Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

Welcome to the computing section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

• Computing
• Entertainment
• Humanities
• Language
• Mathematics
• Science
• Miscellaneous
• Archives

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

   

How can I get my question answered?

• Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
• Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
• Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
• Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
• Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
• Note:
  • We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
  • We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
  • We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
  • We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

• The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

See also:

• Teahouse
• Help desk
• Village pump
• Help manual

July 2

What's that port?

I have 2 types of mystery port on the back of my IBC PC that I was wondering if someone could identify. They don't seem to be documented on Computer port (hardware), but I would like to get them added.

I thought these were serial ports, but the symbol is different than the standard one.

I have no idea what this is; I had never even noticed it there before.

Thanks in advance, Beland (talk) 02:17, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that second one is a really old external SCSI port. The other two could be old serial ports. They are 9-pin D-shaped, perhaps just an old symbol. Useight (talk) 02:46, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

The second port could be where a docking station connects. Have you tried Googling the model of your PC to see what the web reveals?

Atlant (talk) 12:18, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Looks like a 80-pin SCSI connector to me [1] JessicaN10248 16:04, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

The second one appears to be a centronics-style connector. If the computer is a desktop, it's either a printer port or a SCSI connector; if it's a laptop, it's probably a docking station connector. The first one is probably a pair of serial ports with a non-standard symbol. Given the symmetry of the symbol, it may be RS-422 rather than the more common RS-232. --Carnildo (talk) 21:53, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

The top ones are almost certainly serial ports. The bottom one I expect is also a SCSI port. It's not like any parallel port I've seen- the Centronics end is usually at the printer side (the computer is DB25), and it's way wider than a printer Centronics connector. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 21:59, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Adding entries to the registry using .reg files

I found a list of malicious web sites here: http://www.2-spyware.com/news/post334.html. I'm trying to add them all to Internet Explorer's restricted sites (Tools --> Internet Options --> Security --> Restricted sites) via the Registry. I got regedit to create the keys, but they have no values. I double-click on the .reg file I created in Notepad and I see a message box saying that it worked each time. Here's what I enter in the file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap\Domains\expertantivirus.com]
“*”=dword:00000004

Any help would be greatly appreciated.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 04:33, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

The quotes should be like this " (hex 0x22, Alt+034). --grawity 12:52, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Phew. Thanks, Grawity. It works like a charm.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 13:59, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

FireFox 3

I currently run FireFox 3 on a two month old laptop running Windows Vista. Sometimes when I am using it, the program will freeze, and I cannot click on anything for a few seconds, I cannot scroll, and anything I am typing will stop until the freeze is over. Is this a bug with FF3? Or is it my internet or computer? Is there a particular way to diagnose what is wrong?

As a completely unrelated question, is there any significant security attained by using an https as opposed to http? Thanks. seresin ( ¡? ) 05:12, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't have an answer for why Firefox 3 freezes, but I can tell you that generally, https is more secure that http when transmitting sensitive information over a public network (eg. Internet) because it encrypts your transmission. However, it won't help if your system is compromised, or the server you are talking to is. Rilak (talk) 06:00, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

That's happened to me on older versions of firefox. Ususally it was because it was loading some heavy java applet, flash program, or it was executing a particularly heavy piece of javascript. Does any of these sound right?

As for https, it's substantially more secure than http. Normally, every piece of data passes through something like a dozen to two dozen computers, each one of which can read everything you send and retrieve. Also, it's not authenticated, so you can't be sure that you're actually talking to who you think you're talking to. Your communcation can be changed in transit. None of that is possible with https. If a site offers it as an option, use it (for instance, if you use gmail, don't go to http://mail.google.com, go to https://mail.google.com ) 83.250.202.36 (talk) 13:42, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd blame the freezing more on Vista. I don't know about FF3, but I have a laptop and desktop where FF2 work great, and my girlfriend has a Vista laptop where FF2 dies constantly (as well as some other programs). JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 22:01, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I would have been inclined to agree, but I used FF2 on my old laptop with Vista, and never had this specific problem (I had other problems, but I think they had to do with my internet connection). seresin ( ¡? ) 22:49, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

The same thing happens to me often. It's generally because of—as someone said before—a heavy java applet, or possibly just a gigantic page. ¢rassic! (talk) 08:35, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Java Swing: How to get pixel values from components?

I have a Java Swing component (a javax.swing.JPanel) that I want to draw stuff on and then change the colours of the pixels. But how can I get the colour value of a specific pixel? Neither javax.swing.JPanel or java.awt.Graphics seems to define any way to do it. Am I supposed to somehow read the contents of the component into a java.awt.image.BufferedImage and use its pixel-level methods? JIP | Talk 05:30, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

It's been a long while since I've done stuff like this, but as memory serves, the ImageConsumer interface is used for this, specifically PixelGrabber. I think you can only use this with an Image object directly (not a Graphics object), so I suspect you need to use dubble-buffering to use it. See also [2] 83.250.202.36 (talk) 10:16, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

You can use java.awt.Robot, although that will see any windows that are obscuring your components and can't usually be done from an applet (if that's relevant). --Tardis (talk) 15:48, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

No, I'm afraid this won't do. What I want to do, is I want to load an image into a JPanel (this I am already doing), and then I want to change the colours of some pixels depending on what colours they already have. This should be done dynamically, meaning that once I have changed the colours of some pixels, if I change them again, it's done by the colours they currently have, not by the ones they originally had. JIP | Talk 19:24, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Here's what I'd do: load the image one time and use PixelGrabber to get the pixels (can I assume you are loading the image from a file? Either way, get it as an image, and use PixelGrabber). Save the int[]-array. Modify the captured pixels however you want. Use the pixels to create a MemoryImageSource, but remember to keep the original int[] array. Next time you want to modify the pixels, modify the int[]-array, and call MemoryImageSource.newPixels(). And then update the widget, or whatever. The javadocs for MemoryImageSource makes it quite obvious how this all works (read the intro). Will this work for you? Or am I misunderstanding what you want? --Oskar 18:59, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, I guess you have to set the MemoryImageSource to be animated. As I said (that was me, the first response, forgot to log in), I haven't used this kind of stuff in a long time, but I think this will work for you. Let us know if you need more help. --Oskar 19:02, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Because I had absolutely nothing to do today, I put together a small little demonstration of what I think you want. --Oskar 22:10, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

video conferencing

what is video conferenciang?

How is it works?

Is there any advanced techniques used in this now? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alex.snowfall (talk • contribs) 07:37, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

You should probably start by reading our article on videoconferencing and then come back if you have any questions left after doing so. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 08:55, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

There are some pretty advanced items in it. I work for a department that uses H.323 encoder boxes (not through a computer; it's a standalone unit). We operate multisite conferences for high schools to connect to the university for post-secondary classes. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 22:04, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Copying hard drive

I have a laptop and a portable hard drive. I want to use the Portable HDD to move files etc, and as a sort of backup. I have read the article on HD cloning. I do want a clone, i just dont really understand. Help; which software should i use. And how do i do it. Quidom (talk) 11:24, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

What size, in GB, is each internal and external HD (hard drive), and which operating system (eg. Windows XP, Mac, Linux) are you using? This is important because software available for one OS might not be available for another.78.149.63.101 (talk) 11:17, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I have a laptop hardrive of around 120GB and portable of around 250GB its on windows XP, the portable is BUS powered and is a toughdrive Quidom (talk) 11:25, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

VGA connector pin 9

I have a vga connector that lacks pin 9, question what is "+5 V (DDC)" specifically what is DDC, is it Display Data Channel?

When this plug is used to connect a LCD monitor it seems to function correctly - what can possibly go wrong??87.102.86.73 (talk) 11:54, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Pin 9 is +5V DC (direct current), not +5V DDC. I edited the article. It appears that since it is a DDC signal on the cable, someone assumed "DC" was a typo for "DDC". It is very possible that the monitor/projector does not need the 5V reference. If you plug this into a monitor/projector that requires the 5V reference, the monitor/projector will be looking at at the cable and seeing that a positive signal is around 0V (no connection) and a negative signal is 0V (the ground connector). It will then have difficulty telling positive and negative signals apart. -- kainaw™ 12:25, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Misses pin 9.

Interestingly enough, the reference image at the article is missing pin 9 too! (See image). User:Krator (t c) 12:35, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Which curiously looks a lot like (identical except colour) my plug...

Question - anyone know why this pin is 'often' ommited? and why is PIN 4 there when it's marked 'not connected'... (and thanks so far)87.102.86.73 (talk) 12:51, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the "+5V DDC" labelling was (somewhat) correct. Pins 9, 12, 14 and 15 all had new functions to support the DDC Specification. In the original Spec pin 9 provides no function, hence it's removal, and it is also only Optional in DDC1. If i can find official documentation supporting this i will post it. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 14:20, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

If a pin that provides +5VDC is missing, the sensed input depends on how the input is wired. If it has a pullup resistor, it will go to +5VDC; if a pulldown resistor, it will go to 0VDC; if no resistor, it may ambiguously float. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 16:12, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

filename.ext in Windows

(Inscrutable late-noughties proprietary OS blues 1)

The Explorer that comes as part of Vista hides the filename extension, so that mystupidface.jpg appears as mystupidface -- which might instead mean mystupidface.JPG or mystupidface.jpeg or indeed mystupidface.png or whatever. More oddly, I can't find an settings menu to change this. How do I get Explorer to reveal all? -- Hoary (talk) 14:41, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

You can't fine the settings menu? Or the setting? The menu can be found either through the Control Panel, "Folder Options" in Classic View (Can be selected at the side), or through the Tools Menu (Use the Alt key to bring up hidden menus) and choose "Folder Options..." from the "Tools" menu. The actual option is on the "View" tab, as "Hide extensions for known file types". - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 14:53, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Aha. I was looking for a setup menu within Explorer. Thanks, I'll make this change when I next use the Vista machine. -- Hoary (talk) 15:03, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Just FYI, this behavior hasn't changed much since at least Windows 2000. And I'm of the opinion that no sensible person operates with "well known extensions" hidden; sooner or later, hiding those extensions will bite you.

Atlant (talk) 22:16, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Extraordinary. At home, I still use a Windows machine, because I set it up in 2000 or so and it's been chugging along uncomplainingly ever since, because it's seldom connected to the internet, and because Win2k actually works rather well after it's been adjusted and supplemented in various ways. But all the adjusting and supplementing was so long ago that it seems I've forgotten a lot of it. I'd completely forgotten that this machine ever obscured filename extensions. The risks are obvious but more than that there are various irritations; I don't know what Microsoft could have had in mind when they provided this misfeature. -- Hoary (talk) 22:51, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

You'd be suprised how many people don't care about file types, and infact find the extensions more confusing then useful, especially when renaming files. I'm pretty sure, though it was a while since i last reinstalled a Vista Machine, that Proffesional (Or perhaps Ultimate) edition turns it off by default. Also, for the record, I still use Windows 98 and it also provides the feature. I'm not sure about Window 95, as i think it may have been added with IE4, back when IE versions were just as important in working out our feature set. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 23:01, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

escape from Iphoto

(Inscrutable late-noughties proprietary OS blues 2)

Somebody's done something to the Mac OS 10.5 machine such that when I attach a CompactFlash card to a USB port, Iphoto starts up to display the content. Iphoto is very pretty, but I don't particularly want to use it. Finder/Preview are fine for my purpose. More bizarrely, when I drag a minimized image out of the Iphoto window and release the mouse button in order to copy it, the image merely bounces back and isn't copied anywhere. How can I copy out of Iphoto? -- Hoary (talk) 14:41, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

This is one of the few places where Mac OS X is definitely not straightforward. The preference you're looking for is in the Image Capture program (in your "Applications" folder). One of the "General" preferences is "When a camera is connected, open..."; select "No application" (or Photoshop or whatever).

Atlant (talk) 22:13, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Splendid. I'll make that change a couple of hours from now when I get to that computer. Then I'll no longer have to use the Wintel across the room merely in order to get images off the card. -- Hoary (talk) 22:53, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Stupid question about smart antenna

Does the CEA-909 standard, in addition to physically or electronically rotating the antenna based on channel, also electronically tune to a particular channel and filter out the rest, similar to how a Channel Master jointenna is tuned ? StuRat (talk) 14:48, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

My best guess so far is it might be possible if the antenna implements it, but smart antennas will likely focus on directional control. Since the CEA-909 standard costs money, here's what I've based my guess on:

• From the CEA-909 article, it says 14 bits of information are sent to the antenna. It would be possible to send RF channel information in 7 bits (there would need to be 68 possible values, to represent RF channels 2 to 69), in which case the other 7 bits might represent direction or other information. So based on the number of bits, it's possible channel information could be sent to the antenna.

• One of the references listed in the CEA-909 article reveals just the table of contents of the CEA-909-A standard: ANSI/CEA-909-A Preview. In that table of contents, several example applications are mentioned, including "Mast-Mounted Preamp Seeking Gain Control Bits Plus RF Channel Number". That further suggests it's possible to send the RF channel number to the antenna, but depending on the type of antenna, it may not do anything with it.

• I found an ATSC newsletter with a short description of how the smart antenna system works: The Standard, April 2003, page 2 and 3. I also found another description from BroadcastEngineering.com: Smart antennas. And here's a manual for a Funi/Sylvania antenna: Smart Antenna DTA-5000 Instruction Manual. All of these sources describe antennas that use direction and gain settings, suggesting those will be the most common parameters that smart antennas use. The BroadcastEngineering.com article also says "In addition to selecting different azimuth directions, units can operate with different levels of RF amplification." Is that the type of channel filtering you were asking about? --Bavi H (talk) 16:40, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've got a problem with two strong adjacent UHF TV channels (31 & 33) interfering with the weak channel I want (32), so a directional antenna will help, but I'd also like to block the adjacent channels, and was wondering if any smart antenna, now or future, would be likely to solve my problem, or if I'd also need a Channel Master jointenna to block the stronger adjacent channels. StuRat (talk) 01:20, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

security in the properties window

What is "security" in the properties window on Windows XP? It says "this file came from another computer and is blocked to protect this computer". What does it mean. You can see what I'm talking about here: http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/1781/whatthefrelldoesthismeami1.jpg FasterMaster (talk) 15:12, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

It means Windows will warn you before opening it, until you uncheck that. I'm not sure what marks it as being from another computer. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 22:09, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

This is part of Windows Attachment Manager. Certain file types downloaded from untrusted zones, attachments saved from Outlook Express, or files copied from other computers may have this flag set. See "Description of how the Attachment Manager works in Windows XP Service Pack 2" or google search "this file came from another computer and might be blocked to protect this computer". -- Tcncv (talk) 23:12, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Sharing a monitor but not its display

Related to the mental poker question above: how might n people (we can start with $n=2$) using one computer (and one monitor) play a card game with secrecy? Certain physical tricks could be contrived, like a partition attached to the front of the monitor to restrict sightlines, but those are inconvenient and do not extend well to $n>2$. Displaying one person's information at a time, and showing nothing at all while another player moves to the computer, is also prohibitively inconvenient, especially because it is useful to be able to see one's cards continuously rather than only when it is time to select one. One idea that may be useful is to have some sort of multiphase approach: the players could be shown their cards individually, and then they could note them offline (not by finding the same cards in a shared normal deck for the game, though, as the missing cards would reveal the other players' hands) for later use. Obviously, though, an interface that was more than type the card from your paper that you wish to play: would be more interesting and convenient.

Card games typically have very little information to display: Rook's important and visible state can be represented by a short list of colored labels like RK 7 9 13 8 9 10 11 14. So I imagine that, perhaps with suitable obfuscation or additional confusing information (whose nature would answer the question), several such displays could share a monitor. However, the requirement that the secrecy survive the interaction with the game and the acquisition and revelation (play) of individual cards prevents the use of a simple substitution cipher to encode the hands, and the requirement that humans still be able to play the game quickly prevents the use of complicated encodings that could trivially provide the secrecy. Any ideas? --Tardis (talk) 15:36, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps using 3-d movie technology? --Sean 18:09, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, If number of players == 2 then you could use 3d technology like Sean suggested. This monitor apparently puts out two separate images polarized differently. Give each player one polarized lens. But how to stop them from simply rotating the lens by 90 degrees? APL (talk) 20:12, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Three suggestions :

• Colored filters. Draw the cards faintly in a certain color over a very noisy background in two other colors. Player looks through the appropriate filter to see the cards. Drawbacks : could really only work for three or less players, and it is possible to figure those things out of you stare at them hard enough.
• Shutter glasses. Usually used for stereo, these could be used to show each player alternate frames. (Noise could be introduced over opponents' cards to minimize the effects of ghosting.) Drawbacks : would require custom hardware that was more expensive than simply providing extra screens. Would require very high refresh rate for more than two players, otherwise the shutter speed would become low enough to give the users a headache.
• Cypher. Print out three lists of One time pads at the beginning of the game, players then use these to decrypt their cards. Drawbacks : The most obvious, easy to use cyphers would not properly hide flushes and four of a kinds. A lot of mental overhead for the players. Relies on on-paper OTP.

If I was making this system, I'd try the colored filters. However, it is probably not secure enough if money is changing hands. APL (talk) 20:12, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Taking turns in front of the computer is cumbersome, but it can be made easier if you avoid the need for the players to go to another room or behind the display between turns. One approach is to show the information in a really small font and a low-contrast colour scheme so that you have to be very close to the screen to read it. You might also get the kind of directional filter they use at banks so that a player can't see anything unless they are directly in front of the screen. The best solution would be if the computer is a hand-held (or a very light-weight laptop) so that you can simply pass it around from player to player, but I suppose you don't have that kind of a luxury. 84.239.133.47 (talk) 07:42, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I think we're dealing with a fundamental problem. If there are n viewers, and each one needs to see private information from the same source, there are only a few options:

1. Encryption of some sort. Each viewer can only decrypt his/her own channel. This was addressed above (and I think it's the best idea).
2. Polarization. This is related to the technology of the display. I like it but of course cheating is trivial. One doesn't even have to rotate the glasses - simply take them off (unless there is some sort of interference channel to force the glasses to be on). Monitors can't do polarization regardless.
3. Switching views between users. This really is the correct solution for normal hardware. Each player could have a secret keystroke identifying him/her to prove that the other person isn't looking.
4. Physical barrier. This isn't a solution, just a cheap way of multiplying the displays.

The secret is ... what can a user do to get information securely.

1. How about image ciphers or something like that? If the user starts a session with a set of fake cards (say a dog equals a heart, and any number is 2 less than it really is), it could theoretically work. However, this system would be very easy to break I think.
2. Trust. Have the users vow not to read the other side. Then give them the polarized glasses above.

I think if you post to 70s and 80s video game newsgroups you might find a better answer than here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Adamnelson (talk • contribs) 01:06, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Google definitions

As many of you no doubt know, if you enter a search term in Google with "define:" in front of it, Google will give you definitions from various web pages (including Wikipedia). Here is an example.

I will be helping a professional organization put together a list of definitions to key terms used within the academic field the organization represents. The definitions themselves are to be written by members and peer reviewed.

Is there any way to optimize my writing of this so it shows up in Google's "definitions"? I haven't been able to find anything about how Google chooses which sites to use. (searching for "Google definitions" comes up with, predictably, definitions of the word "Google"). Any thoughts? I've looked at some of the other pages that were featured and there's no common thread that I can see, other than the fact that the word to be defined is usually in bold and followed by the definition... --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:36, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Thought i've never managed to cause a definition listing on Google, the following article has apparently been useful to other's attempting it [3]. Mostly it looks at how existing sites manage it, and i believe it draws advice from a related patent application. As long as you structure the website containing definitions in a way that is easy to interpret, and follow some of the advice given, it seems that Google's algorithms for such things are quite thorough. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 15:52, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, that is helpful. It looks sort of like I thought -- having a domain name that looks "authoritative" in some way (in this case, a high-profile EDU will help), and structuring it in the bold word + normal definition, all in neat paragraphs, seems to work out fine. Well, we'll see! --98.217.8.46 (talk) 16:02, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Purely speculative, but I'd guess that sticking it in a dl would be your best bet - after all, it's for definitions by, well, definition. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 16:38, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Domain squatting

Is there an estimate to how many registered domain names are just "squatting" pages? (Either no page at all, or those "parked domain" pages) It seems rather ridiculous to me to have a system that so easily allows itself to be co-opted for pure speculation (registering any name or word you can think of for a few dollars and then hoping against hope that someone will want to pay you big money for it someday), but it'd be nice to have actual numbers. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:50, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I do not know the number, but I want to point out that domain squatting is not just holding onto a domain name and hoping someone will pay for it someday. Many squatters register domain names as soon as they expire and demand thousands of dollars to give the domain back to the company that was using it before it expired. Worse, a squatter in New Orleans used the extreme lack of security with GoDaddy to literally steal two of clients' domain names when they weren't expired. GoDaddy required a minimum of $1,000 to research and correct the action. The squatter asked for $900 to return to the domain name. -- kainaw™ 16:43, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I consider that something more than just "squatting" (that's just plain old extortion), but yeah. I'm really just interested in the numbers on squatting. --Fastfission (talk) 19:41, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

That's not really "squatting" so much as "stealing" or "exploiting". --98.217.8.46 (talk) 19:47, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

You can also register a domain for a trial period (if I remember correctly, it is 5 days). During that trial period you can setup your link farm page and wait to see if there is enough interest in the domain to justify keeping it.--droptone (talk) 12:10, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

CGI

I've read that CGI is scripting used to interact with a server,^[4] but I've also read on Wikipedia that it's a protocol to interact with a server.^[5] An instructor in a video tutorial the other day said that the second part of URLs like this are CGI:

http ://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing&action=edit&section=new

But wouldn't the URL be HTTP? Also, it appears that files with the extension .cgi are in Perl and the /cgi-bin directory is used mostly for Perl scripts. Could it contain PHP? Are all PHPs and JSPs part of a CGI?--Cgi-bud (talk) 17:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

The CGI page explains a little about it. It is a protocol that allows a server to execute anything that can be interpreted or is an executable. For example, on a webserver, you could have a page that calls a file "process" (note the lack of extension) that is an executable file that was written in C. The CGI protocol defines how arguments are passed to the program. So, if the request (assuming a web server) is a get request, the arguments are available in the environment variable 'QUERY_STRING'. If it is a post request, the message body of the request is available on STDIN. The program then executes like a normal C program, using STDOUT to pass the output to the web server. It is called Common Gateway Interface because it handles everything in the same way so that many different types of scripting/programming languages can be used. This includes PHP, PERL, Ruby, and any other interpretted language or executable. JSP is a little different. Take a look at the JSP page for more information. Leeboyge (talk) 18:06, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

And I think you're right that the variables are being passed using HTTP form standards (in this case, GET, but it could also be POST). But the CGI can then take those variables and use them. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 20:12, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I see. That makes sense. Thanks for the replies.--Cgi-bud (talk) 02:08, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Just a little note, everything after ? in the URL above is part of the querystring (GET), as is said above. While CGI can access those variables, there is nothing 'CGI' about the URL or querystring.

Memory compiler

What is a memory compiler (SRAM compiler, RAM compiler, EEPROM compiler etc.), for example as mentioned here? Thanks, --Abdull (talk) 18:04, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Firstly, absolutely fantastic question, i've never before found such a lack of information on a topic mentioned in so many places. I had quite the time researching it and am still left with numerous questions that i've actually now passed onto a friend at ARM who will ask around the people in the department, as well as other places. Firstly, i found the following two articles which provide pretty much the best descriptions i could find [6] [7], however i'm sure someone might be able to provide better sources. Though i haven't had a thorough study of either, they don't seem to explain if it is a Compiler in a traditional Text->Text sense, application software that turns a description into a layout, or as is implied in the second article, is it simply a class of specifications for an interface that provides flexible memory on demand (or at least in a manner making it changeable at times). However, the purpose seems somewhat more apparent. It is a "system" where by details of the interaface between a computer system and memory communicate. The details passed to the compiler, include details such as word sizes etc, as well as low level details I am afraid i don't know anything about. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 19:40, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

It seems to be some sort of design program that will generate memory banks of different types for your chip design - in other words say you are designing an ARM chip and want 16kB of cache built in.. and your chip has a space of say x by y mm spare to put that cache in.. the 'memory compiler' will design your cache so that it fits in the space on the chip, with the correct buses etc...87.102.86.73 (talk) 21:12, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

In other words it 'compiles' a design for your custom silicon memory parts...87.102.86.73 (talk) 21:13, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Already at this point I thank both of you for your comments. The IC industry seems to throw out terms that defy authoritative definition. Jimmy, I'm interested in what your friend at ARM will have as a definition for memory compiler. Maybe you are interested in creating this article then? At 87.102...: so a memory compiler turns a specification for a piece of on-chip memory into a part of the whole Integrated Circuit Layout? Actually I'm surprised that on-chip memory is (always?) compiled. I'd have expected memory being added to an IC by use of a standard cell library that (so to see) offers "precompiled" components. --Abdull (talk) 21:48, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

(I guessed from the available info. 'memory compiler' is a new term to me)

Yes. I'd imagine that it would produce 'bitmaps' (or whatever they use) to produce the masks, as such it would most likely utilise a standard cell library to form the invidiual logic gates etc. That was my interpretation of the ARM page, I think I was close, but not necessarily spot on.87.102.86.73 (talk) 22:15, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, i didn't get much more information from ARM than what has been said. However, apparently, the term Memory Compiler isn't constant, with a few definitions, all relating to the creation of the interface with the memory or the memory itself. In ARM's case it is a product containing software for helping the Electronic design automation process, by generating elements of the design based on your specifications. The specifics are seemingly apparent when you use the software, if you already know the details of designing memory. I haven't run the software yet, but i may get a copy if this still isn't enough, or in order to ensure an article on the matter is created. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 10:16, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Videos on iPod

Does anyone know how many Megabytes a 25 minute video takes up on an iPod? I want to download an episode of Family Guy from iTunes, but I have a 4 GB Nano and I don't want to download the episode if it takes up to much space. Thanks! Grango242 (talk) 20:10, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Depends on the quality of the video 4.158.219.215 (talk) 04:15, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Well thanks anyway, but I'm glad that I asked at the miscellaneous desk too. Grango242 (talk) 01:10, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

?Query??

Message of peace to all!I'm working on developing a network for a company ,just a student level work.Tell me please if i have 5 buildings in a company 50m apart from each other, 22 computers in each building 20in first floor and 2 in 2nd floor then where should be the location of switch.Why usually star topology is preferred over other topologies.--Catherine.michi (talk) 20:56, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Star topology redirects to star network, which should answer your question better than any short answer here could. If you need help with topics covered in the article, please ask. -- kainaw™ 00:59, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

July 3

Flash CS3 actionscript: button to next scene

I am a total newbie at Flash, and am using it as part of my high school course. I'm trying to make a button to go to the next scene, but have no idea how to code it or anything. I did a Google search and it says something about adding labels to frames, which I have no idea how to do and the help files don't help. I'm using Adobe Flash CS3 Professional with ActionScript 2.0Avnas Ishtaroth (talk) 02:03, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

First you need to set up your button with an Event Listener on it to check for the mouse clicking.

Then you set up the function that fires when the mouse is clicked on said button. (If you don't know how to do this, please ask.)

In that function, you then have something that goes to the right scene. For example, if the scene you want to go to is named "Scene 3", you can use: this.gotoAndPlay(1,"Scene 3") , which means the timeline (the "this" here) will go to "Scene 3", frame 1, and start playing it. Or, if you just want to go to the next scene, you can use this.nextScene().

Note that in this instance the reason "this" works with those function is that you are treating the entire Flash movie as a Movieclip. So those functions are Movieclip functions.

Make sense? Any questions? --98.217.8.46 (talk) 14:00, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

iPhone roaming

Hello, I am contemplating an iPhone 3G for a relative. They use AT&T right now, their contract is expiring in July, and renewing the contract should not be a problem. However, they are going abroad for a few months in around September. Would they be able to use the iPhone on a GSM network abroad for a few months without doing anything like jailbreak? They are not very technically minded and I can forbid them from updating the software while abroad if need be. Please let me know so I know if it is worth to stand in the line [which I anticipate will be around 20 hours long]. Kushal (talk) 02:57, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

According to Apple, "if you’re in an area without a 3G network, iPhone connects you via GSM for calls and EDGE for data." --Canley (talk) 03:22, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Burning CDs into USB Flash Drive

Hello. I want to burn three music CDs (in a package) just for educational purposes. The CDs are not copy protected. I burned them before USB flash drives became popular. How may I burn the discs into a flash drive? I want to enjoy the convenience of having the CDs in one storage device.

• Nero 6 can only burn CD-to-CD. I do not have its specific installation disc; it came with my PC disc. I tried installing a free 15-day trial of Nero 8. The installation wizard asked me to uninstall Nero 6. If I removed it, then I would have to reinstall my operating system to get Nero back, which is time-consuming.
• I tried not using quick copy to burn the CDs. Perhaps, the CD-ROM would copy the CDs into my hard drive. I unsuccessfully tried looking for those files.
• I tried creating a playlist on Windows Media Player and syncronizing my flash drive. I could not drag the tracks into my flash drive.
• I could not copy the tracks from the CD-ROM. Only shortcuts appear in my flash drive. I cannot open the shortcuts without the CDs.

Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 03:16, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the easiest way you'd find would be to use Windows Media to rip the tracks to audio files, and simply copy the audio files over. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 06:12, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

You need to convert ("rip") the CD audio files off of the CD into other file formats like MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG, whatever. Then you can copy those files to the flash drive. You can't "burn" to a flash drive—it wouldn't work at all, audio CDs and flash drives store data in totally different ways. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 21:41, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

How do I dismantle a computer?

I've heard that inside of computers there are various valuable metals. And I've heard that it's possible to remove and sell them. Does anyone have any books/websites that I could learn more about this? Thanks 4.158.201.215 (talk) 03:20, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

The amount of "valuable" metals inside a computer is worth less than the time it takes to dismantle it. It is only economically sustainable if it is recycled in bulk, like say a few tonnes. I believe a computer is worth more when its not in pieces. No matter how old it is, there will always be someone (eg. collector, fan) who is willing to pay for it, even if it is broken. Really old computers, especially rare ones, in any condition can fetch many times more than the scrap value. I've seen old Apples, Amigas, VAXen, PDPs and SGIs go for hundreds and even thousands of dollars. The scrap value of any these is in the 2 (small computers) to 50 (big fridge sized computer) dollar range, and I probaly overestimated these values by a factor of ten. Rilak (talk) 07:16, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Computer recycling is a place to start.87.102.86.73 (talk) 13:06, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

This firms website gives some useful information for you as to the types of metals found in computers. http://www.awarefiners.co.uk/computer-recycling.html I recommend it.87.102.86.73 (talk) 13:10, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

The copper in wires in computers may be economic to collect if you have a big supply of used computers at low price..87.102.86.73 (talk) 13:11, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

An steel (in the cases etc) can always be recycled.87.102.86.73 (talk) 13:11, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I mean specifically a Windows 95 that crashed 4.158.201.243 (talk) 02:28, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Seriously, this whole "a computer is El Dorado" thing is simply silly. There is not enough "precious" metal in a computer to warrant economical recycling. The steel is worth nothing - if they bury cars in a landfill, all 900 or so kilograms of steel, what makes you think that they are going to bother with the 2 or 3 kg of steel in a computer? As for copper and old, there are is so little of that it is probaly more expensive getting it out than throwing it away, or leaving the entire computer intact. First of all, they have to grind up the circuit board and chips, extract the copper/gold from the sludge from a smelter and then purify it. It probaly does more harm than good - all the silicon and plastics get incinerated and their ashes thrown away. It would do more good to sell the stuff on ebay, really. If you think you are gonna become as wealthy as Bill Gates through recycling old computers and extracting the "vast" quantities of precious metals, this is not the way to go. Copper heatsinks excepted, of course. Rilak (talk) 06:37, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

If it's just the operating system that failed, you could install a lightweight Linux distro like Xubuntu over the old Windows 95 and be able to use the computer again. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 00:13, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

True. Most of the time when people say that the computer is broken, its only Windows. Most people just go and buy a new computer because they don't know that the OS can be replaced with something else. It would be funny if it they were not wasting thousands of dollars and contributing ever more pollution and e-waste. Even more shocking is that they think that the computer has to be new to do anything. I run run an enterprise-grade firewall on an ancient box modified to reduce power consumption and it works great. The latency induced by this setup is unmeasurable. Rilak (talk) 10:50, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

iPod help please

Resolved

I want to buy an iPod. But I don't want to have to keep a copy of every song on my computer. Is there any way to do this? 4.158.201.215 (talk) 03:22, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

You could use an external hard drive. Mastrchf (^t/_c) 04:46, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Winamp will allow this, and will sync 5th gen iPods, and does it rather well. There is also a seperate winamp plugin that is supposed to be better. I am unsure if it will sync with the "Classic" or touch iPods. There are other 3rd party programs such as yamipod that may do it but I don't know how good they are. TheGreatZorko (talk) 08:19, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

You can upload files to the iPod and then delete them off the computer. That's what I often do. You just set the syncing to manual so it doesn't automatically delete them off the iPod too. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 16:35, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I get turn auto-syncing off? Thanks! That's what I needed to know. 4.158.201.243 (talk) 02:29, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Industry bias

i've recently been editing the Diablo 3 article, and come across a brick wall. Wikipedia needs to convey information; although at the same time, the information must be from a valid source. It can be taken as read that sources producing the subject matter (i.e. Blizzard, on Diablo 3) is a valid source. However, how do you convey information that is generated by the general public i.e. lots of talk in forums, news and over 2000 signing a petition in 3 days (i accept that petitions can't be used, due to how they can be skewed... but even if its only a few people doing it multiple times... thats still a lot of people that are hopping mad) when nobody lets you post it? The article cannot be neutral if it can only quote industry (as they obviously are pleased with how they are doing it), and only give generalizations about what the fans are so disgruntled about? how can an article specify and give an official quote from industry refuting the problem, while at the same time not even acknowledging the specific problem even exists? There should be rules set in place stating that (in terms of a "produces"-"end user" scenario) if industry is quoted, so too must a refutable source from the end users (that is quoted by more than one other source). Ether that, or both should be general, and have sources referencing them so people can look into each side of the story. However, i don't think that is what wikipedia is for. We are about providing the public with free, neutral information. We have to educate people, while at the same time telling both sides of the coin. Don't let Wikipedia becoming Stalinist, where only industry can be quoted, because industry is the only 'official' reference! --Tyraz (talk) 09:57, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

The public isn't a reference, it can't possibly produce new information, especially verifiable information, because it has nothing todo with the project. And somehow i don't think the opinions of lots of giggling boys on a forum matters to an encyclopedia. It's not bias, it's simply that Blizzard is developing the game, not a forum. If fan opninion did make a large or notable point, it would be recorded in a reputable medium, such as one of many number of gaming magazines which don't have a bias towards the game. Reliable sources mean that quality articles are produced, so we can't post information without any sources, especially not WP:OR based on our own views of a forums opinion. However, i believe the industry does it very well for us, and nothing stops you quoting opposing views from them. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 10:07, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Since replies have begun here, I am directing replies from your cross-post on the Help Desk here. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 10:57, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

So what constitutes an industry source? For example, there is a lot of talk, and a lot of reputable sources quoting and referencing a petition (search Diablo 3 in google news to see the amount of traffic on the subject). Does this mean that you are allowed to quote the website which quoted the petition, along with the views expressed? I think it's reasonable to quote the facts a reputable news source gives i.e. the difference between products. Are the views expressed by game reviewers (who are industry) just as valid as the producers of the game?

--Tyraz (talk) 11:47, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, as long as it's the views of the Notable Reviewer, not of the source they are discussing. Also make sure points relate to the article. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 11:45, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

- Hmm, there's more than enough information on the matter, it's just a matter of phrasing it, and making sure it's neutral on both developer and reviewer sides. Interested in having a look? --Tyraz (talk) 11:52, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Nope, unless it's Metal Gear related, i try to stay away, Video Game topics are far too fast moving for me. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 11:58, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

- Point taken.. Although it would be nice to formalize some sort of standards as to what you can and can't quote... Because you can find one reviewer who will love it, and one who doesn't.. although they will both agree that it is in fact different, and that they disagree:P To those ends, would it not be reasonable to separate the facts from the reviewers opinions (that includes official Blizzard reports) to take out bias? --Tyraz (talk) 12:02, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

What you've missed is that the petition, and some fans negative reaction are already mentioned in the article.87.102.86.73 (talk) 13:00, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

True. But briefly, and in general. You are deleting Quotes from notable reviewers and replacing them with your own general wording. While taking direct quotes from the producers, which you feel benefit your view. This is an encyclopedia, not a forum. If you want to express your views, do it there. not by putting strong selective quotes in the middle of articles. --Tyraz (talk) 13:10, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Check the edit history, and show an example of that..

Also the only edit you have made that I can see was to remove a quote about the artistic direction from the 'art direction and design' section which was from one of the blizzard designers??? How does that help the article?

That seems like vandalism to me, maybe you can explain it?87.102.86.73 (talk) 14:03, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

ie this [8] is this a good edit? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.102.86.73 (talk) 14:04, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

One solution here would be to tag the article or sections as non-neutral and get someone independant to look at it, how does that sound, would that be acceptable?87.102.86.73 (talk) 14:19, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Personally I'm more than willing to mention and include references to the things you have mentioned, though I in general oppose a 'criticism' or 'fan response' section except in exceptional circumstances, and definately not for one complaint about a game that has not yet been released, and has only been revealed for less than 1 week.

Question - are there any problems with this version? [9]?

I would strongly suggest tagging the article now if you have an issue with the neutrality, and not making any further edits in the 'art direction' section at the moment. That would be a sensible and non-annoying way to proceed. PLEASE?87.102.86.73 (talk) 14:33, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Javascript: getTimeout on a method of a specific object

I'm writing a javascript with several objects that are instances of a class I've defined. I'd like those objects to be able to schedule the execution of one of their own methods at a later time. My problem is that (as a beginning javascript programmer) I don't know the way to express "this" in a way that can succesfully be passed to setTimeout.

I'd like foomethod (a method of the same class that's calling this code) to run in 100ms, in the context of this object (running a regular function is straightforward, it's how to get the "this" context over to the called-back method that I don't know.

Obviously this doesn't work:

 setTimeout("foomethod("+this+")", 100);

or

 setTimeout(this+".foomethod()", 100);

So I'm hoping someone will know the proper way of writing:

 setTimeout ("foomethod("+ getidforthis() + ")", 100);

 function foomethod(str)  {
   somehow set "this" to be the object with the id generated by getidforthis()
   this.bar = blah;
 }

(sheesh, I hope that makes sense). I appreciate I could keep my objects in an array, and pass an index into that array through setTimeout(), but that seems very clunky. Surely there's a better way that this? If anyone could fathom this, I'd be most grateful. Thanks. CQ345 (talk) 14:23, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Try using this.id, and then document.getElementById (passedId) in foomethod. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:08, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Unforunately it seems this.id is undefined; note that this code is in the constructor for the class, which in turn is called from on_load() CQ345 (talk) 15:32, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

one tool you may want to check out is firebug for firefox. If you're not using firefox then it doesn't really apply I guess. Make sure you're browser is up to date and try for the newest stable version. Also maybe try simply setTimeout("foomethod(this)",100) or setTimeout("foomethod("+this.id+")",100) note that the latter would need to use document.getElementById(passedInId) to get the object Ben (talk) 16:40, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

In what part of a system...

In what part of a system are the way characters are displayed defined? For example, in C, printf("Hello world"); will compile to binary representing the appropriate operations and data, in this case characters but how does the computer know how to display them? Is this handled by the OS, display drivers, BIOS...? --212.120.246.239 (talk) 15:16, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Depends. In most Operating System's, such as Linux, Windows, etc for the x86, in Graphical Enviroments, it is handled by the Operating System. More Specifically, especially in Linux where the Component isn't core to Linux (X11), the graphical manager, or Specialist Font Library manage the rendering process. In Specialist hardware, such as that on Macintosh Computers, many of the standard Operating System Libraries, including widgets and font management are part of firmware (Read: BIOS for none x86 systems). In Text mode on standard IBM Compatibles, the Video BIOS, an extension to the standard BIOS, whose code resides within the graphics system, handles the rendering. The knowledge to render them is also dependent on the system. There may be a standard Bitmap picture that is used in place of the ASCII representation of the character, or it may be rendered from a Vector Graphics format in order to take into account font sizes. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 15:27, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

.docx

Recently I have received a few documents with the extension '.docx', and they don't readily open with Word 2003 or the current version of Open Office Writer. Can you give me a straightforward method for opening these documents, hopefully using the applications I already have? Thx ike9898 (talk) 17:01, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

They are produced by Word 2007. Here's what you need to open them. -- Coneslayer (talk) 17:20, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

The current version of OpenOffice.org should be able to open it. Could you tell us more about your software environment (Operating system, OOo version etc)? Could be a bug ... Kushal (talk) 23:17, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

At a pinch, you can rename it as a zip file. You'll then find the content in an XML file within this. Strip the tags and away you go. Morenoodles (talk) 11:18, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Solution to PHP in safe mode

Hi, I have a "terrible" problem in hands... my website (a wiki) is all messed up because PHP is in safe mode... I use MediaWiki software and I have lots of problems: Thumbnails for images look like crap, can't delete images "the regular way" (like admins can do in wikipedia), in the page of the image, (like this [10]), it gives all users an error about PHP being in safe mode (only if the image is too big to fit the screen)... but it shows up! I mean, I'm totally overwhelmed by all this things... and I think there is no easy solution... even now, to delete images, I have to go through lots of complicated steps... WHAT A PAIN! Is there any solution for this? I have my website in a shared host, and I think I can't disable PHP'a safe mode... is hosting my website on my own computer the only solution?!?! thanks for any possible help... SF007 (talk) 21:18, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Getting a different host is your easiest option. User:Krator (t c) 21:29, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

You might try getting in touch with your host. If you Google "disable safe mode php shared host" it seems there are some ways to do it. But getting in touch with your host and asking if there's any chance they can disable it for you might be a smart thing to do in any case. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 21:45, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I am waiting for their answer... I even considered hosting my website on my own computer, to have full control :) SF007 (talk) 22:21, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

That's not a terrible option. You can use something like No-IP to bind the DNS adress of the host to your IP, even if your IP is dynamic. If you don't mind having a computer stuck in a closet that's on all the time, you have an ISP that doesn't ban it and your site doesn't get absurd amounts of traffic, it's absolutely a solution to your problem. It wont cost you a thing except for your regular internet connection, you have complete control, and you don't need to suffer through the annoying habits of webhosts. I say go for it (then again, I'm slightly nuts, so take with a grain of salt :) --Oskar 23:45, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Of course, if things don't work, or things break, it'll be up to YOU to fix it and spend YOUR time fiddling with it (unpaid). Personally I'm a fan of finding a good, cheap webhost. I pay something like $11 a month and they take care of all the technical side of things. (There are definitely positive aspects to doing some things yourself, but for something like this, I suspect it'll be a better use of your time to find someone you can work with and let them handle the hardware side of things.) --98.217.8.46 (talk) 23:58, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Just curious, what percent of total is your uptime? Are you able to get three or four nines? Could you tell me what kind of Internet connection you have? I was always told that hosting it on your own computer is a bad idea. Kushal (talk) 00:41, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

If you only have very little traffic to your website, you can basically get three or four nines without much trouble at all. I mean, take an old, useless laptop, install Ubuntu server edition (or whatever), run just from the command line (no X), put it in a closet and it will stay on like that for years unless you stop it manually (the good thing with using an old laptop: built-in UPS). If you need to log into it, use SSH. Unless you have a pretty staggering internet connection, you probably wont be hosting large files on the server, but it works splendidly just as a small wiki for your closest hundred friends or so. Or a small blog, or whatever. It's probably a bad idea to run bittorrent on the same connection (again, unless it's a pretty huge connection), because bittorrent tends to eat up your upstream.

As for maintenance, the beautiful thing about this setup is that there is not a whole lot that can go wrong, and when it does, you can find it pretty easily. I mean, check the internet connection, check the router, check the computer. It's almost certainly one of those three, and you don't need a masters in network engineering to find out which. It's not to hard to set up either, if you have some experience with linux.

As I said, this really only works if your site is (reasonably) small, and the server isn't, like, mission critical or anything. If it goes down while you're on a vacation, it's going to be down till you come home, but that wont happen very often I think. Then again, if your site turns out to be the next Boing Boing or whatever, then you can easily just start paying for a webhost and transfer your site there. It's not like this solution has to be permanent.

I don't know, maybe this setup appeals only to me, because I like the control it gives me, and I like the tinkering aspect. Normal people might want to do the webhost-thing. It's up to you, but I can at least recommend you try it, there is something extremely fulfilling about getting this all set up, and then logging in to your little-old laptop in a closet from anywhere, and having it serve content to the entire world. --Oskar 08:55, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Hello to you all! My hosting company said they would disable PHP safe mode for my domain, I am just waiting! I can believe it was that easy... Anyway thanks to you all.

@Oskar: yeah, I'm also one of those guys who wouldn't mind hosting my own website, but besides the big problem that is my ignorance in that area of computer science, I don't want that my visitors suffer from downtime just because I didin't fixed the server... it's a peace of mind knowing there are guys working 24/7 just to keep my site online... SF007 (talk) 12:44, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

It does take some technical know-how :) I'm nuts, anyhow. I'm glad your problem got fixed --Oskar 13:11, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Me too! It is now fixed for real, I tested and it works like it should :) thanks again! SF007 (talk) 04:03, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

July 4

Contact software

I need contact software that lets me enter in information for contacts and export it to a Vcard file.

This software needs to have autocomplete, so if one person has the same address as another company, I can just type the first few letters and it fills in the rest. If possible, I'd like one that lets you navigate similar to Excel. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.164.122.155 (talk) 01:00, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

If you are looking to copy them into Outlook this forum says that you can import directly to outlook from excel. I believe you can export the names from excel to a vCard format (.vcf)--omnipotence407 (talk) 03:50, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

i was able to import excel into outlook, than export from outlook to vcf

however, it had to save the excel as a csv, then match up the columbs in outlooks import wizard thanks for the help —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.164.122.155 (talk) 20:15, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

IP logging of dynamic addresses

I know very little about computers. I've noticed that when I edit Wikipedia when not logged in, I'm logged as various different IPs -- some of which seem to be shared with other editors, since I've checked contributions history on them and seen edits I didn't make.

Does this mean I'm really anonymous when editing logged out -- and when commenting at other websites? Or can websites identify my computer exactly by combining the IP with other information they gather? The different IPs I see on wikipedia are always similar -- generally the first part of the address is sixty-something.

I'm not planning to troll anonymously anywhere! I'm just curious.

Dybryd (talk) 06:15, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

There's probably some router nearby that is handing out different IP addresses. They will each be in the same range, though, like you said. And they'll move around, so, for example if you were 192.168.0.2 one day you might switch later to 192.168.0.4 and now your brother's computer now possesses 192.168.0.2. Consequently, if he went to check on the contribs, he'd see the edits you had made previously. Useight (talk) 06:19, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, you're fairly anonymous if you have a dynamic ip address. Law enforcement could probably convince your ISP to tell them who was using a particular IP at a particular time (if they bothered to log it), but otherwise people can only track you down to the range of IP addresses that your ISP uses. It's about as anonymous as being behind one NAT address with hundreds of other people. Indeterminate (talk) 08:08, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about your ISP, but mine (Comcast) keeps track of all the IP addresses I use and the dates that I use them. The IP alone may not be of much use to spies, but when coupled with other information, such as cookies and your browser's headers, spies can gather a lot of information about you. Your IP may change, but unless you clear out your cookies, most sites will know that you are not a different person. Some administrators here on Wikipedia have access to this type of information. I set my browser to prompt me for cookies and to automatically reject known tracking cookies. The problem with those is that people can use them to track you across the net. They will know not only if you visit their site, but weather.com, your local newspaper, your e-mail provider, and so on, because these sites use the same tracking cookies. They can also use banner ads (images) to track you based on your browser's request to load those images from site to site. I used to use a program called Privoxy that provided pretty good anonymity.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 08:37, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Privoxy by itself doesn't make you anonymous. It is usually used along with Tor, for programs that don't support Tor directly. --grawity 11:32, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I know. It helps with cookies, banner ads, and browser headers. It improves anonymity and eliminates annoying ads and popups. Using Tor slows your internet connection down dramatically, and I don't think it's necessary here unless he's doing something risky. Tor only hides your IP address. I use IE7 Pro nowadays as a replacement for Privoxy.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 11:54, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Powefu

What is more powerful: any of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2008_June_25#music_and_programs or Max-MSP?

If there are things more powerful, please list and explain. I thank you so much.68.148.164.166 (talk) 09:55, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

What are you defining as "powerful"? More features? Better application of them? Faster? You might want to clarify what you are really looking for... --98.217.8.46 (talk) 18:47, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Free Domain Names

Hi all:

Does anyone know whether it is possible to register a new .com domain name for free?

I searched around and found out that I could get a .name domain name for free. There is also this organization offering free .co.nr domain names. Are there any other top-level or near-top-level domains that can allow people to freely subdomain off of?

Thanks.

76.65.14.12 (talk) 11:13, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

You can get a subdomain at co.cc - it looks like top level, allows to use your own DNS servers, configure your DNS records (no AAAA yet) or just set up URL forwarding. --grawity 11:30, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

French keyboard emulator

Hi, does anyone know of any keyboard emulator that would allow for easy typing of French accented letters? I'm using a Cherry RS 6000 M keyboard and Windows XP. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 12:54, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Set your keyboard layout to "US International" you can then use accented letters by typing for example 'e, which will give you é and 'c to get ç. Also works with `a à "o ö, etc. -- Bryan (talk|commons) 13:27, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Right. You don't need an "emulator" to change your keyboard layout. It's somewhere under the Control Panel—international settings or keyboard or something like that, and you can set the "language" of the keyboard. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 18:36, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 09:51, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

sharing internet

hi...I want to share my broadband connection over my hostel's lan...how do i do this...I know that windows allows the internet connection to be shared but I don't know how please explain the complete procedure in detail...also the ip has to be set manually y the users so what is the correct subnet for internet connection sharing...also what's the difference between sharing the internet connection using proxy server and normal sharing i.e. without proxy server....thanking u in advance.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Piyushbehera25 (talk • contribs) 14:40, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to assume that by "hostel" you mean "host". This is amazingly simple. I've done this many times. All you need is a broadband router. I highly recommend Linksys. Quality stuff and it steps you through the whole thing. There are occasionally some bizarre situations (Such as: My niece could not load XP SP2. I host a web site on a server that uses a shared connection. Or, your ISP may not have DHCP, but that is very unlikely.) Those situations require tweaking you may not expect, but Linksys phone support is free and talks you through it.

http://www.linksys.com

What you will do is:

- Unplug the Ethernet cable from the PC.

- Plug that cable into the "Internet" (AKA In) port on the router.

- Use the cable that comes with the router and plug your PC into one of the numbered out ports on the router.

- Any other computers can plug into the other numbered ports.

When you are done, the IP address you that is normally assigned to your PC is assigned to the router instead. On each PC, if you were to run "ipconfig" from a DOS prompt you would see that the PC that powers up first is IP address "yada.yada.yada.100". The next one is "yada.yada.yada.101". etc. The router - routes all the traffic and keeps it straight.

Hope it helps. --Wonderley (talk) 12:58, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Not that it matters, but I wonder why you couldn't assume that "hostel" meant "hostel". --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 09:43, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

You are assuming that I am a master of the English language. My brain was in computer guy mode - I was actually thinking he wrote "hostile." Yes, I have heard of the word hostel, but rarely and just didn't think of it at the time.--Wonderley (talk) 19:54, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

(state of) computer games industry in Germany

Any know much about the above, or got any links. I ask specifically because of Sacred 2 Fallen Angel the only upcoming title from Germany I am aware of seems 'dire', literally many years behind the english speaking world in terms of programming complexity/features included.. And this from the country that gave the world The Settlers.

Have I picked a bad example, are there examples of AAA titles that match the best of the rest of the world? Thank you.87.102.86.73 (talk) 15:52, 4 July 2008 (UTC) (I've excluded crysis since the company appears to be turkish , is this correct?)

Well, Crytek is a German company. The guys who founded the company are of Turkish descent, but I believe they are German citizens, and in any case, the company was founded in Coburg, Germany. Germany has a pretty big video game industry (as well as as a huge and active video game market), but a large number of the games developed there never make it outside the country, as there are enough German-speaking people to support their own industry.

Still, it's true that these days, not a lot of really first-class developers seem to be currently hailing from Germany. Perhaps, at least in part, this is because of the dreaded German index poses certain challenges to game -- and all media -- development. Overall, the environment for creating action-heavy games in Germany is pretty hostile, as Crytek recently made a public statement on. From what I've heard as a gaming journalist, in many "polite" circles simply working for a video game developer can carry a fairly strong social stigma -- not just the general "nerd" thing, but more comparable to working in pornography. It really doesn't strike me as an environment conducive to creative efforts.

Anyway, in addition to Crytek, I can think of Factor 5, but frankly, especially with Lair being such a disappointing game, calling them an AAA list developer would be a real stretch. Egosoft has produced some pretty decent space combat games, as I recall, but they're definitely not in the category you're looking for, either. There may well be companies that I'm blanking on at the moment, of course! -- Captain Disdain (talk) 17:09, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for an interesting response, though I'm suprised that the industry has negative status.. Board games are very popular in Germany I believe and the country has a history of toy manufacture, plus being practically the birth place of the wargame. How strange.

Thank you very much.87.102.86.73 (talk) 18:39, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

It's a little problematic topic, to be sure. Most German games developers aren't making violent games (simply because the laws about them are as strict as they are), but all games are often lumped together with violent games. That's not very surprising; the same thing happens just about everywhere else as well -- most people don't really know much about games, but they know about the games they hear about... so they think that the controversial Grand Theft Auto games, for example, represent some kind of an average product, when the reality is of course quite different. In Germany the gaming culture tends to be pretty different from that of other countries, because active censorship of games is a pretty serious and ongoing issue for the industry. Many games have had their content changed -- classic ways of doing this include changing red blood into green and changing human enemies into zombies, robots or aliens, for example. I imagine that people who make violent movies are treated much the same way, but the difference is, of course, that people don't assume that all filmmakers make violent movies. Movies are just more mainstream than games are, so people make a lot of assumptions to make up for their ignorance of the actual facts. If the many excellent German wargames and boardgames were more violent, they'd probably get treated a little differently as well... but, of course, that medium just doesn't lend itself well to explicit blood and gore. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 20:25, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I, for one, can't wait for the arrival of Sacred 2. This, and Titan Quest, have been the only games that have ever come close to being a Diablo 2 clone. While the world awaits Diablo 3, I guess Sacred 2 will have to do. Crysis was simply stunning as well (if not a bit irritating towards the end, floating around blindly in the alien dome) so as far as I'm concerned, Germans should continue with their great work! Sandman30s (talk) 21:24, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Snapter like software

Hi Wikipedians:

I am looking forward to making some ebooks on my own from camera snapping real books from the library. I downloaded this software called Snapter which purportedly could take the photos and spit out PDF ebooks in one step. Unfortunately it doesn't work on my computer, so I'm looking for other Snapter-like software, hopefully free and doesn't require fancy .NET frameworks.

Any good picks?

Thanks

74.12.39.232 (talk) 16:06, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, no, I've never seen anything else that did this, and I've been looking for something like this. (.NET isn't that fancy—my 5 year old PC running XP can run it just fine. Have you tried downloading and installing the .NET framework? It's not that hard...). Anyway, if your machine is too weak to run .NET... it might be nice if you told us what your machine specs were in the first place. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 18:45, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks 98.217.8.46, I've resolved the problem, turns out I've been running an older version of .NET, when I upgraded it to .NET 3.5 presto, all problems are gone. However, snapter isn't as powerful as I thought, so I was a bit disappointed :-( I'll keep looking. 76.68.9.250 (talk) 00:50, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Only one computer work with a wired connection to my cable modem

Hi all,

I have a cable modem and I used to pass my connection through a wireless router, with my desktop connected directly to the router and the laptops in my house connecting wirelessly. Recently, however, it looks like the wireless router has stopped working, so I thought it was the router's fault, but now I'm not sure. if I connect my desktop PC directly to the modem, it works fine. Here's what doesn't work: anything else connected to the modem. That's the router and both laptops (one Mac and one PC).

Is it possible that some setting has been changed so that only the desktop can connect to the modem? How would I find such settings, if they exist? Is there another likely explanation?

Any help very much appreciated, thanks! — Sam 18:37, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Your router probably has an "in" port and several "out" ports. Make sure the cable from the modem is connected to the in port of the router, and the desktop to an out port. I suspect you have them reversed; the in port acts as a crossover, which needs to be done for the incoming connection. If you plug it into an out port, but the working computer is on the "in" port, it's still being crossed over for that computer, but not for the others. See this diagram. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 18:59, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

The ethernet cable is definitely going into the in port of the router, and yet no data lights light up. Likewise, the laptops can be connected straight to the modem in the same way as the desktop is, yet they show no connection. This is a new problem, I've never had the router or the laptops not work when connected directly to the cable box.

If it were just the router or just one of the laptops not working, I'd put it down to some problem there, but since none of them work, yet the PC does, I'm wondering if this is some kind of setting in the cable box... The box, btw, is a real basic Cisco Scientific Atlanta -- no buttons or switches or anything. — Sam 19:09, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

desktop to an out port. I suspect you have them reversed; the in port acts as a crossover, which needs to be done for the incoming connection. If you plug it into an out port, but the working computer is on the "in" port, it's still being crossed over for that computer, but not for the others. See this diagram. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 18:59, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

The ethernet cable is definitely going into the in port of the router, and yet no data lights light up. Likewise, the laptops can be connected straight to the modem in the same way as the desktop is, yet they show no connection. This is a new problem, I've never had the router or the laptops not work when connected directly to the cable box.

If it were just the router or just one of the laptops not working, I'd put it down to some problem there, but since none of them work, yet the PC does, I'm wondering if this is some kind of setting in the cable box... The box, btw, is a real basic Cisco Scientific Atlanta -- no buttons or switches or anything. — Sam 19:09, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

My ISP gives me one dynamic IP address to work with. That IP address is assigned to a single network card. If I were to connect another computer to the modem without releasing the IP address, the new computer wouldn't be able to acquire a network address (I once had to call my ISP so they could manually release the lease; otherwise I might have had to wait a day or two). Now I have a router, and it works because I set it to emulate the MAC address of my computer's network card. Multiple computers can operate on my home network because the router is performing network address translation (NAT), so to the DHCP server at my ISP it is as if there is only one computer connected.

I suggest either making sure you release the lease on your IP address before switching computers, or make sure your router is both emulating the working PC's hardware address and performing network address translation. You could also ask your ISP if you have a similar setup (single dynamically allocated IP address). Many ISPs will even help you diagnose your problem in any case, so a call to their technical support number may be worthwhile. --Prestidigitator (talk) 21:25, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that worked perfectly! I worked out my network card's MAC address, logged into my router and changed it's MAC address to match my card's, and then plugged in the router, and it works! Yay! — Sam 17:14, 5 July 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.115.120.108 (talk)

Semi-awesome bar for FireFox 3?

Hi all,

I've just switched to FireFox 3, and I'm wondering if there is some plugin or something that will combine the effects of the awesome bar with the old address bar.

Back when I had FF 2, when I wanted (for example) to go to Google News, I'd start typing in "news...." and the first choice would be news.google.com, and when I wanted to go to NYTimes I'd start typing "ny..." and the first choice would be nytimes.com.

Now, since I go to both equally, when I start typing in "news" I randomly get Google, NYTimes, sometimes even the Onion as the first hit, depending on where I was recently. However, I don't want to go back to a FF 2-like bar, since I do like the awesomeness of the bar... sometimes.

Is there any kind of plugin or setting that will let the first X choices in the list be what would show up on the old bar, and the rest of them be what would show up on the new bar? That way, when I start typing in "news..." URLs that actually start with "news" would always come up first, but, say, NYTimes would still show up there somewhere?

Bit of a long-shot, I know, but thanks for any recommendations! — Sam 19:23, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

1. Type About:config in the addressbar, accept the warning
2. Type: Browser.urlbar.autoFill
3. Double click it to set it to true
4. ???
5. Profit.

Chris M. (talk) 20:39, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

It's actually Browser.urlbar.autoFill (with a dot, not a colon)...... Dendodge .. Talk^Contribs 20:45, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I knew that >_>... fixed and thanks. 69.177.166.145 (talk) 22:35, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't work anyway, although it's handy. .froth. (talk) 03:25, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Windows Meeting Space, Windows Netmeeting and you

Currently I'm on a Vista Home premium desktop using Windows Meeting Space with another Vista Home Premium desktop (and it's great actually). When I return to college I want to be able to use a similar program from my XP Professional to this Vista Home Premium. Meeting space doesn't work with XP, and Windows Netmeeting doesn't work with Vista Home Premium (I checked).

I don't care if it's another companies software, I'm just looking for something that does what meeting space does just as well between an XP and Vista home premium.

Any ideas?

Thanks! Chris M. (talk) 19:51, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

repair windows xp professional

I have the above mentioned system, but I cannot boot it up. I dont have an emergency boot cd or even a cd-rom. I know that my computer can boot form usb, but what should I put inside the usb? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.128.154.226 (talk) 21:16, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

We'll need more information on what you mean by "unable to boot it up": can your computer go past POST? Or does it freeze when the Windows logo is displayed? But most likely you'll need a Windows CD in order to repair/reinstall the system. --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:48, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I keep receiving the following message:

System Cannot Log You on Because Domain <Computername> Is Not Available

More about it here. I downloaded the hotfix from Microsoft, but since I cannot boot the computer, I cannot use it. :(

Meanwhile I have a cd-rom again and I am trying to find a Windows CD for it. I have Windows XP professional SP2. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.59.92.109 (talk) 11:20, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Could it be done with Knoppix? And what if I want to abandone my old OS (Windows), save the file and install something else. What do I need then? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.59.92.109 (talk) 11:23, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the knowledge-base article, this could be done with a linux live cd that's able to mount XP drives in a read/write fashion, and then doing using either method 1 or method 2 that microsoft recommends (method 1 would only work if you had the file to replace it with, but I suppose you could find it on the net somewhere. It's just basically move and rename operations, so it shouldn't be too complicated. I recommend the Ubuntu Live CD, it's excellent in every single way.

Are you good enough with computers to be able to do this (since you mentioned Knoppix, I assume you aren't a complete dunce), or do you need more detailed help? The easiest way would of course be to simply reinstall windows, but maybe you have files you want to save or something :) --Oskar 21:57, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Also, if you want to abandon Windows and install something else, you can use the Ubuntu Live CD for that too :D. You could even partition the drive in such a way so that the (malfunctioning) windows installation exists on one partition and Ubuntu on another, and then you'll still have all your files! Only in Ubuntu! Isn't Linux wonderful :) --Oskar 22:00, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. It seems that new versions of Knoppix are able to mount drives in a write/read fashion. I'll take a look at Ubuntu too. I will do a backup of my personal files and then proceeed to reinstall the OS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.128.154.226 (talk) 16:34, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

C++

I have windows vista. I want to program c++. What program (free) do I need?--71.185.138.77 (talk) 22:07, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Visual C++ Express Edition, from Microsoft, or gcc (via mingw) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:25, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Eclipse CDT with gcc in Cygwin is pretty good too, but it's a real pain to set up the first time. I've also used Dev-C++ a long time ago; apparently it is now developed under the name wxDev-C++. There's a list of IDEs at Comparison of integrated development environments#C/C++. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 00:03, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

July 5

Japan mobile phone web markup language alphabet soup nightmare

I'm contemplating the construction of a simple website (in English and Japanese) for consumption via mobile phones in Japan. My head's swimming with markup languages. Au's EZweb uses (used?) HDML. Docomo's i-mode uses (used?) C-HTML (with Shift-JIS). Whatever HDML and XHTML 1.1 Basic are, they don't seem to be the same; yet I think I read somewhere that au uses the latter. And there are other companies and "standards" besides: this commercial page waffles on about how this or that company uses the advertiser's services to convert its cHTML (NTT DoCoMo/iMode) site to HDML (KDDI/au), MML (Vodafone [sic]), Edge and PMDX (DDI Pocket/Feel H" & H")[...].

So far, so horrible. Yet Wapedia is billed as a single site that caters for all mobile phones in Japan. A quick peek at the source of its top page shows no DOCTYPE declaration, but clearly it's some flavor of XHTML Transitional (with UTF-8 character encoding). I'd thought that Transitional went out with XHTML 1.0; is this "XHTML Mobile Profile"? Or is Wapedia sniffing the user-agent string and just giving something identifying itself as "Mozilla" the XHTML 1.0 Transitional that it thinks computer browsers like?

I think I can assume that all potential readers would have phones that are less than three years old. (Most would have phones that are much newer than that.) If I don't need proprietary e-moji and suchlike gimmickry, is there a one-fits-most solution? -- Hoary (talk) 02:03, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

PS this tells me that the http header specifies XHTML and UTF-8. This shows me that when visited by a bot it has a DOCTYPE declaration invoking this DTD ("XHTML Mobile 1.0") and again that it's UTF-8. How strange: when I look at the source again with a browser (this time Konqueror), again I see no DOCTYPE; instead, the page starts with the HTML tag. -- Hoary (talk) 05:11, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I think they do a lot of user agent sniffing and transform the website according to each individual browser and its quirks, before sending it to the mobile phone. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:28, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

What a bore. Ah well, my EZweb phone seems to understand both HTML and XHTML; I'll just have to experiment and then see if people using the other companies can see the results. -- Hoary (talk) 12:59, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

PPS I don't need forms (or any other kind of genuine participation by the bemused browser), but I would like to know what size/format of photos to dish up (my own, rather ageing phone manages to squash down fairly big ones, but quickly gives up with memory limits). And (deep breath) I'm thinking of supplying little videos too. -- Hoary (talk) 00:18, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Differences of software

What are the differences between http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2008_June_25#music_and_programs and Max-MSP?68.148.164.166 (talk) 05:58, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Ubuntu Linux

How is it possible (if at all) to map a second drive onto Ubuntu Linux? I have a Vista machine which has two drives and my Ubuntu partition is only picking up one of them.

Thanks in advance.

--ChokinBako (talk) 12:16, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by drive: another physical harddrive or a partition? Does it show up on gparted or fdisk? (try sudo apt-get install gparted to install gparted or sudo fdisk -l to list all partitions in fdisk)? --antilived^{T | C | G} 12:29, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

It should automatically show up in Nautilus. In the sidebar in Nautilus (that is, the file-browser), see if there is any items that says something like "120 GB Drive" or something. Otherwise, open up GParted (install if necessary), and you can mount it from there. --Oskar 14:31, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Got it in your fstab? .froth. (talk) 03:21, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

DVB-T question

Just wondering, am I correct in thinking that there is a method which DVB-T broadcasters can assign fixed channel numbers to channels (i.e. so that all receivers will place them in the same order)? If so, how does it work in the cases of multiple multiplexes where they are managed by different companies? Thanks for any help. - ^Estoy_Aquí^{(t • c • e)} 13:01, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Although I can't find any reference for it in wikipedia I can tell you that each channel does (seem) to have a specific number attached to it eg in UK BBC1 is always 1, the auxillary BBC channels have numbers 301, 302 etc..

Digital Video Broadcasting explains that there are various bodies involved setting up the standards, I have no idea if the channel number is meta-data Digital_Video_Broadcasting#Encryption_and_metadata, or more fundamental

I'm not sure how different multiplexes could possibly interfere with this assignment? maybe I've not understood?87.102.86.73 (talk) 12:01, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Lost Windows XP admin password

I've fogotten my Windows XP admin password after a long vacation. How can I recover my data? I thought about demounting the HDD, connect it as an external HDD, backup the files and format it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 17:52, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

There are many boot CDs that will reset the password for you, like ERD Commander or Hiren's Boot CD. You just set your BIOS to boot from a CD, insert the disk, and restart your PC. You can also try starting your computer in safe mode by pressing F8 during boot time and then logging into the Administrator account. Windows XP creates an account named Administrator by default. Often the password for that account is blank.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 18:08, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

The easiest way is to boot windows into safe mode by pressing F8 while windows is starting (after the BIOS has loaded, but before the Windows XP logo comes up. Press it repeatedly), and select "Start in Safe Mode". Everything will look like crap, but you get access to an Administrator account which you can use to reset the password for any of the accounts. No need to download anything extra or booting from a different drive. Easy as pie! --Oskar 21:35, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, I didn't see that Hello had already given this tip. How embarrassing :) --Oskar 21:45, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

If you don't want to use Safe Mode, you can also press Ctrl+Alt+Del twice on login screen and login as Administrator.

If you lost the Administrator password, but still have the Windows XP CD:

1. Boot from the install CD
2. Select to install Windows on the top of existing installation
3. When prompted, choose "repair install"
4. During the repair, press Shift+F10 (or Shift+F12 - I don't remember)
5. Type control userpasswords2 or lusrmgr.msc

--grawity 09:53, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

BartPE is a little more elegant than partially IPUing .froth. (talk) 03:20, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Bear in mind if you've encrypted any files with Windows Encrypting File System you won't be able to recover them unless you either remember your password or bruteforce it. If you have done so and want to recover your files I recommend you do not follow any of the above advice and instead look into it first since reseting your password could make your files virtually irrecoverable Nil Einne (talk) 17:08, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Remote Access

I have two computers connected to one router, both running Windows XP. One is a wired desktop, the other is a wireless laptop. What would be the easiest way to access the files on my desktop from the laptop? --Russoc4 (talk) 23:56, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Can you make the Desktop folder a shared folder ? If so, I think that should do it. StuRat (talk) 01:12, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Make sure in the network properties that the PCs have the same workgroup name. In windows explorer on the laptop under the tools menu, select "Map Network Drive." For the folder name put //desktopPCname/c$, but for "desktopPCname" put the name of the desktop PC. It will ask you for the administrator password of the desktop. The drive does NOT have to be shared, but you may have to disable some firewall SOFTWARE. You are protected from the outside because routers have HARDWARE firewalls. Well, I know mine does. You may want to double check that.--Wonderley (talk) 23:33, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

July 6

Booting From a USB Flash Drive

Hello! I've been looking at Puppy Linux as the OS for booting from a 2GB Sony MicroVault I own, because I heard it is a fast OS and it comes with its own software to format the USB flash drive after you run it from a live CD. My two questions:

1. Once I boot from the USB flash drive, will I be able to access files from the hard disk drive on my computer, even though I'm using the OS on the flash drive?

2. Once I format the USB flash drive, will I be able to delete everything on it and use it as a regular flash drive again?

Thanks a lot!--El aprendelenguas (talk) 00:50, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

To answer the second question first: yes, formatting a drive will delete all data and software on it immediately. As for your first question: I've never used Puppy Linux, but, as a repair OS, it almost certainly has the ability to mount hard drives with various filesystems. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 01:29, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I've used Puppy Linux regularly for a couple of years now. Whilst compromises have been made to keep it under 100 MB, I certainly wouldn't call it a "repair OS". Booting from a CD, it creates a RAM-disk for the OS which explains why it is fast even on old hardware (it ran at an acceptable speed on a 400Mhz PII with 128MB of RAM). To answer your first question: Puppy has a drive mounter application on the desktop making it easy to access data on your hard drive. Astronaut (talk) 16:50, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Phone as Clock

I want to use a java enabled flip-phone as an alarm clock. It's small (so travels well), and it's one less thing to take on holiday. The idea being, when you go to bed you open it, and leave it there - of course because the screen sits at an angle to the keypad, it will stay open. But there are many, many, many java clocks out there for phones. Does anyone use one who can recommend it? Preferably one which fills the whole screen.78.144.174.167 (talk) 00:51, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what kind of a phone you have exactly, but I believe that all modern Nokia phones, at least, come with an alarm function as it is, and I'd be surprised to learn that other manufacturers have neglected to include it. I mean, I don't think I've owned a separate alarm clock for close to a decade now. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 11:58, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. It's a Motorola, however. What I had in mind was one which the clock would dominate the screen, making it easier to see from your bed :-) like a conventional bedside clock. I discovered it has a function to use Java screensavers, I thought that would be a nice way of doing it. Then it would start automatically after a few minutes. 78.149.106.37 (talk) 13:05, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Vista

Does vista have WordPad , notepad etc (or is it horribly broken!)..

seriously I'd like to know.87.102.86.73 (talk) 13:06, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

ok read the articles now. ignore or delete question..87.102.86.73 (talk) 13:08, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Resolved

 – StuRat (talk) 19:28, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Impossible to enter my BIOS

I have a PC running Windows XP professional and after some changes to the boot sequence in my BIOS, I am not able to enter it anymore. No matter if I press F1, F2 or Esc. These buttons don't work anymore. The rest is working Windows boots as before. What should I do? Can the BIOS be reset from the OS? What has happened? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 16:41, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

You can usually reset the BIOS by removing the battery from the motherboard and leaving it out for ten minutes. Google your motherboard type for help. Exxolon (talk) 17:13, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

It's also a good idea to search around in your computer manufacturers support pages and see if they have some helpful advice. Chances are you're not the first person that this has happened to. --Oskar 21:42, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I have an ASUS laptop and it should have a jumper somewhere where I can reset the BIOS. I still don't know where this jumper is. Should it be near the processor, RAM or HDD? These places are easier to reach since you have only two screws on them. Otherwise I'll have to take the whole laptop apart.

A long shot, but are you using a USB keyboard? They often fail during this part of the boot sequence, so keep a PS-2 board around just in-case. Also, maybe whatever you did to the BIOS changed the default key to enter it, so try some different combinations from here. Also try resetting the BIOS by removing the cmos jumper from the motherboard for a while. And if you know the maker of your bios, the manufacturer's web site may have a utility to reset and update the bios within Windows, without opening your pc. JessicaN10248 12:42, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

• A follow up question - out of curiosity - would be: what did it happen? And why is the OS still booting? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 08:39, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Wiki diff question

I have this diff: [11], and want to know which "-N" flag was removed from the wiki table. However, the diff doesn't seem to give me enough info to tell, except that it says the change took place on line 849. I'd really prefer not to have to count off 849 lines, however. So, is there an easier way ? StuRat (talk) 21:51, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

1. Hit the "(edit)" link next to the "Revision as of 18:55, July 5, 2008" header.
2. Copy the full text from the textbox into your favorite text editor.
3. Use your favorite text editor's "go to line 849" command. (e.g. 849G if you have good taste)

Alternative method: use both "(edit)" links, copy the 2 versions of the wikitext into separate files, and apply your own favorite diff command locally.

The affected row was this one:

! style="text-align:left;" | RCA
| style="text-align:left;" | DTA800B1
| {{No}}
| {{Yes}}
| {{Yes}}
| Thomson_SA|Thomson
| [[Broadcom]] [http://www.broadcom.com./collateral/pb/3543-PB04-R.pdf BCM3543]
| SoC Integrated
| {{unk}}
| {{partial|Now/Next}}
| D
|-

--tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 22:31, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Unfortunately, I'm on a Windows box here, so use MS Word as my not-so-favorite editor. Is there a way to jump to a line number in Word ? StuRat (talk) 00:38, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Use Notepad or Wordpad. Word is not a text editor. It is a word processor. In this case, the difference is huge. It is Ctrl-G in Notepad if I remember back that far into my distant past well enough. -- kainaw™ 00:44, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Thx. StuRat (talk) 02:30, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

If this problem comes up frequently, you make a Wikipedia feature request for some way of getting more context lines in a diff. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 05:41, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Best suggestions for a text editor on Windows, for this kind of usage: Metapad (which you can rename as Notepad.exe and just overwrite in the system folders). If you want more features, look at UltraEdit too. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 08:59, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Playing diablo2 on lan question

On my house i have 2 pcs on lan, "PC A" and "PC B". I can host diabblo 2 with PC A, PC B is able to enter on the lan game and play togheter with PC A. But if I host with PC B I PC A can not enter in PC B game. Why this is happening??? 201.79.38.20 (talk) 22:49, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm guessing here, but the first thing I would check is whether PC B has a firewall installed that keeps PC A from seeing the hosted game. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 23:20, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

July 7

Document-centric XML database

Let's say I have billions biographical articles in XHTML format. They are all semantically tagged, for example:

<name><first>Joe</first> <middle>Snoopy</middle> <last>Cool</last></name> was a <gender>male</gender> <nationality country="UK">British</country> <job>inventor</job> who was born in <birth><place country="India">India</place> on <month>January</month> <day>1</day>, <year>1900<year></birth>. He died in ...

Joe Snoopy Cool was a male British inventor who was born in India on January 1, 1900. He died in ...

Each file, originally written for human readers, contains exactly one person's biography and each person has only one biography (or one file). They are certainly not very friendly to a computer. I can build a relational database using data extracted from the properly tagged articles. However, it may be more elegant to use a XML-based solution. After all, you may add millions articles to this database each day and thank God you have a really fast computer.

Now I need to read the biographies (full text) of all Australian soldiers who was graduated from the Happy Monkey College of Sydney and died in the 1950s or all of Joe Cool's grandsons (they are all tagged). What are the XML search programs that I can use? -- Toytoy (talk) 03:22, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I entirely understand what you want. Do you have a bunch of files in the above-mentioned XHTML format and you want to convert them into a relational database? Or into XML-format? Or what? --Oskar 03:37, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Querying XML documents tends to be referred to as a "twig-query". The XML can be reformatted into a tree of parent tags and child tags (the page itself being the root node). If you've taken any computer science courses, you've worked with data trees. Unfortunately, twig queries are slow and there is no standard (yet). Also, about 90% of the work on making good twig query systems is being done in Beijing - so learn Chinese if you want to study the latest stuff. I have a similar situation, but I don't use twig queries. Instead, I use grep and sed. For example, if you want to know the job of everyone with the middle name "Snoopy", you can grep for "<name>.*<middle>Snoopy</middle>.*</name>" and then sed "s/^.*<job>//" and sed "s/</job>.*$//". Of course, you'll pipe it all together into one line. Then, use sort and uniq to get a unique list. I've considered writing an SQL-like interpreter that produces the proper grep/sed command, but I've never had the time. -- kainaw™ 04:14, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I think I can implement the DB on a relational platform. But I think "twig-query" shall be much more elegant becaue you do not need to keep a separate catalog. If you create a new element (e.g., <salary>, <weight>, ...), it may be easier to update the XML-based solution to recognize the new element.

On second thought, I think I need to know some buzz words. How do people call this kind of search? What is the query language? What are the DB systems (commercial, open source, ...) that support this kind of search? -- Toytoy (talk) 05:31, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

If you want to put it in a database that makes it easy search for stuff like "Give me all people between the ages 30-35, sorted by their last name" or "Give me all the firemen and the police officers", you want an SQL database, such as MySQL (which is open source). You would probably need to write a little script that parsed the input-files and put them in the database, but once that's done, it's super-easy to do searches on the data (and very easy to export the whole thing to an XML-file). How skilled are you with computers? Do you know how to code? And what do you need this for, are you just looking to do one specific search or are you setting it up so that that you can search the data repeatedly? Is this for a business you're doing this? A little more details would be helpful --Oskar 07:13, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't that grep only work if the name tags and the middle tags where on the same line? Seems to me to be a terrible assumption. --Oskar 05:21, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

You're right- awk is the tool of choice in this case. .froth. (talk) 06:19, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

You do know how to grep an entire file instead of line-by-line, don't you? Yes, awk could be used. You could do it with just sed. You could do it all in Perl. Anyone else have one of the million possible ways to find and print text in *nix machines? -- kainaw™ 12:10, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Then why did they develop native-XML databases if you can search inside these XML files? -- Toytoy (talk) 15:47, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Psi-Ops problems

I recently downloaded a copy of Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy for PC. I expected this to be easy to play, as my system can play Half-Life 2 (granted, on low quality settings) with good framerate. However, when I try to play, I experience massive problems with input lag: Namely, that it can take between 1/2-sec to, occasionally, 3 sec or more for my input to be recognized and the action taken. I even dropped the resolution to 800x600, and it didn't change a thing. Please, this is an excellent game, but I can't continue if I keep inadvertently dropping off a ledge for a 100-foot fall. I am running an Nvidia 6100 graphics card, AMD Athlon 64+ dual-core processor, and 2gb of RAM. 68.103.215.168 (talk) 02:50, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

All OVER google. http://forums.techpowerup.com/archive/index.php/t-3890.html .froth. (talk) 03:09, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

By the way, congratulations on hosing your system by installing StarForce. Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. .froth. (talk) 03:16, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Hold on a sec. The link you gave me (and everything else I can find) is about people running the control program for ATI cards. Could the problem on my end be with the Nvidia compliment? And if I do away with SF, does that mean I can't play Psi-Ops any longer? How do I go about nuking it? 68.103.215.168 (talk) 14:09, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Converting an M4A file

I was sent a file with an .M4A extension (same as MP4). I copied it to a CD but cannot play it on the CD player in my car, which is about seven years old. Any suggestions on how best to convert it to something I can play? I have a computer running Windows XP and Real Player but no special software. Ma^t_chups 03:02, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

You can't just burn data to a disk and expect it to be formatted as CDDA. Try downloading this MP4 splitter and installing the Audio component of ffdshow. Now you can use Windows Media player to burn the disk and WMP will automatically use Red Book formatting. .froth. (talk) 03:07, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

That seems awfully complicated. Probably the easiest way to do it is to import the file into iTunes, put it in a playlist, put a cd-r in your drive and press the "Burn CD" button. Easy as pie! --Oskar 03:13, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah if you use itunes. .froth. (talk) 03:17, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

True, but it's still easier than using WMP, installing mp4 splitter and ffdshow. One very easy to use program, that's quite handy for all your music needs! --Oskar 03:19, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Resolved

I tried the iTunes idea but it said I didn't have the right XP service pack. But then I figured if iTunes could do it, maybe Real Player could too. Sure enough. And although it asked me to pick music from a playlist, I found that I could just drag and drop a file from Windows Explorer. Ma^t_chups 02:24, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

CSS em over px

What is the differences between "em" and "px" when witting in HTML and CSS; is there a preference between the two? ChyranandChloe (talk) 08:44, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

px is pixels - the fixed unit of size which graphics are rendered in. So an image or letter might be displayed as 7px tall, or 6 px tall, or whatever.

em (I think) is "multiples of standard spacing". So 2em is saying "use 2 x whatever spacing you would have normally used".

Check with others, but I think that's the difference. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 08:52, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

An em is (related to) the width of a letter m! Not to be confused with the html em. 163.1.148.158 (talk) 09:09, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I figured "em" were more adaptable (in terms of broswer support) than "px", but I was looking for more or less a preference between the two. ChyranandChloe (talk) 09:58, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I prefer "em", because it can make changes easier. For example, if you have this css

body { font-size: 14px;}

h1 {font-size: 21px;}

h2 {font-size: 17px;}

then if you later decide that all the text needs to be bigger (or smaller), you need to change every occurrence of font-size. However, if you write the css like this

body { font-size: 14px;}

h1 {font-size: 1.5em;}

h2 {font-size: 1.2em;}

then you can change the size of all the text on the page simply by changing the body font-size. Of course, this assumes that you want to keep the same relative sizing. Also, Internet Explorer used to have problems scaling if the font size was declared in pixels; that might have been fixed in IE7. --LarryMac | Talk 13:15, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Always prefer using em ('m's) whenever possible. The space grows or shrinks as the user decides to enlarge or reduce the font size or page zoom. Use pt (points) to place objects in specific positions, it should provide good results in both screen and print medias. Avoid using px (pixels), it is a screen-oriented measure unit, not suitable for printing. --Juliano (T) 14:57, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

As has been said, em will change based on your browser settings (specifically the font size), px does not. So keep this in mind when designating things as one or the other. Space between paragraphs, for example, should always be in em, not px, because if you make the text bigger (because you can't see tiny text), you'll want that space to change proportionally as well. If you have graphical elements that fit together, though, you need to use px on them, or else they'll all fly apart when enlarged (unless you are using Firefox 3, which seems to do enlargement as a form of zooming, last I checked). --98.217.8.46 (talk) 16:00, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I think this question is done. ChyranandChloe (talk) 20:18, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Windows XP Pro and Server 2003 Enterprise

I've been running XP Pro a long time on one of my machines. As I have to reinstall the box now (hardware failure/new components), I'm toying with the idea of trying Win 2003 enterprise as a workstation, rather than XP Pro. As an exceptionally heavily used box, the main incentives for this would be -

1. Increased application and system memory limits (32 GB+ RAM, rather than the 3.2 GB limit of XP),
2. Internal use of Storport rather than SCSIport for I/O (significantly increased SATA non-RAID disk speed),
3. Better stability (BSOD reduction, shutdown tracking, etc)
4. Better security
5. Avoiding bloat or slowdown at OS level (always a risk, Vista is reportedly much less resource efficient; for all I can tell Server 2008 may be as well)

The focus governing component choices is stability, and raw speed/processing power - the machine runs several terabytes of storage via non-RAID SATA, and a quad core CPU on the most stable motherboard I can find, and handles a huge array of very processor-intense tasks for work use. Running slow is "expensive", falling over is "very expensive".

I was originally going to hold onto XP until ready to transition to *nix in a few years, but am instead now considering using 2K3 until then, due to these possible advantages (if it doesn't lose out to XP in other ways).

Since Win2K3 wasn't marketed as a workstation system, the question is,

1. is there anything limiting in its use that might be a problem, such as software, or features and functions, that work on XP but not on 2K3,
2. a sense of lower perceived speed on workstation/desktop software (browser, office type packages, and the like),
3. areas of limited functionality compared to XP (due to it being designed for server rather than desktop usage), or
4. advantages listed above that wouldn't actually be realized?

Thanks for any and all input,

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 08:50, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I've installed Windows Server 2003 before and hardly noticed any differences between it and XP. IIS still has to be installed separately. Interfaces for managing servers are installed to the Control Panel, but the servers aren't. The main difference is that the Themes service is not enabled by default. This wasn't an issue for me since I disabled themes inside XP, anyway. As for stability, have you had a lot of BSODs inside XP? They are extremely rare in XP compared to older versions of Windows. For many people, they don't happen at all. Another difference is that Internet Explorer prohibits you from visiting sites outside your intranet, although this feature can be disabled.

That was a 32-bit version (Standard), though. 64-bit versions of Windows — like Server 2003 Enterprise — have to use an emulator to use 32-bit programs. It runs automatically, so you won't notice unless you go into the Task Manager. The system comes with 64-bit and a 32-bit versions of IE, since certain 32-bit add-ons won't work in the 64-bit version. There may be issues with 32-bit hardware drivers, too.

In addition, you might want to consider Windows XP Professional x64 edition. As a 64-bit OS, it can use more RAM.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 17:41, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

BSOD is rare, but given significant uptime and heavy load, it happens occasionally and is worth reducing. x64 seems to be risking compatibility issues with some software more than 2k3 would (and if I ever add a new card, driver compatibility may also be an issue), which is my main concern there. It's mostly, is there much that works on XP pro, but won't work on 2k3? (For example, I discovered my anti-virus package won't - the commercial version is needed.) And how do they compare for speed and usability if the various "disabled by defaults" are enabled to match XP? That kind of thing. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:13, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I didn't install very much on it aside from servers: just MS Office 2003 and 2007, Adobe Reader, Mozilla Firefox, Quicktime, and Putty. All of those worked like a charm. I hear that certain applications aren't supported though, like Photoshop. But you can get them to work using the Application Verifier utility from Microsoft.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 22:47, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Live CD vs. live USB

If I take the files of a live CD and save them in a USB, a computer will not boot (even if it is able to boot from a USB stick). Why are the files in a live CD different from the files in a live USB? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 09:23, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

The reason for this is that the CD has a boot sector, which cannot be copied simply by copying the CD's contents to the USB flash drive. I'm not that familiar with how booting from a USB flash drive happens, but I'd guess that even if you were to transfer the entire contents of a CD, including the boot sector, to the USB flash drive, it wouldn't work just like that -- the boot sector is located in a specific physical area of the CD, and unless there was some sort of an emulator program included on the USB flash drive, the computer wouldn't know to look for the boot sector data from the USB flash drive. I may be wrong, but I'm going to be a little surprised if I am. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 11:48, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Most linux live CDs have a script you can run, called something like "bootinst.bat" in DOS or "bootinst.sh" is Bash, to copy a boot sector to the USB drive. If you're looking for a good live USB, I'd go with Slax. It even has a prepackaged distribution to make a live USB download here JessicaN10248 12:29, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I would imagine that booting from a usb drive is the same as booting from an internal hard-drive, with MBRs and such. I mean, they're both drives, why would there be a difference?. The ubuntu wiki gives instructions on how to make a usb-stick with ubuntu on it. Essentially, you just install Ubuntu like you usually do, but on the pendrive itself (with GRUB and everything). --Oskar 19:11, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

IRC shenanigans

I use ChatZilla as my IRC client. I have been banned from several channels based solely on this fact.

Is there a script, plugin, or option to change the CTCP VERSION reply, or disable it altogether?

I would greatly appreciate help. I asked on the Mozilla IRC network but nobody seems to be answering. 75.184.96.180 (talk) 10:36, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Double underscore (_)?

Why do some variables and other things in source code in, for example, Linux, have double underscores? --212.120.246.239 (talk) 12:00, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

This depends on the language. In general, a variable that begins with a single underscore is something that you shouldn't mess with. A variable that begins with a double-underscore is something you really shouldn't mess with. The exact reason could be that it is a system library variable or a private class variable (depending on the language, as I mentioned). -- kainaw™ 12:14, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, so they use that symbol to underscore the fact that you shouldn't mess with it ? StuRat (talk) 04:07, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

It can also just be a convention, such as in the Linux kernel, where "__do_something()" often means "do_something()" but without any mutual exclusion locking. --Sean 14:38, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

It's often system-variables and such. For instance, in PHP, there's stuff like $_GET which is the GET arguments in a HTTP request, in Python, there's stuff like the doc-string that documents a function and such, __doc__ --Oskar 19:04, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

In a standard conforming C++ implementation (and likely other language implementations), names containing double underscores are reserved to the implementation. This serves at least two purposes. First, it allows the implementation to freely use these names in header (include) files and libraries for undocumented, implementation-dependent uses without interfering with names defined in a standard conforming program. For example, the mechanism for file I/O may contain numerous implementation defined functions and global data structures named with two leading underscores. Second, it is common for strongly typed languages to use name mangling to assign "decorated" names to user defined functions. These decorated names encode the original function name, argument and return types, and other contextual information. For example, the abs() in the std library might have different (overloaded) versions taking either an integer, float, or double value as an argument. The actual function name generated by the compiler might (theoretically) be called __std__abs__i, __std__abs__f, and __std__abs__d, so that the linker can distinguish between them. This also prevents accidentally calling a function that expects one type of argument from code that passes a different data type. -- Tcncv (talk) 01:32, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good answer for C as well. The ISO standard says:

All identifiers that begin with an underscore and either an uppercase letter or another underscore are always reserved for any use.

-- Coneslayer (talk) 12:27, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Reinstall missing qt-mt.dll

When I try to start up an application, an error message appears, telling me it has failed to start because qt-mt.dll was not found and that reinstalling it may fix the problem. I looked for it on my computer and obviously haven't found it; I googled the problem and I found out that reinstalling Apple's QuickTime might have been a solution. I did that {QuickTime version 7 for Windows Vista} and still that same error message keeps appearing. Any help would be highly appreciated, thanks for your time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.33.143.131 (talk) 16:20, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I suspect QuickTime thought it was doing an upgrade and that the file was already in place and unchanged. I would uninstall QuickTime, reboot and reinstall. However, I have QuickTime installed. Everything appears to work for me and I do not have the file either. - But, I'm XP and not Vista. --Wonderley (talk) 20:06, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm seeing a lot of references to Adobe Photo Album Starter Edition when trying to track this one down, but I don't have a specific answer yet. When you say "when I try to start up an application" do you mean any application, or one specific application? Do you Photo Album on your system? --LarryMac | Talk 20:17, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikis!

I am the webmaster for my company and I was given the job of finding a new host to do a complete rehaul of our website. The first thing I thought of was a wiki and I set out to do it. However the wiki I started it on does not like wikis that are made for "commercial gain" so it will soon be deleted. Try as I might I can't find a wiki-provider that lets you do this. Anyone know of one that will allow commercial websites? It can even be paid for, it just needs to be editable (word?) in wiki style. Thanks, schyler (talk) 20:40, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not an expert but I think you can install the MediaWiki software on your own paid for server and create your own wiki there. Exxolon (talk) 20:52, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

It looks as if you have to have your own server and not use an outside host to use the MediaWiki software. Thanks for the quick response though. schyler (talk) 20:58, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Is Joomla! Something like what you are looking for? --omnipotence407 (talk) 21:10, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Where did you get that from? I have a MediaWiki installation running fine on shared hosting and I'm pretty sure there's nothing in the license prohibiting it. As omnipotence407 suggested, if it's a standard public-facing website you may be better off with something like Joomla. I've heard good things about Textpattern also. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 13:53, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

How do you check cpu temperature?

I tried using speedfan but it only shows the temperature of my hard drive and nothing else. I remember I used the program about a year ago on a different computer and it was fine, but now I just downloaded it and it doesn't work.--75.187.116.121 (talk) 20:40, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

PC Wizard has an accurate sensor module, amongst other things... Sandman30s (talk) 20:53, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Try Motherboard Monitor. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 20:52, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

PC wizard doesn't show temperature for my computer and neither does motherboard monitor. Could it be perhaps my computer doesn't have any thermometers on it?--75.187.116.121 (talk) 21:24, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes; either you don't have a sensor, it's broken, or the software doesn't recognise it. Does your motherboard manual talk about a sensor? You could also try SiSoft Sandra which is updated often. Sandman30s (talk) 11:15, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Website hosting and making.

Hello. I came here because I'm currently looking for a free website hosting service, preferably one that is relatively good, reliable and trustworthy. Do you guys have any particular websites to recommend? Furthermore, do you have any other advice along the lines of you should start doing this, it would be convenient for you to do that, etc? I'm honestly not experienced in making a website nor in finding good services to host one, so any suggestions, ideas and information would be quite appreciated. Thank you in advance. --Laura K. O'Connor (talk) 20:51, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Google has a pretty basic, no-nonsense Google Page Creator that I have personally experimented with. Google Sites is a structured wiki. If you are looking for a simple, free of cost option for a small website (Google Page Creator has a limit of total size 100 MB, uploaded files have to be 10 MB or smaller), you should look into these options before forking out a lot of money. Kushal (talk) 01:28, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Your ISP might offer free hosting as a part of your packge wih them. Check out their home page. Astronaut (talk) 17:50, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

A file renamer

I need a Windows XP file renamer that is capable of:

1. Monitor a folder
2. Rename the file saved into the folder to:

• the time of saving, or
• the time of moving in, or
• a serial number.

For example, if I put the file New Text Document.txt (or whatever.jpg or .gif) into the monitored folder, the renamer shall rename the file to either:

• 200807071533.txt, or
• 07071533.txt, or
• 1533.txt, or
• 0001.txt

I want to sort the files. -- Toytoy (talk) 20:52, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I wanted to reply on this earlier but I was afraid of stating the obvious. You need to have some sort of programming knowledge to do this - perhaps VB scripting. This would be trivial to do in a high-level language such as Visual Basic, Delphi or C. Also, your specs are a bit vague so if someone is kind enough to write it for you, be a bit more specific. Sandman30s (talk) 11:19, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Sandman is right, you will need to create your own custom script to do this. If you are willing to forgo the "monitor folder" function, Métamorphose (renamer) might be able to do most of what you ask... — QuantumEleven 13:08, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Send email from command line without having to specify an SMTP server?

Are there any programs out there that will allow me to send an email from the command line without specifying an SMTP server? maybe it has some SMTP thing built in? --69.74.33.222 (talk) 21:34, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

It depends on your ISP. Some ISPs block port 25 on computers. Atomic Mailer will do the trick, although it's not command-based. Of course, you can also just set up an SMTP server on your computer. If you have XP Professional, you already have one as part of IIS that you can install from a Windows CD. You'd then telnet into the local host (127.0.0.1).--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 22:59, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

You only need an SMTP server on the receiving side. Any program can just open port 25 on the receiver side and send the mail. You don't say, but if you're on something Unix-like, doing a simple:

mail someone@somewhere.com < message.txt

will do the right thing. There's no SMTP server required on the client side. Check out Simple Mail Transfer Protocol#Sample communications for how it works. --Sean 19:03, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

When are we no longer at the mercy of our ISPs?

Dear Wikipedians:

Some of you may have undoubtedly heard about a Canadian Internet Service Provider, Bell, throttling its customer's P2P bandwidth. While feeling angry, I also felt quite helpless because there isn't even the option of voting with my wallet because the only other independent ISP in Canada is Rogers, which also practices throttling, even worse than Bell.

So my question is this: when are we no longer held at the mercy of our ISPs? I.e. when could we directly plug into the Internet without going through any third-party ISPs?

And on a related note, when can people who are harassed by their no-good governments such as Myanmar can get up and say "I've had enough, I quit!!!" and be able to settle into a new country and start a new life? I see both of these problems as being on the same philosophical ground.

Any input from you is much appreciated!

74.12.39.212 (talk) 23:10, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

My ISP (Comcast) did the same thing. So I now use Warez Bulletin Board. You download from Rapid Share through your browser. It's pretty fast (850 kps minimum), but you have to pay about $10 a month to use it. Now my ISP is considering throttling downloads across the board for certain users (i.e., me). I guess my downloading 4 DVDs a day was getting on their nerves!--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 23:17, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm...maybe I should consider getting a paid Rapidshare account too, almost everything is found on there nowadays. 74.12.39.105 (talk) 02:02, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Not anytime soon, I'm afraid. The reason for this is simple: somebody is going to have to install and maintain the actual network cables, DNS servers, pay for the electric bill on all that hardware, do the tech support when required and whatnot. In theory, we could just do all that ourselves, but in practice the costs would be prohibitive.

As for your second question... I suppose that in theory, at least, they can pretty much do it on the spot, and become refugees, and a lot of people have done so. In practice, though, it's a lot harder than that. To start with, they'd have to have the means to leave the country, which may not be all that easy. Also, a lot of them might not even want to leave their country, since it's still their home and probably the only place they've ever known -- at least over there they have friends and family. Also, unfortunately a lot of the people living under conditions like this aren't particularly educated -- I mean, in the case of Myanmar, according to the usually-dependable CIA Factbook over 10% of the country aren't even literate -- so their understanding and knowledge of what becoming a refugee might involve or how to go about becoming one may not be very good, even if they have the means... And in case of Myanmar, what with almost 33% of the population estimated to live below the poverty line, it's a safe bet that most of them would have a real hard time leaving the country without help. Obviously, these really shitty governments run by moral cripples generally aren't breaking their backs making things any easier for anyone on that front. That's just a part of the equation, though, since even though leaving these countries is often very difficult, settling into a new country may not be much easier. Unless you're educated enough to speak another language, getting a job in a new country is going to be difficult, even if you're accepted as a refugee. Your job skills might be pretty much worthless in another society. Racism is often a factor. Chances are it's pretty difficult. So when could we expect it to become any easier? Geez, I don't know. Not anytime soon, I'm afraid. Still, we've made progress on that front over the years. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 23:52, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your detailed response Captain Disdain. That certainly sheds a lot of light on this subject and now I have a better grasp of what a refugee means. I also understand why "education" is top priority for so many charitable organizations working in Africa, because without it people are blind and helpless to change their predicaments. 74.12.39.105 (talk) 02:02, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

There is a common misconception that there is some sort of Internet to plug into. Anyone who has this view simply doesn't understand "Internet Protocol." There is no magical wire to attach your computer to. You just need to get your computer to talk to any other computer that is using the Internet Protocol. Then, if that computer is talking to other computers, you too can talk to them. That is basically how it works. Your computer talks to your ISP's computer which is talking to many others that talk to many others that talk to many others. This is easy to see if you have Linux by running traceroute on a connection. It shows you the name of every computer that your requests bounces through to get to the destination. As for being limited to one ISP - you aren't. You have slower dial-up services for less money. You have faster fiber access for a lot more money. You probably have only one home-based broadband service - not one ISP. As for throttling, the throttling I've seen (such as the work done by Comcast) is easy to undo. I just added one line to my ipchain file to ignore Comcast's attempt to reset my torrent connections and it doesn't bother me at all. -- kainaw™ 00:05, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Cool, could you tell us what is that one line you added?--76.79.202.34 (talk) 01:53, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Same here. I'm all ears! 74.12.39.105 (talk) 02:04, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

You can read a whole article about how it works and how to implement it here. -- kainaw™ 02:08, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Vista vs XP

Pros, cons etc? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.76.171.151 (talk) 23:14, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Please see Windows Vista and Windows XP. Your request for "pros, cons etc" is apparently a request for opinions and an attempt to start a discussion. This is a reference desk, not a discussion forum. If you need to discuss this topic with others, please try using one of the millions of discussion forums elsewhere on the Internet. -- kainaw™ 23:55, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

A comparison can be made based purely on facts, not opinions. Vista generally requires a far more capable computer to run a given application than Windows XP. For example, a product I teach is called Zoom Text. Here are the minimum system reqs under each OS:

   Vista          XP
===========   ==========
1500 MHz      450 MHz
1000 MB RAM   256 MB RAM

As you can see, the Vista computer requires 3-4 times the resources to run the same app. Here's my source: [12]. StuRat (talk) 03:41, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

(It's dissapointing isn't it.. - makes me wonder how fast my computer would be if I still had windows 3.1) 87.102.86.73 (talk) 08:08, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

The questioner did not ask for a comparison. The question was for "pros/cons". Do you know why Vista requires more resources? It could be doing good things that XP doesn't do. It could just be the transparent window borders. It could be a pro. It could be a con. Labelling it as one or the other is a matter of opinion, not a fact. If the question said, "Please give comparisons between the resource requirements for Vista and XP," I would have given a completely different response. -- kainaw™ 13:35, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd just say that an 'average' user will be able to do exactly the same things in XP as in Vista, (though not necessarily with the same ease) but look at Windows_Vista#New_or_improved_features bearing in mind what has been said above.87.102.86.73 (talk) 09:16, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

July 8

Image information utility

Does anyone know of any utility which is a perfect analogy to pictures/images as gspot is to media files? Is there a handy little app which will quickly scan a picture and display all relevant info (type of picture, resolution, dimensions, metadata (if any), etc.) about the image? Thanks!--76.79.202.34 (talk) 01:48, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

It's not quite a utility in the same way as GSpot, but IrfanView can open pretty much every image format out there, and its "properties" (Image -> Information) displays a lot of information about the image, including EXIF data (if any). Hope that helps! — QuantumEleven 13:03, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Windows Vista (and perhaps XP too) lets you add more columns to the display in explorer, including columns for thedata such as resolution, dimensions, colour depth etc. In detailed view, right-click on one of the existing column headings and choose "more..." Astronaut (talk) 17:59, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Broken track ball on Blackberry Curve 8310

I dropped my Blackberry Curve phone one too many times. Each time I dropped it, it literally broke in three pieces but I was able to put in back together and everything worked fine. But after this last drop, the track ball light does not work. How do you fix it? I already called the AT&T store where I bought the phone and they said that they don't do repairs. --Anthonygiroux (talk) 13:42, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

From live CD to HDD

I have a working live CD with Puppy Linux and a non-working hdd (NTFS) with Windows. If I copy the files of the live CD on my Windows HDD, will my computer start from them? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.128.154.226 (talk) 17:38, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Only if you set up your boot loader so it knows where the Puppy Linux OS is. Every computer I've built uses grub as the bootloader. I tell grub how to boot (where the OS is). I can have multiple OSs and grub will ask me which one to boot from. Just copying the OS to a harddrive is half of it. -- kainaw™ 17:50, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

If you boot Puppy from the Live-CD, you should be able to mount a NTFS partition using the disk mounter application. See http://www.puppylinux.com/faq.htm ("Q: NTFS partition") for more help. Astronaut (talk) 18:04, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Netgear

Can I use a Netgear "54mbps Wireless ADSL modem router" hub like a wireless card and connect to another wireless networks, like for example a hotspot, and use their internet? Or is the hub only an outgoing device? RHODOPSIN DRINKER (talk • contribs) 20:30, 8 July 2008 (UTC)