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September 12

64-bit OS compability

Are most 32 bit DVD ROM computer games able to operate on 64-bit systems like windows vista 64 bit edition.--logger (talk) 00:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Maybe. Some game use a copy-protection scheme that is basically a driver (SecuROM? Others?). Those kind likely would not work unless you could get a 64-bit version from the copy-protection maker's website. I'm not sure about the likes of SafeDisc (I know of very few DVD-based games that actually use SafeDisc, though). Washii (talk) 02:55, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, most will be fine. As stated above, older versions of SecuROM may be an issue, and StarForce is an even bigger one (it will force its driver to install on x64 Vista even if it shouldn't be able to, which you have to watch out for; it obviously won't work, but Windows will complain about having an unsigned driver installed when you try to boot); however, you can download updated versions of these from the company's website so it's not a huge problem. Some games have other minor issues on 64-bit Vista vs. 32-bit Vista for some odd reasons, but I haven't run across any issues personally. 130.179.33.33 (talk) 15:18, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

mouse

why does the cursor move when mouse is moved —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.244.6 (talk) 07:19, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Because that is the purpose of the computer mouse? What use would the mouse be if it didn't? Or do you mean 'how' does the cursor move? 194.221.133.226 (talk) 09:03, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

The physical movement of the mouse (around your desk) is converted into the movement of your cursor on the screen, as the computer mouse article describes. The manual for the first Microsoft mouse included instructions for programming this yourself; the unit of distance for mouse movement was (I swear) the "mickey."

Some mice (or their drivers) also have programming so that the faster you move the mouse over a given distance, the further you move the cursor on the screen. --- OtherDave (talk) 10:31, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

They're still called mickeys: <google search>. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 10:54, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Specifically: Moving the mouse causes a pair of numbers to be transmitted to the computer describing how far it moved in the left/right and up/down directions. As others have pointed out - these numbers are in units called "Mickeys" - and the size of a mickey depends on the sensitivity of your mouse. Precisely how those numbers are arrived at depends on the kind of mouse you have.

• The old fashioned mice with the ball inside have a pair of rollers that the ball pushes against - as the ball spins, the rollers are rotated and those in turn rotate a pair of disks with little holes cut into them all around. As the disk spins, it interrupts a light beam and the teeny-tiny computer inside the mouse counts the number of times this happens in each direction and turns that into mickeys.
• Modern "optical" mice actually have an amazingly cheap/tiny camera inside them that looks down at your desk top and takes a picture of it many times a second. When you move the mouse a small amount, the next picture is shifted a bit to one side compared to the previous one - and by figuring out how much it has to move the next picture to line up with the previous one, it knows how far the mouse moved. This is why your mouse doesn't work on really smooth, uniformly colored surfaces...the pictures are all the same color all over! The red LED underneath the mouse just provides enough light for the camera to see by (it's pretty dark under your mouse otherwise).

The mickey data is sent along with the current state of the mouse's buttons and scroll wheel(s) to the computer either down a wire or over an infra-red or short-range radio link into some circuitry inside the computer proper - where it can be read by the operating system software. The windowing system knows where the cursor is pointing at right now - and when the mouse says it moved (such-and-such number of mickey's to the left or right and such and such upwards or downwards), the software simply adds those numbers to the last position the cursor was at to get the new position. If you change the mouse's sensitivity - then it may multiply or divide the number of mickeys by some number to convert it into pixels on the screen.

The cursor can be drawn in one of two ways - it can just be rendered as graphics onto the screen (a "soft cursor") or the graphics chip may have special cursor-drawing hardware that can render a cursor at a specific place on the screen that the operating system can change.

Application programs can also tell the operating system to move the cursor (typically used to "jump" it into a dialog box it just popped up or something) - this is called "warping the mouse" and it's generally frowned upon by user interface experts. Programs can also load up different cursor shapes and tell the operating system what shape to use in which parts of the screen.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:16, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

IE 6 vs. 5

'sup, bud.

I have a legacy computer running Windows 2000. I updated it as much as possible, installing Internet Explorer 6 SP1 and making Firefox 3 the default browser. However, PC World´s "25 Worst Tech Products of All Time" says that any browser is better than IE 6 ... So, does that mean that I should uninstall IE 6 and replace it with the default IE 5? I ask because viruses -- even if they don't arrive through the browser -- usually attack IE. In terms of security, which is better?--Welcome Home Cover 56 (talk) 10:58, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

IE6 is better than IE5, but why are you using such an old IE? Does IE7 not run on Win2K? Even that has security vulnerabilities.

• IE5.5
• IE6.x
• IE7.x
• FF3

If you have FF3 you don't need IE at all. - Phydaux (talk) 12:33, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

And if you have IE7 you don't need FF at all. Hey, i can do it to, absolutely nothing todo with what the original poster was asking but I forced my misguided and childish opinion into the debate too! On topic, in terms of security, a fully patched IE6 is definetly more secure, and usefully, standards compliant than IE5. You don't have anything to worry about that you wouldn't with any other Browser. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 12:49, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

It's not childish or useless to point out to the OP that, since they have already chosen FF3 as their default browser, they don't actually need to worry about IE updates, or about IE at all. Algebraist 12:55, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Many 3rd party programs were written depending on features installed with IE, so un-installing IE will break them. (I don't know your setup, so ???)

MS update only works with IE. Also some website only work with IE (the websites are broken, not the other browsers).

Keep IE6, it works fine and you might need it some time. Use FF3 'cause if you're a MS corporate drone you sound silly when you say "'sup, bud". Saintrain (talk) 14:02, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

'Sup, bud. I'd install IE 7, but MS says it doesn't work in Win 2k. I primarily use IE 7 on my XP box because developers design their sites to look good inside of IE. (The Win 2k setup is for a friend.) I hear IE 6 is less secure than IE 7. Site layouts also seem to get broken more often inside of IE 6 than IE 7. I just have bad memories of viruses displaying pop-ups even when I wasn't using IE. They would install ActiveX plugins into IE, even though the virus entered the computer as a malicious EXE, for example. But, as Jimmi mentioned, IE 6 is better than 5, so I'll just stick with that along with FF 3. Thanks, guys! (Especially Jimmi and Phydaux.)--Welcome Home Cover 56 (talk) 03:06, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

A little nitpick: good designers design their sites to look good inside standards compliant browsers, and spend sleepless nights trying to fix it to work with the quirks and incompatibilities of IE6. Microsoft is now experiencing the consequence of their failed EEE tactic, needing to include 3 different rendering modes for their Internet Explorer 8 just to keep those tag soup IE only websites working. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:27, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Monetize open source software development

Besides consulting and web-ads, what other ways of monetizing OS software are there? Mr.K. (talk) 11:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

There's:

• Hosting - say you write an open-source timesheet-management program: your customers could download it and run it on their own servers, but you can offer them hosted service where you set it up and configure it for their requirements, host it on your (enterprise grade, redundant) servers in a secure data centre, and take care of stuff like security and backups for them.
• Hardware - you could be developing firmware for an embedded device like a storage array or a network device (like a firewall or entireprise spam filter). By using open-source software you can get a lot of the basic stuff done fast, but you retain your advantage because much of your business's value-add is the hardware, which you own.
• Ancillary products - e.g. you write an open-source database which grabs some of Oracle's market, then you sell add-ons like backup systems and management programs and additional storage providers. The degree to which you can do this is contingent on the open-source or free-software licence you choose, and the kind of linking you employ.

And remember that with most OS/FS licences you can make money from your and others' OS/FS software by offering them as a web-service you can make changes and not release those changes back to the originating products (as you're allowing access to the software but not disseminating the software itself. That's largely how Google does things, and is something that licences like the Affero General Public License are designed to prevent. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:19, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• Money and Source status are completely separate issues, and there are many many situations in which open source software is sold. Whether or not you choose to release the source code for a product has no bearing on the commerical, monetary or "moral" aspects of the software. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 12:45, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, let's not pretend it doesn't have some bearing from a practical standpoint. Obviously if I can download the code for free and compile it myself (or someone can download it, compile it, and have the binaries available to download), I don't necessarily need to pay you for it the same way I would proprietary software. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 14:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

True, but you won't get any enterprise-level support, unless you pay a separate fee. That is basically how RHEL works. They build you their core system, and for buckets'o'money they will keep those systems running, and even work on patches to make those systems perform better (to a certain extent). Washii (talk) 16:50, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Right but how many people actually use "enterprise-level support"? I mean, I don't even use that on the proprietary software I have. I'm just saying, your ordinary consumer is not going to pay for something they can get for free. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 22:12, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually... it depends first upon the license. If we accept that the terms Open Source and Proprietary Source are more than the definitions as controlled by the FSF and OSI respectively (the argument people here used to keep the Proprietary Software article when I wanted to move it,) then we can't stipulate about any single license. More Importantly, correct me if i'm wrong but doesn't the GPL say that the only people who are required to have the source distributed to them are people who correctly gained the binaries? So companies can very easily limit it, the consumers ability to then pass on their own modified source code aside. So actually, it doesn't have any bearing unless you just want to make up arguments why Open Source is better than Closed Source. I don't have an opinion either way because it's silly to think about outside to context of each individual product, and i've released as many open source tools as I have closed source. More importantly though, proprietary products can be open source. It may be a shock to find out the opinions you're copying, without having ever considered them, are wrong, but look up the word proprietary, and you'll see that there is no justification for the idea that a proprietary piece of software cannot also be open source. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 17:07, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

"correct me if i'm wrong but doesn't the GPL say that the only people who are required to have the source distributed to them are people who correctly gained the binaries?" That really only helps if you're making a web application. Once you've actually given someone the code they can redistribute it to their heart's content. APL (talk) 18:32, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Exactly as i said immediately after that quote... however in terms of open source, as opposed to "free" software, that doesn't have to be entirely true either. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 21:02, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, right, I was simplifying things a bit by using open source to refer to free software primarily, though I'm well aware there is proprietary open source. Assuming the OP was talking about free software, then it definitely puts bounds on the practical moneymaking opportunities. If you just mean it as a business model, it still can have some practical implications, though for most people compiling binaries is more difficult than just pirating the thing from a torrent. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 22:12, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Help with source code and compiling (bash)

I am trying to modify some source code for a .deb package of flash plugin. That .deb package is a metapackage that dowloads and install the flash player, and what I wanted to do was to modify it/compile it so I would already include the "full" flash installer (for offline use), so my questions are:

• Do I need to modify the source code? (It already contains references to "flashplugin-nonfree/local", so it seems to be looking for a local file...)
• If I need to modify it, what exactly to I need to do?
• Then, how do I then compile it, including the full flash installer? (can I just drop the .tar.gz file in the folder where the source is?)

I found references to "flashplugin-nonfree/local" in 2 files, postinst and config (in case that helps). By the way, I think the language is bash. I hope someone can help me out... Hacktolive (talk) 15:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

What are some words that I could easily type with one hand?

The word needs to be at least 8 letters long, and all the letters should be very close together on the keyboard.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 15:49, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

The full chemical name of Titin at 189,819 letters, typing very slowly with one finger. Is that cheating? JessicaThunderbolt 16:12, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

not helpful.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 23:31, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

rewarded? 207.58.235.243 (talk) 16:26, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

helpful.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 23:31, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Stewardesses. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 16:32, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

helpful.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 23:31, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Right hand or left? qwerty keyboard? - Lambajan 16:33, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

at least attempted to be helpful.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 23:31, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Here's 280 words you can type with your left hand. (That are >= 8 letters long, with a qwerty keyboard.)APL (talk) 16:36, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

most helpful of all; You get the prize! (that was a real question, but if anyone would like to hire me to be the Reference Desk mystery shopper, let's talk turkey).--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 23:31, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Rearward, rearward and REARWARD, Refreeze, refreeze and REFREEZE. I got six left-hand words without even trying, I should get a consolation prize.

And of course, why would one have a need to type 8-letter words with just one hand? You can see where that sort of question might draw unhelpful replies. (and it's OK, we get lots of mystery shoppers here!) :) Franamax (talk) 23:39, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Curiously, I'm stumped for right-handers. Plominik? Kopility? ETAOIN SHRDLU is well-distributed across the Qwerty keyboard (by design), but the right side has got me beat right now, and I notice that all the answers so far have been left-side. Franamax (talk) 23:48, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

The longest I find in Ubuntu's /usr/share/dict/words is "polyphony". It's nowhere near the longest left-handers like "stewardesses" and "aftereffects", which kind of makes sense: there are fewer letters on the right-hand half of the keyboard, and also the two most common vowels and the most common consonant are all on the left-hand side. The full lists, if anyone's interested, are here and here. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 05:02, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, if you say there are fewer letters on the right-hand half of the keyboard, my first instinct would be to ask how you define "half". But that brings up a meta-question - why the paucity of useful stuff on the right side? All the punctuation is over there - do we need our (for most people) dominant hand for dots and braces? Qwerty typewriters were designed to slow down the key rate, since the mechanical key escapement only worked so fast and no faster - but am I now seeing an additional lowering of the right-hand typing frequency? Most cunning if so. Franamax (talk) 06:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

QWERTY wasn't actually designed to slow down the key rate. It were designed so that certain commonly used combinations would not conflict with the mechanics of the original machine. See QWERTY. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 17:54, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Now we have all we need to log in as the Fat Man :) ... password-entering efficiency is it? Whiskeydog (talk) 01:50, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Here's my secret password strategy: you want both hands to be making small motions, almost simultaneously, and in directions where the hand obscures the finger motion. This makes the hardest possible task for anyone watching your keystrokes when you login. For instance, try this "poasl23l" - natural finger movements, very hard to pick up if you're watching for a scoop. Of course, you have to make sure you're typing that at the Password: prompt, if you do it at Login:, you're left pleading with someone to not reveal your ultimate perfect password. :) :( Franamax (talk) 06:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Serious looking free web-page

What free hosting provider would you recommend for a self-employed consultant? I thought about Google Pages, but the service was discontinued as Google Sites kicked in. The problem with the latter is that the adresse structure (http://sites.google.com/site/username instead of http://username.googlepages.com) gives the impression that the site is not independent of other similar sites. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 17:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Serious looking and free is rather difficult. A consultant in any serious field (i.e. no motivational, success or intercultural consulting) should be able to pay the (historically) ridiculous low prices of web-hosting and domain register. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.12.16.56 (talk) 17:25, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm a fan of 110MB.com. It has a lot of junk-sites floating around, but all the available upgrades are really quite awesome. Washii (talk) 17:56, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I've not actually done this myself, but couldn't you register your own domain and sign up with a redirector? When I clicked on mr-K.com/awesomepage.html, it would get passed on to sites.google.com.site/mr-K as an HTTP GET for awesomepage.html.

I'll chime in with the questions here, does it actually work the way I just said? Franamax (talk) 06:34, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Kind of ish. One way of doing this is to register a domain name, then sign up with Google Apps (free), and set up a Google Site that way. Google Apps will give you instructions on setting up a CNAME entry, so when one goes to http://www.yourdomain.com it will pull up the Google site you've created. You will still be paying money for the domain itself, though it's usually only a few dollars per year. There is no way to look professional without spending any money. 24.76.161.28 (talk) 23:48, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I strognly agree that you should pay to get proper web hosting - having a page on a 'free' site says to potential employers that your business is so shaky that it can't afford $9.95 per month - so you probably won't be around for long. When they visit your site it'll be laden with adverts - which just screams "Amateur!". They will conclude that you are a not a serious consultant and that you may not stay in business long enough to complete their contract. So find a decent web hosting company (I use and recommend 'dreamhost.com' but there are a gazillion others) - register a nice domainname, set up your web site AND your email address to refer to that domain and build yourself a super-professional-looking web site. You'll get more disk space than you'll ever need - you'll be able to set up things like Wiki's and document control systems (Subversion, for example), forums and blogs - you can also have multiple email addresses ("info@yoursite.com", "abuse@yoursite.com", etc) all sorts of services that'll improve your business and give the impression that you are in this for the long run. SteveBaker (talk) 14:19, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Splitting commands in Python

In Python, is there an easy way to split input like commandline shells do? For example:

• Input: command arg1 arg2 "a long arg3" arg4 "arg5 \"still arg5" arg6
• Output:
  • command
  • arg1
  • arg2
  • a long arg3
  • arg4
  • arg5 "still arg5
  • arg6

--grawity 17:55, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Here is probably the worst python program ever written -

import sys
s = sys.stdin.readline()

# HACK: change escaped quotes into a magic string that we hope will never arise
s2 =s.replace('\\"', 'COWABUNGA')

# split the command into blocks along " edges - this leaves quoted params
# as the odd elements (HACK: assuming the line doesn't begin with a quoted param)
s3 = s2.split('"')

# HACK: undo the horrible hack above
for i in range(0, len(s3)):
    s3[i] = s3[i].replace('COWABUNGA', '\\"')

# build the final output array
s4 = []
for i in range(0,len(s3)):
    if i%2==0:
        # a bunch of unquoted args, so split 'em out
        for x in s3[i].strip().split(' '):
            s4 += [x]
    else:
        # a quoted arg, so append without splitting
        s4 += [s3[i]]
    
for y in s4:
    print y

but it (kind of ) works. Boy I shoulda used a regexp :) 87.114.18.90 (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 19:18, 12 September 2008 (UTC).

Nah, it's wrong, it doesn't handle escaped escapes properly \\" 87.114.18.90 (talk) 19:22, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

try:

import sys, shlex
print shlex.split(sys.stdin.readline())

-- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:55, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Website help

At my current location, I can only access dicionary/reference websites. Like Wikipedia, dictionary.com, books.google.com and even Urban Dictionary. I cannot access any other website outside of these types of websites. Even informative websites like CNN.com. Is there a website that can help me get around this problem? Is there a dummy site that fits the dictionary/reference criteria to help me get around our firewall?--Endlessdan and his problem 18:49, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

There are several methods. A web proxy would be best but these are probably blocked for you also. Try https://tor-proxy.net/, which uses the SOCKS protocol; but be warned it is very, very slow and unreliable. If you can get into your web browsers proxy settings you can route your traffic through a SOCKS connection, which might bypass the firewall. Personally I recommend Tor which will bypass most firewalls, however you would need to install it on the computer. Do you have administrator rights or is it a restricted workstation? If you're unable to install, can you use USB Flash dives? If so, on an unrestricted computer install Portable Tor onto a USB drive and you should be able to run it on the other computer. Also you'll need Portable Firefox as the computer's web browser will probably not allow you to change the settings. In Firefox change the proxy server in advanced settings to "localhost" and port "8118". JessicaThunderbolt 19:25, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I am on a restricted station. I tried using a web proxy, but that was a no go. The website you recommended, tor-proxy did not work. I got a 'page cannot be displayed' message. --Endlessdan and his problem 19:38, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Can you access Google Translator? If so, try this for CNN - http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com&hl=ar&ie=UTF-8&sl=ar&tl=en Here, I have Arabic to English, though of course CNN.com is not in Arabic. It's already in English, and that's what you get, but indirectly. --Aude (talk) 22:19, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Is Coral Content Distribution Network allowed? You can use it just by adding .nyud.net to the website address. Also, try Google cache. — Shinhan < talk > 12:21, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Linux recognition of wireless card

At the suggestion of members of this board, I recently installed Ubuntu to make my system dual boot. However, when I pull up Ubuntu, it's unable to recognize my wireless card. I am currently using a Dell 1505 802.11n, and I cannot find any drivers for Unix. Additionally, I believe Ubuntu may be able to read the network to some degree, because when I installed it, it (incorrectly) reset the time to GMT, indicating it had network access to the time. Any suggestions? Magog the Ogre (talk) 19:49, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

If you cannot find any native drivers you can always install NDISwrapper and go here to find what windows driver you need. Then install the Win driver with NDISwrapper. Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 20:04, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Try this. --antilived^{T | C | G} 22:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

QBasic

In Qbasic, I have

PRINT "The answer is"; firstNumber; +  secondNumber; =

firstNumber and secondNumber are variables. How do you get QBasic to add the two variables? Wiki131wiki (talk) 20:36, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

PRINT "The answer is"; firstNumber +  secondNumber; =  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.164.115 (talk) 20:42, 12 September 2008 (UTC) 

The semicolon in there makes the compiler view the variables as separate, so it has to be removed. I'm not well-versed in QBASIC (I learned with JBASIC, myself), but you could also just have

thirdNumber = firstNumber + secondNumber
PRINT "The answer is "; thirdNumber

That way, you could leave the equation straight out of the text. I'm pretty sure that would work in QBASIC; it would in JBASIC, at any rate. The syntax may need to be played with a bit, but try something along those lines. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 20:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Wiki131wiki (talk) 16:35, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

What should I learn when I outgrow MS Excel?

In my work, I have to manipulate a lot of data. The datasets are not unusually large and the math involved is rarely anything more complicated than arithmetic. But, I find Excel very limiting and oftentimes I have to piece together convoluted solutions to force Excel to do what I want it to. I end up with lots of formulas such as:

=AVERAGE((INDIRECT("'Normalized mass'!R[8]C["&(COLUMN()/2)&"]", FALSE)):(INDIRECT("'Normalized mass'!R[8]C["&(COLUMN()/2+2)&"]", FALSE)))

or

=SUMIF((INDIRECT(R[6]C[-10]&RC21)):(INDIRECT(R[6]C[-10]&R[1]C21)), ">0")

I can usually make things work, but if there is a mistake or if I want to make a change a month down the road, it can be difficult to go back and figure it out again, because it just looks like gobbledygook. So I think I need to learn a new method for manipulating datasets, but I don't know what that method is. Do I need to learn a programming language? Would something like MATLAB be good for me? Any other ideas for tools I should learn about? ike9898 (talk) 22:02, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Python is pretty easy to learn and one generally produces programs that are much more legible than that scary formula. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:45, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Excel is extremely limiting. If you are dealing with large datasets and wanting to perform manipulations on them, you probably will want to look into database programming. For example, it is pretty trivial to get Excel data into Microsoft Access, and from there you can pretty easily (with VBScript) perform systematic manipulations of the data that are custom-tailored to your need. Personally I find dealing with data in Access pretty much the bee's knees as long as you don't struggle with trying to creating custom user interfaces (forms, etc.) for all of it (which is where Access at first appears convenient but quickly becomes burdensome).

Just as an example, here is some sample VB code that goes over a given table (the equivalent of an Excel worksheet), extracts the data from certain fields, does something with them, and then outputs everything into a new field:

dim rst as DAO.Recordset

dim runningTotalOfJohns as Integer;

set rst = CurrentDB.OpenRecordset("SELECT * FROM myTable")

while not rst.eof

if rst("name") = "John" then runningTotalOfJohns = runningTotalOfJohns + 1

if rst("name")="John" and rst("birthday")="09/12/2008" then

rst.edit

rst("message")="happy birthday, John!"

rst.update

end if

rst.movenext

wend

rst.close

As you can probably grasp, this gives you a lot more control over dealing with the data and allows you to express your intentions in a much more logical fashion, rather than making dense little lines like in Excel.

There are other database and code solutions other than Access and VBScript (MySQL is a common free database backend, and you can couple it with PHP and other scripting languages, and there is also OpenOffice.org Base, which is supposed to be a free analog to MS Access, but frankly I find it pretty unusable at the moment), I'm just using it as an example. The point is, this seems to me like the graduation you are talking about in regards to dealing with data—something of this sort. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 23:36, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I love MATLAB and it's well suited to all sorts of data-manipulation problems. Unfortunately, it's also quite expensive. Even companies that have a clear business case for it can be stingy with licenses (he says, with the cynicism of experience). If you're a student, the situation may be better. There are free programming languages like Octave and R that can do a lot of the same things, but I found the MATLAB IDE a lot nicer to work in, especially for interactively playing around with arrays of data. -- Coneslayer (talk) 01:46, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you all for your thoughtful comments! ike9898 (talk) 01:49, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Try Stata or SAS. Brusegadi (talk) 09:01, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Funny nobody mentioned it, but I would have thought a natural progession from Excel is SQL. This is data manipulation after all, and SQL was designed to work ideally with two-dimensional data. You can of course work with Access, but if you want to stick with Microsoft, go with SQL Server. I'm an Oracle person myself. SQL is just the tip of the iceberg, it should open you up to a whole new world of possibilities... Sandman30s (talk) 09:11, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's what I was getting at. The thing about SQL is (in my opinion) you do better to skip most of the "trying to painfully use SQL to do everything at once" and jump to the "I use SQL as a tool to enhance my programming" which is something a bit different. That reflects my own issues with SQL, though—if you can use basic SQL with a scripting language you can do a million things as once, in a much more comfortable syntax, with only a slight performance hit over doing it all at the same time with raw SQL. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:38, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

If you're happy with Excel's performance but just frustrated with how complicated it gets, I'd suggest sticking with it but writing new functions in VBA rather than by combining existing functions directly in the sheet. You'd be able to develop a system of very general and reusable functions, so that when you looked back over your work, you'd see things like getSumOfNormalizedMasses or whatever and know exactly what they did. You'd still have all the convenience and flexibility of Excel. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.164.115 (talk) 16:49, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that VBA runs pretty slow under Excel, and trying to use VBA with Excel is usually more trouble than it is worth. It's very poorly integrated with Excel, in my opinion—even doing simple things is very tough. By comparison, in Access, the VBA is extremely well integrated, very straightforward by comparison. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 17:48, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

September 13

Wireless in Linux

Hello everyone at WP:RD/C. I am having trouble with my wireless internet connection in Kubuntu/Ubuntu (installed the Ubuntu desktop on Kubuntu KDE4). I am dual-booting Win XP pro SP3 and the afore mentioned. I have encryption on the network so I have a security key. In Win, it asks for the key, I type it in, and everything is good: I'm connected. In linux, however, when it says I need to enter a security key, I enter it and it acts like it's connecting and then pops up and asks again. This is the same key I gave Windows and it connected. Any ideas on what I should do to connect? TIA, Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 00:49, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Did you put in the correct encryption standard (WEP, WPA, WPA2, etc.)? Is it asking for your wireless key or password for your keyring? Does your wireless work with an unsecured network? --antilived^{T | C | G} 02:41, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I tried all of the encyption standards so yes. It seems to be asking for my key. I don't know if it works with an unsecured network. I haven't had the chance to try that yet. Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 02:49, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, just on an off-chance - which encryption algorithm are you choosing? Some of the protocols (WPA in particular, I think) let you choose between (again, I think) DES, 3DES and AES. Most cards will auto-negotiate the encryption - so there again, where do you see "auto-negotiate" in your settings? And what other options are there in the click-box? Franamax (talk) 06:51, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Testing Question

Hai Every one, This is Ganesh, i faced one interview question on Testing.Tell me one bug u found which is high severity,low priority and low severity,high priority?please send me solution —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anjaneyaprasad (talk • contribs) 06:46, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Even if we would help you with what is essentially a homework question (and we wouldn't), we couldn't -- we haven't tested the software in question. (Or, if this is in fact a hypothetical homework question that you're just calling an interview, see "we wouldn't".) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 10:07, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Why the heck are your applying for a job you obviously can not do?--mboverload@ 18:27, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

What could that question possibly be measuring, other than "familiarity with the quirky definitions of severity and priority used in our bug-tracking system"? That's not a skill, that's a trivial factoid you could learn in a few seconds the first time you need to use it. Sign of a narcissistic interviewer who's not really interested in the interviewee's abilities. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 20:33, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

These terms are widely used and understood in a standard fashion across the software QA industry (largely following a simplifcation of MIL-STD-882), and are adopted as a general schema used in most bug and issue tracking software. It's a basic way of communicating defect information that anyone in SQA should understand; it's no "factoid". -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:36, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Ganesh, your question is a bit hard to understand. If you're confused about what "priority" and "severity" mean in the context of bug reports, and you're understandably confused about how a very severe bug could still be a low priority, I'll try to explain that.

It depends on a given company's bug-reporting policy, but generally "severity" simply means how bad a bug is - data-loss is the most severe, crashes are severe, whereas stuff like spelling mistakes or minor screen-formatting problems are generally of low severity. "priority" is a measure of how urgently a fix is needed; priority is often changed by product-marketing or engineering people (in some companies priority is left blank by QA staff and is set by PM or engineering-management).

So how can a serious bug be low priority? Surely fixing crashes and stopping customer data being lost or damaged is the highest priority? Usually that's true (and usually bug severity and priority end up being set to much the same value). But occasionally you get weird ones where that's not true - imagine you're testing a database program, and you get it to crash - but the crash only happens when you enter an impossibly long sequence of keystrokes and will only happen on a specific date in the distant past. You'd probably create the bug with a high priority, but (after examining the exact details under which the crash can happen) engineering might set its priority to low, figuring that it will never actually happen in the field.

Now, conversely, how can a very un-serious bug nevertheless have high priority? Imagine the splash screen of your database program somehow manages to misspell the name of the company that makes it. A simple typo rightly has very low seriousness (it doesn't really cause any harm at all - users can do whatever they want as if the bug wasn't there). But this bug gives the product marketing guys apoplexy - "we'll be laughingstocks", they wail (like they're not already...). So they set the priority to super-high, higher than the dataloss bugs and the crashbugs. So they stamp their dainty marketing-guy feet and furrow their low marketing-guy brows and insist that this bug, however trivial its actual consequences to the user really are, must be the first one fixed.

In most organisations, as a tester, you'd generally just either not set priority or set it equal to severity, as deciding which bugs to fix first is rarely a decision QA makes. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:02, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Excellent, Finlay McWalter! Kushal (talk) 10:53, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

If you followed the explanation of priorities, then the other thing you need to know is that this is not a question about knowledge, it is a question about your own experience. You're supposed to tell them about bugs you found in code that you were writing or testing. So no-one here can answer this question, except for you. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 03:32, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

pluggin

Is there a pluggin like NoScript for IE7? If so where can I get it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.128.190.49 (talk) 06:53, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a script for IE7Pro that does this. Nanonic (talk) 15:04, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Firefox/Minefield browser version

When I go to some sites, I see a message saying something like, "upgrade your browser to ie7 or firefox," then it has a like to where I can download them. I use Minefield, the pre-beta version of Firefox, so I am actually ahead of them in technology. I am assuming that they are reading my browser version using some html script/code/thingy. I found where to change the version name in about:config, but what should I change it to (so I can get sites to thing I am using "firefox")? flaminglawyer^c 12:55, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Open about:config. Add a new string entry:

name = general.useragent.override

content = Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1

This will make your browser identify itself as Firefox 3.0.1.

--grawity 15:25, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Foreign languages in office

I bought Microsoft office 2003 bundled with my computer, and as far as I can remember I did not receive any office disks with it, however I would like to use the foreign language spell checker, which is apparently not installed, and when I try to install the programme just requests the original disks to be inserted. Is there another way to get the foreign language data, or should I have been provided with the disks? 92.10.180.245 (talk) 14:39, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

You would usually get the disks with your computer, even if you have an OEM copy of the software. It's possible that your copy of Office might have been pirated or installed illegally. Try http://office.microsoft.com where you may be able to download what you are looking for. Stifle (talk) 22:31, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

If all else fails - you could download and install OpenOffice - it's free and so are all of the spell-correction dictionaries in a bazillion languages. SteveBaker (talk) 02:47, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Chrome source code size - why so huge?

The recently released Google Chrome (Chromium) source code was recently released and i was shocked at how much space it took up - 1.5GB, that's enormous! I can understand things like webkit are extremely complex but how can a web browser source code take up so much space? It must be mostly text with very little in the way of images, so why so massive? Thanks - a confused amateur programmer -Benbread (talk) 16:47, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

A lot of it is because it doesn't just include the source code for a given package that you need to build chrome, but the entire distribution for something, often including substantive test suites. Included in there is cygwin, a Python (programming language) dist, lighttpd, webkit, ICU (which has a massive distribution), libxml (which has a very substantial test suite). There's 32M of network-cache test data. There's all of Google Gears (which is distributed two large binary files totalling 15M). There's 6M just in unit test data for the V8 virtual machine. There's 330M in webkit layout tests and expected results (including some 4563 test-result PNG files). So you didn't really download the sourcecode for a browser, you downloaded a browser, a couple of dozen major open-source projects, and a huge automated test suite for all kinds of things. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:05, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

PHP from the command line (CLI)

Hi y'all. I'm trying to use PHP to create a command line program to run in Terminal on my OSX MacBook. I need it to batch process a bunch of images, and when I've run the code in a browser it works perfectly. But trying to adapt it to run in PHP CLI (command line) has driven me bonkers. In particular, it doesn't seem like any of the GD (Image) functions are supported! I tried looking at the PHP CLI phpinfo information and it doesn't include any image functions there, and even simple things like var_dump(gd_info()); fail ("Call to undefined function: gd_info() in .../crop.php on line 4"). The GD library is not included the "PHP modules" listed when I run php -m from the command line.

So yeah. What do I need to do so that PHP CLI can use the GD library? I haven't really used it as a command line program before. And I really need those image functions (they're the heart of this piece of code). I could re-write it so that it all runs from a browser but this seems like a defeatist approach to it. Anybody have any advice? I haven't been able to find a Google search that enlightened me, and looking over the PHP manual pages relating to both GD and CLI haven't really helped... thanks! --98.217.8.46 (talk) 17:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Some more poking around seems to imply that PHP CLI doesn't compile with GD automatically and to get it to work I'd have to recompile all of PHP... which I'm not interested in doing. So a web version of it, it is... ---98.217.8.46 (talk) 19:48, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the CLI and CGI versions of PHP use different config files (php.ini) - one is in Apache's folder, the CLI one is in PHP's folder. You probably need to edit the CLI config to load GD's module. (Just a guess.) --grawity 09:37, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

OS equivalent of mathematica

What free OS alternative do I have to a package like Mathematica?--Mr.K. (talk) 17:47, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Look here: Comparison of computer algebra systems --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 20:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

A personal favorite is Maxima. It's not entirely as powerful as Mathematica, but it's a fine product nonetheless. 90.235.16.176 (talk) 09:57, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

The comparison link above doesn´t give further information about which one is equivalent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 12:10, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by equivalent? Are you looking for an open-source implementation of the Mathematica language? I'm not aware of any. Wolfram does sell Mathematica for Linux. -- BenRG (talk) 19:23, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I meant one with so much function, graphical display and with a scripting language (could be Python). Mr.K. (talk) 08:42, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm telling you, Maxima! It's exactly what you're looking for! 90.235.12.16 (talk) 11:18, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

How Can I FAX?

I have a hp psc 1315 all-in-one little printer attached to my home desktop. It can print, scan and copy. It can also FAX, but I understand that pages to be FAXed have to be in a certain format. On my "printers and FAXs" page I have a picture of a FAX machine which is ready, and the properties device name is evidently my modem. I believe it has a driver that works, but I can't send or receive. The device tab page says "send yes, receive auto". Upon trying to learn about this I saw something that said the format of a FAXed page has to be something like *.CO??? but when I try to "save as" a page I only get the options *.htm, *.html, *.mht or *.txt, no *.CO something. I can get a page of a letter I've written to go to the FAX on "printers and FAXs" but I can't get it to go to another FAX machine which I know to be available. My connection to the internet is fast cable DSL which includes my telephone, so phone and desktop computer can both be used at the same time. Please help.Wiki asker (talk) 18:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about your specific printer, but in general windows views fax machines as printers. It sounds like this has been correctly installed, as you're seeing a "printer" named fax in the printers-and-faxes screen. To send a fax you send a normal print job to that "fax" device, as if it was a regular physical printer. At that point a special dialog pops up, which gets you to enter the fax # you want to send to (I forget, and it varies, but I believe it also asks you a bunch of other stuff, and optionally generates a simple fax cover page). Give that a try. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:53, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for replying so quickly Finlay. I can generate a cover page with the special dialog, I had made my FAX "printer" the default, and hit send. I know the FAX machine I am sending to is OK but I get the error message "Phone in use or not connected". It keeps trying every 5 minutes until I delete the message in the FAX console outgoing folder.Wiki asker (talk) 12:22, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

That sounds simply as if it's not plugged into the phone line. The fax port on the fax machine has to be plugged into the voice port on your DSL microfilter (not the broadband port). Try getting it to dial your mobile phone; if it can't make your mobile ring, it's not connected to the analog phone line properly. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:27, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

HI Finlay I'm back. I think you are right. I created a cover letter and sent it. I got a small pop up window labeled FAX Monitor which said "Ready to send FAXes" I clicked "send now". It says "Keep this dialog visable at all times check box, Hide, Answer, More/Less; I got: 8:37 Dialing (number) 8:37 No dial tone The phone is in use or not connected. My cell phone is sitting on my desk right next to me and turned on and working and not in use.It's not ringing. Since it gave me the option to answer an incomming FAX I tried "Answer now" just to see what would happen. I got: 8:37 The call was answered 8:37 An error occurred while receiving the FAX I know nobody was sending me a FAX. Since I only have one line from my computer to the modem now and that must be going to the broadband port, how can I make a new line and have only FAXes go to that line? I have a landline phone connected to the modem and I could pull that plug out and plug something else into that receiving hole in the modem but where would the other end of that line go? and what's a DSL microfilter? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wiki asker (talk • contribs) 13:01, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

A microfilter is a little box that plugs into your phone socket and that splits off the signal for the DSL from the ordinary analog phone line. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 14:33, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Make sure you really have that analog line connected to the appropriate port on the HP, not on your PC or broadband modem. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:09, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I found the DSL filter little white box. It has two holes on end A and one on end B. On end A, one line goes to the phone outlet on the wall and the other goes to the phone. On end B the only wire goes to the modem. There is another line from the modem to the PC and another line which goes from the PC to the hp printer. It appears that having the "FAX printer", which has as it's device name the modem, and also having a "printer" which has as it's device name the hp 1315 means that FAXing doesn't actually use the hp at all, so how can it be a FAX machine? I think if the FAXing were working I would hear a dial tone and the other phone ringing, which I don't, so maybe it has something to do with the driver? I think I read somewhere that the incoming and outgoing "letters" are stored in a regular folder, but the FAX console looks just like Outlook Express format. So far I'm just trying to send a cover letter, sending a message and receiving comes next.

The hp printer only has two openings, one goes to and from the PC and the other suplies power from the wall. Also, people who have FAXes have a seperate phone number just for their FAX. I use the same line for both the landline telephone and the PC? If I bought another machine just to do FAXing how would it get messages to and from the PC? I think I could us my PC to send and receive FAX messages just like e-mail.Wiki asker (talk) 19:07, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Your printer doesn't support fax at all, at least not mentioned on the specifications. It seems that you have a modem installed on your computer, so you should plug the phone line into the back of your computer instead. --antilived^{T | C | G} 22:28, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Dear Antilived - THAT DID IT!!! I pluged the regular landline telephone line into the back of the computer and sent a cover letter and it said that it was sent. Unfortunately the recepient was not in his office at the time so he couldn't confirm, but, using a different phone on the same line I was able to call him and he said he would be back in his office in about an hour and would both confirm receipt of first FAX and also try to send me a FAX so I can test receipt on this end. WOW!! THANK YOU!! This is fun! There's nothing like getting information from someone who actually knows what they are talking about.Wiki asker (talk) 16:14, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm back. Both sending and receiving worked but I can't see the incomming letter in the fax console because I get the error message: "The fax document cannot be displayed because your operating system does not have a default viewer for fax documents (.tif files)" I do have 'Windows Picture and Fax Viewer', and I can view the incomming letter in the archived file. So why can't I use my 'Fax Viewer' to view incomming or sent faxed files? Also, up above Finlay McWalter said "Optionally lets you send a cover page." When I send, with the fax "printer" as the default, the dialog pops up and lets me enter the phone number of the fax machine to send to and then I have to create a cover page. I can't find any way to just send the letter without a cover page.Wiki asker (talk) 20:16, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Storage

Question was dual-posted at Science desk. Redundancy removed, existing answers teleported. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 19:52, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

September 14

Videos from Picasa2

How do I put videos on youtube from picasa? and I don't mean the picture slideshows, i mean the actual videos that I filmed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.119.61.7 (talk) 00:26, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

You don't use Picasa, that's how. Just go to Youtube, choose the upload function, and find the file on your harddrive. Why would Picasa be involved? 24.76.161.28 (talk) 23:40, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Dragging Messages in Windows Live Mail

Hello. When I drag sent messages into a folder within Windows Live Mail and log out, the same message appears in the Sent Items folder as if I never moved the message. I would have to redrag that message into the folder to have it there permanently. How should I fix this? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 04:33, 14 September 2008 (UTC) I don't use Windows Live Mail but in Outlook Express I just right click the message and click "send to" and the folder I want a message to and it's moved. They can come from anywhere to anywhere.Wiki asker (talk) 12:31, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Flickr "all sizes" option

Hi; I've been trying the numerous API 'hacks' to get the full-res versions of this image, this image and this image. Could someone else try to see what I'm doing wrong? :-( Thanks! ╟─Treasury§Tag►contribs─╢ 08:08, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

The article you linked links to Flickr documentation which says that the full-size image uses a different secret from the others. I assume this change was made sometime between 2005 and now to thwart the hackers, and it's no longer possible to get the full-size images without authorization. -- BenRG (talk) 19:17, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Bar (form factor)

I noticed that Nokia handset has different physical structure. Such as slide bar, candy bar. But what can be the exact name of handset that has folding system? Should it be folding bar or something else? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.168.229.245 (talk) 13:23, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Generally they are called Clamshells or flips. Nanonic (talk) 15:31, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

microprocessor

In about 1981, I recall doubling the memory of an Atari ST512 personal computer by placing additinal memory chips on top of the existing chips and soldering the overhanging pins to the pins of the chips below. (It helps to be disparate to do this.) Is there currently a PIC processor which would allow physical stacking in a similar manner to build a multi-processor PIC based computer, cheaply? 71.100.10.11 (talk) 14:14, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

No - definitely not! You have forgotten something about the way the RAM expansion on the Atari ST worked (I know - I did it too!). All of the pins EXCEPT ONE would be soldered together like that - the other had to be wired up to a different address line or something. If you wired up all of the pins together - and the chips were identical then they'd both be given the exact same data and would produce the exact same result...so the two blocks of RAM would contain identical data at all times - which is not very useful. What's needed is to have the new RAM decode to a different range of addresses - and typically you do that by bending up a pin and wiring to a different address line or a different chip-select or something.

This works for RAM chips because they are designed to be "bussed" together - so that each chip's outputs are turned off when it's not being spoken to.

Microprocessors aren't like that - they have lots of outputs (like the ones that talk to RAM for example) that are "always on" and piggy-backing them together results in the outputs of two chips trying to drive outwards at the same time. This is the kind of thing that makes circuits blow up...and that's exactly what would happen if you piggy-backed your PIC chips.

Worse still - back in the days of the Atari ST, chips didn't get very hot (there were no fans in the ST remember!) - mostly because they worked V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y by modern standards. Most modern computing devices generate significant heat and they rely on having decent airflow around them. Piggybacking traps the heat from the bottommost chip - and may well be another reason why it would be damaged...although the PIC (being fairly slow and designed for low power applications) may not have that problem.

SteveBaker (talk) 02:33, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your response SteveBaker. I left out the part about the "flying" pins so the upper 512k could be tapped. What I am asking in regard to the PIC is whether any exist that are intentionally designed to be clustered in such a stacked manner? I mean I can already use the enable line (assuming a PIC has one) with a multiplexer chip to select which processor I want to use or memory bank, etc. I'm just looking for something a bit more plug and play. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.15.15 (talk) 16:40, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Harddrive Crashing?

I've recently (past week) been experiencing quite a few crashes on my computer. Programs, especially Firefox, crash randomly. Pidgin was having some problems with the MusicTracker plugin. Random BSODs too (stop code 0x000000C2 was the most recent). It's a Dell 9300 with Windows XP SP2. It's 3 years old. I tried reformatting and reinstalling Windows, and during the reinstallation, Windows had difficulty copying one file to the harddrive. I don't remember which file it was, but after retrying twice, it seemed to have copied correctly. Could my harddrive be failing? Is there anyway to check? Should I just buy a new hard drive to prevent any data loss? --Russoc4 (talk) 15:43, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

You might be right - but if I were you I'd do a comprehensive RAM test first. It could just as easily be a RAM fault. Try to find a RAM test program that you can boot straight from a CD=ROM direct from the BIOS without loading Windows first - that allows the test to be performed without the Hard drive being involved at all...which makes for a more conclusive test. SteveBaker (talk) 02:37, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Hard drive capacity corruption

I've recently had a problem with my hard drive. Some of the metadata seems to be corrupted (model number, serial number, firmware version, etc. show up with some correct characters and some random "&" "%" ")" characters). One of the things that seems to be corrupted is the capacity. This is a 45GB drive, but shows up as having 6GB under Linux and under most hard drive utilities. It seems to be reporting the wrong number of cylinders(?). However, IBM (the drive maker)'s own DFT program as well as Seagate's SeaTools see it correctly as a 45GB drive (maybe this is because they use LBA or something?). The SMART info seems to indicate that the health of the drive is good; and reading on the first 6GB doesn't show any errors. I believe that the data on the drive is intact and accessible, if I can only somehow convince the operating system to see it as a 45GB drive. i.e. I think that if the OS was convinced to read past 6GB, that it would still work perfectly. Is there a way to somehow override the drive capacity in Linux or other OS, so that I can, for example, use "dd" to copy data off of it, past what it thinks is the end, to a capacity that I specify? Thanks, --71.147.13.131 (talk) 18:59, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

You may find that the cable is not plugged in correctly or that there is noise appearing on it. Make sure that the connector cable is not running too close to other electrically noisy cables in the PC. When I saw this before myself the hard drive was close to failure. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:10, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Did you install the OS recently? Going back and forth "the automatic partition thing" could cause something weird, along the lines of using only the half of the space allocated last time. --194.197.235.221 (talk) 08:08, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Upload

Sometimes when I'm uploading a file somewhere, the site lists me as uploading at speeds which are impossible to achieve. Recently it list me as uploading at 14MB/sec. What gives? --76.29.116.172 (talk) 23:49, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

"The site lists me"—what site? The site you are uploading to, or your browser, or what? --98.217.8.46 (talk) 01:53, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

The site may be telling you how fast the packets of data came in to their machine, and if they have a higher speed link, perhaps 100 meg, then the data may come into them in a burst, particularly if you are uploading a small file. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:07, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

September 15

Opening a file via the context menu in Windows Vista

On previous versions of Windows, there was an option to edit how clicking on a file with a certain extension would allow it to open. This option exists under Windows Vista under a program called Default Programs. However, it only allows an edit to change which file it opens on double-click; it completely wipes out any other options available under the right-click context menu.

For example, I have svg files on my system, as well as Inkscape. I had the default to open under Wordpad to allow manual edit, another option to open with Inkscape was added by the said program. But when I told the system to make Firefox the default program (to allow quick viewing), it wiped out all the other options.

Help. Magog the Ogre (talk) 03:27, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

You can edit what programs are used to open which filename extension from Control Panel → Folder Options. Alternatively, you can add a shortcut to a program into the "Send To..." menu. There are some disadvantages: In Vista the "Send To ..." is well buried in c:\users\<username>\App Data\Roaming\?????? (I'll find the rest of the path later), that shortcut will appear in every "Send To..." menu no matter what type of file it is. Astronaut (talk) 15:26, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Webdesign for dummies

I recently had an idea for a website, but I have limited coding experience and almost no webdesign experience. I won't go into the details of my website because, well, quite frankly I'm sorta paranoid about my idea getting jacked, but in any event after poking around I found Drupal and I think I want to use it to implement my project. Do I need to learn SQL or PHP to play around with Drupal? Should I try to maintain my own local server and database, or can I design the site locally and run it off a hosted server? My old computer is burnt out so I've been thinking of reformatting for use as an Apache server/MySQL database for use in this project, but I don't know if I need to go that far. --Shaggorama (talk) 08:21, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

My (limited) experience is that it'll be handy to learn some PHP with Drupal; that's true for WordPress, where I have somewhat more experience. That said, since you say you have little experience, WordPress has many, many themes (for overall appearance) and plugins (for various kinds of customization), such that you might not need to get into the PHP code, or might be able to get by with examples from WordPress forums. I imagine it's similar with Drupal.

For overall appearance of your site, you can do a great deal with CSS (cascading style sheets). As a simple example, a WordPress theme set the H2 tag as 18point blue italic centered text with 15 pixels of padding above and below. You could edit the CSS to change any or all of those to suit your taste. If you're serious about learning this, I recommend Head First HTML -- there's even a sample chapter at that link so you can see their approach.

I myself would not want to run my own server; hosting is a commodity business, so you have many options that should not be expensive. Again, WordPress.com will give you the specifications that a hosting service would have to provide; some services advertise on the WP site. And for starters, you could begin your site at WordPress.org (though the number of themes is smaller, and you'd still have to pay a bit to have the ability to edit the CSS); later, you could find host companies who will move your mySQL data to a hosted site for you. --- OtherDave (talk) 12:07, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I've looked into WP and I don't think it's right for my needs. I want my users to write articles, yes, but I want the articles to be associated with both the users and more global categories, sort of like the architecture of a product review site. Could this work within wordpress? I got the impression wordpress is really for straightforward blogging, so I thought Joomla or Drupal would probably be better options. --Shaggorama (talk) 19:50, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, as I said, I don't know much about Drupal, and I'm not trying to sell you WP (since it's free). You could give regular writers the ability to write posts (which you could treat as articles) without publishing them (leaving you as the final authority). You can assign both tags and categories to posts. E.g., you could have a category for REVIEW (or one for SOFTWARE REVIEW and one for HARDWARD REVIEW); you could have tags for vendor names or product types (a Microsoft tag, an open-source tag). That means with very little technical knowledge, you could have a site where I can easily find:

• All the articles written by Fred Frack
• All the reviews of hardware (in general)
• All reviews of 4-gigabyte berm divots (assuming you had a category "4-gigabyte berm divot")
• All content tagged "MicroPro," or tagged "office applications," or tagged "predictions."

You can assign more than one tag, and more than one category, to any item. This is not hard stuff; I'm not a computer wizard.

My point is only that there are a number of ways to control how your content appears in WP (and I'm sure in Drupal as well). If I can tell you any more about WP, send me an email. My impression (this is only an impression) is that the administration of Drupal requires more technical knowledge than does WordPress -- but I'm sure some Drupal expert will address that.

One thing you might consider is using either WP or Drupal (are there free Drupal hosts?) to build a small version of the site you're planning. You don't even have to make it public, but messing around with the software will help you see how things work, and will probably give you ideas for how to organize your eventual site. Throw together three dummy pages for each type of content you plan to have, and see if you can link the stuff together. --- OtherDave (talk) 23:56, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Line spacing in CSS

Generally, two paragraphs are separated by one additional line. How do I do single line spacing using CSS?

What I need is:

<p>Line 1</p>
<p><blockquote>Line 2</blockquote></p>
<p>Line 3</p>

There shall be no additional lines between two paragraphs. -- Toytoy (talk) 11:37, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

The p-tag is a block container. It has padding and margin spacing (see "block container" rules on any of the millions of CSS introduction sites). So, you want the rule p { margin:0px; padding:0px; } to ensure there is no margin or padding around your text. -- kainaw™ 12:06, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Howdy there fella

Single-spaced paragraphs here

You just check the source

--98.217.8.46 (talk) 19:53, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Roxio Streamer

I'm trying to use ROxio Streamer to stream my videos to my iPod Touch. However, when I try to go to the address it gives me to view my video, the browser says it can't find the page. I tried enabling UPnP, NAT-PMP and TCP but none of those work. I still cant see the webpage for some reason. Please help. --Randoman412 (talk) 11:43, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Perl

What programme do you use to write a perl script, and to run it?

Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.84.118.226 (talk) 12:18, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

That would depend on what operating system you are running. Most Linux distributions come with a Perl interpreter pre-installed, and you could use vi or EMACS or a specialized editor and/or development environment. For Windows, you'd have to install a Perl interpreter and could use notepad. For Macintosh, I dunno. Lots of links in our handy Perl article. --LarryMac | Talk 12:47, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Normally you'd use any old text editor. I like to use vim. I usually run perl scripts from the command line, like this:

$ chmod u+x ./my_perl_script.pl
$ ./my_perl_script.pl

--Kjoonlee 13:35, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Or you could run the script using the perl interpreter.

$ perl ./my_perl_script.pl

--Kjoonlee 13:36, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

vista directory explorer loses IE icon for .htm files

well, that about says it all.... all of a sudden, the vista explorer gives me a blank page icon for .htm instead of the little blue e icon for IE. what did i change just before that? umm... I reinstalled Real player... but the .htm files are still associated with IE, double clicking opens them up in IE; IE itself still has the blue e icon; I tried rebooting, I even tried going into control panel and associating the .htm files with IE again; no dice. ???? any advice will be gratefully appreciated. TIA. Gzuckier (talk) 15:07, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Computer Woes

I can open none of the drive-folders when I double-click the icons in the My Computer window. I use Windows XP Professional SP2. Can anyone help?? 117.194.224.253 (talk) 18:54, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

If you can still open other folders, you should be able to navigate to your drives from there. Type the address of the drive in the address bar of the folder, or you can try right-clicking a folder and selecting "explore" to get a map of your computer, including drives. --Shaggorama (talk) 19:53, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I ran into a similar problem and found the solution on Microsoft's help site. Your problem may be the same. --Bavi H (talk) 02:23, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, now the problem is that when I double-click the icons, the folder opens in a new window, instead of in the old one itself. Help, please. 117.194.227.36 (talk) 11:49, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Compression by generating sequences of data?

You could compress the first billion digits of pi in a normal zip fashion, which would likely generate a large-ish file, or you could compress it down to almost nothing, just a few lines of code to generate the whole sequence, if you knew or discovered the pattern in the input data. So the question is this: is it useful, or even possible, to compress data by looking for patterns and trying to create algorithms that re-create the correct sequence of bits? You don't of course need to generate the whole archive from one algorithm, but perhaps try to identify sections that can be successfully attacked this way. How might this be implemented? Zunaid 19:12, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

As a start I can come up with one "blunt instrument" approach: try many different algorithms (with different parameters) to see what sequences they generate and see if it matches any sequences in the data. This can be sharpened up by starting on sequences in the data that initially look promising by some prior test or knowledge. Zunaid 19:12, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

The problem here is that without prior knowledge of the data, there is an infinite amount of "patterns" you could look for. Generic lossless compression algorithms are relatively crude, they look for one type of "pattern", ie repetition of bits or bytes or sequences thereof, which are then stored with sufficient information to recreate the original data through an algorithm. They work well enough for data commonly encountered such as text, machine code, pictures with large blocks of the same color ... much of the data we use is repetitive by nature. An advantage of this method is that the algorithm to recreate the original sequence can be externalised, saving further space, something that would not be possible with generated algorithms (though this is not so much of advantage on large amount of data). Prior knowledge of the data to compress makes it possible to come up with better schemes (for instance, it would be possible to externalise an "english language" sequencer based on the most common repetitions of characters and words).

Anyway, I digress. What we have here is basically an optimization problem with a very complex solution space. Given the complexity of the solution space, a brute force approach searching for a global optimum is not reasonable. We might however, want to search the solution space for local optima. An appropriate scheme here would be a genetic algorithm, where each individual is an algorithm and the fitness function is a factor of the length of the algorithm and ability to generate data close to the original data (and also to terminate in a reasonable time). This is no simple task to implement, you would most likely want to set up a virtual machine with an appropriate code set (prior knowledge of the data to compress would be very useful here), and the evolutionary scheme of a genetic algorithm is always a tricky part. Both lossless or lossy compression would be achievable. Now of course, there's no guarantee such a compression process would ever produce better results than common compression schemes, and it might take a very very long time to run. Equendil Talk 21:19, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

This is more of a practical approach than a theoretical one: check your sequence against all the ones at the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. This isn't really a compression question so much as a math one: "given a sequence of numbers, can one deduce the function that generated them?". I suspect the answer is "no", but perhaps the folks at WP:RD/Math might know better. --Sean 20:28, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

It would work, but it wouldn't be too effective: given the infinite number of potential algorithms, you could never be sure that there was one or not. As a specific example, try finding a pattern in the following base64-encoded data that will let you compress it:

Kln7j02PJpB59GqXW3zoX3fhPNaILd4srZw25cw0hNHtzOjB+lkSd2BQ75AVKjbfc+2ZS0/ODN6j

vgLNRtz9Sq47YvxuE1rJHdznm5SwGJv0ScR14LBPuCx+FoK3i+E+T2LA6dh8YvQz2bsBf8yscExz

EtqmllGnw1ITdn9RwuARTqNcYHTkNJq3cmpGhT6kQdqyrTLtoTjZiz8mif075VpwhJzQCn/YpwBQ

Xuy9Iy2Xp95ooh9Fpp055yjvJyo6lopcMdvbQhROOjZCJ1T35Kofi6QII9F4W2TYLkUt1GOQqnIp

lDmuWaObrjMsyGbdQrBkw211EsmWWzdhgFV2FQ==

(Hint: it's impossible. This is 256 bytes of truly random data.)

--Carnildo (talk) 20:35, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

If only we knew the pattern for pi... It's irrational; I think that means there's no real pattern. So I doubt you could compress it in the manner you're discussing here. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 20:46, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

The way to do this is to generate a sequence of algorithms, and test if they make the result. The type of computation is NP complete, or computationally difficult, so you probably cannot use it. For particular applications you could probably improve the compression, eg XML, HTML, English text. In practice you don't often want to compress algorithmically generated sequences like pi to a billion decimal places. And yes there are methods to generate π decimal places. There is a classification of a number in the form of a bit string that asks if the string can be represented by a description shorter then writing out the bits. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:13, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

You may be interested in procedural generation. When I was younger, about the era of the 14.4k baud modem (and dinosaurs roamed the Earth), when downloading a few megabyte demo was an all-night affair (and hope your phone didn't get disconnected!), there was a very "demo scene" game that had the look, polish, and engine (more or less) of - let's say, Quake - and the entire thing about about 27kb in size. Every asset was procedurally generated - in playable form, on the order of a few megabytes. Spore (2008 video game) would be a recent, commercial example of this. Now, arbitrary, post-facto, discrete algorhytmic compression? I believe above responders mostly cover it, although for real data, Benford's law may be a bit of a catch. 98.169.163.20 (talk) 01:51, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

There is actually an error in the question. The equation for calculating pi does not in fact expand out to the first billion digits of pi - it expands to ALL of the digits of pi. However, you could fix that by saying how many digits you'd like it to decompress to.

Anyway, we can easily PROVE that you can't compress every arbitary string of data:

1. Let us suppose you could take every possible sequence of N bits (binary digits) and using your algorithm, compress it into something representable in M bits (where M is always less than N) such that you could then take your M bit number and uncompress it again to get the exact same N bit number that you started with.
2. There are 2^N possible N bit numbers. If you took every single one of those and fed each one, individually into your compression algorithm, getting strings that were at most N-1 bits long. You'd have 2^N sets of compressed results - one from each of the possible inputs.
3. However, if the outputs only have at most N-1 digits then we must remember that there are only 2^N-1 possible N-1 bit numbers.
4. Since we got 2^N N-1 digit numbers out of our compressor - but there are only 2^N-1 unique N-1 digit numbers possible - it follows that some of those N-1 digit numbers we got back are actually completely identical.
5. If we take two of those identical N-1 bit numbers and feed them into an algorithm that decompresses them back into their original strings - then there is a problem. How does the decompression algorithm "know" which of those two different N digit strings to produce since it's being fed the exact same N-1 digit string to decompress in both cases?

The answer of course is that it can't. Hence lossless compression of all N digit inputs is flat out impossible - no matter how your algorithm works - no matter how clever it might be.

Knowing that - it can only be that your approach cannot possibly work. However, it clearly does work for some numbers (like PI and e and 0.3333333333333333333...). What that means is it must fail for many other numbers - which leads you to the rather interesting conclusion that if your approach doesn't work - then some numbers are so "random" than every possible equation in any possible mathematical representation must result in an equation that's at least one bit longer than the number itself!

We need a name for these numbers (Darn! "Complex number" has already been taken!)

That's a very cool conclusion! SteveBaker (talk) 02:11, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

To put it more simply: if you could represent any sequence of bits as a shorter sequence of bits, then you could represent *that* shorter sequence of bits as an even shorter sequence of bits etc, which would eventually result in a sequence of bits of zero/negative length, which is absurd, hence not all sequences of bits can be "compressed". Reductio ad absurdum. That is pretty much a given however, what is interesting is that *some* sequences of bits can be compressed. Equendil Talk 17:25, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, finding the shortest algorithm that would generate a piece of data is not possible in general, because that algorithm would have size equal to the Kolmogorov complexity of the data, which is incomputable. --71.147.13.131 (talk) 09:15, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks guys. Some beautiful maths and engineering answers given here (which, being an engineer, are like air and water to me). Plenty of reading to do! I like the idea of checking sequences against the OIES. You could potentially keep a data store of hundreds of sequences and simply spit out algorithms to generate portions of your compressed data. SteveBaker, I think the term you are looking for is non-computable number. Anon 98, I've seen those procedurally generated demos before, in fact that is what I had in mind when I though of this, just didn't know the correct name for it so I stuck with billions digits of pi as an example.

I suppose this is (sort of) resolved, just thought I'd post one or two more examples to think about:

1. You could generate an hour long video game demo and either save it as compressed lossless video (tens of gigabytes), or you could save the entire game (or if the company makes a "game viewer" then even better) and the player's mouse/keyboard inputs at a cost of maybe a few gigs.
2. Procedural generation as 98 mentioned.
3. You could use Microsoft Excel to generate dozens of charts from tabular data and save and compress the xls file (couple of megs maybe?), or you could record a macro of yourself carrying out all the chart-generating actions and simply save the macro and the input data (a few kb's). This one is actually quite useful if you're trying to send lots of excel graph data to someone.

Zunaid 16:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

The thing about procedurally generated stuff in games is NOT that you start off designing some carefully thought out game level - then compress the heck out of it. What they are actually doing is using random numbers (or perhaps pseudo-random numbers) to generate data - and writing the algorithm such that ANY sequence of data fed into it makes a "reasonable" game level. Superficially, this can be made to make a nice-looking game - but it'll never be as good as a game level designed by hand by experienced artists and level designers. Those guys have a lot of very "deep" knowledge that you're not going to get by random generation techniques. (BTW: I'm a professional video game developer.) SteveBaker (talk) 02:03, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

No - you don't understand what I'm saying. Your speculations for the uses of such an algorithm are truly pointless - it's not just that there would be a few instances of data that wouldn't compress...it's MUCH worse than that.

My argument (above) that proves that compression of arbitary data is impossible also yields a rough probability of being able to compress any given random bit-string by any given ratio: Consider that if you try to compress N bits of data by just one bit to produce N-1 bits. There are only 2^N-1 compressed data possibilities that have to "code" for 2^N possible input sequences. It follows that AT BEST (2^N-1/2^N)=0.5...only half of all possible N bit sequences can be compressed down to N-1 bits!

Suppose you wanted to do some serious compression - perhaps halving the size of random 1000 bit data strings. 2:1 is a pretty modest compression ratio. So that means that you have to encode 2¹⁰⁰⁰ possible input data sequences using only 2^(1000/2) possible compressed data strings...so only 2⁵⁰⁰ of those 2¹⁰⁰⁰ strings can be compressed successfully. That's a TINY fraction of them! REALLY tiny!! In fact, if you fed random 1000 bit strings into your algorithm at a rate of one per second from now until the end of the life of the universe - then it's highly unlikely that you'd find even one set of input data that would compress successfully! That's a monumentally useless algorithm!! But even if it worked - a 2:1 compression ratio is pretty much useless for most purposes - and 1000 bits of data is less than the length of this paragraph! Now apply the same math to (say) a megabyte of data...there are effectively NO algorithms that can achieve any compression whatever of any piece of random data beyond a few tens of bits long.

So it's not just that there would be some things that wouldn't shrink - what you'd find is that this algorithm (and any other that attempts to work with truly random data) is simply doomed to being quite utterly useless.

Real compression algorithms (such as the one that 'ZIP' uses) only manage to do lossless compression because they know something about the nature of your data at the get-go. Mostly they assume there are lots of repeated sequences within the data.

So, for example, if you know the input data is ASCII text containing only grammatically correct English sentences - then there are ways to achieve very effective compression. (eg, you could make a list of the 1,000 commonest words with more than four letters and replace any of those words you found with an '?' symbol followed by a three digit number. All English text would get shorter (or at least, no longer) as a result. However, you can only do that because you know that there are definitely no strings like '?xxx' (where 'x' is a digit) in grammatical English sentences. Compression of English text is therefore possible - but only because we know something about the statistics of English and because there are some symbols that are only used in certain contexts.

However, if you tried to apply my trick to compressing (say) photographs - it would never manage to achieve any compression whatever!

SteveBaker (talk) 02:37, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Wireless network control

What is a good free replacement to the wireless network control feature in Windows? 79.75.190.211 (talk) 19:21, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Usually computers or wireless cards come with one. It's rarely better though. What's wrong with the Windows one? 24.76.161.28 (talk) 23:36, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

The CAPTCHA problem

I am trying to prepare a pywikipedia bot for use on Catalan wikipedia. I have followed all the instructions, but when I try to login I get the message "wrong password or CAPTCHA answer". I am completely sure the password is correct, but I don't know what the CAPTCHA problem is. I've added the solve_captcha = True to the user-config.py file, to no avail. What should I do to solve this problem? Thanks. Leptictidium (mt) 19:40, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm failry certain that the captcha only appears when you are adding external links, so if that's not fundamental to how your bot works, maybe remove that functionality. Also, the captcha goes away when a user is autoconfirmed, which takes ten edits and four days. Why don't you edit manually using your bot-account for ten edits, and wait a few days :) 90.235.12.16 (talk) 11:03, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

XML comment trick

Hi, when i do a comment in xml instead of <!-- and --> , i just do <!--> on both sides and like that i just copy past it around. Do anyone here used this method also? 212.150.162.66 (talk) 21:55, 15 September 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jobnikon (talk • contribs) 21:50, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Presumably a good reason for not using this is that it makes code harder to read: you can't tell which <!-->s are starts of comments and which are ends. 84.12.252.210 (talk) 13:20, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, just stick to the regular kind. The more standard your XML the better. Easier for other people to read. 195.58.125.46 (talk) 15:02, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

September 16

Processes on start up

How do i stop annoying programs from automatically loading when I start up my computer? for example 'itunes helper' or 'adobe speed launcher' hiding in my processes list. I just don’t want to open at all is there a way to stop them loading? (Other then uninstalling the programs altogether). I am running Vista. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.202.144.223 (talk) 02:44, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

See http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/stop-an-application-from-running-at-startup-in-windows-vista/. --194.197.235.221 (talk) 05:18, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

As a simpler answer: Start -> Run -> msconfig, choose Startup tab when it opens. Basically, if it says 'Updater' in the path, you can generally disable it. jusched is a big one too (the Java auto-updater). Generally you can't mess up too much, though try to stay away from anything that you know is associated with your anti-virus (Symantec, AVG, Norton, long list there). Also, iTunes helper and Adobe speed launcher? Totally unneeded. Washii (talk) 05:51, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Fixed to say "can't mess too much up."

Sweet thanks a lot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.202.144.223 (talk) 05:54, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

There is actually a better way: msconfig isn't able to stop everything. A MUCH better program is AutoRuns from Sysinternals. It'll show you everything that goes on a start-up and gives you the option to stop it. 90.235.12.16 (talk) 11:13, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I second that, "autoruns" is good, make sure you understand what you are doing however, or you may soon find you have disabled processes you should not such as useful drivers. Equendil Talk 17:34, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Can't install an important Vista update

After installing Vista on a "Vista Ready" HP Pavilion desktop, I downloaded the available updates but got a 643 error on one of them. It turned out to be for Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1. But the Microsoft download website says this service pack was published in August 2004. If I download this version, wouldn't it clobber any later version of .NET Framework I might have? This is supposed to be an important security update. What do I do? --Halcatalyst (talk) 02:48, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry about it. It's probably installed in some form already. The Windows Update site is relatively dumb. However, if you'd like to check it anyway, grab the .NET 3.5 Network Installer (or Redistributable) and install that. It should install .NET 1.1 SP1, .NET 2.0 SP1 and .NET 3.0/3.5. You can also grab the .NET 3.5 SP1 installer and run that. Then you can make triply sure they're all up-to-date. Washii (talk) 05:56, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

.NET 3.5 Redistributable, does not install .NET 1.1. .NET 1.1 is also not included in Windows Vista, it is a separate system from .NET 2.0 onwards and will not interfere with it if installing afterwards. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 18:20, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

• Can I request a tie breaker? ;) --Halcatalyst (talk) 01:26, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Jimmi Hugh was right. I thought I saw 1.1 included in the list for 3.5, but I stand corrected. Also, installing these after having installed 2.0 or above won't affect anything but 1.1

Here's the link for .NET Framework 1.1 Redistributable: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=262D25E3-F589-4842-8157-034D1E7CF3A3&displaylang=en

Here's the link for .NET Framework 1.1 SP1: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A8F5654F-088E-40B2-BBDB-A83353618B38&displaylang=en Washii (talk) 05:14, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

where do i buy kudzu?

(Moved to science desk -- OP meant plants, not software) --- OtherDave (talk) 10:58, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

internet history

Hi There,

Is there any programme to clean internet history for good.

P.P.80.254.93.170 (talk) 08:46, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

You can clear your internet history for Internet Explorer by clicking tools > internet options, then clicking 'clear history'. You can also clear temporary-history-files within the same area (Tools > internet options > Delete files > tick 'delete all offline content' and click ok), in the same area you can also delete Internet cookies (tools > internet options > delete cookies... > 'ok'). The information should be then pretty much 'deleted' from the view of most everyday people. Clever people could still perhaps access information - and certainly recovery-specialists could potentially get information from your hard-drive, but realistically unless you're doing something illegal/highly dubious the above should be more than enough to remove your history from everyday viewing (i'll assume you are buying a present for someone and don't want them to look at page-history and find a link to the gift selling website...) 194.221.133.226 (talk) 09:30, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Every browser I know of lets you clean out the cache. For something really drastic: (1) save the bookmark file, (2) uninstall the browser (a bit difficult if it's MSIE), (3) install a newer version (there always is one available) of the browser, (4) copy back the bookmark file, (5) tell your parents (if they notice) that you upgraded as a "security measure." That's because "security" always sounds good. (But don't over-egg it with talk about "Islamic extremists" or other piffle too obviously borrowed from US electioneering.) Tama1988 (talk) 09:37, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I use, [1], just because it's so easy to use... but there's probably some free tools available too for those who know what they're doing with them. It also allows you to see deleted files, which i suppose some people might find useful, i've never used it. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 09:43, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help, the main reason is that I am selling my pc, and I would like to clean it from all internet history,web sites, coockies etc. I don't want anybody sneaking on me, such as, on which web sites I hit.

p.p.80.254.93.170 (talk) 10:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

If you're selling your PC, you should wipe the entire hard-drive clean (not just the browser history) using something like Darik's Boot and Nuke. That will remove any trace of what was on there before (and it's free!). Then, if you want, you can just reinstall the OS clean or just sell it without an OS on it. 90.235.12.16 (talk) 11:06, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I should make something a little bit clearer: Darik's Boot and Nuke will wipe your ENTIRE hard-drive away. I mean, nothing on there will ever be recoverable, and you will not be able to boot it up because the OS has been wiped. So fair warning: if there's anything on there you want to save, be sure to save it before nuking it. And if you want your computer to start again, you'll need a Windows XP Install CD so you can reinstall the operating system (which will also be gone). 90.235.12.16 (talk) 11:10, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

That's a little excessive... unless you think there is a serious shortage of computing power at a Major goverment or scientific institute, the chances of anyone with the ability to recover past a single layer of format and caring about the data they find is unlikely. Windows 98 Boot floppy, "format C:". Sorted, sell it and mention it doesn't have an OS unless you reinstall it. Also, some computers (I love Dell, so they're probably the only ones) come with a reinstall system mentioned in the manual that sets the computer back to the state it was in when you first got it. If you run this, it won't format your drive, so you should run a program like the one I mentioned above or cyberscrub to clean the unused clusters before selling it. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 12:18, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm under the (possibly mistaken) impression that DOS format doesn't overwrite the contents of the drive even once. If you do a quick format (/Q) it never even looks at most of the disk surface. If you do a full format it tests the whole disk for bad sectors, but I think this is done by reading, not writing. It's easy to recover files from a formatted disk using software like PhotoRec. Probably the most convenient way to securely wipe your C: drive is to install TrueCrypt 5.0 or later and enable boot-drive encryption, choosing a nice long passphrase. You can keep using your computer while it scrambles the disk contents, and in fact up to the moment you give it away. Then you simply power it down and wipe the passphrase from your mind. -- BenRG (talk) 13:16, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I can't speak for all versions, but the Format included in the standard "Windows 98 Bootdisk" created by XP/Vista, fills the entire partition with 0's, meaning pyhsical drive analysis would be needed to recover any data. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 15:17, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

BIOS with embedded OS

Why don't BIOS have an OS embedded? Flash memory is cheap enough and OS like Puppy Linux only have 128 MB....Mr.K. (talk) 10:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Some do - SplashTop, HyperSpace (software), and I think Dell are making a few machines with this (whether its their own tech or one of these I don't know). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 10:42, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Dell's thing is called "Dell Latitude ON" - http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/15/dells-latitude-on-instant-os-detailed-screenshooted/ I don't think they're actually selling it yet. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 10:45, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

The disadvantages out weigh the advantages. While there are some executive system programs being embedded in some BIOS to cover those advantages (resident recovery system etc.), given the longevity of some system's, the constant upgrading of software features and the size of hard drives, there are few good reason's to stick it all in ROM. While you can of course Flash ROM, it still limits the Operating System. Also note, that any speed advantages ever seen from ROM have long gone, and nearly all ROM is now shadowed into RAM before executing. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 12:13, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

There are versions of Linux that can be burned into a BIOS ROM too. Coreboot (which used to be called "LinuxBIOS") does exactly that. SteveBaker (talk) 13:59, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Plus every embedded device you can find... I think his point was about featured desktop systems as opposed to utilities and specialist devices. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 15:14, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Camera / memory card

Will this type of memory card work with my camera - a Polaroid I633. If not... what type do I need? Thank you in advance! --Endlessdan and his problem 14:26, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

No. According to that Walmart page (assuming it's correct), the camera takes SD and MMC cards only. That is a MicroSD (actually MicroSDHC) card, which is a smaller version of SD. You can buy adapters, but there's no mention of the camera supporting SDHC; in that case, even an adapter would not allow the card to work. If the camera doesn't support SDHC then what you're stuck with is plain SD/MMC cards. Keep in mind that anything over 2GB is an SDHC card. 24.76.161.28 (talk) 14:46, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I can't get to the ebay link but based on the title it suggests that the type is 'micro SD'. Based on the information on the walmart link the camera takes an SD Card. These are cheap and available pretty much everywhere. There's no need for you to get micro-SD - although the SD Card article suggests it is possible for micro-sd cards to be used in SD card slots...but there's no point. You can find SD cards everywhere. The listing doesn't say whether or not High-capacity SD cards (SDHC) work so I would get a normal SD Card (say 1gb or 2gb) - that should provide plenty of storage at a reasoanble cost. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 14:48, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Two concerns, one minor

1. Minor issue: Some^[who?] have suggested that using an SD card might give you faster performance. I am not sure about it.

2. Major issue: Most^{[citation needed]} older consumer electronics do not support SD cards with a capacity greater than 2 GB. It might be that your camera falls under that category. As the eBay seller cautions, "Please make sure your devices can support microSDHC, we do not responsible for any compatibility problem." I am sure someone more knowledgeable about digital photography and flash storage will come by to answer your question shortly. However, in the meantime, yYou might want to read Secure Digital card#SDHC . (If your camera does not support SDHC, your only solution would be to get a card of 2 GB or smaller capacity.) Have a great day! Kushal (talk) 14:54, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you everyone for your help. I am a complete clod when it comes to computer junk. So, would this kind of card be okay? I'd prefer a 2GB, but every time I do a search... it comes up with a micro card. Can someone kindly just point me in the direction of a cheap, non-micro 2GB card? --Endlessdan and his problem 15:00, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I think I found one. I just used -micro in my search. Would this card be suitable for my camera? Again, many thanks. --Endlessdan and his problem 15:01, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Too many edits. Yeah, that would work. 24.76.161.28 (talk) 15:04, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) $7.25 to your door, assuming you're in the USA. -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:02, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Unknown asian brand? 24.76.161.28 (talk) 15:04, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

A 2GB MicroSD card with an SD adapter, kind of like the first listing, will work fine. The only issue is that it doesn't appear your camera supports SDHC (though that's not always well documented, you may want to check the manual), so you have to go for 2GB or lower. But yes, that 1GB card will work too. 24.76.161.28 (talk) 15:03, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Cool. I sorta assumed the cards I linked to on Ebay, the "scandisk" memory cards were bootleg. Should I avoid the Asian card for $7.25? --Endlessdan and his problem 15:08, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

PQI is a pretty well-known memory manufacturer. You can see many more reviews at Newegg. I've used PQI cards (other sizes) with good success. I've also used the vendor I linked to once or twice with no problems. I think you'll have trouble finding non-Asian memory products. -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:26, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Cool. I will get that card then. Thanks! --Endlessdan and his problem 15:35, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

It is safe to assume that every single SD card on ebay is bootleg. --Carnildo (talk) 20:25, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

html help for tables

border=" 3px solid #DFFF00" creates a border around all the cracks and crevasses of my table. What can I do make it go only round the very outside. Thanks, html noob --217.227.85.122 (talk) 14:57, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

cell	cell
cell	cell

cell	cell
cell	cell

Could this be what you're looking for? You seem to be mixing HTML4 attributes and CSS. --Kjoonlee 15:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

cell	cell
cell	cell

--This what you want? --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:44, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Yep that's it. Why isn't it rendering the same on my screen? --217.227.89.144 (talk) 16:02, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Look at the style guidelines I put on it. You have to set border-collapse: collapse; to make it stop automatically adding border lines to the TD elements as well. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 17:25, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

JPG Fullscreen, quick!

I need a quick way to display a jpg image fullscreen of my computer. Sorta like a boss key. Any suggestions? 15:04, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I assume you are using Windows. Make your desktop image whatever JPG you want to show. Remove the desktop icons (they shouldn't be there anyway). There is a "show me my desktop" icon, button, and keyboard command for Windows. I don't use Windows, so I don't know what the keyboard command is. Press it and all open windows will be replaced by your desktop - which is the jpg image you want to show. -- kainaw™ 17:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

If the keyboard has the "Windows" key, then the "Show Desktop" keystroke is Win-D. The Win key has to be held down while pressing the D. --LarryMac | Talk 17:43, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Kainaw - what do you have against icons on the desktop (in an operating system you don't even use)? AndrewWTaylor (talk) 13:02, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Many people feel that the windows desktop analogy has been corrupted by software manufacturers who believe that it is the place for short-cuts to their applications, where it should only be for the documents and files you are currently working on, just like a real desktop in an office. - Phydaux (talk) 14:49, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The average user does not use the desktop as a desktop. He or she uses it as a repository for absolutely everything. Every application has a link on the desktop. Every picture they downloaded is on the desktop. Every attachment from their email is on the desktop. Every install program they downloaded is on the desktop. When I'm asked to fix a problem on their computer, I have to stand there as they spend 10-20 minutes looking around on their desktop for the icon they clicked that caused the problem. By having to support users who put hundreds of icons on the desktop - to the point that they are all overlapping, I am at the opposite extreme of not wanting to see a single icon on the desktop at all. -- kainaw™ 01:32, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Syncing

I am looking for a software solution which would allow me to efficiently sync the contents of two PCs (both running WinXP). The first PC has all of the data (in several thousand directories and files), a subset of which is updated daily (new files are added, some old files are deleted, some files moved around, some renamed, and some updated). The second PC is supposed to mirror the first one, which is done daily by copying the affected directories from the first PC to a USB key and then replacing the matching subset on the second PC with the USB key data. I am looking for a solution that would allow to automate the process—i.e., at the end of the day it should determine which files/directories on the first PC have changed, copy only the changed data to the USB key, and then update the second PC with that information. The size of the daily updates can be anywhere from a few megabytes to almost two gigabytes and over time is expected to grow on average. The PCs are not networked (and can't be, as they are located in separate physical locations and one is not connected to the Internet for security reasons).

Preferrably, the software should be free (or reasonably priced), run without installation (being able to run it from the USB key itself would be ideal), and be able to handle missed cycles (i.e., if the updated data from the first PC were copied to the key but never moved to the second PC, it should not be a problem on the next day when more updated data is added to the key), but I realize that meeting all of the criteria is probably asking too much. Nevertheless, I would most appreciate any suggestions, as no software I've tried so far was able to supply this supposedly trivial functionality with satisfactory results. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:08, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Would Robocopy work? I believe it lets you set job times. Alternatively, you may be able to script the SyncToy Windows XP PowerToy. You'll need to install one or the other, which may somewhat preclude the "run off USB." I'm not sure how well robocopy especially would hold up for that. Washii (talk) 16:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Or, you could schedule a batch script with xcopy: xcopy src dest /D /E /V /C /I /H /Y /Z

This will copy all newer files, copy all subdirectories, verify copies, continue on error, default to copying files to a directory, copy hidden+system files, suppress overwrite prompts, copy in restartable (could probably remove that).

However, it may be better to use robocopy. Xcopy has some evil niggling details (if a path is >253 characters, it fails with an 'insufficient memory' error). I believe the third-party XXcopy doesn't have this limitation and supports mostly the same commands. Washii (talk) 16:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I haven't used it, but the PortableApps version of Toucan may satisfy your requirements. At the very least, it will run directly from the USB drive—that's the point of PortableApps. -- Coneslayer (talk) 16:48, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Xcopy was my firsh thought, too, but it's unsuitable because it ignores the fact that some of the files are being deleted and some are moved around. Robocopy and Toucan, however, look promising, at least at the first glance; I'm going to give them a test run. Meanwhile, if anyone has other suggestions, I'm ready to try them out as well. Thanks much!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:08, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

If you use robocopy /MIR, be very careful that you know what it does. My reasoning glitched the first and second times I used it. Give it a couple of shots on a fake folder-set so you know what it will do in varying situations. However, that should handle the 'remove files' cases. Washii (talk) 17:20, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the word of warning :) I'm going to test robocopy next, as Toucan did not work out for me—it's much like many other tools I tried, as it does a fairly decent job of syncing a source and a destination, but not through an intermediary means (USB key, in this case).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:33, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how far you've gotten, but I did find out that just the robocopy executable should work all on its lonesome as long as you're using a Unicode-based Windows (at least Win2k and up). It should be fairly easy to write batch scripts for re-using the same parameters, but different paths, too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Washii (talk • contribs) 17:53, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I've so far been testing robocopy (and yes, it works on its own just fine) and found it to be an extremely useful and flexible tool (so thanks for the tip) which, unfortunately, does not work for my purposes. If I were able to copy the whole data set to the USB key, robocopy would do a marvelous job of syncing the first PC with the USB key and then the USB key with the second PC. However, since the whole thing is currently at 250 gigs and is only expected to grow, using a USB key for that is out of the question (and hauling a USB hard drive back and forth every single day is something I am desperately trying to avoid). The software I need should be able to work with subsets of the data (which probably means it needs to create a catalog of the first and second PC contents, be able to create USB key subsets/copy them to the second PC using those, and then update those catalogs accordingly at each run). Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I have not tried the SyncToy yet, but by the looks of it it is going to have the same problem as robocopy (i.e., it would sync a source and a destination, but not via subsets recorded onto an intermediary device).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:23, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorting a text file by line length, linux

I need to sort a huge text file, ordering it by increasing line length. The shortest lines in the input are to be the first in the output, then the second-shortest lines, and so on. I would imagine this to be a one-liner, but am not all that familiar with bash scripting, and would appreciate help on how to achieve this. Thanks. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 18:15, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know of a simple way to do that, as sort doesn't have that feature. The following ugly little script does it by prefixing each line with its line length, calling sort, and then removing that prefix.

#!/bin/bash
python -c "import sys
for line in sys.stdin: sys.stdout.write('%08d%s' % (len(line),line))
" | sort | python -c "import sys
for line in sys.stdin: sys.stdout.write(line[8:])"

If you had that saved in lsort.sh, your command line would be lsort.sh < longfile.txt > sortedlongfile.txt 87.114.18.90 (talk) 20:35, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try it out! --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:48, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

If you have Perl installed, you can do it with this one-liner:

perl -e 'print sort { length $a <=> length $b } <>'

The onlyOne caveat is that this won't work correctly if the last line isn't terminated with a newline. The best I can come up with for that case is

perl -e 'print sort { length $a <=> length $b } map { chomp; "$_\n" } <>'

(edit: As mentioned below, it also won't work with files too large to fit in memory.) -- BenRG (talk) 21:01, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Beautiful! The last line was newline-terminated, so no problems with that. Worked like a charm, and fast, too. Thank you! --NorwegianBlue ^talk 21:33, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Ben, does Perl's sort work properly on a dataset that's bigger than the process's available mem/swap? I copped out of the sort and used the coreutils sort because I was under the impression that it did, but on reviewing its man page it's silent on the topic. If NorwegianBlue's input file really is that huge, then this may be an issue. 87.114.18.90 (talk) 21:41, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Ben's solution does indeed have that problem if the file is very large. The "<>" construct slurps all lines into memory. --Sean 23:23, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll keep that in mind. I tried it out on a smaller (though still large) version of the file in question. If this turns out to be a problem, I'll use 87.114's script. Thanks again! --NorwegianBlue ^talk 09:50, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

A side effect of 87.114.18.90's bash method is that same-length lines are sorted. In BenRG's perl method same-length lines appear in an arbitrary order. If that matters. Saintrain (talk) 13:16, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

According to this documentation, you could add use sort 'stable'; to the beginning of BenRG's code, and it would guarantee stable sorting. That is, lines of the same length would come out in the same order that they went in. That's different from 87.114.18.90's output, where everything is sorted lexically. Either one might be preferred, or it might not matter. -- Coneslayer (talk) 13:27, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

In my code you can get lexicographical sorting within each line length by replacing { length $a <=> length $b } with { length $a <=> length $b || $a cmp $b }. -- BenRG (talk) 16:13, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

That's very cool. I've never perl'ed, it looks very handy. Thanks. Saintrain (talk) 18:23, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

In the event that huge really does mean "bigger than available RAM/swap" (and my suspicion that GNU/POSIX sort will only sort in memory) the following will do a bit better

!/usr/bin/python

theGreatIndex=[]
location=0

f = open('srcfile.txt','r')
for line in f:
    length=len(line)
    theGreatIndex.append((length,location))
    location += length

theGreatIndex.sort()

for (len,pos) in theGreatIndex:
    f.seek(pos)
    line = f.readline()
    print line,

As it only remembers the line length (and its position in the file) it uses memory more efficiently (by how much depends on the distribution of lines in the source data). If NorwegianBlue's file has a pretty long average line length (e.g. apache log files) then this should allow you to sort a file perhaps 10 times bigger. But if the file is significantly bigger than available memory that (essentially random) seek will annihilate the disk cache, and this will all run eyewateringly slowly. The best thing to do when sorting astronomically large files (by line length or anything else) is probably a multi-stage windowed mergesort between a bunch of temporary files. 87.114.18.90 (talk) 16:51, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I think GNU sort will operate on files larger than memory/swap. (I'm also surprised.) The manual doesn't say explicitly, but it uses TMPDIR for something, and it lets you specify the size of a "memory buffer". It also cautions that the "buffer grows beyond size if sort encounters input lines larger than size", implying that the longest line has to fit in memory. -- Coneslayer (talk) 16:59, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Gaming laptop

What is the cheapest laptop or netbook that could run a game like Team Fortress 2 well enough to play it very smoothly at its lowest-end graphics settings?--142.108.107.93 (talk) 18:40, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

You can get cheap laptops at every major brand for about $400-$600 that can easily run such a game, provided no other program is running. The cost goes up by $200 if you plan on using genuine Windows. You should go for 1 GB of RAM, getting a good CPU is very expensive. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 18:52, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

My friend's Toshiba laptop with a Core 1 Dual 1.8Ghz and Geforce 7300Go with 1GB of ram can play TF2 on lowest setting on its native resolution, 1280×800. TF2 isn't that demanding. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:36, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

It's also important to have separate graphics memory (ie not "shared graphics memory"). This will markedly improve gaming performance. — QuantumEleven 12:54, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Mobile MSN doesn't show contacts as online

Hi all,

I have a smartphone with WM6 and Windows Live Messenger. Why does Messenger show all contacts as offline even if they're for sure online?

Thanks, HardDisk (talk) 19:43, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

PS: How do I determine which program transmits how much data via GPRS/EDGE? I hate it that even if I'm connected via Wifi, that some app wants Internet access via GPRS :(

It's a known bug (see also [2], [3]). As far as I know, signing off and back on is the only way to "resolve" this problem.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

There was a hotfix mentioned on one of the links, it solved the problem. Thanks!HardDisk (talk) 18:26, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Sign-in secure for this online banking?

Hi all,

I am a member of Cambridge Savings Bank, and the website for signing in is https://www.csbwebonline.com/onlineserv/HB/Signon.cgi

Although the protocol is https, the little info button to the left of my Firefox browser says that the site 1) does not supply any identity information about itself, and 2) my information is not encrypted. Compare this to my Bank of America info button, which not only says the information is encrypted, but also that it's been verified by Verisign.

Is there any reason to not feel safe on the Cambridge Savings website?

Thanks, — Sam 21:08, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

The certificate itself is issued by VeriSign and is still not past it's expiration date. On FF3, I get a message saying that parts of the webpage are not encrypted before data is transmitted over the internet. The question that you should ask the bank is what is or isn't encrypted. Thanks AreJay (talk) 21:34, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

The message about parts of the page being insecure usually means that it's including bits of content that are accessed through plain HTTP instead of HTTPS. In this case the little house icon at the bottom of the page (before "Equal Housing Lender") is an example of this; the page also includes some CSS stylesheets and JavaScript files called by HTTP. Poor page design, as it is confusing, or even scary, to the non-technical user, but probably not actually a security hole. I'd suggest you should point out the problem to the bank (though I have done the same with a bank I have accounts with, to little effect other than a patronising "everything is fine" reply). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:52, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

OP, I think you should still talk with your bank about it. Why should we put up with the laziness of their Web Development team? Kushal (talk) 20:04, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you all very much! — Sam 00:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.115.120.108 (talk)

Dynamic Controls - Ideas please :)

Hi,

I'm writing a small program using vb express 2005. I currently have a form with a few controls (listview, comboboxes, a couple of masked editboxes and buttons here and there).. i need to make similar forms but with different controls, labels etc... So i thought it might be more efficient (and more flexible down the road) if the form / controls would be dynamically created from something like a list or database. But i'm afraid that might be making it a little too complicated (if need to store info like control type, location, etc) and take too much coding time. I was also considering just adding items (much like headers) to a list,and force all input to be done thru something like an edit box, but it would look too 'unprofessional'...

Anyone got ideas on how to implement this better? Am confident there are... Examples or links to articles pointing me in the right direction would also be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance 119.111.70.146 (talk) 21:17, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't VB but in C++ (I know you want VB but a C++ response might be better than none?) it would go something like this. In the constructor of the form where the button is to appear:

   Button *pBtn = new Button(this);  // make a new Button.  pBtn is a pointer to the new instance
     pBtn->Parent = this;            // attach it to the form
     pBtn->Left   = 0;
     pBtn->Top    = 0;
     pBtn->Width  = 25;
     pBtn->Height = 15;
     pBtn->Caption = "DynoButton";
     pBtn->onClick = myDynamicButtonClickHandler;
     etc. 

There's probably a list of properties like this in the button's "editor"? Don't forget to delete the button in the form's destructor. WYSIWYG is easier, huh? Hope this helps. Saintrain (talk) 20:29, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

You can do it programmatically in VB.NET but it isn't a trivial task. It's not really a trivial task in any language, frankly—even making forms in HTML (which takes care of most of the positioning issues automatically) requires a lot of tinkering, and for something like VB it's usually not worth doing unless there is a very strong need to have form information programatically assembled. Consider that in the end it would probably take as much if not more work than just doing it all in Design mode—even with a very robust system you're not going to be able to get off by just saying, "Oh, make me a few listboxes", you're still going to have to specify where they go, what data they have, what happens when you change them, etc. etc. etc.. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:39, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

It's incredibly simplistic. Create a new object of the type of control you want, set it's properties as you would any other class of control, even simpler if you load this data from a file, then add it to the specific Forms control collection. There's even a few simple examples in the MSDN library. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 00:48, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

thank you all very much for your responses. i feel *.8.46 understood my question best, and was able to convince me to just hard-code it. 119.111.70.146 (talk) 17:59, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

September 17

LAN/WAN Engineer

What is the most practiical way to become schooled as a LAN/WAN engineer, while already employed F/T ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandrums (talk • contribs) 03:36, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

What country do you live in? Your local college may provide evening courses to teach you the subject, otherwise, a correspondence course. — QuantumEleven 13:37, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Huge security problem in Linux

If people believe that Linux is reliable (in terms of phishing, virus, and the like), isn't it a huge security problem?Mr.K. (talk) 08:39, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Isn't what a huge securtiy problem? - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 09:08, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

To believe that something is completely secure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 11:13, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

No one believes it to be completely secure; at least those who actually work on it don't. There is constant work upon the security in Linux, as there are in other systems. People only claim it to be somewhat superior to other systems, and you'll find that the people who work with the security are quite aware that there exists no "perfect" reliability. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 11:45, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

An end-user who believes that her/his platform is perfectly secure is the security problem, not the platform itself. The Linux platform is generally more secure because the Linux source code is fortified and because the platform is provided with tools such as AppArmor, Clam AntiVirus, Netfilter, Open Source Tripwire, Security-Enhanced Linux, Snort (software), just to mention a few. Rilak (talk) 12:26, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, Linux users who think it is completely secure are likely using a standard install which, under most flavors of Linux, includes a built-in firewall and automatic updates. That is more secure than some other OS that requires the user to somehow know to turn on the firewall and automatic updates. If he or she happened to use Fedora, it installs SELinux by default also. So, in my opinion, the "ignorant" user is more secure using Linux than Windows. Of course, it is harder to find ignorant Linux users than ignorant Windows users. -- kainaw™ 12:59, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Except that Windows Firewall and Automatic Updates are indeed on by default, and the user is required to have less knowledge of the ins and outs of increasing privelleges of applications so there is less chance of user fault causing bad security. Either way, software inheriting privelleges is bad so none of them are very secure. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 13:06, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Does Linux have File Protection? Since you seem to be a complete noob when it comes to Windows, I'll tell you what it is. WFP automatically detects if system files have been tampered with and replaces them instantaneously with new ones. Also, does iptables include outbound protection? You see, Windows' newest firewall prevents viruses from phoning home. Vista also includes an anti-spyware scanner (Windows Defender) enabled by default. There's also black-hole router detection, address space layout randomization, network access protection, and so on; and so on. It seems that the Linux strategy for virus prevention is simply not supporting 99% of the programs on the net. Hey--that's not sophistication...--Tree 'uns 5 (talk) 14:44, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Back around 1995, I was running Tripwire on Linux, with the statically-linked tripwire executable and the tripwire DB stored on a write-protected floppy disk (later CD-R). If you think change detection on critical files is some new technology, I have to wonder why you're calling other people "noob". -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:49, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I actually don't use Linux. It's too primitive. I was talking about Windows when I used the word noob, anyway. So learn to read before you put words in my mouth. I actually could go on indefinitely by listing all of the security features Windows has that Linux does not. That was just one that you chose to discuss. Speaking of Tripwire, does it come installed by default or do you have to redesign your system to get it to work? It seems like you have to do that a lot to get things to work in Linux.--Tree 'uns 5 (talk) 16:11, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Tree 'uns 5... To answer your myriad of questions... Yes. Most flavors of Linux (the popular ones) protect the filesystem, devices, and network access. I assume you don't care about the details. -- kainaw™ 01:43, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

@Tree: $IPT -P OUTPUT DROP Oh my, whats this? Is Netfilter now blocking outgoing connections? No it can't be! Btw, Netfilter is the firewall, iptables is the program that configures it. Rilak (talk) 07:53, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Linux users justifiably feel themselves to be safe from viruses and malware. I've been using multiple unprotected Linux machines on open Internet connections for ALL of my work for 11 years - and I have never had a single intrusion of any kind whatever. I don't have virus checking software and I don't take any special precautions beyond what the distributions provide by default.

There are many reasons for this wonderful situation - but in practical terms, casual home users and small office setups can simply ignore malware issues when using Linux. Open any attachments you like - visit any website you like - no worries.

HOWEVER: Linux doesn't prevent "social engineering" attacks like phishing (where you're tricked to entering sensitive data into the bad guy's computer) - and it can't stop junk mail, nigerian scams, etc. If someone phones you up claiming to be from Homeland Security or from your ISP and asks for your password so they can "test the line" or something - then if you are stupid enough to tell them, you'll get just as hacked with Linux as you would with Windows...so you can't completely ignore security issues.

In large commercial sites, it is important to be on guard and to keep up to date with the latest patches, etc - because Linux ISN'T 100% secure and a determined hacker could get in if he were sufficiently motivated. However, for a home or small office user - it's unlikely that anyone would be that determined...and if they were, there is probably no way for an occasional user to protect themselves - keeping up with the latest issues is a full-time job! In large organisations, the "social engineering" attack is by far the easiest - and disgruntled IT workers are a serious risk.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:58, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

People who believe that choosing the "best" software removes absolves them of the responsibility to think while using it... will always be getting themselves into trouble. The important differences between GNU/Linux and MSWin are cultural, not technical. One culture distrusts programs without source code from unknown authors; the other eagerly runs whatever it can. So to answer the original question: yes, complacency is the biggest security problem of all. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 20:17, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Excel 2007 and formatted values

I have a cell, A, that has the actual value of 4.556 but is formatted to read "£4.56".

I have a cell, B, that has the actual value of 4 and is formatted to read "4".

A * B = C which has an actual value of 18.224 but is formatted to read "£18.22".

As you can see, when formatted as a currency value, the amount in the cell is rounded up / down to a set digit for displaying. My displayed cells A and B, when calculated on face value (how they are displayed) will calculate to 4 * 4.56 = 18.24; however the actual value displayed in C is 18.22 because the calculation is being done underneath.

I want cell C to show the product of the displayed values of A and B - that is, 4 * 4.56, not 4 * 4.556 so that the sheet looks consistent. Any help? 81.187.252.174 (talk) 12:43, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

C=round(A;2)*B. Note, however, that having the sheet "look consistent" is normally not desired - I for one would prefer to maximize precision. Jørgen (talk) 12:55, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Select the cell(s) with currency. Go to Format / Cell / Currency, and set the number of decimal places you want. --- OtherDave (talk) 14:44, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

windows jingles

is there anyway to turn off those stupid jingles that windows XP plays on being turned on/off; or change their volumes? thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.16.148.143 (talk) 17:00, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Start→Settings→Control Panel→Sounds and Audio Devices→"Sounds" tab. There, either set the "sound scheme" to "No sounds" to get rid of all sounds, or set the "Exit Windows" and "Start Windows" program events to "(None)".—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:11, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

windows xp

why does windows xp have norton ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ourhero in doom2 (talk • contribs) 18:24, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't. Standard Windows XP does not come with any Norton Product. However, the Windows XP that comes when you buy a PC often does, because Norton pays money to Dell, HP or whoever to include it. This is called a software bundle (or, more accurately, crapware) 195.58.125.39 (talk) 18:39, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Using a Bluetooth headset as output for windows media player

Hi all,

another WM6-related question: I bought me some shiny BT headset and it works well, at least with phone calls. But Windows Media player and other programs still output sound through speaker/wired headset output, so I am forced to wear wired headset if I don't want to disturb a whole metro with awful metal music. How do I force that the headset (if in-range) is used as primary sound output?

Thanks,HardDisk (talk) 19:24, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

If you are using XP, then ther's a guide here. Fribbler (talk) 16:17, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

iTunes album splitting problem

I'm having a problem where a single given album is being registered as multiple albums in iTunes. For example: track 1, track 2-10, and track 11 of Year of the Rabbit are being shown as three different (but the same) albums in cover flow view. Artist, album, track #s, etc. are all consistent, so the problem doesn't appear to be with labeling, so I can't figure out the problem.--SquareOuroboros (talk) 19:33, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Select all the tracks, edit info for them and retype the "Album Artist" - this will sort them correctly Lewiseason (talk) 20:04, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The album artist thing seemed to fix things. What's supposed to be the difference between the artist and album artist fields? I'm still confused on that point.--SquareOuroboros (talk) 22:23, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Many albums don't have a single author, while most songs will be listed as the artist being "Dr. Cool-Aid", others will be "Dr. Cool-Aid feat. The Huxtable Kid" (or something, I'm making artists up). These will be interpreted as different albums, unless the Album Artist is set. 90.235.13.101 (talk) 00:56, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

maybe the sorting field wrecks you, remove it individually for each track. sorting sucks. HardDisk (talk) 20:28, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

AcroRd32Info.exe

I have major problems with Adobe's AcroRd32Info.exe application. Almost every time I try to rename, move or delete a PDF file, the application I use (most commonly Windows Explorer, but, of course, for instance any application able to show file dialogs (open/save) can also be used) stops responding, until I use the task manager to kill AcroRd32Info.exe. Is there any known solution? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:09, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Warning, non-neutral POV ahead - Uninstall the Adobe bloatware and install Foxit Reader instead. --LarryMac | Talk 20:14, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Ditto. Saintrain (talk) 20:31, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Whilst I agree with the above comments, if you want/need to continue using Acrobat, I recommend you uninstall your version of Acrobat Reader, download the latest version from Adobe's website, and reinstall. It sounds like a part of Acrobat Reader (possibly the explorer plugin) has somehow gotten messed up, the best way to fix it is to reinstall Acrobat Reader. — QuantumEleven 12:48, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Upgrading MS Office on a new PC

My current Dell PC came with MS Office xp installed, and I have the reinstallation disks. I recently ordered a new computer without Office. I will no longer use my old PC after I get the new one. What I want to do is just buy the Office 2007 Upgrade, for my new PC and use my old Office xp disks to show it that I already have a liscenced copy. Will I be able to do this? ike9898 (talk) 20:51, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Quoting to Microsoft.com^here, it seems you will have little advantage in upgrading vs buying anew if you plan to spend USD 240 or less. Might I suggest using OpenOffice.org or at least giving it a try?

Oops, forgot to sign. Kushal (talk) 01:47, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I need Office 2007 Professional; according to your link the upgrade is $160 less than the full version. Anyone know the answer to my original question? ike9898 (talk) 10:41, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Are zipfile passwords effective anymore?

I keep some personal private information encrypted in zipfiles with a password. But since there is software available to "crack" zipfile passwords, can I be confident that my password-protected zipfiles are secure, or could a curious teenager open them after a few minutes or longer? In other words, are password protected zipfiles sufficiently difficult to open that a teenager is unlikely to succeed, or is the security just illusionary? Thanks 78.149.194.247 (talk) 23:42, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

From what I can tell it depends on what software you've used to encrypt it with. If you use newer versions of WinZip with an Advanced Encryption Standard encryption then they should not be vulnerable to any sort of simple attack. The original encryption algorithm of PKZIP, etc., was very poor and is very vulnerable. So if you are worried about it, I'd get a new version of WinZip and re-encrypt the files with AES. Keep in mind that short and simple passwords are very vulnerable to simple brute-force methods, whereas odd passwords (e.g. mixing of alpha-numeric characters) or pass phrases are much less vulnerable. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:34, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

You can also use other programs to do encryption on any file. If you package a zip-file in a TrueCrypt container, you wont have to worry a lick about WinZips dodgy encryption-scheme 90.235.13.101 (talk) 00:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Honestly, TrueCrypt is probably your best bet. Just be sure you don't couple that with a weak key, or someone will be able to get through it by guessing (ie. a dictionary attack). A sufficiently strong key with TrueCrypt is not feasibly breakable. For that matter, WinZip's new encyrption should be secure as well, if it actually implements AES properly. I'd still go for TrueCrypt though, as it's free, open-source, and works on OSX and Linux as well as Windows. Plus it has far more nifty options, like hidden volumes and full drive encryption and stuff. 24.76.161.28 (talk) 05:30, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I think you mean a weak passphrase; weak key has a different meaning. As far as I know the AES encryption in WinZip (which is publicly documented) is fine. I don't know how widely it's supported, and it only encrypts the file contents, not the file name, if you care about that. TrueCrypt is fine too, of course. You can also get a TrueCrypt-like effect by putting your file(s) in an ordinary zip archive and then putting that archive in a second, encrypted archive. Whatever's most convenient. -- BenRG (talk) 11:42, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Multiple classes

In what programming languages, if any, can an object belong to two classes at once when these classes do not share a subclass? NeonMerlin 23:44, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

See type polymorphism. In languages such as PHP, an instance may be referred to as one type of object, then another unrelated one. This is because memory is reserved as necessary during runtime, not calculated during compile. So, the instance is very flexible and can be morphed into many different classes as necessary (and cause terrible runtime problems unexpected by the programmer). -- kainaw™ 00:01, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Hey Kainaw, can you give an example of this please? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.223.156.1 (talk) 12:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, multiple inheritance? --71.147.13.131 (talk) 06:38, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Also multiple interface inheritance leads to objects being of multiple types. Equendil Talk 08:17, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

September 18

Help

How do I clear away the cache of EVERY PAGE THAT I HAVE VISITED on the Internet? Because "Clear History" does not work. And sometimes, when I view pages on Wikipedia under which I am logged in, I still look like I'm logged in next time I use the page even when I'm not logged in. I am taking a Wikibreak and I want my ENTIRE Wikipedia cache cleared away so I don't look like I'm logged in on any page, and I also don't want my account to be hacked (or used abusively by anyone who is likely to abuse it when I'm using the toilet or sleeping over at a friend's house). February 15, 2009 (talk) 06:37, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

This is browser-dependent. On Firefox you want tools/clear private data. Algebraist 11:06, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

To clear the cache in IE click "Delete Files" in the Temporary Internet Files section JessicaThunderbolt 16:05, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bypass your cache -Abhishek^Talk 17:09, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

The still-logged-in part is "cookies". Saintrain (talk) 17:44, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Security of email password

I want to know how secure those free email accounts (hotmail, google, yahoo) are. Can they be cracked with brute force? Should the user do something wrong to loose his password? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 09:44, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

My own rule of thumb is that the first three passwords you think of are no good. Here are some suggestions for creating a strong password (including: make them longer; use letters, numbers, and symbols; avoid simple substitution (like zero for the letter O). And of course you can look at the examples in the strong password article here. --- OtherDave (talk)

• Don't get phished. That's how most passwords are snooped. Brute force is much difficult because websites have captchas.

• Don't use easily guessable passwords.

• If possible, don't use public computers, they might be logging your keystrokes. I always carry Linux on a pendrive to use on public computers. -Abhishek^Talk 17:28, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Looking for a right-click upload to ftp server

Under XP, I'm looking for a program that will let me right-click to upload to a ftp server. The catch-- I want the file's local folder to determine what remote folder to upload to. So, if I have a folder called c:\htdocs\foobar\, I want all the files in that folder to upload to /public/foobar/ on the remote server.

In essence, I want to do one-way sync on a file-by-file basis, ideally accessible from within Windows Explorer.

Does anyone know of a good tool for such a thing? --Alecmconroy (talk) 10:34, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

That sounds handy. You should be able to do that with a batch file and stick a shortcut in "SendTo". Drawback is that your username and passwd would have to be in the batch file. Saintrain (talk) 17:40, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Boot Ferrari 4000 from USB?

Can I boot my Acer Ferrari 4000 from a USB flash drive? NeonMerlin 14:45, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

If it has a USB port, you should be able to boot by starting the computer and immediately pressing F8. It will get you to a screen from where you can select the device to boot from. If F8 doesn't work or produces a different result, try other function keys nearby. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 17:34, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

simple OO question

I have a "Car" class that has a "Driver" member. I call theCar.theDriver.Drive() ... how can I see the other members of Car (like speed and position) from within theDriver.Drive()? Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.106.15.180 (talk) 15:55, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

You need to either pass the car in as a parameter to Drive() or have the Driver save a reference to the car as a parameter to his constructor. --Sean 16:10, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

programs at start up

how do i keep programs from automatically running when i restart my computer? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.150.20.248 (talk) 16:08, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I believe it is msconfig. Go to start/run msconfig, or with vista search for msconfig. and it will let you click the program. Some programs are stubborn, and this method doesn't work. This method works 90% of the time. Sentriclecub (talk) 16:26, 18 September 2008 (UTC)