up as: VTS_04_0 , VTS_04_0.BUP , and VTS_04_1 .

Right now, I'm using Windows XP, Home Edition. I tried looking for help on various forums, but I kept seeing answers that weren't completely relevant to my question. Hopefully, I can find someone here!

Also, I think it's worth noting that I must get this project done within 24 hours, so I really don't have enough time for a complex situation Also, I'm a high school student who probably wouldn't understand any complicated procedures to follow.

I would greatly appreciate any help --Dem393 (talk) 02:50, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

You need to rip the DVD files into files you can edit. Handbrake is a very easy way to do that—it lets you rip DVDs into a wide variety of different formats. If you rip it as, say, a MPEG file, then you can probably edit that in WMM. You'll suffer some quality loss converting from lossy format to lossy format but if you're in a jam, it's a quick way to do it... --98.217.8.46 (talk) 02:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the prompt reply. However, it wouldn't download because I need Microsoft .NET runtime library v2.0. Is this worth downloading?--Dem393 (talk) 03:04, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's a super easy to use program for converting DVDs into pretty much any format you want. There are other programs out there that can rip DVDs but I've never found one that was as easy to use. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 03:15, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I just downloaded Handbrake, but now I have insufficient RAM. Is there a way to fix this?--Dem393 (talk) 01:17, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

If I have insufficient RAM, would I have to use a different computer?--Dem393 (talk) 01:40, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

That or get more RAM (which is probably not an option on short notice). Worst case, "borrow" some from a big box store which allows no-questions-asked returns within two weeks of purchase. Ripping DVDs takes serious computing power; some DVDs take hours on mid-range PCs. 24.80.96.84 (talk) 02:50, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

My friend could not get HandBrake to properly rip his home movie on his Windows Vista Home premium machine. Can anyone confirm that it works well with Windows XP? Can it rip DVDs? Kushal (talk) 09:26, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all of the help! I ended up not doing the project, since my friend just took over and somehow managed to get the work done on his computer.--Dem393 (talk) 03:41, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

MySpace Groups

If I choose not to have my Groups displayed on my page, is it still possible for people to find out what groups I am in, short of logging on with my name?--136.247.76.171 (talk) 03:20, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

networking

why infrared is fast as compare to bluetooth? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.157.77.10 (talk) 09:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd say its not. Kushal (talk) 09:27, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, but it is. At the moment, according to our Bluetooth article, Bluetooth can transfer data at a maximum rate of 3 Mbit/s. High-speed infrared connections, on the other hand, can transfer data at a maximum rate of 16 Mbit/s, according to the Infrared Data Association specification. You're probably thinking of the older infrared ports, which had a considerably slower rate of transfer, but these days the technology is pretty fast.

So, why is it so much faster? I'm going to speculate a little here, because I couldn't find the exact information anywhere, so call this a, uh, semi-educated guess. (People who actually know the technology should feel free to tell me where I'm wrong!) Infrared is just light, of course, so theoretically, your greatest limitation for data transfer is the speed of light. In practical terms, however, the bottleneck comes from processing power -- even if the signal itself moves at the speed of light from the transmitting IR device to the receiving IR device, there's no way the transmitter is going to be able to fire off pulses of light at that pace. It's considerably slower than that, but still pretty fast. Essentially, it's a little like having an optical fiber cable between the transmitter and the receiver, except the light is being beamed over the air. That's a direct connection, so it's pretty straightforward -- the light pulses transmit the data, and the receiver picks them up, and there's not a lot of noise to confuse the process.

A Bluetooth connection, on the other hand, is constantly broadcasting in all directions, possibly (and even likely) in an environment with a lot of other radio traffic, so the receiver needs to pick out the correct signal from among all of that background traffic, much of which may well be in the same frequency. That's not terribly difficult, but it takes a lot of that processing power to sort it out. All data packets need to be verified to be correct and coming from the same source, instead of, say, some Bluetooth-enabled cell phone nearby, so the processor has to work pretty hard to accept the correct data packets and ignore the ones that aren't intended for that receiver. It's not that difficult, but it takes time.

Battery life is also an issue here, because Bluetooth has been designed to have low power consumption. IR has an advantage here, because transmitting a fairly narrow (and weak) beam of infrared light in a certain direction probably takes a lot less energy than constantly transmitting radio signals in all directions at a longer range. The Bluetooth standard probably takes this into account, so the processors aren't too efficient -- the more work they do, the more power they consume, of course, and you don't want to eat up that precious energy and shorten battery life just because someone wants to sync his cell phone with his computer. Of course, as more energy efficient processors and batteries become available, data transfer rates will go up. The new proposed Bluetooth standard, for example, could have a data transfer rate of 480 Mbit/s. But then, the same would probably also apply to IR devices, which are also still improving.

Of course, IR has the disadvantage of being fairly short range and requiring the devices to be in sight of and properly aligned to each other, but that's another issue. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 12:16, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out that the speed of light has nothing to do with transfer rates. I could transfer 1 terabyte per second by removing a hard drive and moving it to another computer, at a speed much lower than the speed of light. I remember an old joke about the technology with the most bandwidth is a 747 full of hard drives. The speed of light only reduces the lag between transmission and reception. Mad031683 (talk) 17:33, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

In practice, the speed of light does matter. Almost every data transmission protocol requires two-way transmission: the transmitter sends the data, and the reciever acknowledges it. The limiting factors on the transmission rate are the packet size, the allowed number of unacknowledged packets, and the round-trip latency, which is limited by the speed of light. --Carnildo (talk) 20:44, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

For the sake of clarity, I should probably say that it wasn't my intention to claim that the speed of light had a whole lot to do with the transfer rate as such; I was just using it to illustrate (probably badly, but still) that the bottleneck is elsewhere. I mean, radio waves also move at the speed of light, so I certainly didn't mean to imply that there's a difference in the speed of the signal from the transmitter to the receiver between Bluetooth and infrared. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 23:14, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, although Carnildo's list of limiting factors is correct, it's still worth noting that, at least for bulk data transfer, round-trip latency can be arbitrarily well compensated for by increasing the other two factors. The folks doing eVLBI, who tend to have some serious data transfer needs, have developed some specialized protocols like this one for that purpose. Also, if the latency is sufficiently high and you have enough bandwidth, you can even just proactively transmit some extra error correction data, reducing the odds that even a single retransmission is needed. This is commonly done with deep-space satellite communications (see also Interplanetary Internet), where lightspeed delays are significant, but a more mundane example can also be found in the PAR2 format used to post binaries to Usenet. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:15, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

GNUCASH user experience

Can you please share your experiences with GNUCASH. Many thanks. --V4vijayakumar (talk) 10:47, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Tried it long ago. Many features were not implemented completely. Documentation was actually a todo list. Decided to continue using the free copy of Money that came with my Wife's computer (and actually ran under Wine). -- kainaw™ 12:16, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I would like to believe that things have changed since. A new stable release (5.3 (June 26, 2023 (2023-06-26)) [±]) came out just a few weeks ago. --67.165.212.35 (talk) 13:51, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Antifilter

Are there any anti-filter sites other than Bypass School Filter? 124.181.14.142 (talk) 12:03, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

What is an antifilter? --Kushal (talk) 14:00, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

It is a made-up word for a proxy. The example (Bypass School Filter) is just a proxy site. All the school has to do is block that site and it is useless. -- kainaw™ 14:53, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

What about Tor (anonymity network) with Privoxy? Kushal (talk) 02:49, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

It's just another CGI proxy. There's more of them around than you can shake a stick at. I'd be somewhat vary of them, though; I'm sure some of them are well written and operated by trustworthy folks, but a lot are buggy and you never know if they might be logging everything you type into them. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:29, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

CD player woes

Hello, I have a Toshiba satellite with Windows XP. recently, I am having problems with my matshita dvd-ram uj-840s. It does not show up under my computer anymore. There is a generic windows file icon instead. I then used Device Manager to uninstall the driver for the device. I rebooted my computer and hoped for the best. Windows detected the cd drive; however, it was unable to correctly install drivers for it. What should I do? Please help me. --67.165.212.35 (talk) 13:18, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Search for a driver? --LarryMac | Talk 13:26, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer. I already installed the program (.exe) given by the top hit. There was no effect. How can I find the official website from which to download the driver? --67.165.212.35 (talk) 13:48, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Normally I'd say go to Toshiba, but trying to search for that drive on their site didn't get me anywhere. What is the specific model number of your computer? --LarryMac | Talk 17:47, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Its a Satellite M55-S135. --Kushal (talk) 18:29, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I am downloading a file from Toshiba's website. --Kushal (talk) 18:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I was about to post a link with a similar URL that looks more like an explosion in a typesetting room than a web address.... --LarryMac | Talk 18:38, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

You have been a great help, LarryMac. I don't have any good news yet, however. The software unpacked and installed. However, nothing changed. :( What could have happened? --Kushal (talk) 18:55, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Rayman sound

I've been trying to get an old Rayman CD-ROM to work on my XP computer, and everything is fine except the sound; instead of music there are popping noises and the sound effects seem a bit jumbled. What can I try to fix this? Vitriol (talk) 16:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and my soundcard is a SoundMAX Digital Audio. Vitriol (talk) 16:21, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I would look into the game settings for any menus that allow you to select the type of soundcard you have. If you can't find a setting that works with your SoundMAX, then maybe you can make the SoundMAX emulate on of the game's supported cards --LarryMac | Talk 18:40, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

The older Rayman titles have patches. Did you apply the patches before running the game? See Rayman (video game) for links to patches for the first title. -- kainaw™ 18:49, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Having downloaded a patch and ran it I see there are three variables I can alter: Port, IRQ and DMA. How can I find out what to change them to? Vitriol (talk) 16:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

You can try VDMSound to emulate a soundblaster or some other soundcard... Sandman30s (talk) 19:37, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

777 folders hacked

On my site I need a few folders with '777' permission on the server (for the content management system to work properly). But these folders all got hacked unfortunately. Someone put a .htaccess file and php file in them, making all kinds of urls available like ../torents.html ../free-serial.html etc. (those pages didn't actualy exist on the server but did show up in Google). Like I said I do need the '777' folders, or I have to change to another CMS (which I'd prefer not to), so my question: How do I prevent these folders from being hacked in the future? Emil76 (talk) 19:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

777 is read/write access to anyone who can log into your computer (including the "web server" user). Which CMS system are you using? You can use AllowOverride None in Apache config to disallow htaccess files. --h2g2bob (talk) 20:51, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Yup, 777 is the chmod code for bending over and shouting "come and get it!" :-) [2] . If your content management system requires this then I would say that it's defective. Check that it is actually required (sometimes, unfortunately, it is) and not just the result of some dubious path-of-least-resistance instructions. If the software genuinely requires you to leave directories on a public server open to all comers, then your only option is to find something that sucks less. 81.187.153.189 (talk) 22:48, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I had a similar problem with a Java CMS on shared hosting. The problem was that files uploaded and deployed ran as "me" whereas Tomcat ran as "tomcat". Hence the uploaded web-application had folders that were not writable by the CMS. I too went with "777" permissions as an ill-advised work around. Having being hacked I contacted the hosting company who "chown"ed the offending files for me. -- Q Chris (talk) 08:07, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Win XP SP3

Apparently, there is ongoing support for Windows XP after all, as I was just notified that Service Pack 3 is available for download (a mere 70 megabytes). Anyone have any experience with it yet? I don't have a burning desire to install a bunch of stuff that I probably won't need, for instance; and being a natural cynic makes me wonder if MS might use this as a back door way to install stuff that I have previously refused (although it is clearly stated that this will not force you to upgrade to IE7.)

I don't want to be the first on my block to do this. Anyone else already done it and found any "gotchas"? -- Danh, 63.231.163.147 (talk) 19:36, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I installed it a few weeks ago (downloaded from TechNet) and haven't had any problems. —Wayward ^Talk 20:38, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, if you install SP3, you won't be able to uninstall IE7 and revert back to IE6. See this site for more info. Useight (talk) 03:24, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Pray this helps to force lazy corporations to support IE7. The more standards compliant and secure the merrier (even if the GUI is insanely stupid) 206.126.163.20 (talk) 03:44, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

More news about SP3 problems.--droptone (talk) 14:57, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

They wont suppot IE7, they'll use Firefox! Sorry, i had to throw that in there... --69.127.64.22 (talk) 14:45, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Increasing font size of a specific font

I have a regional unicode font whose size I want to change. It can't be done via Personalization->Appearance. As the font's size is pathetically low in comparison to the English ones, I need to change the size of only this font. Please suggest a way to do so. Bobatnet (talk) 21:32, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I'd think you would need to find the font file and replace it with one that contains a larger version of each letter. You could most easily make the font 2X or 3X the current size, if you don't worry about "smoothing out the jaggies". For example, a 4x4 font "X" might look like this:

X X
 X
X X

You could most easily make it 8x8 like this:

XX  XX
XX  XX
  XX
  XX
XX  XX 
XX  XX

But smoothing it out like so would require more work:

X    X
 X  X
  XX
  XX
 X  X
X    X

StuRat (talk) 16:36, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

That's true for bitmap fonts, but almost every font these days is a vector-based format such as TrueType. For those, you just need to adjust the font scaling factor. --Carnildo (talk) 20:46, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, the font(s) I am talking about are Opentype, how do I change the scaling factor for those ? Bobatnet (talk) 16:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Simple freeware Windows database for bibliographic details.

I have about 100 PDF's of academic papers I intend to read. As the file names of the PDFs give no clues to their content, I would like to have a simple free-standing database that allows me to record the title, authors, filename and so on. I have windows millenium, and would prefer to avoid bloatware. What would people suggest please? Yes thanks, I have looked at Comparison of reference management software, but the sioftware there seems more complicated than what I require. 80.0.106.211 (talk) 22:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I am assuming you don't have Office installed otherwise you could have used Access or even Excel. If you don't want to perform for example a SQL query, then I would suggest using the file system itself. Rename your files to something descriptive. Then with PDF's the trick in windows is to right-click on each file, choose the Summary tab, then enter more information under those fields. Once updated, you have to right click on your folder's title bar to show this information. Then you can sort with the title bars, and use the Windows search function, etc. Sandman30s (talk) 13:54, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I tried right clicking on various PDFs, but no "Summary" appeared in the menu - it was just the same as usual. I am surprised there is no simple card-index type freeware database available. In CP/M there was a non-freeware one built in to Mallard basic as far as I recall. 80.0.102.167 (talk) 10:47, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

AMD vs Intel: current mid-to-high range CPUs

I've been out of the loop since around the time Intel came out with Core Duo chips. Prior to that, the Athlon was the de facto CPU of choice, and now I'm looking at building a new gaming PC. What are AMD and Intel's top CPUs currently in mass production? Which of their sockets is the newest in terms of high-volume motherboards? Is there an article comparing AMD vs Intel CPUs? I'm hoping someone who has kept up on this can help save me several hours of reading by pointing me in the right direction. Thanks. BigNate37_(T) 23:05, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Eh, never mind. Going with the Q6600 over the 9850 based on this CNet review. BigNate37_(T) 00:50, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Unless you know for sure that you need quad core, I recommend going with E8400 which you can easily overclock to 4GHz. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 14:26, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The chances I'll be decoding a DVD whilst compiling a large project and then decide to play a CPU-intensive FPS are pretty low. However, I'm the kinda guy that leaves things at stock speeds. I have this idea that more power use and heat aren't worth the trouble—I might bump the clock by 10% or so just with the BIOS setting in the Asus P5K motherboard, and that'll be that. Plus, the Nikon E8400 isn't that fast ;) BigNate37_(T) 16:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

If you're concerned about heat and power consumption, you definitely don't want a quad core, which will probably use more at stock speeds than a 45nm Dual core at said overclock. Some modern games make good use of multiple cores, but unless you know you will play those heavily, an E8400 @stock will be cheaper, cooler and faster than a Q6600. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 17:14, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Well you almost have me convinced. I'll take a serious look at the E8x00s after work; I like the faster bus, but I'm not comfortable spending enough to get anything faster than PC2-8500 so I don't know that will make a difference. I hadn't realized they were built using a 45nm process, which explains the value. Does AMD compete significantly with the E8400? The Brisbane doesn't look like serious competition, though AMD hasn't come out with a 45nm dual core desktop chip yet. BigNate37_(T) 17:39, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, bus and RAM speeds are pretty inconsequential compared to the CPU frequency - I wouldn't worry about those. To the best of my knowledge, AMD's current processors at your price range are inferior to Intel's. Intel also has 45nm Quad cores (Q9x00), but they don't seem to be as cost-effective. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 17:58, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, my PC-building heyday started around the time you could get a 2.8GHz processor with a 400MHz FSB, so I quickly developed a skeptical view for the "traditional" CPU specs. But I haven't been keeping up enough to know how much of a factor bus speed is, so tips like that are pretty helpful. BigNate37_(T) 00:33, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the E8400 - I have one and love it. I overclocked mine as well, but made sure I stuck a large "Maxorb" cooling fan over it. Good luck with trying to find apps that make full use of quad core, let alone dual core. I eventually found a dual core codec for blu-ray playback, but it wasn't free. Quad core is a little overkill nowadays unless you have specific needs and are sure your apps support it fully. Sandman30s (talk) 21:56, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I'm fully aware of the implications of multicore processing and I definately agree that most pieces of CPU-intensive software will not utilize multicore technology very well. Many pieces of software still don't even utilize multithreading effectively, let alone attempting optimal resource sharing across processes. But between say Windows XP, FRAPS, BF2 (client and server), and the BF2 Editor, which I would run all at once if I could... I'm sure there'd be enough independent processes to go around. Especially if I end up running two separate monitors. But yeah, I'm a software engineer by day, so no worries. In fact, part of me just wants quad-core because of my excitement for how four cores could be used, but now I'm really leaning towards the E8400. BigNate37_(T) 00:33, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

May 8

Mozilla Firefox: restoring sessions

Where does Mozilla Firefox save the information for restoring sessions if there's a crash?

And/or do you know another solution for this problem:
My Mozilla Firefox has recently crashed while I had several windows open at the same time. Next time I opened Firefox it asked me, as it should, whether I wanted to restore the session. I did. I don't remember some of the URLs of the pages I had opened, and I definitely want to get them. So it started "loading" the sites I had last been on (and some others I had been on a while ago)... and then stopped before finishing "loading" and just crashed. Hm. I tried over and over again, same result. It opens some sites, not always the same number, and that's it. I've tried deleting some of the sites in the few seconds before the crash, either the first page (i.e. the last I used before the original crash), some of the next pages to be opened, some of the next pages that would need to be opened if the program wouldn't crash--to no avail. I don't remember if I could reduce the number of pages to be opened at all (maybe at the beginning?), but at least by now I can't: I can close the windows while Firefox is loading the first pages, but then there's the crash, Firefox doesn't save the change, so that next time I open the program, it again opens all pages (incl. those whose windows I closed previously); I guess it just doesn't have time to "save" which windows I closed. Kind of a Groundhog Day feeling...

Thanks for any and all suggestions!! --Ibn Battuta (talk) 04:22, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the session information is stored in sessionstore.js in the profile.

The default location for Firefox profiles in Windows is %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\.

But if Firefox crashes and you start it again, it should ask "Do you want to restore your pages?"

--grawity 12:56, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Browsing Internet using Adobe Acrobate Reader

I am just wondering, Will Adobe ever make Acrobat Reader a browser? It can be considered as a value add, and market opportunities are huge. :) --V4vijayakumar (talk) 07:55, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I hope they won't. Unix philosophy tells, "do one thing and do it well." While Adobe Reader (not Acrobat Reader anymore) isn't the best PDF reader there, adding a web browser (with all the weight and security holes of a rendering engine) to it would make it a piece of ****. Besides, we already have Firefox, Opera, Safari, SeaMonkey... --grawity 12:45, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

There's no business incentive there. You can make money off PDF editors and Flash editors and HTML editors, but not off a browser. -- kainaw™ 16:48, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, Opera sold their browser for a while... Opera Mobile is moneyware too. --grawity 17:38, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Youtube

I have a problem with YouTube. Although almost every video works properly, there is the occasional one, such as this one, that just won't load, even though ones similar to the unloading ones work perfectly. How can I get the unworking ones to load? Interactive Fiction Expert/Talk to me 08:14, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Weird. Doesn't work for me either. - Akamad (talk) 08:18, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

It's possible that the video has been removed. I can't download it from this site either: [3]. - Akamad (talk) 08:26, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Works for me. --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:04, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Not for me. Kushal (talk) 09:14, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Me neither. I have noticed though that sometimes the flv files from youtube download from an IP address, which can cause problems as some proxy servers block host IPs. Think outside the box 10:49, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Works for me just fine. I don't know what Antilived and I are doing right, though. Useight (talk) 15:15, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Works for me. But I've had the same problem. To start, just try restarting your browser. In a few cases that might help. Mastrchf (^t/_c) 21:58, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

"Works" for me - well sort of... got some stupid song from the Gamecube game Mario Party 5 and a fixed image of the game's cover art. Pretty pointless as a video if you ask me. Astronaut (talk) 13:10, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Fork bomb

:(){ :|:& };: How does that work? I don't know enough bash to figure it out... --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:03, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

It's equivalent to

bomb () {
 bomb | bomb &
}
bomb

The first 3 lines in my expanded version are a function definition. The function being defined is "bomb" and its content is "bomb | bomb &". After those 3 lines, "bomb" is now recognizable as a command word, on equal syntactical standing with the other built-in and external commands (cd, echo, ls, grep, etc.) If you've used shell aliases before, then you can think of a shell function as an alias with more sophisticated syntax.

The last line simply runs the new command that was just defined. And what does it do? It creates 2 background processes connected by a pipe, each of which then calls the function to create 2 more, and so on.

The only really tricky part is the fact that bash allows ":" to be used as a function name, where some other shells require more reasonable names. x(){x|x&};x would work on a wider variety of shells, but the colons make look so much more scary. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 10:56, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Ahhh so that's what the colon's for. I thought the colon had some special meaning in bash which I didn't know. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:08, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

If you haven't done anything silly like define a function named ":", then the command ":" is the same as /bin/true - a noop which always succeeds. It's sometimes used to write infinite loops, as in while :; do something ; done. That's not a bash feature either; it's in all the shells of the Bourne/POSIX family. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 11:05, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Image printer device driver

I'm looking for a good image printer device driver, i.e. a device driver which behaves as if it were a printer, and outputs numbered raster images for each page of the document being printed. I'm using Windows XP. I tried ImagePrinter (sourceforge), but the output was not good enough for my needs. The vector graphics of the document was messed up rather badly, lines were missing etc. Anti-aliasing is needed. Any recommendations? Thanks. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 15:17, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

PSP Help please

Every time I try to upload images or videos to my PSP, it gives me the usual "There are no images. You can import images from a PS3 or PC." runaround, and when I plug it into my computer, it shows all the images, in the image folder, in JPEG or GIF. I am using the most recent firmware, and a Windows 2000 computer. Hpwever, the music which I have uploaded displays and works perfectly. Could anyone help me as to why it won't display the pics? User:Radman622 16:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Trying to recall but it's just not clicking...

Where, under Windows XP, do you go to change whether you use a single click or a double click on an icon to open/run an application ? StuRat (talk) 16:26, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm translating from the Norwegian menu items here, what appears in quotes is a translation, but I hope you'll find it even if the translation isn't exact. Open any folder, then select "Tools" (item next to "Help") | "Folder alternatives" | "General", then (radio button) "Single click to open an element". --NorwegianBlue ^talk 16:46, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Two ways (leading to the same place):

• Control Panel -> Folder Options -> General -> Click items as follows
• open a folder -> Tools -> Folder Options -> General -> Click items as follows

--grawity 16:48, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that does it, thanks to both of you ! StuRat (talk) 17:11, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Desktop motherboard with on-board modem AND wireless capabilities

Dear Wikipedians:

Do you know of any desktop computer motherboards with on-board modem AND wireless capabilities?

And does anyone know if an eSATA hard drive (notice it's external) can be used as the ONLY hard drive for a computer system? (In other words, can I boot WinXP and Linux off of an eSATA hard drive?) And how much effort would it take for me to plug an internal SATA drive into an eSATA port?

Thanks,

76.68.9.49 (talk) 19:49, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I know of laptops that have onboard wireless, modem, and LAN. I haven't seen that in a desktop motherboard. As for booting from eSATA, that is dependent on the BIOS. For example, the BIOS in my old computer will ONLY boot from IDE or Floppy. In the computer I currently use, I can boot from IDE, Floppy, or a PCI disk controller. In the computer I'm putting together right now, I can boot from any IDE, SATA, Network, or USB device. -- kainaw™ 20:43, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

You can certainly get motherboards with ethernet and wireless capabilities, but I haven't seen any with built-in modems for a good while. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 21:53, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Could you give me any links to motherboards with ethernet and wireless capabilities? Thanks. 76.68.9.49 (talk) 22:34, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Just search Newegg for 'wifi' under the motherboards section.141.190.32.72 (talk) 23:00, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I found it. But now I think that getting one of those USB wireless adapter and plug it into a cheap all-in-one motherboard is more economical. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.12.199.167 (talk) 00:56, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Google Toolbar Find

Hello. After I installed the Norton Internet Security 2008 90-day free trial (the only antivirus protection that I have installed), my Google Toolbar find bar is completely grey when I click on the Find icon or when I type Ctrl+F. How can I fix this? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 23:24, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Uninstall Norton. Walk away slowly, don't show it fear. (In all seriousness, avoid Norton. Use Kaspersky, AVG, or something else). 206.126.163.20 (talk) 00:25, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

For the love of God, don't use Norton. It's absolutely abysmal. Use Avira AntiVir, 100% leak protection and catches just about anything thrown at it. asenine ^{say what?} 07:11, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

May 9

Strange HDD problem

I'm trying to fix a problem for a friend who's hard disk mysteriously became password protected after a Windows crash. Worse then that, it's somehow set to the maximum security mode i.e you can't reset the password with a master password you need the user password (which obviously no one knows, since none was set). The good thing is the data isn't particularly important. In theory, the master password is unchanged (word 92 is 0xFFFE) so I should be able to use SECURITY ERASE PREPARE and SECURITY ERASE UNIT to erase and recover the disk without having to go through the rigamole of trying to convince Seagate that I/my friend didn't set a user password and it happened unexpected. But before I do that, I'm just wondering if anyone has any ideas I've missed. I've already tried mhdd to try various default passwords like "Seagate" +25 spaces but not surprisingly these don't work. I'm planning to try hddparm since I don't like the feedback I'm getting from mhdd, I'm not sure if it's working and I can't seem to work out how to do a full ID (I can with hddparm Windows but I'm having problems with that and there's no way I'm using it to erase so I'm getting a Linux recover CD). But that seems to be my last option. From what I can tell, it's difficult to recover via software only when security level is maximum, for example some expensive commercial utility (A-TT repair station 4.3) is unable to. And I've read that even attaching another controller board is pointless since the password data is stored somewhere on the HDD cylinder i.e. you need a special controller board which will ignore the password setting. Obviously anything like professional recovery companies, special tools etc are not under consideration since as I said, the data isn't important. Also, has anyone come across something like this before? I found this [4] and my friend said he came across one or two other people describing similar problems but it definitely seems a weird thing to happen. BTW, in case your wondering, I'm sure my friend is telling the truth and this really is how things happened. There is a slight possibility it's a virus but I haven't found anything like that and this happened in late March. N.B. I'm referring to a HDD ATA password as described at AT Attachment not a bios password or anything else. Nil Einne (talk) 00:05, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Bypassing difference?

What is the difference between bypassing my cache brower and refreshing? What does it do differently? Basketball110 ^{My story}/_{Tell me yours} 00:52, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Refresh simply redraws the page. It doesn't necessarily mean that your web browser will fetch the source code and image data from the server again. Bypassing the cache will force the browser to re-fetch the source code and image data. So, assume you are looking at a page. The page is changed on the server. You hit refresh/reload and see the same page you were seeing before. That is because you just redrew the page you downloaded before the change was made on the server. Bypassing the cache will force your browser to download the new page and show that instead. -- kainaw™ 03:27, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Geometry software

Hi. I am formatting a mathematical postulation, in the field of geometry. To help in my work, I need a method of constructing geometrical shapes down to an infinite point, and perfect circles (no constructed edges). Would the expertise present know anything about software that might help me? 3D modelling seen top-down (Gmax, Sketchup, etc) will not function because their circles are constructed by use of edges. Something akin to the .svg format might help, but I don't think any photoshop/paintshop program has much in the ways of helping geometrical shape construction. Perhaps a special plugin. Thanks in advance. Scaller (talk) 09:12, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

SVG leads to List of vector graphics editors and then Comparison of vector graphics editors. Find anything good there? --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 11:09, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

That was a helpful list, and it turns out I have OpenOffice Draw! These (those I have so far read about or seen, a third) still do not perform the most important function of all, that of measuring angles. Scaller (talk) 12:54, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

The Geometer's Sketchpad has been bought! A marvelous piece of software, simple and with the desired functions. Question resolved. Scaller (talk) 19:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

You bought the software just so that you could use it? [It was just a silly joke. I understand that the distributor wants you to believe that you licensed it.] :) --Kushal (talk) 19:29, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Getting electric shocks through iMac headphone jack

The iMac G5 I use at work has a bad tendency to emit electric currents through its headphone/line-out jack. While the stock iPod earbuds I usually use with it seem to insulate from this well enough, I get shocked something fierce when I try plugging in a pair of Sennheiser canalphones. Do the white Intel iMacs suffer from the same issue? (This doesn't seem to happen with the new aluminium iMacs; I plugged the Sennheisers into one of those and didn't get shocked at all.) --Lumina83 (talk) 10:36, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

...that, um, doesn't sound either safe or like it is working correctly? That definitely sounds non-standard to me. You might want to have that looked at. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 12:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Does this Mac use a three-pin power connection? That is, does its power cord offer a Ground/Earthing pin? Does the mains outlet into which it is plugged properly connect that ground/earthing pin to actual ground/earth?

On the other hand, if the Mac connects with a two-pin power cord (so no ground/earthing pin), it's not that unusual for two-pin power connections to place some amount of leakage current on the chassis of electronic equipment, but if you can feel the leakage current, you should probably get it checked-out.

Atlant (talk) 12:51, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I must congratulate Apple on the ultimate way to get people to buy their products (by administering electric shocks to anyone who buys another company's ear buds). Ivan Pavlov would be proud. :-) StuRat (talk) 14:48, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

CPAN for Java

Is there some central repository/directory of open source libraries for Java akin to Perl's CPAN (or even PHP's PEAR?) Or just good starting points for finding what's out there? Donald Hosek (talk) 17:22, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

There are some attempts to become the "CPAN of Java"; I find java-source.net in my bookmarks. Nothing that I'm aware of that is anywhere as authoritative as CPAN. For myself, I like google for finding Java code.^{notemployedbyorotherwiseassociatedwithgoogle} Weregerbil (talk) 20:36, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Weregerbil, you are a part of the brain drain too? Kushal (talk) 21:53, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Removing Ubuntu

I installed Ubuntu a while ago on my Vista machine, and it worked like a dream, except for one problem: my inbedded wifi didn't work, so to get Internet on Ubuntu I had to sit in a totally different room from where I usually use the laptop using the ethernet cable. So, I have decided to remove it from my hard drive, because it is taking up too much space on my hard drive and I no longer use it. I have the Ubuntu Live CD, but have no idea how to uninstall it and get my partitions back to normal so I can use the 10GB I gave to it for my Windows PC. Can anyone help?--ChokinBako (talk) 20:24, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

You only need to delete the appropriate partitions and put them in a format that Windows can understand. Be careful which partitions you delete. You certainly do NOT want to delete /users partition unless you have your documents backed up. On second thought, would you want any help with making your internal wi-fi card work? Please let us know. Kushal (talk) 20:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

To be honest, I just want to free up the disk space. How is it possible to delete the partitions? I am actually originally a Mac user and am having trouble using stone-age hardware like this.--ChokinBako (talk) 21:08, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Lets try this. Turn on the computer to go to windows. On your keyboard, press the [R] key while holding the Windows logo key. A dialog box should open up. Type in Diskmgmt.msc Click on OK. You should come up with something like this. Right click the partition you want to format and click format. [WARNING: Be very careful in this step! You do not want to delete something else by mistake.] Hope that helps. Come back if you need anything. Kushal (talk) 21:51, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Documents would be the /home partition, not /usr .froth. (talk) 23:39, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction. Kushal (talk) 07:08, 10 May 2008 (UTC) about stone-age hardware, if I remember correctly, a recent edition of Consumer Reports rated Lenovo's ThinkPad T61 higher than a Mac in its category. I run a Mac and I love it but not all hardware that run Windows (oh, this includes Macs too) is bad. Kushal (talk) 07:15, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

May 10

Router for PS3

What kind of router works best with Play Station 3? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.138.240.182 (talk) 01:13, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Does it even make a difference? I am not sure if it does at all as long as you get one that is compatible with PS3 (such as 802.11 b/g wireless router). Cisco's Linksys Linksys WRT54G series is a good place to start looking. Thanks to Google for the search: Router problems with PS3 Kushal (talk) 07:20, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

The wheel ... invented. Kushal (talk) 07:23, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd look at something that is capable of running DD-WRT or Tomato Firmware 206.126.163.20 (talk) 22:47, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

A question about Windows Paint...

I liked Windows Paint. I liked to draw on there and make pictures with that program. Another thing I liked to do with Windows Paint is that I can open pictures I saved in my Pictures folder and I can color them, change them to other colors, and other ways to manipulate the pictures. Now, here's the situation: I wanted to trace a picture with lines with Windows Paint, and then change the picture to blank, but also keeping the picture trace on the white background. Is it possible to do that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sirdrink13309622 (talk • contribs) 03:25, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

What you really need is a program with layers (such as GIMP). But, you can do what you want. It is just rather difficult (and I'm going from memory since I haven't used Windows since Windows 95 was introduced). The eraser has two functions. Left-button-dragging causes it to replace everything with the background color. Right-button-dragging replaces the foreground color only with the background color. So, you can use that to erase the colors you don't want. Still, it would be a hell of a lot easier to use layers. Just add a transparent layer. Trace the picture on it. Remove the picture's layer leaving the trace. -- kainaw™ 04:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Or use Inkscape and Bézier curves to trace, you get way better results that you can scale to whatever resolution you want. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:08, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

How to find IE Proxy Settings on a restricted computer

How can I find out what proxy settings Internet Explorer is using when I'm restricted from opening "Internet Options"? Many sofware have a "Use IE proxy settings" option which work well but it doesn't show the settings just uses them. I want to configure Firefox to use the proxy settings but I need to know them first and the owner of the computer would never tell me. I know they are in IE options but I'm blocked from looking in that. Please helps. Mr Beans Backside (talk) 09:04, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Install Firefox, let it import IE's settings, then look in Firefox's options to see what it got 206.126.163.20 (talk) 22:46, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

We are not here to help you gain access to areas of a computer that you shouldn't. If you really want it so badly, why not talk to the administrator? As for the FireFox thing, if he is restricted then that likely will not work. It all depends on what sort of restrictions are applied. asenine ^{say what?} 07:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Nvidia chip again

I posted a question asking if my laptop was any good for gaming as it claimed to have 'Nvidia graphics'. Someone told me to run dxdiag and after doing so I found out details of my computer and nvidia chip.

Model: Compaq Presario v3700 notebook

OS: Vista Home basic (6.0, Build 6000)

Processor: AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 Dual-core 2.0 GHz

RAM : 1982 MB

DirectX version : DirectX 10

Display device : NVIDIA MCP67M

Chip type: GeForce 7150M / nForce 630M

DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC

Approx Total Memory: 796 MB

So is my laptop any good for playing newer FPS games and other strategy games? Nvidiauser (talk) 10:32, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

The generic answer that your support personnel would give is "It depends on which games you want to play." Kushal (talk) 14:15, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, no. The GeForce 7150M is an integrated graphics card, and therefore it is very weak.

The specification "Nvidia graphics" should be taken as mere trivia, for it is meaningless as far as performance is concerned. A high-end GeForce 9800GX2 is roughly 20 times as powerful as a low-end GeForce 8400GS, both by Nvidia. And even the 8400GS is probably several times stronger than what you have. You can find some reviews of the card via A google search. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 17:26, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Forget newer FPS games unless you turn the resolution down and turn off most of the eye candy, as the specs of your notebook will make up for the lack of graphics power. As for strategy games - turn-based yes, others - it depends. Unfortunately if you want to play new FPS games as they were intended to be experienced, you would need a proper gaming machine. This would mean dual core cpu, ddr2 ram, 8800 or 9600+ nvidia card and a decent motherboard chipset. Lower these specs and you have to lower the resolution in games. 7000 series nvidia cards can play most FPS's just fine with lower settings. Sandman30s (talk) 23:58, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I had a mobile Geforce 7400Go. It was roughly equivalent to an ATI Radeon 9700 (faster than a 9600, slower than a 9800 Pro). Meaning, Half-Life 2 would play on high without AA. C&C3 would play on low acceptably, though with many units or action onscreen the framerate would drop (maybe mid 20s, still acceptable but getting choppy). That was all at the LCD's native resolution of 1200x800; newer FPS and RTS games would be harder or impossible to run at that resolution, and even hard at lower resolutions. Now, the 7150M is even worse, so that gives you an idea. Older games might be okay, but it'll be rough on anything remotely recent. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 22:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Something

Has anyone noticed that when using Google's Translate feature to translate from Japanese to English, it used to show unrecognisable words in small letters in brackets, but now it shows such words in all caps? Is there any way I can change it back to the old one? I do not like the new one because it makes me want to copy those all-caps words and add a swear word before them and a whole bunch of exclo-marks after them! Interactive Fiction Expert/Talk to me 13:56, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Why don't these yahoo answers links work?

Why don't these yahoo answers links work? Is it because I'm Canidain? [5] [6] [7] [8] Mr Beans Backside (talk) 14:04, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

If it is because you are a Canadian (and I seriously doubt it), you need to sue Yahoo! Inc. for discrimination. It might be because you happen to be in Canada (and their service is down in Canada). However, I don't think Yahoo! would ever do such a thing as to discriminate based on nationality. --Kushal (talk) 14:12, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Are you joking? Lots of very reputable web sites offer differing levels of service based on the nationality of the user. (For example, The BBC) There are a number of practical and legal reasons for this. You might also be shocked to learn that many movies only come out in certain parts of the world, and will not even work on DVD players from other parts of the world. APL (talk) 02:04, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

They don't work for me either and I'm from the US. And, since it's Canadian Yahoo, I'd expect it to work for Canadians in any case (why is there a seperate Canadian Yahoo answers anyway, do they substitute "oot" for "out" in all of their responses ?). I suspect the real issue is one of the 3 they list on the error page, probably the last one. StuRat (talk) 14:18, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Yahoo is down in Canada? But people are still asking questions, I just can't access any of them. This happens ever day when I use this google search to find Avril related news from the past 24 hours [9] Mr Beans Backside (talk) 14:20, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Specifically, I'd guess they archive their answers like we do here, with the consequence that the original links (which Google finds) no longer work after the archival. This seems to be a general Internet problem (links that "expire") which needs a general software solution. A partial solution would be for each site to provide redirects at the old location pointing to the new location when they do an archival. Of course, since this relies on each site to do something, it will never be 100% effective.

Another approach, which I'd like to see here, is for each site to put each question (or maybe each day's questions) on one permanent page to begin with, then provide temporary "transclusions" on the current questions view page. That means those questions and answers would appear on the current page, but would really already be on the permanent archive page. Picking on the links at the top of the current view page or "edit" in each section should then take you to the permanent page, where you would get the permanent link to that Q&A.

A comprehensive solution would be for Google to not only provide a link to each page, but to copy the contents of the page as well. This is currently prohibitively expensive due to the cost of storing that much data and may stay that way as the amount of data on the Internet (current and former pages) may grow faster than the cost of storage goes down. Also, there might be copyright concerns with such a system. I believe that Google does cache some popular pages currently, but certainly not all of them. StuRat (talk) 14:22, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I see. So they die after a certain amount of time? Thats a real bummer because there isn't a google cache link to view. Mr Beans Backside (talk) 14:27, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Slow computerr

Why is my computer being so slow? and it does not have a virus, for example, when i close a window, it takes a long time for that window to close down. how can i fix this? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 14:45, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

(See my response below, to your follow-on question. StuRat (talk) 14:57, 10 May 2008 (UTC))

Well, the most likely diagnosis for a slow computer is not viruses or malware, but instead exactly that - a slow computer. Have you considered upgrading? asenine ^{say what?} 07:06, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Strange application

There is a strange application running on my computer when I look under task manager called "Deepfreeze". It is a virus? How can I get rid of it I did not install it and it won't go with end task? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 14:46, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

This sounds like it might be related to the above "Why is my computer so slow" question. It does sound like a virus to me. First off, do you know that using the Task Manager (at Control-Alt-Delete) a second time to try to close an application will force it to close ? Try that. Unfortunately, many viruses will then just restart a new process. If you have an anti-virus program, try running that. Also remove any registry entries that sound related to "Deep Freeze" and do a "find files" on files that contain that phrase to see if you can track them down and delete them (save a backup copy somewhere in case those files did something important before the virus got to them). If you've done a system save recently (but before this virus appeared), you also may want to do a full system wipe and restore. StuRat (talk) 14:55, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this: http://www.faronics.com/html/deepfreeze.asp. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I should probably say that it is not "my" computer. This relates to my earlier question "How to find IE Proxy Settings on a restricted computer". Mr Beans Backside (talk) 15:02, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I thought DeepFreeze was a data backup program. Useight (talk) 15:59, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Why, it certainly freezes . Scaller (talk) 17:59, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

new ram not working

a freind recently brought some new ram and i installed it in his pc, the thing is windows pro sp2 wont recongise that it has the extra ram, i know windows 32 bit is limited to 4 gig, which is the total now in there but its only showing 490 mb, even when i remove the new ram, which should leave 2 gig, though my friend seemed to think its always been round there. I've updated the bios and the bios recongises that there are 4*1 gig ram, even beeps at me when i dont pair them correctly. I used memtest and that showed no errors. windows wont boot when i haaave only the new stuff in but does boot when it only has the old stuff or the old and new ram. i think the motherboard my be. the ram is PC3200 and its a D865GLC intel board. i'm thinking the boards broke, though it still works fine any ideas?--86.20.169.136 (talk) 15:34, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it's your motherboard. Motherboards can only support a certian amount of RAM. It sounds like an old computer. Try to find its max RAM capacity or get a new motherboard. --Randoman412 (talk) 20:25, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

intels website says it can handle 4 gig ram, guess its a new motherboard--86.20.169.136 (talk) 22:04, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I also think it is probably a problem with the motherboard. It may also be the RAM. While most RAM is tested before shipping, defects still can make it through the system. I would also check that before buying a new motherboard. However, if you do get the ram to work, and Windows only displays 2.5 GB, that is an issue with Windows XP Pro. Windows Media Center Edition will display it correctly, but XP Pro will not. Leeboyge (talk) 03:35, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Joyfully interesting graphical glitch

There seems to be something wrong with my old computer (running Win XP SP2). What programs and not have been installed (so as to give a clue for cause, eg through malware), I can't quite tell you. What I do know is that when I open the Control Panel task for installing/uninstalling software, the list of installed programs goes on perfectly as normal... until near the end. What takes shape is an enormous (likely 650x14,000 pixels, by eye measure and memory) rectangle. It is like a pyramid, if you'd like: First layer is black, then comes white, then comes black, then perhaps grey, then black and then white again. It is quite the interesting sight, and has not been seen in any other list on the computer (I searched rather exhaustively). It can be scrolled through just fine, but not selected. After it comes a few more listings of software. I am planning to reformat said computer, but would like you lot to have a go at this first. I would be able to produce a screenshot, had I not been impaired in access to the computer. So there'll likely be a chance at solving the mystery again, in summer, if anyone needed a screenshot for their diagnose. Scaller (talk) 17:56, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

If you could get your hand on a video camera, you could upload the entire episode to the Internet. Kushal (talk) 22:59, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

re kushal - Or FRAPS for that matter. asenine ^{say what?} 07:04, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

3D modeling software

Hi all, I know there isn't a definitive answer but I've tried some relevant forums and I seem to be getting biased replies so I hope you can point me in the right direction...

I'm a freelance graphic designer and most of my work is for print/web. Occasionally I have to do basic 3d work (eg. boxes, cylinders) to show how the finished products will look. I've been mainly using Bryce_(software) and a couple of free programs but over time I'm being asked for increasingly complex 3D work which I have to outsource as Bryce isn't really created for this type of work.

After trawling google, forums and looking through the 3D_computer_graphics_software I'm just confused so can anyone suggest a solid, easy-to-learn package please? I don't need anything ultra-powerful like film/games studios use. I'm not creating 'organic' scenes, most of my modeling would be based on combining primitives or 'lathing' (I forget the correct term), but if I could model things like this [10] and this [11] that would be great! And I do like the 4-window interface (X/Y/Z/perspective) that the likes of Anim8or use.

Oh, and I'd prefer to stick with something at £800 tops! PC or Mac! If there any designers out there who have made the move from Adobe-type products to 3D I'd particularly appreciate any comments you have!

Thanks in advance, Mike --87.114.18.154 (talk) 19:01, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah thats the thing with 3D graphics programs - there can be a bit of a steep learning curve initially. Blender is powerful and free, albeit can be difficult as the rest - but theres a lot of documentation and wikis on it - and if you're gonna be using it a bit in the future, may as well dive in? Boomshanka (talk) 22:08, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Three cheers for Blender ! Hip hip hurray! Kushal (talk) 22:29, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for quick replies! I know there's going to be a learning curve, I spent weeks playing with 3DS at college (this was about 10 years ago) and managed to create a box with a spotlight lol, I just want something fairly basic and easy to learn. Do either of you have any samples of your own work in Blender? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.114.7.177 (talk) 23:10, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Forgot to sign the previous comment, i was me! Mike 87.114.7.177 (talk) 23:14, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Forgive me if this sounds obvious, but have you thought about just working through one of the many Blender tutorials on the web? (I don't use it but I worked through part of one years ago.) I've found that's often the best way to dive into something relatively unknown and with its own particular interface paradigm and etc. Just going through the motions can give you a lot of insight, more than tinkering with something pre-made. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 23:58, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Version Control System

Now that there are 4 coders and 2 designers in my company we have started thinking how we need some kind of version control system (yeah, I know, we should've thought of that before). Nobody has any experience with any VCS, so we are free to choose the best tool for the job. But, the big question is should we use SVN or get some kind of distributed system? Also, does anybody have some suggestion where we can learn this, and some best practices? Especially problematic is the fact that all of us use Dreamweaver, and while coders could switch to Eclipse or some other tool that has good integration with version control systems, designers certainly cant. And besides the split Design/Code view is damn useful. So, any tips regarding VCS and web development? If we go SVN how would we accommodate the existence of devel and live servers? — Shinhan < talk > 19:41, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Until someone comes here to actually answer the question, please feel free to browse List of revision control software. Thanks. Kushal (talk) 22:28, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I think for the size of organisation you are talking about there is not much advantage to a distributed system. A good place to look for best practice documents are the Perforce White Papers, start with the High Level Best Practices guide. These are generally applicable, not just to perforce - though they are more applicable to a branch based system (like SVN or Perforce) more than a label based system (like MS VSS). When our organisation looked at revision control, systems we came down to two SVN with the tortoise-svn client or perforce. We ended up going with the commercial perforce because it had a slightly better merge facility and our ITT manager is "nervous" about software that does not come with support - I.E. he likes to pay for things!

We decided to use the separate interface rather than eclipse integration, as with trials with the eclipse plugins we found that some users found it harder to control check in-outs and to ensure that only "working" builds were checked in to the mainline. We have about 20 programmers, ranging from mediocre to excellent, and if all your programmers are high-end this may not be an issue. -- Q Chris (talk) 07:07, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Processor Compare

Is there any website where you can compre computer prossesors such as Intel to AMD or ATI to Nividia? I mean this in terms of specs, power and price etc. --Randoman412 (talk) 20:23, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Try Tom's Hardware [12], Anandtech [13] and CPU benchmark [14]

Mike 87.114.18.154 (talk) 20:30, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Sisoft SANDRA can do this in real time (your processor vs. other processors), if that's what you want. asenine ^{say what?} 07:03, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

How can I make my computer run faster?

When I play a game its really slow. It can be fast actually at around 70 frames per second, but while I'm playing sometimes my computer just starts suddenly making more noise and i have like 30 fps. Theres probably something running in the background thats making it slow. How can I fix this? I'm playing and then randomly it slows down and once in a while it pauses for half a second or so. I want to know if theres anything I can do to make it clean and fresh again without completely reinstalling everything on my computer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.187.116.121 (talk) 23:48, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Try a clean boot [15] or the program CCleaner. I can attest to both of those, and perform them whenever needed. Good Luck! Hpfreak26 (talk) 01:45, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

With CCleaner, go to Tools > Startup and remove anything you don't need. This can dramatically increase the speed of your computer, but be careful when removing entries when you don't know what they do. Usually if you search for the name on Google you can find out what a startup process does. asenine ^{say what?} 07:00, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

May 11

Privacy and email

If I appreciate my privacy can I have a free email (like gmail, yahoo or hotmail)? Or is it absolutely necessary to pay for it?217.168.0.94 (talk) 00:11, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

To be truthful, it does not help even if you pay for it. Unless you send all of your emails to yourself over localhost and noone else, there will be a receiver. If you get an email, there will be a sender. Please stop worrying about things you cannot realistically help. Alternatively, you can come up with an entirely fresh paradigm and get filthy rich (you can give the money to me if you don't want to stay rich. =P) --Kushal (talk) 01:03, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

You might consider carefully reading the privacy policy of any email service you use, free or otherwise. Some of them may be scanning your emails for keywords to base advertisings on. Or they may be filtering for viruses or spam. You may consider this a violation of your privacy. Even if they don't do any of those things, you emails will still be going through at least one (probably more than one) third party who may either illegally monitor your emails, or turn them over to law enforcement agencies on demand. It's also possible that a hacker will gain access to a email server. See E-mail privacy for more. A possible solution is encryption. Pretty Good Privacy is a reasonably popular solution. APL (talk) 01:49, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

One word: Encryption. GPG. There's no other way. --grawity 13:20, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

iTunes on new computer

I just got a new computer, but had to give up the old one before the new one arrived. I'm trying to sync my iPod to the blank iTunes on the new computer, but it won't recognize it. I did save all my music files and everything from the old computer, and put it on a portable hard drive, but I can't just put the whole thing on, and am afraid I'll have to add each song individually, which will take forever, plus I'll have to re-enter all the information I spent so many hours diligently researching and filling in on the first computer. How can I make all the songs and playlists and everything from my iPod sync with the blank iTunes on my new computer without losing everything? Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 08:53, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

And to make matters worse, my iPod just froze. It won't play, it won't turn off, it won't go to the menu, it's just stuck on pause. (And no, it's not locked; I did think of that.) Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 09:00, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

You can restart your iPod by holding the MENU and center buttons pressed for a few seconds (until the Apple logo appears).

The information is stored in the music files themselves (see ID3), so you should be able to just add the whole folder to iTunes.

And next time, use "Backup to disc". (It's in "File" menu on Windows.)

--grawity 13:19, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Playlists, however, are not .froth. (talk) 13:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help so far. I did manage to add the entire music folder, and you were right, the artist and album and album art and all that stuff came with, but the things like play counts and playlists didn't (as mentioned by froth) so if I now plug in my iPod and sync it, will it import that info from the iPod to iTunes, or will I lose it all? (If it helps to mention this, I not only backed up the My Music folder onto the portable hard drive (which is the folder I just put onto iTunes), but also the iTunes folder from under Program Files. Would the stuff I'm looking for somehow be accessible from there?) Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 02:21, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

And now I see that all my music files imported in double, so I have two of every song. What happened there??? Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 02:26, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't have Google access right now so I can't get you a link, but there are pages that describe moving your iTunes library from one computer to another. Not sure if everything moves over, but some does. You want to click the export iTunes Library menu item (or something close to that), probably in the File menu. That'll give you an XML file. You may have to edit that to point it to the new location for your music (and album art?) (search/replace?), but when you import it on the new computer it should bring over most everything from your old library. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 02:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Just ONE file for flash

When I export a project from Swish Max, I end up with one lovely file that will import quite happily into Powerpoint (using a plugin). However, when I make a swf file in ADobe captivate (also to use in powerpoint) I end up with lots of different bits and pieces. Is there any way i can convert these bits and pieces into one file? Sorry for my use of over technical languag, you can tell I am no Flash expert! Thanks - Kirk UK —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.82.79.175 (talk) 11:26, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean 'bits and pieces'? What are the file extensions of the files generated? asenine ^{say what?} 07:01, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

C array and structure initialisation

I can't seem to figure out how you can set all the elements of multidimensional arrays or of structures to zero. I'm also having trouble initialising strings in structures at initialisation.Any help would be appreciatedBastard Soap (talk) 13:18, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

If you set the first element of an array to zero, the rest of the elements will be set to zero automatically. So just do something like

int array[size][size] = {0};

Dismas|^(talk) 13:22, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Didn't work, all elements came to a value of -858993460 Bastard Soap (talk) 13:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Try memset(array, '\0', sizeof(array) ); APL (talk) 15:12, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

If you used malloc, use calloc to allocate memory set at zero. --h2g2bob (talk) 16:47, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Dismas's suggestion should work. The C standard requires that it work. It's better not to use memset when you can avoid it, because it's easy to get the details wrong and crash your program or fail to initialize the whole array. Also, it's undefined behavior to use memset (or calloc) to initialize pointers or floating-point values to 0. It'll work on most modern implementations, but technically it's a bad idea to rely on it. The = {0} construct works correctly for pointers and floats. -- BenRG (talk) 01:26, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I want to initialise to zero multidimensional array of characters or structures with characters and doubles. Bastard Soap (talk) 13:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Automatically removing all line-breaks

Here is a page with a bunch of letters. I want all the letters on a single line. If it were any other character (even a tab-space), I could use find&replace to remove the separation, but I don't think this can work with line-breaks. Is there a way? ----Seans Potato Business 14:18, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Are you pasting it into something like Word? In Word you can just do a search and replace for '^p' to replace hard returns. If you're pasting into some other package that won't let you search for returns there's an easy workaround. View the source code of the web page, copy/paste into your package then serach and replace the html code surrounding the text. Mike --87.114.7.177 (talk) 15:04, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

View source wont work, because it's formated with line-breaks in the source code also. I use OpenOffice so will search for a code for that, but if anyone else posts it here, I'll be grateful since I'll be checking intermittently (and post the answer when I find it for prosperity). ----Seans Potato Business 16:20, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

In the Find and Replace dialogue enter a dollar sign in 'Search for'. Click the 'More options' button and check 'Regular Expressions'. Click 'Replace All'. William Avery (talk) 16:55, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

With OOo 2.3.1, I get "search key not found". Have you confirmed that this works? ----Seans Potato Business 17:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes. It works with 2.4.0 on Ubuntu. Possibly you need \n instead of $. William Avery (talk) 19:04, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Well it didn't work with either but I updated to 2.4 and now it works fine. Thank you very much! ----Seans Potato Business 08:13, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The unix tr command will do this job

tr -d '\n' 

You can download a Windows executable from UnxUtils at Sourceforge William Avery (talk) 16:15, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

How do I tell it which file to apply the effect upon? --Seans Potato Business 17:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

tr -d '\n' file-name

Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:18, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

In the end, I didn't use this option but I've retained the UnxUtils, since I've used Linux before and know you can do some nifty things in terms of searching through files. Thanks for the tip! --Seans Potato Business 08:13, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Metadata editor

Hello, I'm trying to find a way of editing the metadata on all my movie files in XP. I have loads, in all shapes and sizes and they appear to inherit random metadata as regards to Genre and suchlike. There are apps for editing MP4 files, of which I have vanishingly few examples, is there not an easier way? With MP3s one can simply right-click and edit the data manually, that fuction seems to be denied me with movie files. Thanks. 80.229.160.127 (talk) 14:37, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried importing them into either Windows Media Player or iTunes and editing the data like that? weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 19:20, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Windows Movie Maker

I am using Windows Movie Maker, and I created a movie. I noticed an error, so I fixed it in the project, and went to resave it as a movie. Now, I keep getting the error:

Windows Movie Maker cannot save the movie to the specified location. Verify that the original source files used in your movie are still available, that the saving location is still available, and that there is enough free disk space available, and then try again.

I have verified all that it said, and it still is not working. I have restarted the computer, changed save locations, tried different names, and it still wont work. What can I do? --Omnipotence407 (talk) 15:23, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Try importing all of your video clips or pictures into WMM again. weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 19:17, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Im afraid I have. The error I had to fix was on all the slides, my converter had put green lines along the bottoms of the pictures. I fixed that problem by reinserting properly converted files. --Omnipotence407 (talk) 00:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I have had this problem in the past, as well. As far as I know, it is an error with the program, and I haven't been able to find a workaround yet. Leeboyge (talk) 06:36, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Translate from Turkish

Does anyone know a good site where I can translate a web page in Turkish to English? Makey melly (talk) 18:02, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I've looked, and entire website translators and few and far between. I have however found some Turkish to English phrase translators:

• Translation Booth
• InterTran

Both of these are free. weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 19:24, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Hidden pic (Internet Explorer only)

How does this work? [16] --grawity 19:20, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

The image appears to have alternating pixels; the ones with the woman on are slightly smaller than the others and can only be seen when highlighted. weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 19:27, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

IE highlights images by drawing a checkerboard of blue pixels over the image (try highlighting the Google logo and looking closely at the white bits). This checkerboard hides all the pixels that make up the non-hidden image. If you look carefully in the top-left corner with the image not highlighted, you can see her face and the other image in alternating pixels. It doesn't work in other browsers because they highlight images with a semitransparent mask rather than alternating solid and transparent pixels. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 20:14, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Slow laptop

My laptop is 4 years old now, and it has recently begun to randomly slow down for about 5 seconds before resuming it's normal speed (though the fan really kicks in after those 15 seconds). Recently reformatted and plenty of free space. What could be causing this? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 20:45, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Could it be a hardware problem, as you said that you newly reformatted the computer? Perhaps the hard disk drive is malfunctioning? User:Yetmotega/1 Yetmotega (talk) 21:56, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Could it be a power problem (low battery)? 82.35.162.18 (talk) 22:09, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

12 May

KDE 4 questions

I recently installed Kubuntu with KDE 4, and I have a number of questions.

First, new applications I install using adept and aptitude don't show up on the Applications menu, and I have to use the search bar to find them. How can I get them onto the menu?

Second, on a related note, where's the menu editor where I can remove or recategorize existing applications?

Third, when I delete a file from the desktop, it doesn't actually get removed from the ~/Desktop folder. I also can't cut-and-paste or drag-and-drop a file from the desktop into Ark, Dolphin etc. How can I fix this?

Finally, so that I can restore it if it disappears, what is the new version of Kicker called for invocation purposes? NeonMerlin 01:16, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

NeonMerlin 22:50, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

As far as I know, the desktop doesn't work as you'd expect. It uses those plasmoids or whatever they're called, the same type of widgets that run the panels. I don't know if there's a way to restore expected functionality there. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 23:14, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

internet radio in ipod touch

i have ipod touch, broadband internet connection and a 'modem with wifi facility'. is it possible to listen either shoucast radio stations in ipod touch if ipod touch has internet access via that wifi modem? if not shoutcast radio station, can i play radio stations listed under library folder in itunes software? thanks in advance —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.96.24.243 (talk) 04:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Down Loading free e-books on Plam Top 5

Hi, could any one please help me by telling me how do I down load free e-books on my Plam-top? The ones that I have downloaded appear in characte and symbols, when I try to open them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.190.32.66 (talk) 04:42, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

It sounds like you are opening a file in notepad which is not designed for notepad. If it is a PDF (which is likely), you can open the file with Adobe Reader. asenine ^{say what?} 06:56, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

There are several formats for e-books, all require special software. If you could tell us where you got the file, or perhaps the three letter extension on the end of the filename it would help. APL (talk) 19:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

IP Address Question

If one uses their internet connection from home to connect to their work machine, and if they make edits though this "Remote Desktop"s " whose IP address shows up? Only the the target computer, or can the IP address be seen that supports the connection to the internet, connecting to this work computer? I've heard conflicting answers to this question, but it should be easy enough to test out (if anyone has a remote desktop ability). My sources tell me that doing so would not mask the originating IP from the home internet connection, even if its done thought a remote desktop method. Any technical experts out there who can weigh in on this controversy, or test it? Thanks.Giovanni33 (talk) 04:50, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Only the address of your work machine would show up, since a remote desktop connection effectively means you're directly controlling your work machine, using the hardware of your home machine through the internet. It's no different to opening a webpage on the work machine with you sitting in front of it. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:49, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Registry

If you install a file to the Windows Registry in order for a game to run, is this okay? What does it do? How do you remove file later? 86.129.95.46 (talk) 08:02, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

It is normally safe to import these files. Open the file with a text editor and in there you can see exactly what it is trying to do. Usually, for a game, it would be installing keys and key values under the publisher's name. It is normally safe to remove the key from its root (find it using Regedit) after you uninstall the game, if the game itself hadn't removed it already. Sandman30s (talk) 14:32, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The game was downloaded. Is it still okay? 86.129.95.46 (talk) 15:44, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

If you suspect something would go wrong, you can backup your entire registry before you install the game. If you suspect malice, please do not install the game. Kushal (talk) 17:14, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Open the registry file up, look at it. And scan the game executable and installer for viruses while you're at it, warez-monkey. 24.76.169.85 (talk) 19:30, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Any substitute of CloneCD?

Yes, I'm curious to know if there is any substitute for CloneCD. CloneCD can copy CDs regardless of some sort of protective measures (as I read the article here). Can Magic ISO do the same?--Fitzwilliam (talk) 09:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Alcohol 120% works better in some cases. It also copies at the physical level unless you instruct it to remove copy protection. Sandman30s (talk) 14:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Big Brother

How easy would it be for the government to read your e-mail? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 10:12, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

What makes you think that they haven't? See Carnivore (software). Dismas|^(talk) 10:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

If you use a good encryption for your email correspondence, probably not so easy. Better questions are perhaps - why would the government want to read your email, and why would you care? -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 11:35, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Try giving that argument to EFF, Meni Rosenfeld. To stand up on a soapbox, these are definitely not better questions. Please let me quote from User:Rama,

“ People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both ”

That's all, my honor. --Kushal (talk) 12:01, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Rama should probably credit Benjamin Franklin. --LarryMac | Talk 13:51, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

As much as I disagree with this sentiment, I will refrain from any additional comments as this is obviously not the correct place for this. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 12:21, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I sincerely apologize for any hurt or resentment, Meni. I did not mean to attack you personally. I am sorry if it came out as such. I am very grateful that you had the kindness to restrain yourself. I hope you will accept my apologies. Kushal (talk) 17:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

We have an article on e-mail privacy. Basic answer is that a government organisation can intercept and read your e-mail quite easily, and indeed legally if they can show a half-way good reason to do so, unless you add your own layer of encryption. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:50, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Spyware

What is Spyware and how did it get on my computer in the first place. I'm sure I never installed it. How can I get rid of it? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 10:14, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

See Spyware. Dismas|^(talk) 10:24, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Compression

What is the most effective compression method for a web archive which contains HTML, WAV, MP3, JS, CCS, EXE and JPG files? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 11:43, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

It may not be the best but 7z deserves a look. Kushal (talk) 12:19, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Outlook error?

When I click on a link in an email I get the response: This link type (http) is not supported. How do I avoid/fix this? Kittybrewster ☎ 12:28, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

In windows explorer, go to Tools | Folder Options | File Types and in there see if that link type is registered. In there you can tinker with how you want outlook to open a file type or extention. Be careful though, it is not always trivial to change certain links back to original or intended behaviour. Sandman30s (talk) 14:37, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I have no clue why a simple http link type goes unrecognized. Which email client do you use? May I suggest the free and open-source Mozilla Thunderbird? It comes from one of the most trusted¹ software vendors and there are tons of features like IM² to look forward to. Kushal (talk) 17:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Probably KittyBrewster uses Outlook. I guessed this because it was the topic of the question. Outlook is perfectly capable of clicking on links, theres no point encouraging them to change email softwares for that. APL (talk) 19:19, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Unless it's broken as it sounds like it is. Although, usually just uninstalling/reinstalling Microsoft Office will fix a large percentage of Outlook errors (most of the rest are due to security software malfunctioning). 24.76.169.85 (talk) 19:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Additional hard drives

My computer has one internal hard drive but the cable which connects it appears to have a slot for an additional drive. But whenever I connect another drive the computer will not boot. It is a modern computer, two / three years old, and I know both HDDs work. Any ideas? Is the cable ment for this? xxx User:Hyper Girl 12:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Are the jumpers on the drive set to the right positions for a slave? Dismas|^(talk) 12:51, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I had this exact problem yesterday and as Dismas said, it was the jumpers. Look for a grid of pins on the side of the drive. There should be a little block covering two of them, which you can pull off and put in the correct position. The label on the drive may have the different jumper positions printed on it, or you can Google for '[drive manufacturer's name] jumper positions' to find them. The original hard drive should be set to Master and the one you've just added should be set to Slave. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 14:09, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Alternatively, most computers later than the stone age use a cable select cable that automagically sets the drives to Primary (Master) and Slave (Secondary) based on which connectors you plug the drives into. But the jumpers on the individual drives should then both be set to the "Cable Select" position.

Atlant (talk) 16:38, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've got the drive in my hand. There are four diagrams on the casing, each showing nine circles with two of them highlighted. I think this is what you are talking about. One of them is labeled "Cable Select", the others "Master", "Slave" and "Slave Present". What do I do with this? Do I have to solder the two pins together? xxx User:Hyper Girl 19:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Google balls

Who are they? What they mean? See here. --GoingOnTracks (talk) 14:41, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Probably a reference to a ball pit? --98.217.8.46 (talk) 14:58, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

GOOGLE has two O's. GOOOOOOOOOOGLE has ten O's. A ball pit has MANY O's. I think user:98.217.8.46 is at least partially right. It might also have reference to the huge number of O's that would be needed if each page for a result of a search of Anna Kournikova or any other search term was represented by a Google ball. Kushal (talk) 17:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Firefox - force text/plain to view files instead of download?

OK, take this page for instance. If I click one of the .pl files, I get the good old "You have chosen to open ... which is a ..." open with/save as dialog. What I'd like is some way (an extension I guess) to right-click the link and force it to simply display in the browser, no matter what filetype it is. Is this possible, or will I have to write it myself? I did find the Force Content-Type extension, but it doesn't seem to do what I want. Any advice? Aeluwas (talk) 14:42, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

What would "Open with" > Mozilla Firefox do? Kushal (talk) 17:42, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Haha, it seems to create a loop! Every time I click OK, a new window pops up with the open with-window. :D -- Aeluwas (talk) 17:44, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

RSTP

1. I am using VLC on Mac OS X 10.4.11 I can play the location [rtsp://webcast.un.org/ondemand/unaction/unia1123.rm from UN] but I can only hear the audio, there is no video. How can I solve this problem?

2. How can I open BBC World Service's listen live programs on VLC? What is the address for it and how can I find out the same for BBC Nepalese Service?

Thank you. You guys are awesome! Kushal (talk) 18:06, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

1. Oh hell, Realplayer? VLC won't do it. Simply won't. You'll need Realplayer; I'm not aware of any alternative on OS X (on Windows you could download an illegal standalone version of Real's codecs, but that wouldn't work in VLC either).
2. [17]. In fact, on the website, in the player window, there's a link that says "launch in standalone player" that uses this link :P. I can't navigate the Nepalese site, but see if there's an equivalent link there, and if not, just check the source of the page with the embedded player and look for a .asx file or a url starting with mms:// 24.76.169.85 (talk) 19:44, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Simple graphics problem - make an Excel chart into an image

I have several charts that I have produced in MS Excel that I want to use in a Power Point presentation. Each of the charts has several thousand data points. To reduce the chances that my charts will appear incorrectly when I give my presentation, I'd like to turn them into plain old images. I don't know how to do this. I have the open source graphics applications Inkscape and The Gimp, but I don't kno whow to use thenm very well. Can you help? ike9898 (talk) 18:19, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

To clarify, by chart I mean a plot of many points on cartesian coordinantes, not a table. ike9898 (talk) 18:37, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

You might consider converting it to PDF. See List of PDF software. If you really want an image, there are come commercial products to print to an image such as JPG. You can also do a screen capture, depending on how the spreadsheet is displayed. [18] --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 18:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

A low-resolution solution would be to take a screenshot (screen capture) of the chart when being dispalyed correctly by Excel and then insert that image into your PowerPoint presentation. (You can trim off non-chart portions of the image any number of ways.) It's not the prettiest solution but it's pretty darned fool-proof.

Atlant (talk) 18:58, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Another alternative would be to save the chart as an HTML file, and then open the file. Right click on the image of the chart in the HTML file and save the image. weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 19:26, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Runtime errors

What causes runtime error messages in Windows? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 19:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Mr BB do you have questionitis? What's stopping you from researching this in google? This has to be one of the most documented and varied problems in computing. Sandman30s (talk) 19:35, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd be willing to bet it has its roots in Microsoft's software design practices and quality control. --Prestidigitator (talk) 19:41, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd put my money on badly written drivers. Sandman30s (talk) 19:43, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

HTML source

Is it possible to make the HTML source of a web page not viewable? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 19:11, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

No, not reliably. -- Coneslayer (talk) 19:15, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The browser that your users are accessing the page with has to see the source to render it, so... no. 24.76.169.85 (talk) 19:45, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Monitoring upload/download

Is there a way I can determine what executables running are sending or receiving data from the internet? Sometimes I see network activity which I can't understand since there aren't many applications running in task manager, only the necessary ones for Windows to run properly. This is for Windows XP SP2 by the way. --Mark PEA (talk) 19:28, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd also like a reliable way to see this. What I do currently is stop all known active processes, then go and look at the list of processes in the task manager. Sort by CPU and see what is active. If something is using your bandwidth, you can be sure it's using a little bit of CPU too (jumping up and down the CPU usage list). However, if you're searching for spyware, it's probably better to get yourself a good spyware scanner. There are lots of good free ones on the net. Another thing to do often is clean out your temp folders as a lot of spyware seem to lurk there. Sandman30s (talk) 19:42, 12 May 2008 (UTC)