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May 18

MS-DOS Windows Command Prompt

When using DOS command prompt, does prefixing a command with "@" in a batch file makes the line execute without displaying it on the screen? For example, a .BAT file that says:

@cd a:\

md a:\test

When executed in DOS the command prompt, would display (right?)

a:\>md a:\test

Yes. Also, the command echo off will stop commands from being displayed. Thus, you can put @echo off as the first command in a batch file to avoid having to type the @ on every line. --Bavi H (talk) 07:05, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, how would I get a batch file containing something like this (below) to execute properly?

cd c:\

md c:\test

cd c:\test

When I write a batch file to create a directory and then change to that just-created directory, it won't change. There won't be an error or anything and it displays the commands correctly, it just won't execute the "cd" command. It shows the command line containing it; but after execution of the file, I am still in "c:\" directory instead of the "c:\test" directory.

Thanks much, Zrs_12

When I tested it on my computer, the batch file does indeed change the current directory to c:\test, but only if you start it from the C drive. If you start it from a:\, for example, the current directory will show a:\ at the end. This is because DOS remembers the current directory separately for each drive. Try the command c: to change the current drive to C. --Bavi H (talk) 07:05, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

If you use Windows Command Prompt (on Win XP/Vista), you can use cd /d C:\test, but it's not available on pure DOS. --grawity 12:13, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, it's working now. I don't know what was wrong before. Thanks, Zrs 12 (talk) 15:30, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Note that the Windows command prompt (on NT/2000/XP/Vista) is not DOS at all, pure or otherwise. It's just a Windows application that mimics some of the syntax and behavior of the old DOS command prompt. -- BenRG (talk) 17:32, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I thought it's just a 32-bit rewrite of the good old command.com + lots of extensions. --grawity 15:34, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, alright. I am using Windows XP command prompt, not DOS. Zrs 12 (talk) 19:15, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Then, use cd /d folder.

Also useful are pushd folder and popd commands.

--grawity 15:34, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

hardware problem

Hi. my pc just recently refused to boot. when i try to power it on, the HD led and power led turn on (doesnt blink like it used to though).. the monitor doesnt wake (but am sure its working fine), and theres no 'beep' that usually happens before it does POST. I already tried removing/reinserting the components (hd, memory, dvd-drive, vc) but no luck.. I also find it curious why when i tried to power on w/ no memory in the slot it didnt even give a warning beep.. all the fans powerup (cpu, vc, case fan). Is my mother board dead? or is it something i missed?

Specs if it matters (amd 64 3200+,1gig ddr2, 1 sata hd, 1 ide hd, dvdrw)... Thanks in advance. 124.105.117.161 (talk) 04:52, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like your mb or CPU yeah. That's basically what happens when you touch your mobo without grounding yourself first. 210.229.27.172 (talk) 07:35, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

thanks for the reply.. am the poster above 121.97.133.42 (talk) 11:50, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

photos in ipod touch

is it 100% legal to save flickr photos in my ipod and show it to friends and relatives? Is it commercial use if I put in ipod and show to others? what other websites are 100% legal we can do like this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.121.138 (talk) 05:34, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

If you're just showing them to friends and relatives it would, in the US anyway, easily fall under fair use and so it isn't worth worrying about. This sort of "personal use" that doesn't involve anything that would cut people out of profit is usually fair use. This is independent of however the photos are licensed. --66.180.186.198 (talk) 10:25, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Some flickr photos are Creative Commons licensed (search here). Alternatively, there's Wikimedia Commons. --h2g2bob (talk) 22:23, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

CLI question?

I am looking for an example of a CLI which is currently in use. Also I need to understand why it has not been recoded as an object oriented system and have example of a device or system which uses that CLI. In addition I would like to know how and why it is utilized —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.170.143.225 (talk) 15:40, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

We don't do homework, but you should check out Command Line Interface, which should answer all your questions. Come back and ask if there's anything you don't get in the article. Also, object-oriented doesn't mean GUI, even though GUIs generally are quite object-oriented. --Sean 16:05, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

CD Audio, 700MB = 80 minutes. Why?

"2 channels of PCM audio, each signed 16-bit values sampled at 44100 Hz".

16 bit = 2 bytes.

There are 2 channels so each second takes: 2 * 2 * 44,100 bytes.

80 minutes = 80 * 60 * (2 * 2 * 44,100) bytes = 846,720,000 bytes = 807.495117 MB > 700MB.

As far as I know CD Audio standard use no compression at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.0.235.64 (talk) 17:20, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

An 80 minute CD does hold about 800 MB of audio. This is divided into about 360,000 sectors of 2352 bytes each. On a CD-ROM, usually only 2048 of those 2352 bytes are used for user data. See CD-ROM format. It was done that way for backward compatibility reasons. A significant part of the extra capacity of a DVD comes from just using a better modulation scheme. I think the DVD scheme would fit about a gigabyte of data on an ordinary CD. A simple firmware upgrade would allow any CD-ROM reader/burner to read/burn such discs, but there was never sufficient interest after DVD took off. -- BenRG (talk) 17:53, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

The last time this question was asked, I calculated the math as follows.

There are more error correction codes used in CD-ROM format than Audio CD format. According to Compact Disc#Data structure, each sector can have 2352 bytes of music in Audio CD format or 2048 bytes of data in CD-ROM format. So 846720000 bytes (80 minutes) of Audio CD music use the same number of sectors as 737280000 bytes (~703 megabytes) of CD-ROM data.

--Bavi H (talk) 02:27, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Java: Method overloading

Suppose I have a Java class called Animal and a bunch of subclasses of Animal called Tiger, Crocodile, Monkey, and so on. I also have a Java class called Zookeeper. The Zookeeper class looks something like this:

public class Zookeeper {

    public void putInCage(Animal a) {
        GenericCage cage = new GenericCage();
        cage.insert(a);
    }

    public void putInCage(Tiger t) {
        t.sedate();
        TigerCage cage = new TigerCage();
        cage.insert(t);
    }

    public void putInCage(Crocodile c) {
        c.addMuzzle();
        CrocodileCage cage = new CrocodileCage();
        cage.insert(c);
        c.removeMuzzle();
    }

    public void putInCage(Monkey m) {
        MonkeyCage cage = new MonkeyCage();
        cage.insert(m);
        m.feed(new Banana());
    }

    // etc.

}

Now, somewhere else in my code I am given an Object. This may or may not be an Animal (and if it's an Animal, it might be a Tiger or a Crocodile or a Monkey or what have you, or it might just be a plain old Animal). If it is an Animal, then I want to have my zookeeper put it in a proper cage. So I tried something like this:

public void process(Object o) {
    if (o instanceof Animal) {
        zookeeper.putInCage( (Animal) o );
    }
}

I have to cast o to an Animal, because the zookeeper doesn't have a putInCage(Object) method. The problem is that this casting always causes the generic putInCage(Animal) method to be called, even if o is actually a Tiger or a Crocodile or a Monkey, so these animals are put into cages incorrectly.

I don't want to have to include a whole bunch of lines like if (o instanceof Tiger), because there are too many subclasses of Animal, and more might be added in the future—and anyway it seems that I shouldn't have to do that (isn't that what method overloading is for in the first place?). How do I get around this problem? —Bkell (talk) 23:41, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Overloading is resolved at compile time. Even though those methods have the same name, they have different signatures and are unrelated. The method with the argument type of "Animal" is selected at compile time because the expression (Animal) o has type Animal. You have to explain what you are doing with these "cages" in more detail, because from the code you've posted, it appears that you create a new kind of cage, and then discard it, in each method, so it's not doing anything; I'm assuming that this is not your complete code. What is the difference between these "cages"? And how are these "cages" used outside of the method? From what you are saying about not wanting the Zookeeper keep track of the types of subclasses, another possibility, depending on what you want to do, might be to have a method in Animal that is executed when it is to be put in a cage. Then subclasses of Animal can override the method and implement custom behavior. Then each type of animal would have to contain the intelligence about what is to be done to it. Is that what you want? --Spoon! (talk) 00:47, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the specifics here are obviously not my real code (I don't really have animals and cages and zookeepers). Ignore those details; they're not relevant. The important thing is that different methods should be called depending on the type of the argument.

Overloading isn't resolved at compile time. For example, I can say

Animal a = new Tiger();
zookeeper.putInCage(a);

and the zookeeper will put the tiger in the cage properly, despite the fact that the tiger is being held in a variable declared to be of type Animal. (Try this if you don't believe me.) The same thing works if I wrap it in a method:

public void process(Animal a) {
    zookeeper.putInCage(a);
}

As far as I can tell the only reason for the failure of the code that handles Objects is because I have to explicitly cast the Object to an Animal to be able to call putInCage() at all, but the compiler interprets this as a request to use putInCage(Animal) regardless of the actual type of the animal.

For my simple example here, the better solution would be (as you say) to have the subclasses of Animal do the putting-in-cages themselves. In my actual code things are more complicated, and in fact the zookeeper himself is an Animal (and how the put-in-cage operation should be done depends on the type of the zookeeper as well as the type of the animal), so this solution doesn't work—there is no "other" class to which the methods can be moved (or, to think about it another way, if the methods are moved to the individual subclasses of Animal, then the arguments change to reflect different types of Zookeeper, so you haven't gained anything). I can explain the whole situation in great detail if you like, but I think it would needlessly introduce a whole bunch of complexity. I tried to simplify the situation as much as I could, so if you can just take it on faith that it doesn't make sense to move the methods out of the Zookeeper class. —Bkell (talk) 01:03, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I may have to eat my words. I could have sworn I tried

Animal a = new Tiger();
zookeeper.putInCage(a);

and it worked, but now I am trying it and it most certainly is not working: it's the putInCage(Animal) method which is being called, not the putInCage(Tiger) method. It seems I will have to concede that overloading is done at compile time, as you said, Spoon. I think that means I need to go ponder my new perspective on the Java method calling mechanism. —Bkell (talk) 01:23, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

"Overloading considered harmful" seems to address a lot of my misunderstandings. I'll read through it carefully and then maybe I can formulate a better model of my problem. —Bkell (talk) 02:00, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

• Looks like you've found everything out, anyway. But in case it helps - what you're asking to do is dynamic casting. It can be done in C++, but it wasn't handled in Java. Java 1.5 and 6 get close with generics and the getClass() method, but while getClass() will find out what the subclass is, it still won't allow you to cast to the subclass (in the sense that it does, but the casting is determined at compilation, not runtime, so it isn't dynamic). To be honest, I'm not sure how much good it would do for you anyway, as I would assume that the aim is to create methods for Monkey, Crocodile, Tiger and so on, but if it is none of those default to Animal. Given that you'll need to create the methods anyway, the ugly "instanceof" conditionals would make sense. :) - Bilby (talk) 02:23, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

What kind of dynamic casting are you talking about? Your mention of generics makes me think you mean templates, but neither templates nor generics will solve this problem—they're statically bound just like overloaded methods. What you really need here (and what the original poster thought he had) is multiple dispatch, which neither C++ nor Java supports. The only nice way to solve this problem in C++ or Java is to put the methods in the Animal class (as Aaron Rotenberg says below, though this has nothing to do with any extra complication in C++). -- BenRG (talk) 11:20, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, by generics I'm referring to Java 1.5's approach, where you have "unknown" class types which are instantiated by the compiler. So templates are probably right in terms of C++. I agree that it doesn't solve the problem - using getClass() and Class.cast(Object) is close (and possible because of the use of generics), but as it is statically bound it was never really in the running. (It still turns up here and there as people try it as a solution, though, which is part of why I mentioned it). I agree with you, Spoon and Aaron that overriding would be much better than overloading. But Bkell mentioned that the methods had to stay in Zookeeper, rather than being transfered and overridden to Animal, as different Zookeepers would have different approaches. Thus the ugly instanceof is one of only two solutions I can think of. The other is perhaps uglier. Add a method public void cage(Zookeeper z) { z.putInCage(this); } into Animal and each subclass of Animal (it needs to be overridden) then call it from Zookeeper with (Animal) o.cage(this);. It avoids casting, so it sidesteps the problem. But not in an elegant way. :) - Bilby (talk) 11:57, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) But, as we all know, casting (not to mention everything else) in C++ is way too complicated. The standard Java pattern is, as Spoon said, to use overriding:

public class Animal {
    public void putInCage() {
        GenericCage cage = new GenericCage();
        cage.insert(this);
    }
}

public class Tiger extends Animal {
    @Override
    public void putInCage() {
        sedate();
        TigerCage cage = new TigerCage();
        cage.insert(this);
    }
}

// etc...

Then you can completely eliminate the Zookeeper class, or at least the Zookeeper.putInCage() methods. It's much prettier, and it allows clients to create their own putInCage() methods for their classes. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 02:38, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The best solution, as has been mentioned, is to refactor (some of) the method into the Animal class hierarchy. However, if you really needed to you could have the method with the most general type test the dynamic type of its argument. This is not pretty and not very maintainable, so it should be avoided where possible:

public class Zookeeper {
   public void putInCage(Animal a) {
      if (a instanceof Tiger) {
         putInCage((Tiger)a);
      } else if (a instanceof Crocodile) {
         putInCage((Crocodile)a);
      } else if (a instanceof Monkey) {
         putInCage((Monkey)a);
      } else {
         GenericCage cage = new GenericCage();
         cage.insert(a);
      }
   }
   ...
}

Note that the way these are written, the refactoring of the logic into Animal would probably be a good candidate for a template method pattern. For example, give Animal (or an interface like Cageable implemented by Animal) three methods called prepareForCage(), createCage(), and accommodateToCage(). Then Zookeeper's logic would simply become:

public class Zookeeper {
   public void putInCage(Animal a) {
      a.prepareForCage();
      a.createCage().insert(a);
      a.accommodateToCage();
   }
}

That might be overkill, but it is worth keeping in mind where the logical flow has a lot of similarity for each and each step might vary a lot between subclasses. --Prestidigitator (talk) 16:29, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

May 19

for speed, put XP or Windows 2000 on an old PC?? (pentium 3, 667 MHZ, 256 MB RAM)

so I have this old computer running windows 98, but 98 isn't stable enough for me, I normally would put windows 2000 on it, but I read that htis is SLOWER than windows xp:

http://home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/XPMyths.html

“ Myth - "Using Windows 2000 over Windows XP will improve performance"

Reality - Windows XP offers better performance than Windows 2000 so long as the recommended Windows XP requirements are met regardless of the age of the computer. With 128 MB of RAM Windows XP is superior to Windows 2000 and all older versions of Windows. This includes dramatically faster boot and resume times and highly responsive applications. Performance only gets better with additional resources, particularly when you run memory-intensive multimedia applications.

”

But if you look at their source, you see it's Microsoft! So, of course they're going to say that (at the time).... according to independent people, would Windows XP or Windows 2000 be faster on my ancient hardware? Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Beaterofapc (talk • contribs) 00:49, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

If you adjust Windows XP for best performance (System Properties > Advanced > Performance Settings) it will be very similar in performance to Windows 2000. If the computer is going to be connected to the internet, I strongly recommend Windows XP, as it is more secure. Your system is adequate for XP. --67.170.53.118 (talk) 01:08, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

With the above change they would be imperceptibly different; even with the default settings it probably would be fine. XP's theoretical performance improvements are in booting, and application launching (since it prefetches things and whatnot). However, the kernels and most of the underlying stuff is very similar between the two OSs, with XP adding various small things and making the GUI friendlier. I don't see any reason not to go for it. XP is newer as well, so its support end date is further out. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 03:27, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Here is your complimentary nudge to use Linux, especially Ubuntu or its derivative, Xubuntu. Thank you for using the Reference Desk service, and have a good day. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:04, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

You'd be amazed what an extra 256M will do for your XP performance. For such an old machine, people are virtually throwing away or selling RAM for VERY cheap. Good luck finding some, though. Graphics card performance matters to a lesser extent, and here again you'd be able to pick up an upgrade virtually from a junk yard. Old PC's are becoming a major landfill problem worldwide. Sandman30s (talk) 14:04, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Maximum dimensions for image files

Hi, what are the maximum height and width for various image file formats? Are there any formats without restrictions? I'd like to know about PNG, JPEG and TIFF. Thanks. --Kjoonlee 00:53, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The PNM format doesn't have any (defined) size limits, although software processing such files of course may be more limited. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

• PNG [1] uses 4 bytes to store width, and 4 bytes to store height (4.3 million pixels square)
• TIFF [2] uses up to 4 bytes to store width, and up to 4 bytes to store height (4.3 million pixels square) (2 bytes each is more common)
• I don't know about JPEG, but I've seen dubious websites that claim 32Kx32K. I think JPEG treats dimensions more weirdly than PNG or TIFF.

You may be more likely to encounter operating system limitations [3] at very large sizes. I am not an authority on this. :-) --67.170.53.118 (talk) 01:52, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) As for PNG, JPEG and TIFF, if I'm reading the specs right, JPEG seems to be limited to 65,535 by 65,535 pixels, while PNG and TIFF seem to allow up to 4,294,967,295 by 4,294,967,295 pixels. Good luck finding an image viewer able to display that 16-exbipixel image, though. Or a hard disk to store it, for that matter. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:55, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

And it's hard to imagine an instance in which it wouldn't be more sensible to split it into multiple pieces and just have it pieced together on the fly. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 01:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Can Windows Media Center record/pause RTSP streams?

Can Windows Media Center (in Windows XP Media Center Edition or Windows Vista Home Premium) record/pause videos streamed from the internet (specifically WMA/WMV streams over RTSP)? Thanks. --67.170.53.118 (talk) 01:02, 19 May 2008 (UTC) (Edit: I meant RTSP streams.)

How does the Chinese Wikipedia interconvert between different flavors of Chinese?

The Chinese Wikipedia allows articles to be rendered in several flavors of Chinese, including, among others, Taiwanese Chinese (in traditional Chinese characters) and Mainland Chinese (in simplified Chinese characters). The conversion involves more than just a one-for-one substitution of characters, because of the following complications:

1. The mapping from simplified Chinese characters to traditional Chinese characters is NOT one-to-one. The same simplified Chinese character may correspond to several traditional Chinese characters, depending on the context.

2. There are terminological differences among the different flavors of Chinese. Something called by one name in one flavor of Chinese may be called by a different name in another.

3. Contributors add to the same article using both simplified and traditional Chinese characters.

How does the Chinese Wikipedia do it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.78.237.18 (talk) 15:25, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

See Chinese_Wikipedia#Automatic_conversion_between_Traditional_and_Simplified_Chinese for a quick overview, and meta:Automatic_conversion_between_simplified_and_traditional_Chinese for the more detailed one, as well as various appropriate links to the actual conversion tables and such. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 00:56, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Cartoon Animation in Adobe/Macromedia Flash

Does anyone know any good websites (or books, if no known good sites exist) for learning the optimal way to create animation in Flash? (By animation, I mean character-based cartoon animation, not tweening.) I've done several searches, but the sites I've found are extremely basic. In particular, I am interested in three main aspects of Flash animation:

1. Effective but efficient lip-synching (e.g. how many mouth shapes are necessary for convincing but not overly time-consuming speech animation)
2. Optimal workflow techniques (e.g. to what degree should objects/characters being animation be broken into symbols, what's the best way to handle all the different symbols, etc)
3. Recommended drawing techniques (this is less important than the other two; I'm just curious if people recommend anything other than a graphics pad).

Any advice on good resources for learning about these things would be most appreciated. Thanks! H. J. Hackenbacker (talk) 16:57, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

IE7 bug

I just found a nice little bug in Internet Explorer 7. If you have a dropdown list (<select>) with only one option, clicking on this dropdown list twice crashes Internet Explorer. It is 100% reproducible. Adding another option solves the problem. Where do I go to report this bug to Microsoft? JIP | Talk 20:21, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

From a quick Google, [4] is useful Nil Einne (talk) 20:42, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I was also interested in reporting a different bug in Internet Explorer 7 that I had spent hours tracking down. That blog post Nil Einne linked to above looks promising, but the link in that blog goes to a Not Found page after you sign in. In the directory of connection forums, the closest match I found is one called "Internet Explorer Beta Feedback," but it appears to be for Internet Explorer 8 Public Beta. The directory page says that forum was created March 6, 2006, and the blog post above is dated March 24, 2006, so I guess that original feedback forum mentioned in the blog evolved to cover a newer version of Internet Explorer. It's not clear if it's still appropriate to submit IE7 bugs there, and the application process to join that forum requires you to provide your address and phone number, so I didn't complete the application at this time. --Bavi H (talk) 00:14, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

The general Connect gateway for IE is at http://connect.microsoft.com/ie Nanonic (talk) 19:53, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

(JIP, you might join that forum anyway and see if it's appropriate for IE7 bugs, or if your bug was already reported. Or, you might consider testing IE8 Beta, and if it has the same bug report it that way. I might do this myself later on for my bug too.) --Bavi H (talk) 00:38, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Misc Desk

Is the Misc desk being vandalized or is it just me. When i see the page it looks like there is another page right on top of it before there was a picture of avril? anyone else seeing this? --Nick910 (talk) 20:24, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I assume someone has hosed up one of the headers that's trancluded... I tried to fix it but it makes the links not work in my browser. Friday (talk) 20:25, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

This happened to all desks I'm pretty sure since it was indeed to one of the headers, take a look at the talk page if you haven't already for more details Nil Einne (talk) 20:42, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Wordlist generator or commandline dictionary attack program

I'm trying to bruteforce a truecrypt password which I semi-forgot. I haven't calculated if it's feasible yet, but I haven't yet found a program which serves my need anyway. TrueCrypt supports a commandline mode, so all I need is a simple program which can bruteforce a commandline program until success. I've found programs which can probably do the command line part, trouble is, getting the wordlist. Most of them accept dictionary/wordlistss and at least one can even modify words in the dictionary. But surprisingly enough, none of them can use two or more words which is what I want. I also want to specify that one word is always there. I've come across some wordlist generators, but most of them only allow you to specify stuff like R?????p? or someething of that sort. Anyone know of either a wordlist generator, or a command line bruteforce program that can try to bruteforce two or more words (specified of course) and always include at least one specific word? I appreciate of course that it's a power function so with several words it can quickly get into taking many, many years. Nil Einne (talk) 21:00, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

If the tools you already have are sufficiently Unix-y — that is, they use standard input and output — you should be able to just use paste (with the -d '' option) and yes (and perhaps process substitution out of bash or so) to get a list of words with your word prepended or appended. Is that all you need? --Tardis (talk) 23:02, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Something like this will do it for two words:

check() { truecrypt --decrypt-with-password "$@" && echo "Password is $@"; }
known_word="celadon"
for i in `cat /usr/share/dict/words`; do
   check "$known_word$i" && break
   check "$i$known_word" && break
done

--Sean 13:34, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Slow internet problem?

i'm currently having a problem with my internet, webpages take an extremely long time to load, if it all, yet i can still view Youtube videos easily, with the video loading quickly, and i was able to download from Rapidshare at 90 kb/s. Also, this only happened after i messed about a bit with my internet settings to try and forward my ports properly for Soulseek. I'm using Mozilla Firefox and Windows Vista. Does anyone have any idea what i could do to try and get my internet web-page loading-speed back to normal? 91.109.10.126 (talk) 21:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.109.10.126 (talk) 21:08, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

It probably won't work, but you could undo what you did and see if you still have the problem. --WikiSlasher (talk) 10:00, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Does it happen in IE (ie. Firefox issues)? Using any security software? Router? If you surf by IP address does it work quickly (ie. DNS issues)? There are a lot of different points of slowdown... 206.126.163.20 (talk) 22:00, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Visible polygon vertices algorithm?

I would like an (efficient, easy to implement, floating-point-tolerant, pony-based) algorithm for identifying which vertices of a set of polygons are visible from a given point (that is, not obscured by the interior of any of the polygons). The polygons can certainly have CCW-ordered vertices (which allows the useful inclusion of an inside-out polygon that contains the whole field), and are simple, but may be non-convex, have a large number of vertices, and/or be large in number. I have an algorithm that (I think) works in theory, but it's falling afoul of roundoff error. I'll give it, but I suspect that the true answer may be unrelated.

• Given: a list of polygons (each a list of vertices) and a query point not in any of them.
• At all times, maintain a list of intervals on the torus [0,2π]; each interval is a set of directions in which we have not found the termination of sightlines. This list is initially the entire interval.
• Also maintain a stack and a queue of edges of polygons, each initially empty.
• Also maintain a set of vertices to return, initially empty. (A set because we will "notice" some vertices more than once.)

1. Find the nearest polygon that (at least partially) lies in an unresolved direction and, if the edge stack is not empty, which intersects the triangle defined by the top edge and the query point. (This can be done efficiently with some sort of quadtree.)
2. If there is no such polygon:
   1. Pop the edge stack. (If it was empty, the algorithm is finished; return the set's members.)
   2. For each endpoint of the popped edge, add it to the return set if it lies in an unresolved interval.
   3. Then mark the interval of angle subtended by the popped edge as resolved.
   4. If the edge stack is now empty, pop an edge from the queue and add it.
   5. Go back to the start.
3. Find the nearest edge on that polygon (also efficient with an appropriate quadtree); if two edges are closest because the closest point (to the query point) on the perimeter is a vertex, and the query point is on the "inside" of one of those two (it cannot be inside both, or it would be inside the polygon), choose the other edge.
4. Push the chosen edge on the stack.
5. Walk around the polygon in each direction, pushing other edges onto the queue. Stop when the query point is "inside" an edge and do not push that edge.

The problems, of course, lie in calculating the intersections with the triangles and angles (or sectors): for a simple triangle with one visible edge, that edge attempts to hide the triangle from further consideration by resolving the interval of angle containing it, but the triangle may be later considered to just extend into the allowed region of angle. (It's also possible for the polygon whose edge defines a triangle to search to be counted as inside that triangle, although this can be worked around.) Any thoughts? --Tardis (talk) 23:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

This sounds like a subset of a hidden line removal program I once wrote. One part was to create a piercing vector from the point in question to the camera point and then check to see if it interesected any surfaces between the two points. It sounds like you only have a wireframe model, though, not a surfaced model. You may need to first create a surface model to do what you want. Creating planar surfaces inside a polygon is relatively straightforward, I believe, and creating planar surfaces outside those polygons shouldn't be difficult, either. You first must define the plane using any 3 non-colinear points, then apply boundary edges to them. StuRat (talk) 02:32, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, you're talking about a 3D problem, perhaps populated by flat surfaces; I'm talking about a plane problem (all polygons and the query point lie in it). Sorry for not being clear. --Tardis (talk) 04:15, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

May 20

Help with files

HELP HELP HELP. I got a file from my friend but something is wrong with it! It is a folder. Inside the folder are 5 files. They all have the same name, but they're all different file types. There are:

• Song.1pk
• Song.pk
• Song.sfk
• Song.cue
• Song.wav

When I play that wav file in realplayer or windows media player, it is 45 minutes of static. What are the other files for??? How do I do this??? Thank you!--Goon Noot (talk) 01:12, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

The .pk file appears to be used by Adobe Audition ([5]) and the .sfk Sound Forge ([6]). The .cue file is likely to be a CD image of some sort which can be burnt onto a CD (or using specific software, its contents extracted) and the .wav file is predictable a WAVE file. Not sure what the .1pk file is for. If you can't play the .wav, I'm not sure what that's about because usually these sound issues are to do with lossy formats; there's hardly codec problems for .wav files out there... Perhaps the .cue file can be mounted using software like Daemon Tools and played as if it were an audio CD? x42bn6 Talk Mess 04:49, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Does not sound good. Are you sure that your friend manually sent you the email? Could you check back on him/her in meatspace to confirm? Kushal (talk) 04:42, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I changed the file type of the .wav to .dts and it plays on foobar now. What should I do with the other files?--Goon Noot (talk) 15:50, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

iPod storage

I am interested in buying a new iPod, but I'm not sure how may gb to get. When it lists that it can hold 8,000 songs, that's about 2 minutes each, but how many minutes of videos with sound does it hold? As I'll want songs, videos, and photos, what is the conversion rate of memory space taken up? Thanks, Reywas92^Talk 01:28, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

As a general rule of thumb, a non-audiophile listener will enjoy music that is about 1 megabyte per minute, and about half-to-a-third that for varying definitions of "audiophile" after that. Videos depend on a number of factors, but a random sample of videos I have seems to produce approximately 4 megabytes per minute of video. A picture at appropriate resolution for an iPod is probably going to clock in at 1/20th or 1/200th of a megabyte (my apologies, I'm a little too tired to trust my precision at the moment). A "decent" digital camera picture will probably clock in at, again, 1-2 megabytes (but that could easily be re-sampled to lower resolution; the iPod will have to dynamically, anyway). Keep in mind, you don't get the entire storage space for use - some gets used by the operating system. Still, 400 songs and 20 videos later, and I'm not even half full myself. Only so many November Rains out there, I suppose. -- Ironmandius (talk) 02:52, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

shaddy contractor

question removed by Zrs 12 (talk) 01:55, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

This question has been removed. As per Wikipedia reference desk guidelines, we are not permitted to answer any questions about legal advice. It is my suggestion that you ask a lawyer about the way in which to deal with anyone who has botched a job on your computer.

However, if you have any questions about how to repair your computer, we would be happy to try to help. Zrs 12 (talk) 01:55, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

How do I split the tabs?

Okay I am running an instant messenger on Windows XP 2002. When I open a lot of windows, some of them that are of the same type collapse into just one tab and it shows a number. How do I split it back into individual tabs?--Goon Noot (talk) 02:43, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Right-click on taskbar. Click Properties. Deselect "Group similar taskbar buttons". -- Danh, 70.59.79.51 (talk) 03:27, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

What's wrong with my keyboard?

Pressing ~ causes a ¬ to appear. Pressing \ causes a # to appear. Pressing | causes a ~ to appear. Pressing @ causes a " to appear. Pressing " causes a @ to appear. Pressing # causes a £ to appear.

This problem occurs in some programs but not others and the programs it occurs in seems to keep changing! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.61.14 (talk) 11:50, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like you have the British keyboard layout enabled. ----— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:59, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

The exact same thing happends on my home pc, so I always get confused when I use someone elses that doesn't do it. For # you do "shift 3" on my keyboard. Bed-Head-HairUser:BedHeadHairGirl12:51, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

See Keyboard layout#QWERTY UK and Ireland. Assuming you have Windows XP, check your layout by following these instructions. ----— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 13:10, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

CPU question

I saw a gaming PC with an advertised processor speed of 13 GHz. Is that actually possible? Or is that just the speed of all the cores added together? Could I actually achieve speeds of 13 Ghz, or would it only be that fast if I used all of the cores at once? Any explanation would be appreciated, thanks in advance! Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 12:47, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Where is this PC ad? I'd like to see it. But 13GHz is misleading. I don't know of any consumer computers going above 5-6GHz even when cooled with liquid nitrogen. The chances are that they just added the speeds in the cores (8x 1.66 GHz or 4x 3.25+ cores). That being said, there are times where it will perform as well as a single core 13 GHz processor, particularly when video is involved. But of course, if you look at even the Sony PlayStation 3's massive amount of cores, getting games to use all that processing power is neigh on impossible. That, and you'd probably want graphics processing for video, unless some of the cores are made to be graphic processors. And I'll guarantee that none of the clocks in there run at 13 GHz, or anywhere near it. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 13:31, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't find the exact one I was looking at earlier, but here is a similar one: [7]. So its advertised speed at 9~ GHz is misleading? Silly me for being optimistic. You mentioned consumer PC's running at 5-6 GHz? Know where I could find any running at that speed? Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 14:45, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Yea, that's a quad-core 2.4 GHz chip that they're advertising. You won't find any PCs running at 5-6 GHz without being able to get a supply of liquid nitrogen, as they're overclocked. And clock rates don't mean as much nowadays as they did back in the days, pre-3GHz. If the program (or game, probably, in this case) you're running can utilize more than one core well, a 1.66 dual core can perform better than 3GHz system. It gets harder to utilize the more cores you have though. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 14:56, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

(after edit conflict)

Yep. The heating problems led Intel to go through the massive problem of dismantling in the consumer's mind, the idea of equating processor "power" with the clock speed. Just getting beyond 4 GHz was problematic and although I am sure Marketing protested wildly, Intel went ahead and began educating people that clock speed is not everything about a processor (a notion some say Intel itself put in the consumer's mind). As Wirbelwind, I would like to see the advertisement as well. Could you link us? Kushal (talk) 15:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Was it Intel that reeducated people? I thought it was AMD, by making processors that outperformed Intel's at a lower clock rate. That kind of drove the point home. -- BenRG (talk) 16:11, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

That's what I thought too, cause IIRC, Intel was trying to push the frequency while others (like AMD and I think IBM) were saying they need to give up. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 16:25, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

That's what's funny about it. Intel had to backpedal and side with AMD on the point. So, uh, both of them are trying to reeducate people now. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 21:41, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

PS: thanks for the link. According to AMD, it is a 2.4 GHz processor. The ebay seller is probably misleading you in the heading but in the specs, it says "2.4GHz (x4)". I am not sure if they want to be dishonest but they seem to give inaccurate information like calling their version of Windows "Genuine Windows Vista Premium 64Bit Included" where they probably skipped the word "home". I don't think I would buy a desktop in one piece until I did some basic research to figure out if it would be cheaper to build it myself or not. Kushal (talk) 15:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies guys! I'll try not to get duped! ;-) Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 15:36, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Sounds obvious to me, but could it have been a misprint and actually 1.3GHz? Some (long?) time ago a 1.3GHz would have been a kick-ass gaming machine. Astronaut (talk) 18:08, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

free online soccer

my friend said it's possible to see live soccer matches on the internet for free. is it true --scoobydoo (talk) 15:34, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

It seems so from looking at this site, which lists software for streaming broadcasts. These are not soccer specific, or even sports specific. My suggestion would be to try some of those out (of course, watching out for adware and the like). Googled "live soccer match web." WDavis1911 (talk) 18:14, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

VoIP/IPKall: receiving incoming calls

I've been trying to get calls with an IPKall number, forwarding them to my FWD account; I'm using an X-Lite soft phone.

It doesn't work. I hear the ring tone of incoming calls, can intercept the call... and neither I nor the caller hear each other. I've read somewhere of other people having this or a similar problem, but didn't find a solution. I don't have any problems with a separate sipgate account which I've been using for months (using the sipgate X-Lite soft phone).

I don't mind changing VoIP company or soft phone--all I want is receiving calls from a "real" phone number, so that people without an SIP account can call me. Voicemail would be appreciated, but at this point I'd just like to get any calls. So any tips for what I should check or which other software I should use are highly welcome. Thanks a million! Thanks, thanks, Thanks for answering (talk) 15:36, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

C variable string

Is it possible to do a string like this ("%c%c",char1,char2) ? Something similar to the string generation in printf. I want to combine different elements of an array of characters into a string. Bastard Soap (talk) 20:57, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

sprintf works like printf, exept that the results goes into a character array. Sample code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
   char str[100];
   char o='O';
   char k='K';
   sprintf(str, "%c%c", o, k);
   puts(str);
   return 0;
}

Is this what you were looking for? Mind you, code using sprintf is very bug-prone, and also vulnerable to exploits, because of the danger that your program might try to put too large strings into the buffer. Using C++ and standard library strings is a better option. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 21:43, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

If you're adding individual chars you should be able to easily cook something up to count the number of chars you've added compared to the size of the string. sprintf'ing using string arguments (without buffer overflow protection), or doing chars and such without checks is a recipe for bad times, though. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 22:11, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks man, it was just the thing. Bastard Soap (talk) 22:38, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

AMD board

I have an old computer with an Intel motherboard and INtel chip. If i wanted to get an new AMD motherboard and remove the old Intel motherboard, would I need a different CPU case? In other words, would a case affect what i could put into a computer. --Randoman412 (talk) 21:41, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

As long as both motherboards conform to the same form factor, then there's no issue. And most normal-sized motherboards are ATX, so it will probably be fine. Different cases within the same form factor do have different amounts of air flow (and if you're moving to hotter components that might matter), different room for hard drives, and other differences, but the motherboard, CPU, powersupply, and normal sized expansion cards should all fit. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 21:43, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

And on a minor matter of terminology, just call it a 'computer case' or just a 'case'. A CPU is a pretty specific component inside the computer, and 'CPU case' sounds kind of like a CPU heatsink. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 21:56, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Disk image/operating system compatibility

If I create a disk image on a USB flash drive with Disk Utility in Mac OSX, can I open that image on a computer running Mac OS9? Could I encrypt it? Are there any alternatives to disk images that can be used to secure/encrypt files that are compatible with both OSX and OS9? Thanks a bunch. Ilikefood (talk) 23:13, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

TrueCrypt has plenty of good reviews. Kushal (talk) 23:28, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but TrueCrypt needs 10.4 to run. Anything that will work with Mac OS 10.3.9? Ilikefood (talk) 23:49, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Kushal (talk) 00:04, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

No problem. :-) Ilikefood (talk) 00:19, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

It should be possible to find a PGP implementation for just about any operating system, even the old ones. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 00:56, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

PGP had an OS 9 client back in the day. Here's a interesting link that mentions what you need for OS 9 support. [8] --70.167.58.6 (talk) 19:57, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Real-world computational complexity

Has any theoretical work been done on adjusting computational complexity theory for such real-world complications as:

• The time taken for disk and RAM operations
• The effects of swapping if there is insufficient free RAM
• The overhead costs of system processes and security software
• The optimal allocation of a limited upgrade budget

NeonMerlin 23:39, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

You don't need new theories to model these factors. Their modeling may require painstaking and tedious analysis, but is not very interesting from a theoretical viewpoint. --72.94.50.27 (talk) 02:33, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Those things come into play very heavily during hardware and OS design, where paging and caching are very carefully watched to ensure they don't run wild. With that said, during application design, those factors don't typically affect runtime complexity, but may change the constant multiplicative factor. In other words, if an algorithm takes (3 seconds)*N^2 time in one case, and (5 seconds)*N^2 time in another (where N would be the number of elements of whatever we are operating on), it is O(N^2) both ways. Typically the worst-case or average complexity of an algorithm is what you pay most attention to, but when the constant factor becomes "very" large (e.g. Fibonacci heaps have notoriously large constant factors despite quite good theoretical runtime complexity) it might become an issue. From a more down-to-earth perspective, I think you'd optimize all factors independently to reach an ideal (or at least most cost-effective) solution: hardware, OS, and algorithmic logic. --Prestidigitator (talk) 04:34, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

May 21

how to sniff and play streaming mp3

When a user is listening streaming radio in mp3 format using application like Winamp, how can a network administrator monitor what is being listened by the user, by using packet sniffer? Is there any tool that will play mp3 which is being listened by other users on network at runtime? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.129.237.147 (talk) 06:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Driftnet claims to have that ability: http://www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/driftnet/

The hard part for our nosy network administrator is to convince his router(s) and/or switch(es) to pass all their traffic through his unix box. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 21:01, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Mysterious page inclusions/deletions

If you look at the revision history of the 2006 Lebanon War article, User:Ian Pitchford made [an edit] which didn't seem to effect the Media controversy section but generated a partially duplicated section above it. Not vandalism, as far as I can tell, but a computer error. Similarly, [this edit] did not actually seem to touch any parts of the "Mosquito repellents and personal mosquito control" section, but after the edit the content was deleted. Are these some strange computer errors or am I missing something? It seems like content errors are arising when not consciously committed by the editors. Please explain.72.184.183.175 (talk) 08:03, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

In 2006 Lebanon War, the "Media controversy" section actually exists twice in the wiki source. Before the edit you highlighted, one of those instances was being hidden by an unmatched <ref> tag. (The text actually got squeezed into the a footnote.) User:Ian Pitchford correctly changed it to a </ref> and the extra section popped out of the footnote list and back into place above its twin.

In Mosquito, some top-level section headers were added in between existing second-level headers, which caused some of the old second-level sections to appear in a different place in the tree (5.4 and 5.5 became 9.1 and 9.2) but I don't think anything actually disappeared. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 09:18, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

YouTube

I have a problem with YouTube. The "similar videos" box on the right has the problem - all the videos that are not in the box when it first appears go all the way down to the bottom of the screen, and the scrolling of the video names is not in sync with the video screenshots. What is causing this problem and how can I fix it? Interactive Fiction Expert/Talk to me 11:53, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

What web browser and operating system are you using? « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 13:27, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

What Trusted timestamping service do you trust?

If you trust any, of course... Mr.K. (talk) 13:23, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

It would probably depend on what I was trusting it to do! If it was about patent priority, such a system would be secondary to getting trusted witnesses and building a strong paper record of how I got to said bright idea. And though I'm no lawyer, personally I would worry less about timestamping on MY end of things than making a hash of the work and sending it to, say, a dozen other people, all of whom could testify as to when they received it (or putting it on websites with timestamping beyond my control—even Wikipedia, for example). Do that enough times and the likelihood of buying everyone off and faking all of the technical data across a variety of machines seems rather unlikely. But in the end the courts are going to privilege witness testimony and ample paper records more than a few neat technical tricks, I suspect. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:12, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Can an Adobe Flash plugin read a person's MAC Address or other hardware/personal information?

Can an Adobe Flash plugin read a person's MAC Address or other hardware/personal information? I mean with the latest version that fixes some security flaws in the past? William Ortiz (talk) 15:50, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

If you do a google search for "actionscript mac address", it looks like the answer is no, unless you've saved the flash file to your computer, run it from there, and you've also installed some .exe file to help it get your mac address. Typically flash can only get the same sort of information that javascript can get, which is not much outside of what the browser knows. If you're asking if there's a security hole allowing unauthorized access, I have no idea. Indeterminate (talk) 23:11, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Java parser implementation?

As a hobby, I recently wrote a simple Java class library implementing a very basic form of lambda calculus. I now have a class library capable of representing lambda calculus expressions dealing with operations on rational numbers. But to be able to test the class library, I would have to be able to actually construct lambda calculus expressions. I could do it by constructing the objects by hand, but using a parser would be much more powerful. Problem is, I don't know how to write a parser. Is there an existing parser implementation in Java, that I could just feed a Backus-Naur grammar and instructions on what objects to construct? JIP | Talk 17:41, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Check out JavaCC (and JJTree). Those might be a decent place to start. --Prestidigitator (talk) 19:54, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

link sharing.

my site is bigtreespa.com. I want to know if I can link to your definition of swedish massage, shiatsu massage and sports massage? my email is (email address removed) —Preceding unsigned comment added by G2506 (talk • contribs) 19:20, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

You're free to link to any content in Wikipedia without asking permission. If you want to copy the content text to your own site you need to abide by the terms of the GNU Free Document License. (I've removed your email address per the reference desk guidelines because pages from Wikipedia are widely copied, which would make your email address very public.) — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 19:48, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Anything better than Anisotropic filtering?

Anisotropic filtering for 3D textures has been around for more than a decade (I remember Virtua Fighter 3 arcade had it). Has there been any better/cleaner/faster filtering methods since then? Is there a next generation filtering algorithm? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 20:16, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Not that I know of... I'm not aware of any major problems with anisotropic filtering that another method would improve on. Indeterminate (talk) 23:00, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Dotaing

What does this word mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.119.83.204 (talk) 22:28, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

afaik, it just means playing Defense of the Ancients. Indeterminate (talk) 22:33, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

May 22

How can I use public domain materials? Can I make money off of them?

Let us say I have some public domain material (text). Let us say I modify it, add it my own, stuff like that. Now, can I call it falling under my copyright? Or, since it contains public domain sentences, do I have to call it all public domain? Smaug 01:07, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

You can copy and sell them to make money, and there are books like that around. Usually the focus will be on producing a high quality book that can sell at a high price, even if the content is free. I have seen old books like this with copyright claimed by some company, and the only copyright bit is the new cover and verso page. Another common thing is to reproduce old pictures and sell at a premium price. Although you can claim copyright on your modifications you can't stop someone from copying the public domain component. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:36, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Even if you don't do anything to it you can make money off it if you want. Public domain means nobody has a (valid) copyright claim to it. Now if you don't modify anything, you can't claim copyright over it yourself, but if you add anything to it, that and only that are copyrighted.

So let's say you decide to come out with your own series of Sherlock Holmes reprints. You can't claim copyright on the stories themselves—those are in the public domain (at least the early ones are). But let's say you add your own illustrations. Bingo! Those are all yours, copyrighted and so forth, exclusive to you. How about some annotations and footnotes? Hooray, those are yours too! Again, the basic text, the stuff unmodified, that's still public domain—you can't sue somebody else for having a Sherlock Holmes book. But the new material falls under copyright.

Painting of the Mona Lisa? Public domain! Painting of the Mona Lisa that you drew sunglasses over? Can be copyrighted! But only the sunglasses part.

For more details, see derivative work—the modifications made to an existing work carry their own copyrights (though they do not trump a pre-existing copyright claim on the work if one exists). --98.217.8.46 (talk) 02:50, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, technically you should indicate where your own copyright notice begins and ends—what materials are new to you. There is technically a penalty for claiming false copyright—e.g. over public domain material. I have never seen this prosecuted and major companies, esp. photo companies, violate this all the time (Corbis, for example, has a huge amount of material in its archive that was produced by the US Federal Government and is not copyrightable, yet it is labeled as copyrighted all the same). --98.217.8.46 (talk) 13:56, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

GIMP question

How is it possible to blend two pics together using the Blend Tool in GIMP? All it seems to give me is colours, and not a choice of pic.--ChokinBako (talk) 04:30, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Try adding a layer mask and putting a gradient in it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:48, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) I would guess by using something like the "FG to Transparent" gradient type on the front layer. You might be able to find more in the online documentation. Good luck! --Prestidigitator (talk) 04:50, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you. I added the layer mask and put the gradient in, and it worked, as it became transparent. But I couldn't put a pic over it. Was I supposed to do that on the second pic? AGH! Sudden realisation while I write!--ChokinBako (talk) 07:55, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Yup! Got it! Thanks!--ChokinBako (talk) 08:02, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Running many with &&

On Windows XP, how can I run... many "msg" commands with one go? Typing in msg * Hello && msg * Hello Again won't work as expected. It does work from the command line. 212.149.216.233 (talk) 08:48, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I haven't tried it, but cmd /c "msg * Hello && msg * Hello Again" should work. -- BenRG (talk) 11:20, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

ActionScript: make _rotate rotate smoothly

I have this script:

on (release) { mc1._rotation -=90; }

it rotates the movieclip 1, but I want it to rotate smoothly (accelerate and then brake).

How can I change it?

RgdsMr.K. (talk) 12:26, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

One way is to do it with tweening in Actionscript, which has its own "ease" setting (which is the smoothness).

The other way is to give your movieclip a property of, say, a destination_rotation and then have a function that every frame or so checks to see if the destionation_rotation has been hit or not and, if not, rotate the movieclip a bit. The way to make it "speed up" at the beginning and "slow down" at the end is just to figure out whether you are in the first or last 5% of all rotations and to adjust how many rotations you make per frame.

Make sense? I don't have code handy but if you google "smooth motion actionscript" or "smooth rotation actionscript" there should be examples of both, I believe. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 13:47, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that better would be to have a specified mathematical model: store an old_rotation, a destination_rotation, a rotation_time, and a rotation_start and then calculate $r(t)=r_{o}+f\left({\frac {t-s}{T}}\right)(r_{d}-r_{o})$ where f is a surjective, monotonically increasing function from $[0,1]$ onto itself whose derivative is larger in the middle than at the ends. For instance, take $f'(x)=Cx(1-x)$ so (using $f(0)=0,\;f(1)=1$) $f(x)=6\left({\frac {x^{2}}{2}}-{\frac {x^{3}}{3}}\right)$. If you don't want the speed to ever be 0, try instead $f(x)={\frac {6}{1+6c}}\left({\frac {x^{2}}{2}}-{\frac {x^{3}}{3}}+cx\right)$ for some positive c. One could also look at the arctangent function or the logistic curve depending on the precise amount of acceleration desired. --Tardis (talk) 15:09, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

That would probably be more perfect in an ideal world, but for most actionscript it would be overkill and a bit processor intensive. Actionscript is pretty crappy at the big equations in my experience, and assuming you've got anything else going on at the same time it'll really lag it to do something that complicated. Again, we're talking about probably less than 100 frames here—precision isn't the problem. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:21, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all answers. I'll go with the tweener class. Mr.K. (talk) 16:08, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

The overhead involved in calculating a polynomial with as few terms as these have is so trivial as to not deserve mention. The actual math to rotate the image (and interpolate properly to avoid bad artifacts in so doing; see the similar image scaling problem) is so much more complicated that, even with the polynomial being interpreted and the image manipulation done directly by native code, my bet is on the image manipulation taking the majority of the effort. Anyway, premature optimization and all that. The only issue is whether evaluating t (that is, consulting the system clock) is expensive for some reason; then t could be a measure of frames instead. --Tardis (talk) 23:07, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Incredibly stupid Python question...

I'm a python neophyte and I have a question regarding a fundamental part of the language. In C-style languages, if you want to iterate over a sequence of numbers or the items in an array, you'd use the familiar for-construct:

for(i = 0; i<somenumber; i++)

Of course, it doesn't quite work like that in python, it uses the whole neat built-in looping over an array-thing instead of the old-school for loop. If you do want to iterate over a range of numbers, the python tutorial recommends iterating over the range function, like so:

for i in range(somenumber)

I have a question about this though: what if you want to iterate over, say, 5 million numbers? I mean, it seems incredibly stupid to create a five-million sized array just to iterate over (it makes me shudder in the old parts of my brain that spent hours optimizing c-code). Is there some smoother way to do this? Obviously, you could just use a while loop:

i = 0
while i<somenumber:
    #here be code
    #...
    #...
    i+=1

But this is not nearly as elegant, especially since you have to have the increment at the end (you could have it at the beginning, but then you'd have to initialize i to -1 and compare to somenumber-1, and that is even less elegant). There seems like there should be a better way, especially in a language like python which is all about elegance. Can anyone help a stupid guy out? 83.250.207.154 (talk) 15:33, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Of course Python has an elegant solution. In fact, it is so elegant that it is all but invisible. Although the Python for statement looks as if it is looping through a pre-built list, it actually uses iterator behaviour (derive and return next item, yield control) by default as long as its target object supports this behaviour - see iterator#Python and this article and this one too for more details. All of the Python built-in sequence classes support iterator behaviour, and you can add it to your own classes if you need it. You might also want to check out the xrange function - a memory-efficient alternative to range. (BTW, not a stupid question at all - the Python tutorial makes very little mention of iterators, which is a pity). Gandalf61 (talk) 16:02, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

So if I understand you correctly, xrange is actually an iterator object, instead of a list? Clever! I have to say though, I still kinda prefer the traditional construct. It's so much more direct. I've (almost) come to peace with the whole "whitespace has semantic meaning"-thing, but the for-loop is going to take longer :) (btw, you do feel like a total moron when you've coded for the better part of two decades, and you have to ask a question about a fundamental control structure :) I blame the cabalistic alchemy that is the python programming language (seriously people, it has a lambda operator!). I really love the array slicing thing, though) 83.250.207.154 (talk) 19:26, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing cryptic about lambda, it just has a poorly chosen name. Some languages (like ML) call it function or fn instead. And some languages use iota for the numeric range operator, which makes it look cryptic. (I'm blanking on examples, though, aside from APL, where everything is cryptic.) I don't think iterating over a numeric range is less direct than initializing a variable and incrementing it until a termination condition is satisfied. It's just a more compact expression of the same thing. Both foreach and lambda are great ideas that are spreading to more and more languages. The upcoming C++0x standard has both (though not by those names). -- BenRG (talk) 23:13, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I just meant that it sounds like something Christian Rosencreutz would put in, if he was designing a language :) (new slogan: "Python: the language of choice for a Templar!"). I realize that it's very useful, but it has a sort-of mystical feel to it. It's not as bad as APL though, that language is deep black magic. As for the directness of iterating over a range of values instead of just incrementing a variable, that's just me being a fuddy-duddy. When you do that in C (or C++, Java, or any other C-style language), there is a sort of directness to it: you create a value, it resides in a specific place in memory, then you increment it. You're speaking pretty much directly to the computer, telling it what to do. In contrast, creating an object that calls an iterating function to step through the values is far more abstract, and far more removed from the nitty-gritty of what the computer is actually doing. I'm having a little trouble getting used to that, but I'm sure I'll be a converted python zealot soon enough 83.250.207.154 (talk) 07:25, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

As regards the lambda expression, it is simply a shortcut for creating an in-line unbound function object. If you want to, you can avoid lambda completely by using def to create a function and bind a name to it instead. So

(lambda *args: <some expression> )(foo, bar)

is exactly the same as

def spam(*args): return <some expression>

spam(foo, bar)

Having lambda in the language is just like being able to write

eggs = eggs + 'Holy Grail'

instead of being forced to create an object with value 'Holy Grail' and bind a name to it before you can reference it, like this

holy_grail = 'Holy Grail'

eggs = eggs + holy_grail

Like iterators, lambda is another topic that is poorly explained in the "comes with" Python tutorial, which covers it in one short paragraph with a badly chosen, overly-complex example. The on-line book Dive into Python gives a much better explanation here. Gandalf61 (talk) 09:47, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Other useful commands are:

enumerate(['a', 'b', 'c'])
    = [(0, 'a'), (1, 'b'), (2, 'c')]
zip(['a', 'b', 'c'], ['d', 'e', 'f', 'g'], ['h', 'i', 'j', 'k'])
    = [('a', 'd', 'h'), ('b', 'e', 'i'), ('c', 'f', 'j')]

--h2g2bob (talk) 22:12, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Blu-Ray playback on Mac (non-copyrighted material)

I'm burning my own Blu-Ray video discs from hi-def camera footage. Is there any Blu-Ray playback software on the Mac? (not for movies, but for home authored projects) --70.167.58.6 (talk) 16:16, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

There is no Apple-supplied Blu-Ray drive option for any current Macs. While it's possible to put a BR drive into an external enclosure and hook it up to the mac, last time I checked, OS X will only recognize this for data, and there is no existing playback of Blu-Ray video available. Donald Hosek (talk) 23:17, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Different OS = different fonts?

If I have Windows can I use fonts that someone used in a Mac?Mr.K. (talk) 16:26, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

The most common font format is TrueType and that formate is supported on both Mac OS and Windows. Seano1 (talk) 17:42, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

And Linux for that matter. APL (talk) 23:52, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

It didn't used to be the case, but now it pretty much is. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 17:50, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Sending e-mails without disclosing everyone copied into them.

I have always simply clicked on To - and then clicked on addresses in my address book and then clicked on Send Now. But I am aware that my e-mail then shows everyone else's e-mail address to all other recipients. But I sometimes receive e-mails fom various people that have been copied to others but which don't show their e-addresses. How do I do that please? And thanks in anticipation.92.21.228.246 (talk) 17:00, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

There should be a feature for blind carbon copy or BCC, depending on your e-mail application. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 17:18, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Often BCC is not enabled by default, but can be found if you muck around in the preferences. Nobody receiving the e-mail can see any of the addresses on the BCC list. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:02, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

FreeHand to SVG

I'm looking for a decent freeware Macromedia Freehand to SVG converter. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 17:24, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

If you actually have a copy of Freehand, you could try exporting to PDF (or EPS) format and using Scribus to convert to SVG. I've never worked with Freehand myself, but I've generally found that Scribus tends to do an excellent job of converting PDF to SVG (certainly better than Inkscape, usually). —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:09, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

More command prompt

What command is used to open the D: drive in command prompt, and its syntax, please. Also, how does one shutdown the computer from command prompt? I can on my usual computer (with the "shutdown" command) which has a newer version of command prompt, but this is version 5.00.2195 in Windows 2000 (for both of these questions, in fact). Thanks, Zrs 12 (talk) 19:31, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

You should be able to simply type "D:" then hit <Enter> if you are using DOS. From there you can issue any ensuing commands like "dir" to list the directory entries and so forth.

For shutting down type "SHUTDOWN -s -t 01" for complete shutdown, and "SHUTDOWN -r -t 01" for restarting. I think these should work for your version... WDavis1911 (talk) 19:43, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, now I meant open the drive to be able to place a CD in it. When I type in D: it says "Device not ready". Also, shutdown -s -t XX is the command I use on my normal computer, but it won't work with this version. When I type in shutdown -s -t 01, it says "'shutdown' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or batch file." -- Zrs 12 (talk) 20:04, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

If you want to see the contents of the D: drive from the command prompt, you can type "explorer d:\". The shutdown command is not available on Win2K unless the Resource Kit is installed, but you can try TSSHUTDN (type TSSHUTDN /? to get the usage and switches). I didn't work on the system I just tried, perhaps because I'm connect via a remote control session. --LarryMac | Talk 19:59, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

"TSSHUTDN" doesn't work. It says "'tsshutdn' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or batch file." And I am wanting to open the D: drive to be able to insert a CD. -- Zrs 12 (talk) 20:07, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

For opening the drive tray, I don't think there's a built-in tool, but Google seems to turn up a ton of third party utilities. I can't actually view any "free software" sites from this computer, so you'll have to do the legwork on that one. TSSHUTDN is actually part of Terminal Services, so if that component wasn't installed then again, I'd search for a third party solution. --LarryMac | Talk 20:19, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I don't know the DOS command (if one exists natively) for opening the CD drive, but there are utilities that you can install that let you do that. Try this link. For your other problem, is the Resource Kit available to you for you to install? If so I would take that route. WDavis1911 (talk) 20:17, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Note that "DOS" and "Windows command prompt" are two entirely different things. It looks like that link points to a DOS eject utility, and the page mentions that it may or may not work in Windows (and if it does it'll only be via a fairly circuitous process of emulation). These ones appear to be Windows apps, but I can't personally vouch for any of them: [9] [10] [11]. -- BenRG (talk) 21:03, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Writing DVDs

I have a faulty DVD+RW disk. Something went wrong during the finalisation process and now both my DVD players refuse to play the disk. However, my PC is sometimes able to play the DVD without error and at other times struggles to read the disk. On an occasion when it was working, I copied all the folder structure and files (.vob, .ifo, .buf) to my hard disk. Can I simply copy those folders and files onto a new blank DVD+RW and play it on my TV? Astronaut (talk) 21:28, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes- you can compile a DVD with the folder AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS and their contents and burn it like you would a data disc. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 00:15, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

That's not necessarily true. DVD-Video is not just a bunch of files on a DVD; it requires the UDF file system (not ISO 9660) and it requires the files in the VIDEO_TS folder to be arranged in a particular way on the disc. You need DVD burning software with special support for writing DVD-Video discs. I'm pretty sure all DVD burning software has that support these days, but it won't necessarily be enabled automatically. You need to tell it that you're making a DVD-Video disc. But yes, those VOB, IFO, BUP files are the only ones you need. -- BenRG (talk) 01:40, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Domains

I have just created a new wiki on my own computer and at a home server. How do i get (something like) en.wikipedia.org as my domain name. I know it will cost. Can a 123reg.co.uk domain be used? How do you associate it? CyberThing (talk) 21:49, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I got my domain name registered at nominet.co.uk and my site is hosted by my ISP, for which I pay a small premium over my regular broadband fee. My ISP were the ones who sorted out the connection between my site on their servers and my domain name. I'm not sure how it works if you host the site on your own server but I would assume you need that machine to have a fixed IP address. Even so, your ISP are probably the best people to turn to because all traffic would have to be routed through their servers anyway.

The difficulty I had was finding a domain name that wasn't already taken by a reseller and simply "parked". They usually offered those domains for sale, but why should I pay these scumbags when thay have no intention of using the domain for something more than selling it on. Astronaut (talk) 22:09, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

You also need to check the fine print with your ISP. Running a web server may be against the terms of service for a home account. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 00:12, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

See Dynamic DNS. One of these places could probably help you. However, as per above, make sure that your home ISP gives you the right to run a web server and that you have enough bandwidth to cover however much traffic you're expecting. APL (talk) 12:42, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Excel question

I have 3 columns of data in Excel. In Column "B", some cells have a trailing coma. If one of the cells in column "B" has a coma, I need that coma erased. If the coma isn't at the end of the column, I need it to stay.

Comas in other columns need to stay also.

Is there a way to accomplish this with find/replace? It could save me a full day. I'm using Excel 2007 for Mac, but have 2003 on my old HP machine, and I could use that if I have to.

Thanks for the help.

71.164.116.200 (talk) 21:57, 22 May 2008 (UTC) –I figured it out, I had to learn how to use Macros--I found one that did it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.164.116.200 (talk) 23:39, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

The easiest way is to just make a new column with a function like, =IF(RIGHT(B1,1)=",",LEFT(B1,LEN(B1)-1),B1)) which (unless I've counted parens incorrectly) will just give you column B except without trailing commas. Once you've applied that to an entire column then you can copy that new column and paste special > paste as values (or whatever it is called) over the old column. Voilà! --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:01, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Even easier to use the text to column fuction, select the column, select text to column feature, select delimited, next, tick the comma box and click finish. This will remove all commas regardless of the field length Hughiemcl (talk) 19:50, 23 May 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hughiemcl (talk • contribs) 19:47, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

May 23

Computer restart problem - fix

If we just add a power source into computer that would just keep data in RAM safe, then we wouldn't need computer restarts, right? --V4vijayakumar (talk) 13:34, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean? Computer restarts are needed precisely because what is currently in RAM isn't what we want it to be, so we want to delete it and load everything from scratch. If you mean that if we keep the RAM intact when powering down the computer, we could avoid the long boot times - we already have that, and it usually goes by the name "standby". -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 13:58, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Request: OpenOffice.org macro

OpenOffice.org Writer doesn't have a built-in feature for converting "straight quotes" into "smart quotes". Is anyone knowledgeable in Oo.o macros willing to implement the following rules in a macro and release it for anyone to use without charge?

Here are the rules:

1. Any straight quote that occurs immediately after a non-whitespace (i.e. NOT space, tab, line-feed, or paragraph break) character is converted into a "closing" curly quote of the right variety (variety meaning single vs. double).
2. Any straight quote not converted in the previous rule is converted into an "opening" curly quote of the right variety.
3. If there is currently a text selection, the quote conversion should be limited to text selection.

Thanks. --72.78.237.229 (talk) 14:06, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Check out http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=59003 --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:46, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

securing my wifi

how to make sure that no one is stealing my wifi —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.96.31.31 (talk) 14:55, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

For a starter, enable WPA2 security (or WPA if not all of the equipment involved supports WPA2). Do not rely on WEP or leave the wireless interface unprotected. Also, if a user-selected passphrase/key is used, use only long, random, unguessable passphrases/keys. Anything that would make a bad password under the usual password guidelines would also make a bad WPA passphrase. Change the key/passphrase every couple months.

There are other things that you can do to mitigate the risks, but the above should be among the first to do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.78.237.229 (talk) 15:22, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Debian SSL/SSH vulnerability

Does the recently-announced Debian SSL/SSH vulnerability put me at any risk of attack, given that I am the only user of my computer and it is firewalled against all incoming connections? Is it possible that I have a key that I will need to replace? Will the package manager automatically download all necessary updates, in case I need to generate an SSL or SSH key in the future? I use Kubuntu Hardy Heron. This is a home computer, and I am satisfied that an attack from within the LAN would be impossible even on those occasions when the one other computer on the LAN is running. NeonMerlin 15:06, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

You need to patch your PRNG now, not the next time you generate a key. It's used for more than just key generation. If your system is set to install security updates automatically (which it should be) then your PRNG is probably already fixed. Otherwise you should start the update process manually (I don't know how this works for Ubuntu). If you're running an SSL or SSH server then you need to generate a new host key, but it sounds like you aren't (or, if you are, it's inaccessible and you might as well just disable it). If you use the SSH authorized_keys feature to log in to a remote machine, you need to generate a new key for that. Any other keys you would probably know about. Not directly on topic, but for anyone interested, here is a very good technical discussion of the problem (not just the bug itself but the far scarier process failure that allowed it into the code base at all). -- BenRG (talk) 18:25, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Wait, isn't he saying that he doesn't run a SSH server? If you don't have an SSH server or a key for it, you're fine and dandy! To make sure you're not at risk, run

ssh-vulnkey

in the terminal. But if you've never manually generated a key then you don't have one. And yes, assuming you have updated your packages like you should, future keys will be properly random. Besides, if you run your home-network using a router and you haven't port-forwarded port 22 to your computer, you're protected by that too.

In short: you're almost certainly not at risk. Still, run ssh-vulnkey. 83.252.191.19 (talk) 19:23, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

SSH is the easiest way to attack a computer with a faulty SSL random number generator. However, OpenSSL is used for a number of other encryption systems, so you still need to update it. --Carnildo (talk) 19:29, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Home Server

I recently asked whether how to create a mediawiki wiki. I cannot do this on a home server. This site offers MediaWiki hosting. Does this involve a home server and does it contridict AOL's T&Cs. Thanks. CyberThing (talk) 15:43, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

If someone offers hosting, then it means exactly that: the company hosts your wiki/site/whatever. So the rules like 5.3.2 won't apply to you. --grawity 17:56, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

quality of Windows Live SkyDrive

What quality can I expect form Windows Live SkyDrive? Will it be always free? Is it reliable? Can a third party access my files? Should we trust them? Mr.K. (talk) 18:16, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

It looks similar to other online file storage services. I see nothing to suggest that it's especially secure (or especially insecure). You can always use a service like this securely by encrypting your files locally before you upload them with a program like GnuPG or TrueCrypt. As far as uptime and long-term availability, you're probably better off with Microsoft than some fly-by-night web business. -- BenRG (talk) 20:45, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Exceptions to crossfading

Does any music-management software on the market allow the user to mark specific songs so that they will not overlap other songs, and/or so that they will always start or end at full volume, even when crossfading is on? NeonMerlin 18:42, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

MS Word 2003 Question

Is it possible to remove the 'author' details from a Word document? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Givnan (talk • contribs) 20:39, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Google for "remove personal information" "MS Office 2003". --98.217.8.46 (talk) 21:59, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Restricted Surfing Zone

In the oceanic sport of 'Surfing' when beach employees close a section off for surfing, they put out these Black flags, the term is 'BLACK BALL'. My question is in regards to the Internet surfing restricted zones (per employer): Is there a site that you can surf within a surf / A webpage within a webpage / Browser within a browser?

Note: in surfing the sport, you can go inside the wave, they call this the Barrel, seen by beach go'ers as nobody out there, but being inside the inside spot, we say 'Man...Dude...did you catch my wicked Barrel back there!!?'

--216.100.216.5 (talk) 20:49, 23 May 2008 (UTC)jacob v

Can you explain your question a bit more, it's hard to see what you're getting at. Employers can restrict what web pages employees visit. Normally this is done through some kind of content-control software. Sometimes these restrictions can be circumvented by going through an open proxy or one of the methods described at Internet censorship#Circumvention. --h2g2bob (talk) 22:06, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

iphone vs blackberry

which one do you prefer? why?

The Computing Reference desk isn't really the best place to start discussions / debates. There are a lot of message boards and forums where this sort of question will be greatly appreciated. Nimur (talk) 23:05, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

android

there are many mobile platforms like windows mobile, mobile linux, limo linux, symbian palm etc..

but why has google launched android? how is android different from above mentioned platforms? what does google want to achieve and what is their gameplan plan

This is more of a business strategy question than a computing question. Clearly Google is hoping to position itself for participation in the rapidly emerging market of mobile telephony. Many modern phones are more than just a voice communicator - they are an internet-enabled mobile data platform. Google's efforts are definitely guided by the idea of mobile internet. As far as what differentiates its platform from the many various alternatives, the best reference would be our Android (platform) article. Nimur (talk) 23:03, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Failed RAID mirror - both drives

I am running Vista on a Dell XPS 420. I came home to find both drives failed in a RAID 1 mirror. Dell gave me no help recovering data, but did send two new drives. I have installed Vista on one of the new drives without RAID. I wanted to see if I could recover any files from the failed drives, but I can't seem to get Vista to recognize either of the old drives that were in the failed RAID array. The failed drive does appear during boot up and still shows as part of a failed array. How can I get Vista to recognize the failed drive so that I can then attempt to run file recovery software on it? dryguy (talk) 23:46, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I think it's be better and easiers to use PhotoRec (it recovers more than photos) on a Linux LiveCD than trying to get Vista to recognise the drive. --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:18, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

May 24

My new motherboard is making me sad

Hi, my new motherboard+CPU will not boot at all. The cpu and case fans run when I power it on. I have disconnected everything except the power switch header and power supply, and put the motherboard on a piece of cardboard to remove the possibility of a short circuit. There is no signal output from the onboard VGA, and there are no POST beeps at all (with speaker header connected). I did a CMOS reset; no change. The dealer did a RAM and CPU test with this motherboard, and they worked. Specs: Gigabyte GA-945GCM-S2C, Intel CORE 2 DUO E6750 2.66G, 4GB Kingston DDR2-667, 300W P/S. Any ideas? Thanks. --Sean 04:24, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Archive of flash site

I think it is highly unlikely, but I was wondering if in any way it would be possible to get an archive of this page: [12], along with content from it, including zipped files of the training videos. One example is this "GeneralWarmUp_videos.zip", and similar file(s) in PDF. Googling yielded nothing, and archive.org does not seem to archive it properly, at least I didn't get it to work right. They have replaced the training site with their Sparq training, before it was Nike Bauer hockey training, and was really well laid out. I'm sure if I emailed them they'd just say better things are to come. Maybe if they put all the old content. I'm sure the new site might be good, but this one was really good for hockey training. Many videos are on youtube, but not all, and not in proper order. It probably won't help, but it was taken down within a space of a couple weeks or so. Alright, thanks very much! Baseballfan (talk) 05:40, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Transferring files to MP3 player

I am currently using a Compaq Presario 2500 laptop I bought five years ago. Since the original USB ports no longer work effectively, I use a USB card for stuff. I am trying to transfer files to my MP3 player, a Samsung YP-U1, which is no problem for newer computers but is problematic here. When I plug in the player, it works fine but when I try to do anything - deleting a file, uploading a new one - it stops and disconnects. Then it magically reconnects but then disconects once I attempt to do something. This cycle repeats and I believe it could be a problem with the card itself and not the player. What do I do? --Blue387 (talk) 08:23, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I have continued to try transferring files using an USB extension cable but it does not work. I am very frustrated. Is there an alternative? I could try my college's computer labs if not for the labs being closed for the weekend. I am frustrated by by old computer preventing me from performing a simple one minute operation. --Blue387 (talk) 09:13, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Ipod Touch Downgrading

When I try to downgrade my ipod touch it comes up with "an unknown error has occured (5)"I am trying to downgrade my ipod touch from firmware 1.1.4 to firmware 1.1.1 and it comes up with that error. I have downloaded the 1.1.1 software. What I am doing is when I am in Itunes with the Ipod summary I click restore (while holding shift), select the 1.1.1 firmware and then it comes up with that error!! Is there something I'm doing wrong? PLEASE HELP!!!!!! 220.233.83.26 (talk) 09:24, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Just wondering, why do you want to downgrade your iPod? --grawity 17:40, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Preserving quality of an image

Hello,

I have some page images that I was going to upload. I scanned them as black-and-white PNGs. Some of them have black areas around the edges, though. I was going to open them up in Photoshop and use the paint-bucket tool to fill it in. But to do that I have to convert it to grayscale. Fireworks seems to convert them to RGB. I think that PNG is a lossless format (right?), but does editing the images still degrade quality or blur them? Some could use cropping, too. I'm worried because the images are also going to be processed using OCR.

Thanks,

Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 13:43, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

PNG is lossless. Converting them to grayscale if they are already black and white won't lose any quality. I would just use the crop tool, personally, it is a lot less trouble. I would not worry about degradation in this case as long as you don't save it to a compressed, lossy format. I wouldn't worry about the OCR at all in this case, it won't be affected. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 17:34, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

ok. Thanks. --Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 17:44, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

bittorrent situation in France

so I'm in France and don't get US television, but I really miss the colbert report.

I'm not asking for legal advice, but in general what is the p2p situation in France? Would I get in trouble if I download the show via bittorrent? After all, it's an American show it's not even available in France so I'm certainly not depriving anyone of any profits or anything else.

What do you think? Thank you. (Again, I'm not asking for legal advice, just the technical situation in a different country.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Colbertfan31 (talk • contribs) 15:39, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Is it illegal? Yes. Does it matter if you can't get it on TV? No. Are you really depriving anyone of profits? Technically you are, in the sense that you aren't watching the commercials, which is what really pays for the show. Will you probably get in trouble? Unlikely, but that's not legal advice of any sort.

There are, of course, more legal ways to do it. I'm pretty sure you can buy it on iTunes and there are tons of clips on the Colbert Report's website. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 17:41, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

CD player woes (reposted with updated question)

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)

developing story: It seems that Windows does not have the drivers for any CD device. I plugged in my SanDisk Cruzr with U3 disk, and Windows showed problems with that too! Is there a way that I can force Windows to download drivers from the Microsoft website? Kushal (talk) 12:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

It seems your windows installation is screwed up. I'd suggest formatting and reinstalling. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.202.21.253 (talk) 14:29, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

That's sad. How am I supposed to reinstall when Windows does not recognize my CD drive? :( Any more takers, please? Kushal (talk) 01:24, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

That isn't a problem. When you are _installing_ Windows from a CD, you are not _running_ Windows. Instead, you are running a program from a bootable CD. So, all you really need is the Windows CD, a functioning CD drive and the base hardware that sees it.

Have you verified yet that the actual hardware is good? When you first start your laptop, can you get into the BIOS setup? Does it see the CD drive? Can you boot from it? If you can, then the drive is good. This is, indeed, a windows driver issue, and reinstalling Windows should fix it. Reinstalling is overkill, yeah, but it will fix it.

If, however, your BIOS does not see the CD drive, then this is a hardware issue -something is broken, either the drive or the controller- and reinstalling Windows won't fix that. -SandyJax (talk) 14:27, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, SandyJax. I will check to see it asap. Kushal (talk) 19:38, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Update: The BIOS sees the "CD/DVD" drive. When Windows is running, I can open the CD tray and close it, and the LED flashes for a bit while a little sound comes which means the CD drive is trying to read if there is a CD in it. I would love it if it were possible for me to just download the required drivers from Microsoft but the download center (both new and old interfaces) could not find what I was looking for. I could not use Mozilla Firefox to do automatic downloads (which I don't understand why) and the ActiveX warning never popped up when I tried using Internet Explorer. I am using Windows XP service pack 2 on that computer. Kushal (talk) 01:50, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

What should I do? Kushal (talk) 13:46, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

New image of "my computer" screen

Flash Drive

I know a computer can be booted from a CD. My question is, can a computer be booted from a flash drive with a .iso image of say linux on it? Thanks, Zrs 12 (talk) 16:25, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

A quick Google search for "flash drive start up" brings up several results, this being the first. Dismas|^(talk) 16:40, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Flash drive also mentions the possibility. Also, the One Laptop per Child computers will boot from flash memory (they won't even have hard drives). Algebraist 16:48, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

And another question: Is a .iso even a bootable file type? Zrs 12 (talk) 16:53, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

.iso is a complete image of a CD. So if it was made from a bootable CD, then it will have the bootloader and stuff. By the way, I just finished installing Fedora 9 Live into my USB flash drive. --grawity 17:38, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Underclock macbook pro

I have a first generation 2Ghz macbook pro. This model is notorious for over heating, sometimes it hits 80C. I have Fan Control installed (which controls the fans in greater detail), and iStat pro monitors the temperature, and I am NOT happy at it heating the whole house like that. Other than cooling pads, can you underclock the processors, at maybe 1.9 or 1.95, to keep in the 70's celsius?81.150.247.152 (talk) 17:18, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Chip fan failed

My computer's chip fan has failed (or at least the BIOS setup says so).

1. Is it the little fan on the motherboard?
2. Is it replaceable?
3. Will it do much damage if I don't fix|replace it?

--grawity 17:47, 24 May 2008 (UTC)