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November 10

windows xp services

any way to turn off unneeded windows xp services programmatically?

You can stop or disable services using the sc command in the command prompt or by using the ControlService() [1] or ChangeServiceConfig() [2] API functions. As for the unneeded bit, I don't know how you can determine "unneeded" services. --wj32 ^t/c 08:41, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

There are lists online about which ones are really "unneeded" for 99% of users—there are a few in that list that can have a drag on the system that in many cases are totally unnecessary (e.g. services that only are useful if you are having someone remotely control your desktop, which most people never do or even know they can do). I recall there being something that allows you to disable services under the Account Management control panel? --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:22, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

PNG vs TIFF

I just want to make sure: when storing digital photographs in PNG and TIFF format, there will be no difference between the two right? Both will offer 100% lossless storage of the photos, but PNG files are smaller? If so, what is the advantage of using TIFF over PNG in storing photos then?

As well, when I burn either format onto a recordable CD or DVD, no data will be lost either right?

Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 00:13, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

PNG format can be lossy, it depends on your compression level. PNG can comprFess in a lossless way, but a standard TIFF will be totally uncompressed. For storage smaller would be better, but it could be easier to write a program to operate on a TIFF or bitmap. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:52, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

TIFF can use either lossy or lossless compression. To see what I mean, save an image inside Photoshop as a TIFF and a dialog box pops up asking whether you want to save it using no compression, LZW (like a GIF), JPEG, or ZIP. Most of the time, though, TIFFs are not compressed at all. On the downside, it's not a sure thing whoever you send a TIFF can view it. Windows is pretty good with them, though. One advantage of TIFFs over PNGs is that they support layers and animation! Many people don't know about that last feature of TIFFs.--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 07:22, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

PNG can't be lossy (unless you mean using a smaller color depth or something). PNG only offers deflate as a compression method (which is better than TIFF's LZW). So, if you really want to store photographs in a lossless format, then use that. I think TIFF supports more metadata tagging than PNG, but I don't really think you would need that anyway. However, for archiving photos, I would recommend using JPG at 99% or "100%" quality - lossless formats don't compress photographs well. --wj32 ^t/c 08:31, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

If he plans on modifying his photographs after he takes them, then he probably should save them in a lossless format, like BMP, uncompressed TIFF, or a digital negative. Every time you save a JPEG, the quality of the image is reduced. Once he is done modifying them, then he might save them as JPEGs if space is an issue. Personally, the only time I make JPEGs is when I upload to the web, since space isn't an issue on my HDD.--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 09:47, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

PNG is a lossless format. Superm401 - Talk 16:32, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

PNG is absolutely not lossy. TIFF is a bit of a crap shoot - it's a "wrapper" format that can encapsulate other formats and may or may not have added fields that some programs will ignore and others will use in hard-to-predict ways. You could easily have a lossy JPEG-compressed image inside a TIFF wrapper and not the lossless format you hoped you would get! BMP suffers from some of the same problems as TIFF (especially on non-Windows computers) and it doesn't have proper transparency - it's internal structure is a typically Microsoftian pig's breakfast of headers and subheaders with duplicated field that could contradict each other...URGH! I strongly recommend using PNG whenever quality is important. If quality isn't important and small storage space is vital - then use JPEG. If you have super-amazing "high dynamic range" photography (you almost certainly don't) then the RGBE format is the only game in town. All of the other file formats should pretty much "just die" because they don't really have advantages over intelligent use of PNG/JPEG/RGBE. The one kinda-sorta exception is GIF - which is in every regard a sucky format...but it allows a kludgy form of animation that's widely used on websites for small, simple, cartoony, animated/flashing/whatever images. SteveBaker (talk) 01:45, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

And just to make it clear because I don't think anyone addressed it yet, burning the pictures onto a CD makes no change to the file so it can't introduce any loss of data. Assuming the CD burned correctly ;-). Matt Deres (talk) 17:20, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Youtube

Do Youtube videos last just 3 years on the site? Because I can't find any pre-2006 videos on Youtube. JCI (talk) 00:22, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Keep in mind that Youtube was founded in only February of 2005. Acceptable (talk) 04:58, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Here's one from 2005. The #1 reason you are having trouble finding videos from before 2006 is that YouTube did not "take off" until late in 2005/early 2006, I believe, and then you have to factor in how many of that earlier, smaller pool of videos were copyright violations and other such things. As a result the odds are highly stacked in finding post-2005 content, and since YouTube gives you no way to search by date, that makes it all the more harder! I found the above one by searching Google Groups for posts containing "youtube.com" from 2005. It was actually harder than you think it would be -- as people were talking about YouTube then, but rarely was anyone linking to it. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 14:22, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

This is supposedly the oldest video on Youtube. - Akamad (talk) 01:23, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Information on CNC

I'm doing a research paper on CNC, and one requirement is a ridiculous amount of 4x6 index cards (54, to be exact). These cards are meant to contain all the information we cite from our sources. At only 20 cards, I've gotten all of the information I can possibly find. I've cited the only two books from my school's library that had any information on the subject, conducted a lengthy interview with a professional, and cited Wikipedia itself. This site is the only other Web site I've found so far to actually provide information about CNC; all the other sites have been forums for discussion or commercial sites. The local public library was closed, so I'm at a deadlock for information. Currently, I'm scouring CNC Information for what I can, and that isn't going to get me another 34 cards.

I need some online source of information about CNC. Anybody know of any sites?

And by the way, I posted this request here because CNC has to do with computing; anyone knowledgeable about CNC might know of a few Web sites for it, no?--The Ninth Bright Shiner 00:52, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Have you talked to your instructor? In either case, you may have wrote too much information on each notecard. Most instructors will tell you to put one or two key pieces of information on each card, rather than fill it up.

I hated these kind of research requirements for this very reason. I could craft a good research paper from 15-20 cards full of information, where I was supposed to have 60+ with a fact or half a fact each. Washii (talk) 03:23, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, yeah. I originally packed each card to the limit, but of course that didn't work. Currently, I'm placing bullets of information in sentence form on the cards, while not trying for them to be too lengthy. After one bullet, there's a blank space, then another bullet, etc. I get the feeling that only one or two pieces of information would be really fudging it...as if that's not enough, I persuaded my teacher to let met turn in my cards Monday (they were due Friday) for a reduction of 5 points from my total grade. And yet, over the weekend, I've found about two or three bullets of information. So I've pretty much lost five points for nothing. Oh, fate, why hast thou conspired against me?--The Ninth Bright Shiner 04:46, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't have any specific sites to point you to, but the terms NC and DNC (digital? NC) may lead to other sources. I'd recommend searching in combination with other terms such as "manufacturing". -- Tcncv (talk) 05:05, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I have no helpful hints for your quest, but I can say that you should start asking for help with projects before midnight on the day they're due. flaminglawyer^c 20:55, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Using old printers on windows XP

Are there printer drivers around for old dot matrix printers for Windows XP? For example the Epson mx-80 was widely copied, so a driver for this could work on many printers. I remember with win 3.11 there was a manual set up for printers where you gave escape sequences to get bold, italic etc, is there anything like that in XP? These printers could be parallel or serial connected. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:21, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Guess what I can answer my own question, the Epson MX-80 is still there, and aslo the generic printer, which I can set strings under properties. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:26, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Switching between soundcards

I have two soundcards on my PC (running XP), one M-Audio soundcard for recording, etc. and one for ordinary pc use (gaming etc.). I have to switch between these cards very often, so my question: Is there maybe software to easily switch between soundcards. Another solution would be to make icons on my desktop which would execute some (commandline) commands to make the switch to another soundcard for the output of audio. Does anyone know if there's a way to switch to another soundcard through the commandline? Emil76 (talk) 10:02, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I found QuickSoundSwitch, so this question is solved. Emil76 (talk) 19:18, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I can't sign in to MSN or get to msn.com

Other websites and programs work fine.

I tried ping msn.com and all 4 packets timed out.

I tried telnet msn.com and apparently there is a problem with port 23. The connection troubleshooter also identified "key ports" as the problem.

Now how do I fix the port? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.57.48 (talk) 13:59, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Run tracert and see where it gets hung up. It'll tell you if it's on their end, your end, or somewhere in between. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 14:23, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Times out after 5 consecutive Level 3 Communications IPs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.57.48 (talk) 14:44, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Search for someone's MSN skydrive

Me and my friend signed up for MSN live. and uploaded files on SkyDrive. Without knowing each other's homepage's address how can we access each other's sky drive. (without inviting each other to view folders) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Muhammad Hamza (talk • contribs) 17:06, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

This may seem extremely obvious and stupid, but you could just give each other your username/password. I don't recommend it, though. 75.66.48.112 (talk) 20:49, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

What company rates website builders

i have a business that needs a website with domain name,search engine etc.l am ignorant about the process and want to go with the best company that helps build websites for businesses and gets you a domain name,search engine,help with advertising etc.i would like to know about some company s that rate these types of company's to determine which will be best for me like consumer reports rates all sorts of things but not this.please help me. I am going in circles and getting nowhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.162.240.114 (talk) 18:33, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

It has to do with cost. It sounds like you want a publicity firm that includes Internet publicity. A web design company just designs a website and walks away, leaving you with the files and a hope that you know what to do with them. A webhosting company can host your website. There are companies that can do both. -- kainaw™ 19:45, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Since you have a business, I would advise hiring a web developer/designer. If you can get a good one, he will design a good-looking website and find somewhere for you to host it. If you don't want to hire someone, there are free website designs all over the 'net and gazillions of sites like these, along with lots of comparison sites. flaminglawyer^c 22:42, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Automated diagramming for Netware partitions/replicas

Now that Microsoft has killed Visio Enterprise Network tools, is there another tool that can semi-automatically map/diagram servers/partitions/replicas for Netware and eDirectory? Thanks in advance! --198.162.133.101 (talk) 19:11, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

windows games

Hi, my mom called me and is looking for this program on her old computer that she really wants. I don't even know if it is a program. It was on her desktop and I am told it may be an interface. She says it was a livingroom that also had a kitchen you could cook in and a gameroom that you could click on games on a bookshelf and then play them. Has anyone heard of this or even know if it's available out there or is there something like it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruthmetz (talk • contribs) 19:29, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

From a distant memory... Back in the Bob days, there was an experiment for Windows which made your desktop look like rooms, with a desk, file cabinets, bookshelf, and such. It wasn't popular and was killed off (with Bob) - probably to make room for Clippy. -- kainaw™ 19:43, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Some screen shots here APL (talk) 20:23, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

What is BOB and what is clippy? is there anything similar to this available? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruthmetz (talk • contribs) 20:24, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I honestly have no idea what Bob is, but Clippy (the Paperclip) is/was the default "helper" for Microsoft Office on Windows 2000. 75.66.48.112 (talk) 20:46, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Microsoft Bob was the somewhat predecessor of Office Assistant; Clippit or Clippy was the default assistant. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:46, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

More screenshots here. You can see the "family room" with the desk, bookshelf, and such. -- kainaw™ 15:19, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Definately Microsoft bob, I remember playing with it when I was a kid. 66.216.163.92 (talk) 02:07, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Need Excel fundtion help

I'm struggling with a nested IF statement in Excel, and would much appreciate any insight from the RefDesk. Can I actually upload a minispreadsheet for others to look at and work with? If not, you have to use your imagination :-)

Sample:

C	M	N	P
2001	100	0	Pay from NQ
2001	125	500	NQ
2001	275	0	Pay from NQ
2049	50	0	Pay from NQ
2049	100	0	Pay from NQ
2049	400	600	NQ
2049	50	0	Pay from NQ

We are computing client invoices from this data; this sample data contains two clients (2001 and 2049 in column C) who have seven accounts between them, one per row. Column M contains the "raw" number, which may or may not be paid from the account on this line. Column P contains text which drives the test conditions. (Other conditions exist as well, but this is the one that's making me crazy!)

The formula in column N represents this explanation:

• IF col P contains "Pay from NQ", the amount paid from this account is zero; ELSE
  • IF col P contains "NQ", the amount paid from this account is the sum of all amounts in M for this value of C; ELSE
    • (failing both of those conditions) N = M.

The IF-statements aren't really the problem, it's the SUMIF function that's proving obstinate. As far as I can get is:

=IF( P14="Pay from NQ", 0, IF( P14="NQ", SUMIF(M4:M24, C14=C$14), M14 ))

(P4:P24 comes from "Nobody has more than 10 accounts, so +/- 10 from the current row should catch them all")

Problem with this is I still have to go in and manually enter "$14" where needed -- I can't figger out how to parameterize or genericize this. C14=C14 doesn't do it! Any suggestions?

Thanks!! --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 20:20, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Fixed typo in formula --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 20:23, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not 100% certain what you are expecting to achieve so not sure if this is going to be right but it seems like you'd want it to be

=IF(D2="Pay from NQ",0,IF(D2="NQ",SUMIF(A2:A8,A2,B2:B8))) Where D2 = the 'p' cell you are assessing where A2:A8 = the range you are assessing to see whether or not it = the C-column in your row where A2 = the value you want to assess 'c' against where b2:B8 = the values you want to sum (i.e. the 'm' column).

I'm not sure if this is right as not sure what you are trying to achieve. Using the above code the code would result in '500' for the answer to the first row of data 194.221.133.226 (talk) 11:18, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

The SUMIF clause you want in, say, N14 is SUMIF(C:C, C14, M:M). This will sum the values in column M where the value of the corresponding cell in column C is equal to the value in C14. Copy and paste this up and down column N, and the C14 relative reference will be updated automatically. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Resolved

Gandalf, that's obviously a well-chosen handle. After I realized that C14=C14 was just incorrect syntax, I tried =C14 and "=C14". Who'da thunk that -C14-, no equals, no quotes, was a legal comparison expression!

Thanks! --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 21:01, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Numbering in NeoOffice

I can't get the hang of numbering in NeoOffice. When I start a main point, say '1', then press enter, it starts the next main point at '2'. All well and good up to now. But, when I put a subset of points in for '1', such as (1), (2), etc., when I try to start the next main point (which should be '2') it starts off at '1', again. Is there any way to sort this out? I have ended up doing it manually, with the pain of having to delete auto-numbering and auto-tab, etc., leading me to want to switch the damn auto-numbering thing off altogether. Which leads me to my next question. Is this possible, too? Can I switch it off completely (without using the little button AFTER the auto-numbering has already numbered back to '1')? This is really annoying sometimes, because half an hour later, I will start a new main point, and it will number itself at '4' or something else annoying.--ChokinBako (talk) 21:02, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Your second question first - if you turn it off completely, you would have to manually set the margins and stuff, which gets annoying after a while. First question - I don't know, I use MSOffice flaminglawyer^c 22:11, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I can't remember if neo-offic does this but usually when you are in a numbered-list if upon entering from 1 you get 2 but what you want is 1.1/ 1 (1) (or whatever) you usually just press 'tab' and it will indent the numbered list and automatically change to a sub-point rather than the next main number. That's how it works in MS Office anyways. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 15:02, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry i was being daft - it's the "increase indent" button you'd need to press. Here's a forum discussion about indents on Neo-office (http://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=6478&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=) 194.221.133.226 (talk) 15:08, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Using someone else's unsecured wifi

<request for legal advice removed>

Paypal = credit card?

From reading microlot's support's relevant palpal FAQs, I can't come to a conclusion about whether they will or will not accept PayPal as a method of deposit/withdrawal. [3], they say they only accept credit card/bank wire. [4], they say they accept a PayPal credit card. I have a Paypal acc, so I guess my question turns into: Is a regular PayPal account the same thing as a Paypal credit card? flaminglawyer^c 21:54, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

No. The PayPal Plus Credit Card is a credit card that the service PayPal offers. Like most of these "store" credit cards (e.g. Macy's Credit Cards, CostCo Credit Cards, etc.) it is a regular credit card (with a balance of credit you can take out, with interest rates, fees, etc.) except you get some sort of store specific benefit for using it (in the case of PayPal, you get "exclusive PayPal offers" and "Rewards"). It is mailed to you as a regular credit card. I think the reason they have a clarification regarding the specifically PayPal credit card is because they don't take PayPal—and they're just emphasizing that that doesn't mean they don't take the PayPal credit card (which is the same as any other credit card). They even bother to specify that it should have a Visa logo on it (making it clear that it's a real-deal credit card, although I believe the PayPal Plus Credit Card is a Mastercard, but whatever..). --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:15, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Subset symbol doesn't render on Wikipedia

How come the subset symbol doesn't seem to be working for me right now: $\subseteq$ --128.97.245.127 (talk) 23:35, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Server problems/general weirdness? When I view the image by itself it still doesn't work. flaminglawyer^c 00:46, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

It appears to require something following it. "<math> \subseteq </math>" yields "$\subseteq$", but "<math> \subseteq A</math>" yields "$\subseteq A$". The bug seems limited to this particular symbol. Others similar symbols appear to work correctly - for example, "<math> \supseteq </math>" yields "$\supseteq$". (I'll add a cross reference to the Math desk where it might get the attention of someone more familiar with the inner workings.) -- Tcncv (talk) 01:15, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Somehow that particular image was broken. A kind server admin deleted the broken one, and the image has been regenerated. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:33, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

November 11

Hacking into my hotmail account

I lost the password and secret question answer for my hotmail account and I don't have an alternative email to send the password to. How can I hack into my email? --124.254.77.148 (talk) 02:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, can not answer that even if it is your own. Some one may know, but I doubt they will tell you. Rgoodermote  02:35, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Just create a new account altogether. Take this as a lesson, try to remember your password and make sure secret question is hard to forget (but not easy to crack). And create an alternative account just to be safe. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 07:21, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

A similar thing happened to me a long time ago. Here are some alternatives:

1) If the username of your email account is not your real name, you can make your password to be your real name (provided you remain annonymous when sending emails). 2) If your username is your real name, make a secret question such as your grandma's middle name (or some other name which would be impossible to guess unless the person trying to hack into your account knew you really well). Then you can choose any password. Until you get used to this password, you always know the answer to your secret question so you can't 'lose' your account.

However, it is important to change you password every 72 days or so for security reasons.

Topology Expert (talk) 07:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure I believe that changing your password every 72 days is neccessarily a good idea. Changing your password is good if you can you pick a unique secure password every time. My problem with forcing people to change the password at short intervals is that people will resort to picking easy passwords or writing it down somewhere which is no good because the people around you could find it. (who I would suspect would be more likely than anyone else to have a reason to want to get into your account) As long as your computer security is good (i.e. no keyloggers etc) pick a more-than-ten character password with upper and lowercase letters with no dictionary included words, special characters, and numbers not all at the end, and just stick with it. As an example 3I.L1i4k1e5P9i2e --> I Like Pie minus the spaces alternating with 3.141592 (It's faster to type than it looks because you can type ILikePie first and then go back and type in the number skipping a space every time.) 152.16.15.23 (talk) 19:33, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I like that idea (I will have to try something similar).

But do not actually make the example password your real password (since it's already in public view). --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 19:57, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I actually came across that warning in some "what's a good password" guide somewhere (think it was Google). It sounded funny at the time, but I guess there are people who need to be told, just as there are people who need to be told "password" is not a good password Nil Einne (talk) 12:34, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

A fairly simple way to make a really good easy to remember password is to get two words you can remember and merge them, making one uppercase and one lowercase, then append your house number or the day of your birthday to the end. For instance WAFFLE, turnip, 25, which would make WtAuFrFnLiEp25. Appending a symbol to the end makes it even harder while still being rather easy to remmeber! 88.211.96.3 (talk) 13:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Take a 2x2 matrix that you can remember very well (equivalent to a four digit number that you know very well). Use the Hill cipher against a 'simple password' and encode it into a more complicated password. In this case changing your password every 72 days is not a problem. Keep the same 'simple password' (which should be a good enough password on its own that you can remember) and change your 'encoding matrix' each time. This should last for quite a while...

Topology Expert (talk) 13:26, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I take that back. I have now learned there is a way of doing it without doing something illegal. Rgoodermote  00:09, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

SQL Help

Does anyone know what the syntax is for a CHECK clause in SQL? I found information about ranges (e.g., less than value x), but I need a CHECK clause (or any type of statement, really) that limits an attribute to five choices. For example, in the following statement, I create a table with an attribute named LetterGrade that can only hold the values A, B, C, D, and F. Here's what I have so far:

CREATE TABLE "Roster" ( 
   "LetterGrade" VARCHAR(1) NOT NULL CONSTRAINT "LetterGrade_Chk" CHECK (

In case you were wondering, it's not a homework question. Thank you for any help.--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 02:39, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Try something like:

... CHECK ( LetterGrade IN ('A','B','C','D','F') )

Check your documentation for the IN operator. You will find that it can also be used with a subquery that obtains a list of allowed values from another table. For example:

... CHECK ( LetterGrade IN (SELECT Letter FROM AllowedLetterGradeValue) )

By the way, it's usually not necessary to put double quotes around identifiers such as table and column names. They are only needed if the identifier contains special characters or matches certain language keywords. -- Tcncv (talk) 03:00, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

OK. Thank you, Tcncv!--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 03:33, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Also, depending on the RDBMS you're using, you could avoid the explicit CHECK constraint entirely by declaring the column as an enumerated type. For example, in MySQL you could write:

    LetterGrade ENUM ('A','B','C','D','F') NOT NULL

For details, see [5] and/or the manual for your RDBMS of choice. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:21, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Omitting multicharacter postfix in a regular expression

Resolved

I cannot figure out how to build a regular expression that omits a multicharacter postfix. As an example, I would like to match exactly those strings that start with "error" and do not end with any of " not found", " expected", " handled", but matches all other occurances of "error". I would like to make a regular expression like error [^( not found)^( expected)^( handled)]. This does not work, because [] matches a single character.

Is there any way to do this with a regular expression?
Best regards
Søren 212.130.46.190 (talk) 10:46, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Just break it up into multiple matches, each separated with a |. The problem you will run into is that RegEx is not designed to look for something that is NOT there. Your better bet is to look for anything that matches what you don't want and ignore those. For example, if I were using PHP with preg_match, it returns "true" if I get a match. So, I can say:

if(preg_match("/^error.*/", $mystring) && !preg_match("/not found$|expected$|handled$/", $mystring)) ...

Then, the "if" logically matches every line where I didn't get what I wanted. Notice that I had to match error first, to only get those lines, then remove the lines I didn't want. -- kainaw™ 15:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This is called a negative look-ahead assertion. The exact syntax depends on the kind of regular expressions you're using — it's not a standard feature. In PCRE syntax (which is what PHP's preg_match() uses), you'd write "error(?! not found| expected| handled)". —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your answers, quite interesting. I think I will just settle for an easy variation of this approach: replace "(error not found)|(error expected)|(error handled)" with "", and search for "error". (I am using notepad++ to search, so I can't use your method directly).
Best regards
Søren212.130.46.190 (talk) 15:53, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Win XP: Sorting documents by page count

I have abou 60 word documents collected in a folder and I want to sort them by page count. I applied 'details' view to the folder and even found a 'pages' option, but it attributes only 1 page to each document which is inaccurate (so I'm guessing it means something else, maybe page files per object). Is there any easy way to do what I'm trying for without going in and counting the page numbers document by document? --Shaggorama (talk) 16:04, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

The Windows shell can't do this natively. I found an article that does it with a VB script. You'll have to open Microsoft Script Editor and paste it in. Change C:/Scripts to the folder where your docs are (obviously adding an interface for this would be good), save, and then execute the script. Superm401 - Talk 04:24, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

audio electronics

plz help i want some good (free)book or some comprehensive article on audio electronics,i mean about sound physics its implementation in electrical components and then their responses in circuits.it means a-z material on sound devices 116.71.180.15 (talk) 16:48, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Not a book but maybe a start [6]--GreenSpigot (talk) 02:23, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

robots

i have searched a lot of robot sites but each of them have incomplete materials,is their any web that contains robotic projects with complete reports of concepts,devices being used,schematics,pictures. 116.71.180.15 (talk) 16:51, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

AVG deleted user32.dll!

Hi, I'm trying to restore user32.dll after AVG's last update considered it a trojan and deleted it. (You might guess that now Windows won't boot at all, and that I'm very pissed off right now; you'd be right.) The problem is that I followed the instructions to fix the problem here (under "False positive "user32.dll" (DB: 270.9.0/1777)") but it still won't boot up correctly. I don't know what I might be doing wrong. After the expand command, it says "file expanded", so it means it worked! My first guess is that I'm not selecting the right "windows installation" when it asks. I put 1, but is that correct?? Please help soon!! :( 190.157.120.42 (talk) 16:53, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

UPDATE (:P): I just noticed that the blue screen which said "can't find user32.dll..." now says "can't find winsrv". Now I guess I have to fix that, but how?? I tried doing the same as with user32.dll, assuming that winsrv is a dll too... but nothing. 190.157.120.42 (talk) 17:05, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

NEW UPDATE: I tried using the iso disc that they offered as an alternative but still nothing. It's been 4 hours. Please help. 190.157.120.42 (talk) 18:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

A lot of people had this problem. Try looking here: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/10/2319209 for help. They link to the fix and their may be helpful discussion below the story. 152.16.15.23 (talk) 19:15, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Do you have "T.V. Media"? [7] --wj32 ^t/c 06:23, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

css bug fixes for ie6 and 7

Hi I am relatively new to css and was going to buy a second book dealing with layouts...it kept going on about bugs in ie6, is this book irrelevant now with the advent of ie7?

any excellent sites on layouts that you know of?

thx. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.144.35.166 (talk) 16:58, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Huge numbers of people still use IE6—depending on what your audience is, how accurate your page must be, etc., that may or may not matter (at least 50% of the IE traffic that my sites get is still IE6, and IE in general makes up about 60% of all the browsers my site gets; I am not sure how representative that is but I get a fair number of random hits so that shouldn't be too far off the norm. Firefox for me is in 2nd place with about 22%). That being said, one should not, as a rule, bend over backwards to implement quirks to account for one bad browser. But sometimes it matter. I recently was working on a project that must look good on IE6 as well as IE7, Firefox, etc. (it has to be genuinely cross-platform in an environment where it is not appropriate for me to demand that my audience all use updated browsers), and was running into severe problems due to the fact that IE6 uses a non-standard box model for measuring widths (so sometimes my text boxes would be aligned, but often not in IE6). What I ended up doing was re-writing the code in a way that worked on all of them—there is often more than one way to get the same result, and sometimes one of the ways is more universally compatible than others. This approach is much more sane than making all sorts of special stylesheets and rules that are only implemented in one browser or another. If you are just making a personal site and don't really care about it looking bad for people in some browsers, then you can afford to not worry about it and take a stronger stand about people using standards-compliant browsers. If not—look for a workaround. But again, you ought not try and bend over backwards for IE6 with hacks and fixes—they often make the page very hard to maintain and can have their own unpredictable effects in browsers that are actually standards-compliant. --140.247.248.117 (talk) 17:45, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

All the above, and the fact that IE7 is still far from standards-compliant. If you're interested there's some good info here, and a list of all the IE positioning bugs on positioniseverything.net. Pretzels^Talk! 18:03, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Torrent help needed

Yo, so I'm working on the article Skinner's Room which is undergoing a GA review, but I haven't got access to the text of the story itself, which is very difficult to come by in physical form. However, a pdf of the text is listed as part of this torrent. I have a fried laptop and can't run torrent services except for from internet cafes. Is there someone with good torrent-fu who can tell me whether it would be plausible to download this torrent within say, one hour, at a standard European internet cafe? The torrent size is 32.34mb. Any help very much appreciated, the skomorokh 17:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

If you want the entire torrent it is well seeded. Should take a few minutes. But the story you want is 17.6KB, you can just select the single file from the torrent...the first piece you get would be the entire story. Should take a few seconds. ;) Louis Waweru  Talk  17:40, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Splendid! Follow-up question: what's the smallest (in mb) torrent client that would do the job? the skomorokh 18:01, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

That would be μTorrent. There are browser based clients in case you can't install things at the café...but I can't recommend one. Louis Waweru  Talk  18:10, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Ha! I tried Bitlet, which asked for the "metafile" and rejected the url above as input. the skomorokh 18:22, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

You have to actually download the .torrent file, and then open it with the client. The download link is on that page, or you can change /det in the url to /get. Louis Waweru  Talk  18:45, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, the url change fixed it. It's gone ahead and taken on the whole 32mb, though, at an average speed of about 100b/s (!). Thanks for your patience and assistance! 208kb out of 32.34mb, the skomorokh 19:13, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

A client with an even smaller size would be imageshack's online service.[8] Mac Davis (talk) 22:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Troublesome issue with a shell script

Greetings! In the following shell script, assume $2 is the name of a text file with each line within it containing the names of processes, and $1 is the name of a user on the local machine to email if the process is running.

tmp3=$(less $2)
echo $tmp3
for check in $tmp3 do
	result=$(ps -C $check | wc -l | LANG=C sed 's/\([0-9]*\).*/\1/')
	if [ $result -gt 1 ]; then
		echo "Process is running!" > /dev/tty
		message=echo $check is currently running'!'
		echo $message | mail -s $message $1
 	fi
done

Now, the issue I am having is with result=$(ps -C $check | wc -l | LANG=C sed 's/\([0-9]*\).*/\1/'). I am certain the command itself (that is, without a variable in the mix) works as intended, which returns a single number, then enters the if statement if there is more than one line detected in the process list.

However, upon trying to run it, the shell is stating there is a syntax error somewhere, and I just cannot see it. The complete error is below

[kes@fluffy stuff]$ ./shellScript 2 test.txt
ps ls init gnome-terminal syslogd
./shellScript: line 16: syntax error near unexpected token `result=$(ps -C $check | wc -l | LANG=C sed 's/\([0-9]*\).*/\1/')'
./shellScript: line 16: `       result=$(ps -C $check | wc -l | LANG=C sed 's/\([0-9]*\).*/\1/')'

Any suggestions on how to overcome this confusing issue would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Sincerely, Kesiana. 137.155.37.5 (talk) 18:02, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

The "for loop" syntax goes "for i in a b c; do body; done". Those semicolons can be replaced by newlines, but you don't have either. Also, you should use cat rather than less. --Sean 18:12, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Joomla, LAN, and WAN

HI,

I've setup a small portal using joomla on our lan (on a windows machine running AMP), whose computer name is \\server

when i set it up, the $mos config live site became: http://server/

It's been working well, but now i want to be able to access this outside our LAN, so i did the necessary port-forwarding on our router, and using a proxy, i can see the page, but the css / links are broken (I checked the source, and all references seem absolute. ie: css is linked as <link href="http://server/templates/madeyourweb/css/template_css.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />) so the page looks jumbled up.

Does any one know of a workaround to get our portal to show on both LAN and WAN?

TIA (ps, I've already posted on the Joomla Forums, but i know wp:rd/c peeps tend to be very sharp and quick) PrinzPH (talk) 18:35, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, why are the links absolute and pointing to "server"? Who or what was used to create the page? Either change them to relative links, or change the absolute links to use the external IP address or external hostname (if one exists). --71.106.183.17 (talk) 20:55, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Checking E-mail with Public WiFi

Is it safe to check one's email, hence entering a username and password, across a public wifi, such as one at a the side of a highway or a restaurant? Can a hacker potentially sniff out the password that I am sending across the web? Acceptable (talk) 21:52, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

It's generally not safe. Some traffic send over HTTPS should still be secure, but usually that is only used for the first sending of a password (and sometimes not even then). But anything else... it's not safe unless you are using a VPN. Even if you are using encrypted WiFi (e.g. WPA or WEP, the latter being extremely easy to crack incidentally), there's a chance the the router operator could be sniffing your packets before sending them on. With a VPN though everything is encrypted—no one can see your traffic. But otherwise, you're basically just sending things out in a way that anyone can see them. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 22:14, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah use a VPN if you have one; because I don't have a VPN account but have many SSH accounts, I tend to use SSH's dynamic port forwarding, which allows me to set my Internet applications to tunnel their traffic through the SSH connection. Many email systems these days have secure access though. I know that all the university email accounts I've seen have full HTTPS webmail interfaces, and they require SSL to be used with IMAP and SMTP when used with local email clients. Gmail has an option (Settings -> General -> Browser connection) that allows you to have it always use HTTPS. --128.97.244.146 (talk) 23:54, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

IMHO as long as your entire session is sent over HTTPS. (For example, GMail allows it. Go to settings.) Kushal (talk) 03:42, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Frankly I don't understand why there are still email systems that don't use HTTPS. There would be a big fuss if a bank's online banking website didn't use HTTPS. Yet there are hundreds of times more personal information in my email account than anything you can access on my bank account (they partially hide all the numbers and stuff anyway). --71.106.183.17 (talk) 07:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Wow. First things first. Security is important, but lets not be too crazy. Anytime you connect your computer to a network or the internet, it carries a potential risk of being hacked. It is (logically) likely that hackers will prey on public/unclosed networks more than private/secured networks - so the above is perhaps sound from a 'protection' perspective..the question is now - is that the only perspective? Ultimately - is it more important that you check your email (and open yourself up to a slightly increased chance of being hacked) on these public networks/less secure areas, or can your email checking wait until you are at a more secure network? Personally I would consider the slight increase in risk as worth it for the effort-saving gain of being able to do X now, rather than waiting. That doesn't mean there isn't a risk, just that you have to weigh risk against reward. ny156uk (talk) 15:31, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

November 12

Reducing restrictive NAT on wireless router

Both my PS3 and Xbox360 report that my Wireless b/g/n router is using a type of NAT (type 3) that could cause problems connecting to online games and chat. How do I change my router settings so it plays nice with my game consoles? --69.151.187.196 (talk) 02:10, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

It could be that you need to forward ports and/or enable UPnP on your router. --Rixxin 23:37, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, if your router has it, enable UPnP. It will save you many pains, as it essentially allows devices to forward ports as they wish. 24.76.161.28 (talk) 09:11, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

If it works semi-properly. UPnP is notorius for being shoddily implemented in a myriad of different ways. Washii (talk) 00:42, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't appear that Airport Extreme base stations support UPnP directly. Now what? --69.151.187.196 (talk) 05:49, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Dell Inspiron 1501 Powerpack issues

If you're curious, I'm writing this on my brother's computer.

I've had my computer and its powerpack for over a year now. Today, I unplugged the computer from the powerpack and moved it into the dining room for a change of location. when it told me that battery was low, I brought the powerpack in and replugged it into the wall and the computer. I continued working, for a long enough period of time that the powerpack must have been working to keep the computer running. At the end of the session, I unplugged the computer from the powerpack and brought it back into my room. I hooked it up onto my printer to print my work. Realizing that that computer should be plugged in, I walked back into the dining room, brought back the powerpack, and plugged it into the wall and the computer. While it was printing, I left the room, and did not return until nightfall, a few minutes ago. I noticed that the printing job was unfinished, because the printer had run out of paper. Also, the computer was off. when I pushed the button to turn it on, it beeped three times and told me "WARNING! BATTERY IS CRITICALLY LOW. PRESS F1 TO CONTINUE." I did so, but there was not enough juice, and the computer soon shut itself back off. It was fully plugged in and everything, so I wasn't sure why it wasn't working. I moved the powerpack and computer into the dining room and tried it in the socket there. It still didn't work. I tried the socket in the kitchen. It still didn't work. In the past, whenever the powerpack was plugged into the wall, a little green light would turn on. These times, no light turned on. What's wrong, and is there a way to fix it? Alternately, if not, can I still get the rest of the printing job from the printer (I've refilled it with sufficient paper to finish the job). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.179.52.204 (talk) 03:14, 12 November 2008

Depending on the size of the print job and assuming you haven't powered-off the printer, the rest of your document could be in the printer's memory. If an indicator light is orange or flashing, press the button to print whatever is still in the memory.

I'm assuming you have made sure the powerpack is connected properly (the powercord on my Dell is pretty stiff to insert in the powerpack). IIRC the "little green light" is on the PC and not the powerpack itself, so it could be a faulty powerpack (replacable from Dell or try eBay), or it could be faulty circuits inside your PC (not really replacable - sorry). If it's still under warranty, call Dell tech support - I was pretty pleased with their warranty repair service only a couple of days ago. Astronaut (talk) 06:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

IE6 "Active content" warnings, javascript permissions, blah

IE6 is "busting my balls" as they say. I am on a deadline to develop a product that will ship as HTML files on a CD that people can use (think of it as an online brochure, but off-line and more complicated).

The product uses extensive Javascript. It is mandatory for its functionality because it is offline. It has a javascript search engine and tree browser and all sorts of things.

This is fine in every browser I've used it on except IE6, which is still a bit too popular to ignore. IE6 has decided that it basically won't let the user execute javascript from locally hosted pages without lots of big yellow warnings that say "Internet Explorer has restricted this file from showing active content that could access your computer". Personally I'm dubious that Javascript alone can "access your computer" in a dangerous way, and think basically blocking all Javascript is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but anyway. That's the message.

I've tried using the "saved from url" trick that I've seen on some boards. It does not seem to be working on my testing setup (XP SP2 with IE6 on a virtual drive). For the life of me I cannot get IE to run this product correctly (Firefox is fine, Safari is fine, etc.).

Any suggestions? What are my options? Sometimes it doesn't even show the little yellow bar, it just lists it as an "error" that my page is trying to use Javascript. Really, really unhelpful. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 03:15, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Upgrade to IE7. Here's the link for you to download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9ae91ebe-3385-447c-8a30-081805b2f90b&DisplayLang=en . Personally though, I'd stick to Firefox. Seems more reliable in my opinion. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 23:13, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

The whole problem is that s/he's not the end user and so has no control over what browser will be used to access it. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 23:32, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

This page has some good ideas: http://www.winxptutor.com/lmzunlock.htm . You could change the extension to .hta or you could add change the registry settings to allow active content to run by default using a .reg file or the reg command.--Areateeth34 (talk) 23:41, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Ship a copy of FireFox on the CD. It's free - it works. Write in big, friendly letters: "If IE6 sucks for you - use the free copy of FireFox that we enclosed for your viewing pleasure". That way you have complete control - if your software works great with that exact version of that exact browser - then any kinds of 'support' issues you get that relate to browser incompatibilities can be fended off with "Well, you can always run the copy of FireFox we enclosed on the CD."...obviously you should still seek compatibility with as many browsers as possible - but there comes a point with some of the more ancient ones where you have to give up and get on with life. You could even dive into the Firefox source code and 'hard-wire' the thing to have Javascript always enabled and your 'front page' HTML file be the default page on startup - then make that version of FireFox autostart when they stick the CD in the drive. SteveBaker (talk) 00:34, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

There's really no need to do that. You can actually make a special browser inside Visual Studio using the WebBrowser control. You add your own buttons for back and forward and an address bar. But I'd just make the user run a batch file modifying the registry or rename the HTML files.--Areateeth34 (talk) 01:34, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

You could just put in a browsercheck thing, and if they have ie6, then make the page tell them to use the included Firefox. flaminglawyer^c 04:41, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Sharing the Program Counter

I have been studying for my PhD exam and I hit a question: "Can a thread share its program counter with its parent?" I know the answer is "no", but it got me thinking... Is it possible in any current popular operating system to have a thread create a pointer to the PC register? If so, sharing the pointer with the parent would be trivial. I can create a pointer to the PC register in non-threaded environments (I remember doing it on the Commodore 64). I haven't had any reason to try on any modern computer, so I don't know if it is possible. -- kainaw™ 04:16, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Really the only way to share the program counter is in a 'SIMD' type of machine - the GPU in your graphics card for example. But in any case - you can't take the address of a register...that's meaningless...so a "pointer to the program counter" doesn't make a whole lot of sense in a real, physical computer (maybe in a simulated one you could do that). You couldn't take the address of the PC register on the Commodore 64 - it was a 6502 CPU and there is no such mechanism. Perhaps the "program counter" used by the BASIC interpreter would have been shareable...because it's just an "emulation" of a notional BASIC-CPU. SteveBaker (talk) 05:30, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I think it may be possible in a virtualized machine where the CPU is virtualized also. That gets the registers into memory. Basically like the C64, which I mentioned. The current step (program counter) is all in memory. However, I just realized that I may have interpretted the question wrong. I think it is asking if a thread and parent can use the same program counter. That is obviously wrong since a thread can go off working one thing while the parent can continue working on something else. Of course, it could be read as asking if they can use the same register to store their program counter in when they are processing. That is correct - a single CPU will use the same register for all processes. -- kainaw™ 11:58, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, in a 'real' computer (not a 'virtual' computer or a 'simulated' computer) - the program counter is a single, unique specialised piece of hardware - it tells the computer where the next instruction is to be fetched from. Because the PC changes with every instruction executed - two threads using the same PC would have to run on different CPU's (different cores - at least) and they'd have to run in perfect lock-step. That's not a feature that x86-style hardware is likely to be able to do. One thread runs an instruction and bumps the PC to point at the next instruction - but the other thread probably wasn't executing at the time - so nothing much happens until the PC has been bumped a few more times. Then the other thread might run - but now the PC has moved by (say) a few dozen instructions - that thread would 'miss' the instructions that the other thread had executed. The entire concept is so utterly meaningless as to be almost beyond my ability to articulate the problem! It can really only apply to a SIMD machine where all of the separate 'cores' or 'CPUs' are locked together so they all execute the same instructions (from the same location in memory) in perfect synchrony. In a virtual machine (like the Java virtual machine) - it would be possible to make two threads run in this perfect lock-step - but I don't quite see why that would be useful. Worse still - unless you have the kind of specialised hardware that SIMD machines have - things like conditional execution is going to be very tricky - if both threads say "if ( x > 10 )..." and one thread has x==9 and the other x==11 - then one needs to have the program counter step into the 'then' part - while the other has to have it go into the 'else' part. At this point, sharing the program counter completely breaks any kind of rational programming paradigm. In SIMD machines (such as the shader processor in your GPU) all of the processor threads execute both the 'then' and 'else' clauses - and the hardware simply write-protects the memory and registers in any of the threads that are running instructions that they are not supposed to be executing because of the failure of a conditional test. SteveBaker (talk) 00:06, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Copy Protection

I have an old CD called TriplePlayPlus!Chinese that I dug out this evening and tried to run. It installs fine on Windows 98, but when I try to run it, the computer locks up. According to the task manager, something called CDCops ver 1.27B #3747 is Not responding. I've tried this several times in different ways, rebooting every time since there's no other way to get it moving again. I've also uninstalled and reinstalled it, with no success. Any ideas how I can get around this thing? It can't be the copy protection itself, since this is a legally purchased CD and it accepted the access code when I was installing it. Black Carrot (talk) 07:31, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

If you are running it on a newer version of Windows that might be the problem. The copy protection software may not be compatible with anything but Windows 98. The wonders of copy protection! Rilak (talk) 10:51, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

"It can't be the copy protection itself"—oh, if only it were true. In fact, the odds are it is the copy protection software, put in a new operating system, wigging out and preventing you, the guy who bought it, from using what you bought.

If you're really devoted to using it, I recommend using it with VirtualBox and a copy of 98, if you have one of those lying around. Otherwise... take this as a clear example of why DRM technology is actually extremely problematic for the honest consumer. --140.247.41.106 (talk) 16:54, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm running it on 98, I said so before. On XP it didn't even install. Is there a way to bypass the copy protection without hurting the software? Black Carrot (talk) 17:56, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes: Find a crack for the copy protection. Keep in mind that 1) doing so may not be legal where you live, and 2) cracks sometimes include viruses or other malware. --Carnildo (talk) 22:10, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Merging accounts on AOL

Is it possible to merge two accounts on AOL, so that messages will at least appear in the same IM window? Ideally, the merge would be transparent, so a person IMing me on one account would not know about the other. I say this because I have two accounts, one for real life, the other for the internet where I'm sometimes wary of giving out real life information. And I want status messages/etc. to appear on both. 68.63.171.112 (talk) 08:25, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. There should be a button (on the aim website or on the AIM client, I don't remember) that says Link accounts or something like that. After you do it, when you're on the AIM window, you can see both the acc's at once. I did it, so I know it works (or at least it used to work). And, like you said, I could message you on one acc and have no idea that the other is linked, or that you even have another acc. flaminglawyer^c 04:22, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Yep. It took me a good 10 seconds, but I found a link. (sign in before clicking) flaminglawyer^c 04:25, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Flash not cached

This page at "jedreport.com" starts off with embedded Flash from CBS. I find this chunk of a news show interesting and want to save it for future reference. (What else should I do with my monster hard drive?) However, the Firefox downloading add-on "DownloadHelper" doesn't see it, and more surprisingly it doesn't turn up in the cache: no item anywhere near big enough is in the cache directory as viewed with a file manager, and also it doesn't show up when I view "about:cache?device=disk" (as recommended in this page).

It occurred to me that the cache might just not be big enough at 120MB, so I tried increasing it to 300MB -- whereupon Firefox seemed to stop caching anything. So I brought the size back down again.

I wonder why I can't grab this Flash thing in the regular way (why/how it can not be in the cache), and what other way I can grab it. (I can choose among Firefox, Konqueror, Opera, Safari, Shiira, and even MSIE.) Tips? -- Tama1988 (talk) 08:53, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Random guess, but try using the download manager of your choice on this link: http://www.cbs.com/thunder/swf30can10cbsnews/rcpHolderCbs-3-4x3.swf. I haven't tried it myself though. Rilak (talk) 10:46, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

That file is surely just the "player", not the video itself. The variables of the OBJECT no doubt point to whatever the FLV video itself is: "http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ecbsnews%2Ecom%2Fvideo%2Fwatch%2F%3Fid%3D4586892n&partner=cbssports&vert=News&autoPlayVid=false&releaseURL=http://release.theplatform.com/content.select?pid=4riNJ7D8_f6jKqW60ntgY356PanH9YNB&name=cbsPlayer&allowScriptAccess=always&wmode=transparent&embedded=y&scale=noscale&rv=n&salign=tl". Feel free to disentagle if you are interested.... ---140.247.41.106 (talk) 16:57, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

there are shareware/freeware utilities that will grab and save a flash file. however, as everybody suggests, in this case it's absolutely likely that the flash is just the player of a video file. installing the newer versions of real player installs a popup in flash window players which sticks up a tab when you mouse over it, saying "download this video to real player" which works very well, if it's a real player video, which they almost all seem to be on youtube, etc. Gzuckier (talk) 18:02, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you all for your efforts to help. I got the impression that this URL (an XML file) might be the key. It's got obvious links to "DoubleClick" crapola, and among this also the link "rtmp://cp21928.edgefcs.net/ondemand/?auth=dbEdwdHa5apd2dBbyaCaqaPcHcEbnbnaCbj-bjg5G8-h0-buy-Gc zMjUog&aifp=v001&slist=video/_!/CBS_Production/882/79/60_Obama_1109%3Cbreak%3Evideo/_!/CBS_Production/8 82/79/60_Obama_1109.flv", which looks promising. (I've inserted two spaces in this to avoid the need for horizontal scrolling.) However, Mozilla doesn't know what to do about any "rtmp" protocol, and anyway there are entities in that URL [?] that resolve to angle brackets around "break", so only the last part, "video/_!/CBS_Production/8 82/79/60_Obama_1109.flv" seems to matter. I tried splicing that to form "http://release.theplatform.com/video/_!/CBS_Production/8%2082/79/60_Obama_1109.flv" but that brings a 404 message. I'm pretty sure that theplatform.com is the host, though, thanks to the mumbo-jumbo on that domain's top page, mumbo-jumbo that I only dimly understand but that seems relevant to video hosting for big-bucks corporations.

Some software like this sounds good; I wonder if there's an equivalent for some other OS. Time permitting, I'll explore all the pages [gulp] of this long but useful-looking thread later today. Tama1988 (talk) 03:31, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Having enabled Flash, and yeah, my link was the wrong one... Has anyone noticed that the video has an embed option with a link? I wasn't able to copy the link (Javascript problem on my side perhaps), but it might be worth a quick look. Rilak (talk) 08:39, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

This video has me stumped. I suspect that, given enough time, I could work out precisely what it is that I want, but I also suspect that since the hosting site (surely theplatform.com) takes such trouble to obfuscate it would also do referrer sniffing (is it called?) and tell me that no such file was available.

Maybe out of pure ignorance, I infer that webhosts mark material as either cacheable or non-cacheable -- how? in the http header? -- and that web browsers obediently comply. If this is so, to me it goes against the spirit of the web as I know it. Consider CSS: even if your browser knows what to do with CSS you can tell it to ignore CSS or to apply your own stylesheet instead or in preference. By analogy, I'd expect that browsers would have options for cacheing, with "cache as directed" as default but also "cache nothing" and "cache nothing". Actually some browsers do have that second option (aka "private browsing" or whatever); I wonder why none has the third.

Anyway, I'm on the lookout for something like "Replay Media Catcher" ("Runs on any PC with Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003 or Vista") for some other OS. -- Tama1988 (talk) 04:16, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Aha, there's a Firefox add-on called BetterCache that promises to do just what I want. I'm experimenting with it now, Tama1988 (talk) 04:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

And the experiment failed. Sniff. Tama1988 (talk) 10:07, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Columns in HTML tables

header 1
row 1, cell 1		row 1, cell 2		row 1, cell 3
row 2, cell 1			row 2, cell 2

Hi, if you want a table to have three even cells in the first row and two even cells in the second row, do you have to use colspan like in the example above? Is there a better way? Any help will be much appreciated. Thank you. --Kjoonlee 10:23, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Colspan is the way to go. Use CSS to set widths of each cell to get them exactly the way you want them. An alternative is to embed tables. Make the top row and bottom row a single cell. Inside the top row, add a table with three cells. Inside the bottom row, add a table with 2 cells. You may run into issues with cellspacing and cellpadding, but playing around with them will eventually get you what you want. -- kainaw™ 12:00, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd take Kainaw's second suggestion unless you have a specific reason to not use nested tables. Set the spacing and padding to zero (at least when you start) and then make changes as you see fit. COLSPAN always gets me into trouble, but YMMV. ;-/ Matt Deres (talk) 17:44, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Or you could set a colwidth="33%" thing, which works in wikitext and HTML. flaminglawyer^c 04:36, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

linking iphone to a different itunes account

What happens if, after linking an iphone to your itunes account, you sell it, and the buyer registers it to his itunes account? Does it wipe any data? thanks, 202.89.166.179 (talk) 13:20, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I would like to delete my Wikipedia URL

Madam or Sir:

Please let me know how I may delete my URL. // *****It's a wikipedia URL. I have admin access. **********//

Thank you,

Bill Motsenbocker removed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.184.211.125 (talk) 17:51, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Which URL do you need to delete and from where do you need it deleted? Astronaut (talk) 18:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

PS: These help and ref desk pages are highly visible across the internet and putting personal contact details on your comments is just inviting various spam-bots, crawler-bots and so on to send you even more junk. I have removed your details to protect your privacy.

Are you trying to ask how to delete an article on Wikipedia? See WP:Deletion process. -- kainaw™ 20:17, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Are you perhaps asking how to get your user account deleted? If so, see WP:Right to vanish. All you need to do is to put {{db-user}} on the top of your user page and eventually, your account will be deleted. (It seems odd that someone with admin rights wouldn't already know these things). This question was asked (somewhat differently) on the Wikipedia helpdesk - and referred here because it didn't seem (then) to be a Wikipedia question...O think it really is a Help-desk issue - but our OP needs to explain in more detail - and more clearly. SteveBaker (talk) 23:45, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

The helpdesk sent him here. APL (talk) 02:56, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

That is just because "delete the URL" makes no sense. -- kainaw™ 13:02, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

November 13

Vista copy file missing "Do this for the next n conflicts"

When copying files in Vista and there is a conflict, it will show a dialog box asking you what to do. At the bottom it should show "Do this for the next n conflicts" but it is not showing up on my computer. Help? 118.93.12.200 (talk) 03:58, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

cross-vnc

screenshot of mandarin translator

Is it plausible to use 2 different VNC programs with each other? i.e., Bob's computer has RealVNC, and Bill's comp has TightVNC. Bob is at Bill's house fixing Bill's just-out-of-warranty Chinese toaster. He reaches for the instruction manual... and it's written in mandarin orange er, Mandarin Chinese. Bill is paranoid about viruses and whatnot, so he tells Bob not to use an online translator, but to use the Chinese translator that came with Bob's Vista Ultimate package. So Bob uses Bill's TightVNC client to connect to his own RealVNC server, to access his mandarin translator. Is that possible? flaminglawyer^c 04:13, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

All VNC client and server applications should implement the same core protocols developed for the original VNC implementation at the AT&T Laboratories in Cambridge. Later implementations may have extensions that provide different levels of control, security, compression, and encryption, but these extensions will should only be activated if the client and server detect compatible features in the other though some form of handshaking. If the extensions are not supported by both sides, operation should revert to the original protocols. Unless the server is configured to only accept connections from clients that implement certain extensions, any two implementations should work fine together. -- Tcncv (talk) 04:57, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

spontaneous connection combustion?

I recently (within the last 2 months) upgraded my Comcast internet service from 600 to 800 (I don't know what the numbers mean; presumably kb/s?). Since upgrading, my internet connection has been... how can i put it lightly... "on the blink." I'll be doing great with my fast new connection one second, then the next, I'll have the "page not found" button. The no-connection period can last anywhere from a few seconds to 10 minutes. I've noticed that it usually, but not always, happens during periods of high-use, i.e., downloading something or just going to a lot of different pages really fast. This can get really frustrating when I'm on Facebook, in the middle of a conversation, then I just get shut off. Or doing homework at 3 AM. flaminglawyer^c 04:33, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

But what was your question? -- SGBailey (talk) 09:06, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Check your connections, try resetting your router if you have one, bypass your router if you have one, and check to see what the modem is doing when all of this is going on. If all else fails, call tech support; there may be a signal quality issue (can also check the levels on many modems through http://192.168.100.1 if you're on the right subnet, but you'll have to look up how to interpret them). 24.76.161.28 (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 09:10, 13 November 2008 (UTC).

Are you living in an older house? We had a similar problem when our connection speed got bumped up, because the phoneline in the house is about 40 years old, and we solved it by moving the router closer to the place the phoneline enters the house. 88.211.96.3 (talk) 09:14, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

For SGBailey, my question is/was "Why is this happening and how can I stop it?", which has already been answered (but none of which have noticably changed my performance. I will add that I am not on a wireless connection, but I am connecting (with wires) through a router. So that means my cable cord goes to my thingy supplied by Comcast, and my ethernet cord goes from there to the wireless router, and another ethernet cord goes from my router to my comp. flaminglawyer^cwe will never forget 21:14, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

So you've done the router bypass and even the call to tech support? 24.76.161.28 (talk) 23:04, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

No, not the tech call; I'm not involving them unless absolutely neccessary (i.e., it gets worse). And - would simply skipping the wireless router (having my wire go from the cable thingy to my comp) be an acceptable method of "router bypass?" flaminglawyer^cneverforget 00:02, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's pretty much the definition. Bad routers are not uncommon, so that might tell you something. Otherwise the only other common thing left (that doesn't normally require calling tech support) is a bad ethernet or coax cable. Could try switching those around. 24.76.161.28 (talk) 03:08, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I just want to add the the exact same thing is happening to me, also on Comcast. While surfing, every now and then I'll get a long pause while the brower bar simply says "Looking up www.google.com" (or whatever site), then goes to a Page Not Found. If I refresh, it comes up immediately, so it appears that my connection is dropping for a few seconds, then coming right back. I am hardwired (through a router). I have't tried bypassing the router, but I am almost postiive that the problem is either the modem itself or somewhere on Comcast's end. The only good thing is that it slows down my wife's online shopping and ebay bidding, so I'm not in a huge rush to fix it.  :-)--Zerozal (talk) 14:30, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Mac OS X: How Can I Stop Devices From waking sleep mode?

I have a MacBook Pro with Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger), I carry it with me almost everywhere. At home, at work, and on the go, I connect it with various devices. However when plugging and unplugging USB and FireWire devices, the machine wakes up even when the display is closed, consequently making it harder to wake the computer properly again. Sometimes I have to put my password in twice, and sometimes the "alert sound/flash" will occur once or twice afterword. Is there a way for me to disallow USB devices from waking my computer? There exists an option for bluetooth devices in preferences, but is there a thing for other wired devices? I want my Macbook to wake up ONLY when I either open the display or hit a key on the built-in keyboard. 199.165.98.15 (talk) 06:11, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

iMovie 08 Fast and Slow Motion

Could anyone tell me how to insert clips into an iMovie project in fast or slow motion? Specifically, I have a 7 minute clip of people drawing that I want to speed up so it's possible to see the image unfold rapidly and save the viewer the boredom of watching the whole 7 minutes. So far, I have heard I need a plugin, but am unsure if this is true.

Many thanks Lukerees1983 (talk) 07:48, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I seem to recall there being a little slider that lets you speed things up? A rabbit and a tortoise? I can't remember where it is though. But I think you can adjust the speed of clips. Note that an alternative, perfectly valid approach is to just cut the clip down—that's probably what a film editor would do. Cut it into smaller bites. If you make a few jump cuts it can give the "frenzied work" aesthetic just as well. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 13:46, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I've had a pretty good look and the only sliders to be found are not to do with the speed at which you can roll the footage. I'm at a bit of a loss. The feature either isn't within the software or it's too obvious for me to find. Lukerees1983 (talk) 08:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Turn off automatic loading

I am (reluctantly) using Microsoft Windows XP. Whenever I plug a memory stick into my USB port, the computer automatically loads all the hundreds of images from the stick. It seems to have mistakenly been told always to do this, but I never, ever, want it to do this. Can someone tell me how to turn off this feature please? I've searched the help files in vain. (I wish there was a magic switch that told every piece of software never to do anything until specifically instructed - sigh.)--Shantavira|^{feed me} 12:34, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Does this help? --Sean 14:31, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. That certainly ought to work, but it doesn't, even after rebooting the machine to try to make the setting stick, it still tries to download all the photos until I click "stop".--Shantavira|^{feed me} 17:21, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

There is a way to do this and it is somewhere in the settings. I have it set up so that it presents me with a list of options and I can choose what to do (like what you want I suppose). I'm on a mac now so I can't look for the relevant settings menu, but you are going to want to locate something called Autoplay (I think it's called autoplay... maybe autorun... I forget) and modify its settings. Try looking for it under the control panel perhaps? If that doesn't work try searching for programs with the search program under the start menu. When you do locate it make sure you apply the settings/set it as default if you are presented with those relevant options because just checking a bubble and closing a window might not actually cause the setting to change. 152.16.15.23 (talk) 03:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Maybe this will help? http://www.kevinscrate.com/blog/2007/10/13/adjust-your-autoplay-settings-in-xp/

152.16.15.23 (talk) 04:06, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

help with seamonkey composer

OK, so I've downloaded seamonkey composer. I added my html text but now I want to see what the html would render as. How do I go about doing so? Thanks! --217.227.100.110 (talk) 20:09, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

PS:If anyone can recommend a better (free) html editor please do. :) --217.227.100.110 (talk) 20:10, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I suggest NoteTab Light, which is free, and pretty sweet. And it has a button to give a rendering of your text (you asked for it). I have only very recently downloaded SeaMonkey, and I'm still getting used to it myself, so I can't really give you any advice there. flaminglawyer^cnever forget 21:21, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I've played with a bunch of HTML editors - and in the end, the one I actually use is 'vi' (or NotePad if you're a Windows person) - in other words, "just a plain text editor". I find it's just easier to learn HTML than it is to fight to get HTML right through a tool that's trying to subvert my every move! SteveBaker (talk) 21:35, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

nvu has been useful to me, even though it's an abandoned project. --LarryMac | Talk 22:11, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean. How did you "add your html text"? SeaMonkey Composer is a WYSIWYG editor, so usually (in Normal mode), you already see and edit essentially what it renders as. You can also use the Preview mode and it will actually render using a browser rendering engine. You can look at and edit the source in Source mode; is that where you "added your html"? I hope you didn't just type HTML into the normal mode.

I typically use KompoZer as my editor; it is an updated version of the abandoned Nvu, which is itself based on Mozilla Composer / SeaMonkey Composer, so the interface and stuff should be similar to what you see in SeaMonkey Composer, but with more features. For more alternatives, you can check out Comparison of HTML editors. --131.179.33.130 (talk) 22:44, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

fastest, lowest-footprint version of Opera browser (no javascript)

So I'm on this like 600 megahertz computer with like a 4 MB graphics card. I installed Windows XP on it and Google chrome works great, and acceptably fast even at this speed. But Google chrome doesn't have a way to disable javascript, and opening dozens or hundreds of tabs is too slow.

So I'd like to run Opera with scripts and plugins disabled at the same time. But the newer versions seem to have way more overhead, like just a single page, all the scripts turned off, can give it a 36 megabyte memory footprint. So I'd like to know if I'm really getting speed for all that memory usage, or just more features? In sum, which verison of the Opera browser is fastest, most lightweight, when all scripting, plugins, etc, are disabled? I can't find any current benchmarks. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.199.126.76 (talk) 20:20, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

No benchmarks, but I've run Opera 5 just fine on a 400MHz computer with 128MB of RAM. You might also try Opera 6. --Carnildo (talk) 22:17, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Recursive Functions in Matlab

Do you know how i would write a function,

function out = gcd_rec(a,b)

where out is the greatest common denominator of a and b, two intergers, where a > b? Thanks, Julia Millon169.229.75.128 (talk) 20:32, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

See Euclidean algorithm. --Sean 20:39, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Pausing Youtube Buffering

Is there anyway one can temporarily pause the buffering of Youtube video. When one clicks on a link to a video, the video opens up and automatically begins buffering and once a pre-set amount is buffered, the video begins to play. Is there a way I can stop the video from buffering, then re-start it again? Acceptable (talk) 23:26, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Just click pause the very second the video starts to play. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 01:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

@Crackthewhip775, I think it will still keep buffering. Kushal (talk) 03:01, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

That is correct. While the video may be paused, the video is still buffering and taking up bandwidth. Acceptable (talk) 03:08, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

This technique will probably be useless for whatever you are trying to achieve, but interrupting your internet connection (by pulling the internet cable for example) will stop the buffering. While offline you can watch the video and skip around within the buffered parts all you want. If you reconnect to the internet and allow the video to play until it reaches the edge of the buffered zone, the video will idle and act like it is trying to buffer (although it does nothing). Get the video to rebuffer again by dragging the scrollbar just a smidge beyond where it idled. (The previous buffering is lost because you effectively skipped ahead...) Probably useless info, but it was worth a shot... 152.16.15.23 (talk) 03:27, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

If you use Firefox with the NoScript or Flashblock extensions, the video won't buffer or play until you explicitly allow it to. --LarryMac | Talk 13:50, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I have NoScript but not Flashblock and Youtube videos do autoplay for me (after short buffering period). Maybe I should install Flashblock if it will turn off Youtoube's autoplay. Opening multiple youtube tabs sucks as it is :( — Shinhan < talk > 20:24, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

If NoScript is not stopping Youtube videos from playing, then you've probably added the site to the white list. Go into the options dialog and remove youtube from the list of allowed sites and that should take care of that. You might have to restart Firefox. --LarryMac | Talk 20:59, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

If you immediately click to the last second or so of the video, only a tiny tiny bit will buffer. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 22:33, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry if I sound overexcited but I just found this userscript and immediately thought about you, Acceptable. You will need to be using Firefox with Greasemonkey (please come back if you need assistance with that) and then you can install this script on GreaseMonkey. Hope it works for you, Kushal (talk) 10:56, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

November 14

Batch File: File Tree

Does this batch file properly store the computers file tree into a txt file in my documents folder (C:\Users\'User'\Documents)

@echo off
set /p filetree=tree /F C:\
echo %filetree% > Filetree.txt
echo File tree has been made
pause

--Melab±1 00:26, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Why don't you tell us? What results do you get when you run it? -- Tcncv (talk) 01:42, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

The syntax is wrong. Change it to this:

@echo off
set filetree=tree /F C:\
%filetree% > Filetree.txt
echo File tree has been made
pause

Set /p is for a prompt. You don't need to set a variable either -- I'm not sure why you did that. I'd just do it like this:

@echo off
tree /F C:\ > Filetree.txt
echo File tree has been made
pause

That's assuming you want to include file names in the tree (hence the /F). It's also assuming that you're in your documents folder when you run the batch file. If you aren't, you'd need to change > Filetree.txt to > C:\Users\user\documents\Filetree.txt. Good luck with your assignment ;).--Areateeth34 (talk) 02:16, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Disabling Live Call Hyperlink

Hello. Internet Explorer 7 hyperlinks whatever looks like phone numbers to Windows Live Call. I visited websites in which the seven digit numbers separated by a hyphen after the first three digits are hyperlinks going to different parts of the website, not phone numbers. How do I disable Live Call hyperlinking? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 02:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Its probably a setting in Windows Live Messenger. Kushal (talk) 03:01, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

220.225.242.210 (talk) 03:42, 14 November 2008 (UTC) harshagg

bit storage

Hello, I want to know how i can myself assign a limited no. of bits to a certain variable instead of using the existing data types. Example, i have char a; --> which will assign 8 bits to a; but i want to make a variable 'a' and assign just 1 or 2 bits to it and use it in my programs. Is that possible in any known programming language? And if not then answer this, Why is it that none of the compilers give the user the ability to make their own new data types in addition to the existing data types (eg : int ,char, float);???????

Also one more question. A char data type can store 256 values and occupies 1 byte, which is equal to 8 bits.

A bool data type can store only two values, 0 and 1 -> but still occupies 1 byte, again 8 bits. Technically it should occupy only one bit of space but occupies 8 bits. IF you use the sizeof() function in c++ and output it both bool and char show the same number of bits assigned to it.

WHy is that?

Note: sizeof() function returns the size in bytes and not bits.

The reason that the minimum data size is 8 bit is because processors work with 8bit registers minimum (very very old processsors were once 4bit). That means the minimum size of a peice of data that the processor can manipulate is 8 bits. If you want to use 1 byte and have 8 bitsf of info you can do it yoursel like this:

char c;
c |= (1 << x)  ;  //set bit number x (where x is 0 to 7)
c &= ~(1 << x) ; //clear bit number x
and test the values like this:
if (c & (1<<x)) ; //true if bit x is set
if ((c & (1<<x) == 0)) ;//true if bit x is clear

Dacium (talk) 04:05, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

You're free to define your own data type, and then act like it's a single bit, but it won't be. C just doesn't allow that; there's no point, since as Dacium said all modern computers perform calculations on data >= 8 bits in length. Superm401 - Talk 04:18, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

C also allows you to specify fields in a struct to only take up a custom number of bits, which is less than the usual width of the type of the field; see C bit fields. But this is usually only used for things like hardware interfaces which require a specific bit format. Otherwise it is more trouble than it's worth, as it also introduces other problems. --71.106.183.17 (talk) 05:06, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

There's not much point in cramming in all your variables so that they take up the least amount of space. Even though that will probably save several bytes of memory space in total, the performance loss is not worth it. Here's how you can save two 4-bit numbers in a byte:

char n = 0;
n |= 9; /* n is now 00001001 */
n |= (14 << 4); /* n is now 11101001 */

int r = n & 0xf; /* r = 9 */
r = n >> 4; /* r = 14 */

To retrieve values, the basic idea is to shift it right and then and it with a mask like 0xf or 0xff (2^{number of bits} - 1). --wj32 ^t/c 05:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Harshagg (talk) 15:30, 14 November 2008 (UTC)harshagg QUestion :- but you cannot avoid memory padding which will waste my rest of memory so no use of doing that

As others have pointed out - there is the C 'bit-field' thing - which does allow you to allocate variables with a certain number of bits each. However, the C standard doesn't require the hardware to pack them efficiently - and because of various features of the language - it's pretty inefficient to do so. Hence, I think you'll want to go with your own implementation. This can be wrapped into a 'class' implementation - but will take you quite a bit of work to do well.

I believe the Ada programming language also has variables of arbitary precision...which amounts to having bitfields.

I'd also caution that you should only consider doing this if you need such an insane number of variables that the overhead of rounding each one up to the nearest char/short/int/long-sized "chunk" is going to make things not fit into memory. If that's not the case then the loss in performance for packing and unpacking bitstrings on every single operation will soon kill you...and the extra space consumed by the packing and unpacking software could easily mean that doing all of this packing actually causes you to consume MORE memory! SteveBaker (talk) 06:56, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes you are actually only going to save space if you have a lot of occurrences of your small bit variable. They are used however if things like bitmaps for images, or a set representation, or fields in communications protocol headers. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:33, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

How to sort all the processes running on my computer

Hi there, Is there any way to figure out what all the processes are running on my puter? When i go to Task Manager there are nearly 100 exe files listed, one of which is some adware that pops an IE window every window 1/2 hour or so. Some of them are obvious like iexplorer.exe but what the heck is alg.exe or tpfnf7sp.exe? Is the only way to track them down to do gsearch of each and every one? thnx —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.234.6.82 (talk) 07:14, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

You can right click them and select Open File Location to get a better idea. Or just google. People at CastleCops are willing to look at HiJackThis logs to help people find the needle in the haystack. They're friendly and helpful. Louis Waweru  Talk  07:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

There's a (free) program from Sysinternals called Process Explorer, which is like Taskmanager, except like, 100 times better. There you can see a list of the sofware running, and if it is signed, you can see what company made it and a short description. So, for instance, "alg.exe" is made by "Microsoft Corporation" and it is desribed as an "Application Layer Gateway Service". This doesn't tell you all that much, but at least now you know it's kosher (being from Microsoft and all). Malware programs aren't signed so they have no description, and they stick out like a sore thumb in Process Explorer. It's absolutely fantastic at helping you figure out what's going on inside your computer (btw, after a little googling, tpfnf7sp.exe whatever it is, it's from Lenovo, so it probably came with your laptop). Belisarius (talk) 09:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

The programmer can make description and company name just about anything. Someone could make a program and name it alg.exe, give it the description "Application Layer Gateway Service" and company name "Microsoft Corporation", so those fields shouldn't give a sense of safety. Louis Waweru  Talk  10:03, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

They're cryptographic signatures, you can absolutely trust them 195.58.125.64 (talk) 14:01, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Here's a screenshot of an unsigned sample app. Louis Waweru  Talk  14:33, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Fine, do this: Open options-menu, activate "Verify Image Signatures", right-click the top-bar, select "Select columns" and make sure "Verified Signer" is selected. Then, the programs that say "(Verified)" plus the signer in that field are guaranteed to be kosher. And the vast majority of legitimate software you run will be verified (currently, I have two processes that aren't, one is WinRAR and the other is some subprocess of Skype, both obviously on the up and up). It will basically instantly narrow down significantly the suspected processes. No malware will come out on the other side of that. 83.250.202.208 (talk) 17:46, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry if I'm asking the obvious, but have you tried running a program designed to sniff out this kind of thing? Back when I used Windows I was once affected, by some sleazeware that had the effrontery to attempt to sell me anti-spyware software that would kill it (ha ha); instead I used a freeware program that didn't find the culprit, and then some trialware program (sorry, I forget its name) that got a serious write-up in Wikipedia. It cost me $20 or but I got my money's worth. Although I rate myself fairly highly at avoiding trouble (and I only screwed up that one time), if I am in trouble then I figure other companies' algorithms and databases will be far better at locating sleazeware on my computer than my own tired eyeballs would be. -- Hoary (talk) 12:44, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty happy with uniblue ProcessScanner. You can click on the .exe after it's run a scan and get info about what it does. It's free and much better than the Taskmanager. Of course nothing is foolproof and there's probably some bored idiot out there who makes bugs appear genuine. But you can at least get rid of things like the ISP you used years ago running an .exe without acidentally deleting your wifi. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 14:02, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Um, get Spybot and it'll clean out your adware. Don't try to just guess. Smart adware/viruses use legitimate process names (like ieexplore.exe) so you can't see them easily (they rarely have something like hiimavirus.exe as their process name). --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to you all! I did try the antivirus software on this puter but it didn't get rid of the adware so I'll try the solutions offered here until I get it. Is there a way to sort the various exe's by date added or modified? thnx —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.234.6.82 (talk) 16:50, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Open office.org question

I'm probably just being silly again but is there a way to get rid of the header on every page? I only want it on one page and it seems to be appearing on all of them! I'd appreciate any help! :) --Cameron* 13:44, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Just like font and paragraph styles, you have page styles. Create a page style with a header and use that for the style of the page that should have a header. For all other pages, use a page style that doesn't have a header. -- kainaw™ 15:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! :) --Cameron* 16:30, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Siebel

Are there any article or materials available for Siebel CRM? Is there any special site for GE Commercial Finance Siebel Application details?What is the link? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shaliniimohan9 (talk • contribs) 15:25, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

SIMple questions ?

I have some questions related to cellular phones and the SIM cards in them (United States):

1) I have two cell phones which have failed. I suspect one has failed in the SIM card itself, as it now says it's "not registered" and gives errors whenever I try to program it. The other phone has problems with the buttons not working reliably, but the SIM card is probably OK. So, can I take the working SIM card and put it into the working phone ? I'm guessing not in this case since the SIM card would be moved from a Motorola W260g with Tracfone service to a Kyocera phone under Page Plus Cellular service.

2) If I can't do the above swap, could I move the SIM to a Motorola V170 under Tracfone ?

3) And how about if I bought an identical phone (Motorola W260g with Tracfone service) ? Could I then move the SIM card over to recover my minutes ? StuRat (talk) 17:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

If phone receiving sim card is not simlocked and it operates in the same standart (and frequency ranges) as phone, from which sim card is being taken, then it should work. Usually, even when phone is simlocked, it accepts only simcards from that operator, which locked it. So, case 1. probably will not work, cases 2. and 3. should work. -Yyy (talk) 11:12, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, how can I tell if a given phone is simlocked ? StuRat (talk) 19:24, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

CSS standards

What features in CSS, if any, became part of the W3C standard as a result of being implemented by the browsers, rather than vice-versa? NeonMerlin 18:06, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Non-internet browser way to view locally hosted html files

I'm in law school, and during our exams we are now running some sort of exam software called Exam4 that appears to disable at least firefox and internet explorer. I like to make outlines in wiki format (I installed mediawiki on my computer), and then I look at them through firefox even though they're hosted on my own computer. (We have open note/laptop exams so we're allowed to refer to our notes, which for most people are in Word.) Does anyone have any ideas of how I could still use mediawiki for constructing my outline, or do I need to go old-school again? (Note that I don't need to access the internet here if that makes any difference, I just need to be able to look at html files that are hosted locally.) I haven't gone through every obscure web browser - maybe I should just do that, but I bet it would take a really really long time to find something the program doesn't recognize. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:51, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

One of the HTML editors mentioned in the question above "Help with Seamonkey Composer" might do what you need. --LarryMac | Talk 19:02, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Shoot, after installing that I just realized that probably I don't need HTML viewing at all but instead PHP viewing or however mediawiki generates pages on the fly. I guess I could try to dump the wiki to HTML at the end but that seems kind of risky to have to wait to check if these things work until right before exam time... Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:21, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

If all of the browsers are disabled, it is most likely blocking requests to port 80 (web connections). Change your local webserver to work on a different port (ie: 8080). Then, browse to http://localhost:8080 to use the new port. -- kainaw™ 19:31, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Just tried that (good idea!) but it didn't work. :( I don't know what it's doing. IE and FF still open, but they won't load anything. Also after I run the exam program firefox only pretends to close (I have to go and end the process afterwards)--not sure if this gives anyone any helpful clues, but i figured I'd throw it out there.... Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:10, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

The problem with MediaWiki is that it does indeed use PHP. But PHP doesn't execute in the browser - it runs in the HTTP server (Apache or whatever). So it's not that reaching across the network is hosing you - it's that the local PHP execution environment is evidently being blocked. SteveBaker (talk) 06:48, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

How do I get a list of files on WinXP using DIR command

I'm trying to get a list of files that have a file extension of .asp. I tried DIR *.asp but this also returns files with a .aspx extension even though I did not type DIR *.asp? or DIR *.asp*. I imagine that at some point in time, Microsoft F-ed up the DIR command so now it no longer works correctly. Does anyone know the proper command to get a list of files with a .asp extension and only a .asp extension? 216.239.234.196 (talk) 20:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I think the ultimate cause of this is that DOS (and 16-bit versions of windows) used limited filenames of the "eight dot three" format -- up to eight characters, then a dot, then three characters. The dot was always assumed to be there, and the extension was assumed to be no more than three characters. When they went to 32-bit windows they loosened this up a little, but people had already been doing things based on the old assumptions and some of those still cause annoyance. For instance in the old style "*.*" matched all filenames (whether or not they contained a period). It still gives that result, even though files might not have a "." in them at all.

I believe (I base this largely off a blog post, so I could be wrong) that Windows keeps both "long" and "short" filenames for each file and does its pattern matching against them. For instance, I create a file named "one_two_three.four"; Windows will also recognize the old-style-compatible name "ONE_TW~1.FOU" as pointing to the same file. So wildcard expressions (as with "DIR") end up matching the file if either name matches. See also [9].

I'm sorry, I don't know if there's a way to make "DIR" look at only the "long" filename. Or any other command (I would guess that other command line utilities that take filenames with wildcards probably handle them the same way). If there is, I wouldn't know of it; I don't use Windows very much. Given the wide usage of Windows, it's possible that somebody has come up with a set of replacement command line utilities that do what you want.

One thing you can do that might suit your needs: Use the file handling GUI (windows explorer). Navigate to the directory in question. In the "View" menu, select "List" and "Arrange Icons by -> Type". That will bunch all ".asp" files together. Unfortunately, getting the file names out seems trickier. I think there's a way to do it but it involves more knowledge of batch files than I've got. -- Why Not A Duck 21:05, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Another possible alternative: The Search command available in the Start menu (or by right-clicking on any folder) searches only long file names. For example, I was able to search for *.abc and the results included file.abc but not file.abcd. --Bavi H (talk) 03:55, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

If you're planning to do any significant amount of command-line stuff at all - give up on the DOS shell - there is just too much of this anachronistic crap. Head over to www.cygin.com and grab a free copy of Cygwin. It includes the Linux/UNIX shell tool - which does command-line stuff PROPERLY. The 'ls' command (which is a bit like DIR) will do what you want and behave totally rationally. Better still, the Cygwin/Linux/UNIX 'find' command has an incredible amount of power for doing file searches. SteveBaker (talk) 06:44, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

If he's using windows, it's probably smarter to use Windows PowerShell. I actually find it to be a superior shell to bash, and especially so under windows. Don't get me wrong, I love bash, it's a wonderful program that I use every day, but it is 20 years old by now. 83.250.202.208 (talk) 17:22, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree. It's worth mentioning that the command shell in Vista doesn't behave like this...your query would return only asp files. But dir "*.asp" might work for you. Louis Waweru  Talk  17:49, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Time complexity of SortedList<TKey,TValue>.Concat()

In C#, what's the worst case time complexity of SortedList<TKey,TValue>.Concat() when both arguments are SortedList<TKey,TValue>s with the same TKey and TValue and the output is being stored in one as well? NeonMerlin 20:36, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Pesky School Filter

First of all, to clear everything up, I am not asking this so I can look at porn. I am not even asking this to get onto myspace. I just need to bypass my school's network security to get to websites which will help me with my senior project. I have went to the administration, but they decided I could go to a public library if it meant that much to me (I have 28.8 kb/s dial-up at home. Try watching videos on that).

So here is the scenario: -I am by no means a computer genius; I just know how to use resources, and I can think through things. So if you do help, dumb it down as much as possible, please. -The school used to use a computer based proxy. I could turn that off. -They got smarter, and locked it; I got through. -They based the entire security system at Central Office, where I can't easily access it; I will now provide some information that will hopefully help someone assist me. -It won't even let me use FireFox (they got one up on me). They used to have the proxy based on IE, but after they realized someone (me) was using alternates, they based it on something else.

I will use myspace as an example, since every kid in the school wants to get to it.

Ex 1: When I type in http://www.myspace.com, it redirects me to this page: http://10.1.1.60:81/cgi/block.cgi?URL=http://www.mypsace.com/&IP=10.209.2.111&CAT=GPORN&USER=DEFAULT

Ex 2: I download LimeWire, and it will download, install, and open, but when I try to actually download a song, it never connects. This leads me to believe that they have some firewall or something blocking anything foreign getting to the internet.

What I can Do: I can create/delete and manage (to some extent) Administrator accounts; I can use command prompt within simple LIMITS. I'm just looking for the right website or right person who can basically spell it out for me, or at least point me in the right direction for more research.

So please. Help!

The LimeWire thing is secondary, but it would be nice to have new songs again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by EWHS (talk • contribs) 20:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how but even if I did I wouldn't tell you. One it's illegal to manage/delete Admin accounts that don't belong to you, second LimeWire illegaly distributes music, third you shouldn't download LimeWire or Firefox on their computer without permission. --Melab^±1 22:03, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Do you have a Wi-Fi modem or could you borrow one? If so, check whether any Wi-Fi spills into the building from one nearby. (Your chances will improve if you have a laptop and try it outdoors. Apartment buildings are your best bet, followed by single-family houses.) Also, do they prevent you from USING Firefox, or just from installing it? If you have a CD burner or USB flash drive, you can get a portable version of Firefox.

Finally, you said you can create admin accounts. Can you do this only locally on the individual computers, or can you create one on the network? Can you log into the router? NeonMerlin 22:11, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't think its possible to bypass the blocking; here in NSW the DET also uses a HTTP proxy. You can't access anything without using the proxy, and since the proxy only supports HTTP, people can't use LimeWire, BitTorrent, online games, etc. I think your situation is similar to mine; you can access the internet through the proxy but other programs (LimeWire) can't access anything (without using the proxy). Creating an admin account wouldn't do anything, since if you didn't use the proxy, you wouldn't be able to access anything on the Internet. And by the way, is your school administration that stupid to allow normal users to create other accounts and have write permissions to program files? Do they use any form of desktop management? --wj32 ^t/c 00:19, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Are the computers set up so that after any person has logged in they have what appears to be their own disk drive (perhaps a "G:" or "M:" or whatever, in addition to the untouchable "C:", "D:", and perhaps "E:")? That's the way it was when I used an institution's computers some years ago. On C:, D:, and perhaps E:, the institution had installed The World's Favorite Software (i.e. mediocre bloatware), and any attempt to install any additional software there would fail. However, it was possible to install software on the virtual drive, and to run some of it from there. Firefox would run perfectly well, though I couldn't store any of its settings (or perhaps even change the settings in the first place; I now forget).

However, I can't see how running Firefox rather than Exploder is likely to help you very much.

Despite your modesty, you clearly do know quite a bit. Rather than wasting your knowledge and energies battling with the people who run your school (a war that you're sure to lose in the long run, and that might get you into serious trouble), I suggest you find some way of turning them into cash (creating websites? setting up LANs?), and use the cash to get a good connection at home, a good connection which you can then use for your serious purposes and also (cough) for purposes that require more privacy than would be available in a school. -- Hoary (talk) 02:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Turning computer skills into cash doesn't always work; I've tried it. NeonMerlin 22:12, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Downloading from YouTube

[10] This video seems to resist such tools as the media-converter and KeepVid - any ideas? Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 22:24, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

It says that the video is not available in my country (which is the United States); so that might explain it, if those sites are based in the US. --128.97.244.12 (talk) 23:37, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

It's not available from Australia either. Have you tried VideoDownloader? --wj32 ^t/c 00:21, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

UK only fwiw. VideoDownloader, DownloadHelper etc. should work, GDonato (talk) 01:41, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, VideoDownloader doesn't work with Firefox 3.0. Try Fast Video Download. --wj32 ^t/c 02:15, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, did it with FVD :-) ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 08:10, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

November 15

are there any totally-lightweight "spreadsheets"?

So I barely use spreadsheets for formulas, it's just cells and coloring to me, maybe at most some sums. Is there some totally lightweight spreadsheet thing, like uTorrent is for bittorrent? That would rock so hard. I mean a few kilobytes, and instant even on a 100 mhz computer... and under active development, like uTorrent is. I'm so in love with uTorrent. "lightweight, feature rich, high performance" -- and boy do they mean it!

Hell, forget the spreadsheet: what other application domains have something like uTorrent in them. The bundled notepad.exe on Windows is good for text files, not bloated at ALL. Any other application domains with something like that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.199.126.76 (talk) 00:49, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

My favourites: Notepad2 for text editing, PuTTY for SSH, KeePass for passwords, Winamp for music (without most plugins it's quite small). These I don't use, but still nice: foobar2000 for music, IrfanView for pictures. --grawity 16:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

You might want to consider trying out some of online Office suits such as Google Docs. Please also see this link. Basically, idea is that all of the work is done by server, which means that if you can run browser, you can run spreadsheet program. I personally use Google Docs for everything MS Office used to do and haven't looked back. Not sure whats your specific situation, but it might be worth a try. --Melmann^(talk) 16:18, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not totall sure that a 100 Mhz computer could run Google Docs. JavaScript ain't exactly the most optimized language, it takes up a fair bit of memory to both run a browser and Google Docs. Try it out, for sure, but I'm not totally convinced it will work. 83.250.202.208 (talk) 17:16, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'm just throwing out ideas. Its not like there is wide selection of spreadsheets programs that will run on 100mhz computers.--Melmann^(talk) 10:46, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Try an old version of MS office excel (v6 or v7), although these might not be very fast on 100MHz. (excel97 certainly was very fast on athlon xp 2000, but that probably does not counts). Even faster might be some very old spreadsheet programs, bet these might be written for dos and might not support mouse. -Yyy (talk) 11:01, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Lucid 3-D. It may be dead, but it's good. Given 100 MHz, it should fly. -- Hoary (talk) 13:47, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Poster of a flickr image

Given the url of a flickr image such as http://static.flickr.com/105/303174125_67b62986df_o.jpg how do I find who posted it? Thanks. Saintrain (talk) 01:09, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

The easiest way is to just append the image id after the string http://flickr.com/photo.gne?id= which in teh example given would be http://flickr.com/photo.gne?id=303174125 , however that particular image has been protected by the uploader. No doubt there are webtools somewhere that can do this as well. Nanonic (talk) 01:51, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

An alternative (and probably more successful way) is to call the flickr api using the online forms at http://www.flickr.com/services/api/ , for instance - you can use the form http://www.flickr.com/services/api/explore/?method=flickr.photos.getInfo - enter in the photoid 303174125 and the secret 67b62986df - tick both boxes to send the info and click call method. The output is displayed underneath in XML giving the username, user profile and direct link. Nanonic (talk) 02:01, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. That was easy.

What's the "secret". Seems to be the same for different pix whether or not I'm logged in? 66.214.189.209 (talk) 23:42, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

PSP Inviso-files

I'm asking this question for a friend of mine. Several music files that he's put on his PSP simply don't appear when you browse through the files on the PSP. They're clearly present on the Memory Stick when you check on a PC, though. I can't imagine why, though. The files aren't hidden or anything, and I know the PSP should be able to open them, because the files are all the same type...any possible reason they aren't showing up?--The Ninth Bright Shiner 02:56, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

To clarify one point in there, all the files that I put on his PSP are the same type; some work perfectly fine, but others aren't displaying.--The Ninth Bright Shiner 03:43, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Could you tell us the extensions of the files? Because some do not work on the PSP. Rgoodermote  04:05, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I believe they are MPEG-4. My own knowledge tells me that the PSP shouldn't be able to open any files like that, but it is. Have I been wrong for many years?--The Ninth Bright Shiner 04:34, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I believe it can play that. However, just to make sure. Encode videos/music using SUPER. Rgoodermote  02:44, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

The Feeble Beep of Doom

This is a strange and rather irritating phenomenon my laptop has exhibited at some points. Upon taking the computer out of standby mode, the computer will just beep at me, without the display coming up (I also don't think that the hard drive starts, because when I turn the computer off from this state, I don't hear the characteristic "sudden hard drive shutdown noise"). The beeps repeat the same patter of one long beep, then two short beeps; I guess it would be like the letter "d" in Morse code. The computer stays in this state until I shut it off by holding down the power button.

I think that its occurrence is connected to keeping my computer running for a long time, and the computer automatically going into standby mode. I know it doesn't happen every single time, though. Any possible explanation for this? I think I've heard somewhere that if your computer doesn't have enough RAM to start up (or something along those lines), then this happens.--The Ninth Bright Shiner 03:30, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I think lack of RAM is unlikely. Could you try to boot using a Live CD? Oh, and do you by any chance know the model/make/year of your laptop and the motherboard inside it? Thanks. Kushal (talk) 04:41, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Many computers have a feature where they do some basic tests as they start up - if those tests fail, the computer may find itself unable to display an error message. In that case, it'll emit a pattern of beeps to help you figure out what's going wrong. I assume that's what you're hearing here. If you can find the tech manual (or perhaps call the manufacturer's hotline) you should be able to get that specific pattern of beeps decoded - and that should tell you what's broken. But a clean powerup works OK - and that's something that can maybe give us a clue as to what's happening. When you put the computer in standby, it actually writes everything that's in memory out to disk - and then powers down. When you restart, it has to read that data in order to carry on from where it left off. So this could be a hard disk problem. I agree with Kushal though - I don't think a RAM shortage can do this. Ideally, you need to decode that beep pattern...but that requires finding/obtaining the full tech manual - or getting someone at the manufacturer to look it up for you. We have an article about this stuff here. SteveBaker (talk) 06:34, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

It may be obvious, but I'll say it anyway, go ahead and disable standby mode to stop it from locking up. To save power and the screen, use some other power saving options like turning off the monitor and stopping the hard drives, instead. If you ever solve the issue with standby mode, then you can try it again. Also, I don't see any reason to ever use standby mode when the computer is plugged in. This option should only be used when on batteries, and then only if it's working properly. StuRat (talk) 17:58, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

organising favorites across various comptuers with different OSes and browsers

I have a desktop with Windows XP Media Center Edition and I use both Firefox and Google Chrome regularly, I also have another Desktop with Ubuntu installed where I use Firefox and I also have my Eee PC with Ubuntu where I also use Firefox. I have different sets of favorites on each of them, but I'd like to know if there is a way I can homogenize my favorites so that I have the same set of favorites on all my systems and on all my various browsers. Also, I have an old laptops whose screen no logner works (thought it can be hooked up to a monitor, so no worries) and I'd like to get my old favorites off of that. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks ahead of time. 63.245.144.68 (talk) 13:43, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

For firefox, you can use the extension FoxMarks which is supposed to do just this (I've no experience with it however, so I can't testify to it personally, but I hear wonderful things). I don't think there is a way to do this easily with Chrome (as it doesn't allow extensions), but you can import your bookmarks from Firefox with Chrome, so if you synch your Firefox browser, I guess you could just import the bookmarks into Chrome directly. 83.250.202.208 (talk) 14:29, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Can't reformat a drive

I had an original install of Windows Vista on my (what is now) D: drive. I've since installed Windows Vista again on my (what is now) C: drive. I've finished moving any important data over from D: so I was going to reformat it so I could install Ubuntu on it. However, Windows won't let me do anything to the drive ("Windows cannot format the system partition on this disk") because it's a system drive (it could also maybe be because it's marked as active?)

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/9994/activewd9.jpg

Help! --69.152.220.39 (talk) 00:35, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I believe FDISK will allow you to format the active partition. Of course, once you do that you won't be able to boot from the disk, so you'd do best to use FDISK to change the active partition first. StuRat (talk) 19:06, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean "reformat it so I could install Ubuntu on it". To set up the new partitions, you will have to use the partitioner anyway, which is part of the Ubuntu installer. The partitioner obviously can delete partitions and all that too. --71.106.183.17 (talk) 19:23, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the Ubuntu installer will let you format the D: drive anyway. Plus, Windows Vista can't format your D: drive to anything Ubuntu can use as a root filesystem. --wj32 ^t/c 21:42, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Not what I meant. I wanted to erase everything off that drive from windows. But my main concern is doing so would fuck up everything. Like not being to able to boot into the Vista on C:. I mean, why is D: marked as system? Shouldn't C: be marked as system? How would I change that?

Also, I can't run FDISK. "'fdisk' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file." --69.152.220.39 (talk) 00:35, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand why you need to erase the drive from Windows. Formatting D: wouldn't do anything to your Vista installation either. --wj32 ^t/c 07:00, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Broadband connection problems

So I sought to change my IP address by resetting the BT homehub, now it's just going at a STINKING one meg per second. It's been like this for five F***ING hours. Yes I am angry and would like it solved immediately.--Troupmnronger (talk) 19:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

...and you're talking to the Wikipedia Computing ref-desk instead of BT's tech support people...why? I presume that changing your DHCP hookup also got you connected to a different server - one that happens to be overloaded right now. If so, the answer is to reset it again - possibly several times if necessary. SteveBaker (talk) 19:46, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Your first port of call should be BT Broadband Support, not the volunteers at Wikipedia's Reference Desk. And when you are asking for help it is wise to adopt a more pleasant tone. Astronaut (talk) 20:40, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

So I'm using another neighbour's broadband connection. Seems to be fine, but is unsecured. What are the chances of someone seeing what I visit? (I mean, realistically. I don't believe that many of the people in the neighbourhood where I live are going to give a shit.)--Troupmnronger (talk) 23:31, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how you were brought up - but I was taught that stealing is wrong. It doesn't matter whether you get caught or not - it's still wrong. Why can't you call BT and ask them why your legitimate connection isn't working as it should? SteveBaker (talk) 06:08, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

TI 89 assembly language

I have a program that I wrote in TI89 BASIC that I wish to transform into an assembly-language program. However, I do not know C, the assembly language used by the TI 89 Titanium, so could someone please do this for me? The program may be found on my userpage. Lucas Brown (talk) 21:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

What? C is an assembly language? According to TI-89, it has a Motorola 68000. See [11] --wj32 ^t/c 21:48, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, C is what the ASM compiler (TIGCC) uses. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucas Brown (talk • contribs) 02:00, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Why do you want to translate this to an ASM program? Doing so is (probably) not going to be as simple as merely translating each line of the BASIC source. It appears that you are just doing some computations, so I would think that your BASIC program would be sufficient for what you're trying to do. If you are trying to gain speed, your best bet would be to learn how to use something like Maple, Mathematica, MATLAB, or Sage and do your computations on a computer. —Bkell (talk) 15:12, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

So how would this be translated into a Mathematica program (I have Mathematica 6.0, student version, on my computer)? Lucas Brown (talk) 19:11, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't actually know Mathematica, but I'm sure that by looking through the help or doing some searching on the Web you can find information about programming in Mathematica. —Bkell (talk) 22:47, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

If it's a game and you're attracted by the speed of assembly games, then it's not going to be easy to just "translate" it. Assembly development is like 20 or 30 times slower than BASIC development for an equivalent program. Or 40. And assembly is really very different than BASIC; you certainly won't be able to use many algorithms from your BASIC program in the assembly version. Well, you will, but assembly development is very different from BASIC development and you'll find you don't want to. .froth. (talk) 18:04, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Free online music hosting

I'm looking for a Youtube-like music hosting service. I want to be able to upload music to the hosting service and then embed the music in my webpage. Is there a respectable service like this? -- kainaw™ 22:22, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Well you can not upload, but you can use the site. Project Playlist searches for music for you and lets you make your own embed playlist and you can download if you use the URL that is usually with the song. The site is pretty good at finding songs..but I have had issues finding songs from certain bands. Rgoodermote  02:47, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but I need to be able to upload music. -- kainaw™ 03:08, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I think Last.fm can do this? --98.217.8.46 (talk) 03:38, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. It appears you have to be an artist or label to upload music. I could be wrong. I have a last.fm account, but I don't see where to upload music (without getting an artist/label account). -- kainaw™ 05:36, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Embed music? Please don't, that's tantamount to <blink> and <marquee>. I know that putfile lets you upload music but I'm not sure if it'll let you embed. I actually did need to embed music in a page once; what I did was upload it to the webserver and used XSPF to play it. It's extremely flexible; I had it stripped down to just a round button that toggled Play/Stop and that autostarted. You could also use rapidshare/megaupload/mediafire and just link to it. .froth. (talk) 17:57, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

This is not a web page for the public. This is a request for a project that is heavily restrained by bureaucratic rules that often conflict with one another. The admins need to upload audio clips and an outline. The students will go to the pages and see the outline and hear the audio. Administration wants this to happen yesterday. However, the web server has been set up to deny streaming audio or video. You can't even link directly to an audio file. Why? Administration rules. So, they say "you can't have audio on the server" and then say "we demand that we have audio on those pages". If these were videos, I could easily set it up to upload videos to Youtube and embed them into the pages. But, these are audio files. So, I hope you can see why I am interested in a Youtube-like music service. -- kainaw™ 18:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

It is possible to upload/embed music to Imeem^{proof of concept} and Last.fm. You could also create videos from the audio files by making a slideshow or something. Just one photo or image should be sufficient ... :) About the future, your catch22 situation aside, <audio> and <video> tags will be here soon (at least on Mozilla Firefox and other standards-complaint web browsers) which should make it possible to upload the files on google pages and hotlink it to your website (if you have access to html editing). By the way, why do you not want an artist/label account on last.fm? Kushal (talk) 20:41, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

November 16

Can WinXP access WPA2 WiFi networks?

I have my Wifi 'n' base station configured for WPA2 only and my WinXP machine cannot connect to it. But if I change the base station to WPA/WPA2, XP can connect. Any trick to getting it to access WPA2 only? --69.151.187.196 (talk) 06:08, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

You need to install this update for Windows XP to support WPA2. Windows XP SP3 includes it I believe; but you need to manually get the update for previous SP's. --71.106.183.17 (talk) 10:19, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Also this update, which "enhances support" for WPA2. --71.106.183.17 (talk) 21:52, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Virtual 3D Accelerator for Linux

I just installed Ubuntu 8.10 desktop version on my PC. Unfortunately, my graphical device, SiS 661FX seems to not support hardware 3D acceleration so that the Compiz Fusion desktop effect is not available. Maybe, setting up a virtual machine could solve this problem as it could emulate a 3D acceleration devie (NVida, ATI, etc. graphic cards) on the virtual machine (I'm not sure as I never used it), but VirtualBox requires 512MB memory which my PC cannot satisfies. So I wonder is it possible to make a virtual device driver (for Linux) which can emulate a 3D accelerator and enables Compiz Fusion? - Justin545 (talk) 07:01, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Even if you got an emulation of hardware accelerated graphics to work, it would be very slow and you probably wouldn't be able to do anything useful. The only VM software on GNU/Linux that supports 3D acceleration for the guest is VMware Workstation 6.5, but that requires that you have hardware acceleration on the host as well. I don't think there are any "virtual device driver"s out there. --wj32 ^t/c 07:54, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

The slowness is expectable. One purpose of my question is to know the possibility. The possibility that whether linux is capable of emulating such a device without changing its kernel architecture. The other purpose of the question is to give me a chance to somewhat experience and tryout Compiz (even if it's extremely slow) and familiar with the settings so that I can decide if I should prepare for my hardware upgrade or remain unchanged. I may stay unchanged if the settings is too difficult or it's not worth. - Justin545 (talk) 08:45, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

No Sound in Linux

So I recently installed Ubuntu Fiesty onto my laptop (I have not bothered to download the most recent as a distribution update is not that long) and then updated it to Hardy. The laptop is an EMachine. I have no clue what the model is as it just says "EMachine" and the sound card appears to be an ATI card. Anyways, I have all the codecs and I have installed alsa and oss..and a great amount of others. But to no avail. I have no sound and I have searched all over to find a driver or workaround. I am hoping you can make sense of what I am saying at 4:30 in the morning. Rgoodermote  09:22, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Programme to find chords?

Hi there, everyone:

Is there a programme that one can use to find chords of an MP3 or other music file. I wrote and recorded some songs a few years ago and forgot the unfortunately complicated chords.

Thanks in advance,

--134.151.33.188 (talk) 12:44, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

You'll have best luck looking in a MIDI file. If you could find a MP3 to MIDI converter you could easily find the chords, but most mp3 to midi converters are experimental and may not sound exactly as the song itself. Parker2334 16:07, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Converting an MP3 file to MIDI is going to take exactly the same sort of computations necessary to just view the chords/notes of an MP3 file. You're just adding an extra step by making it a MIDI file. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 20:09, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

If you have a song of complicated chords it is unlikely that you're going to be able to have a program extract them automatically. This is the sort of thing that a well-trained human does much better than a machine (which has to do a lot more work to separate out the foreground from the background noise, much less figure out the chord notes). Take it to a guitar shop; their resident guru could probably do it in a minute. (My guitar teacher could do it, anyway, and he was nothing special.) --98.217.8.46 (talk) 20:09, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. However, it can be done in software if you take one chord at a time, see A Hard Day's Night (song)#Opening_chord. Not exactly trivial, however :-). Better to follow 98.217's advice. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 22:22, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Send and receive Text Messages (SMS) from a computer

I have a computer but do not own a cell phone. I have many friend who do have cell phones. I want to be able to text them easily from my windows xp machine and have them easily be able to reply. And, of course, I hope to do this free of charge, to me at least.

What's the best way to do this? --Alecmconroy (talk) 14:44, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

With most instant messaging, you can simply add them as a contact with their username being +[International][AreaCode][PhoneNumber]. For example a USA cell phone could be texted from a service like AOL Instant Messenger with the contact being "+17325551234". Let me know if you have any questions. MatthewYeager 18:58, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I just e-mail them. For example, if your friend used Cricket, and their number was 111-222-3333, you'd send an e-mail to 1112223333@sms.mycricket.com. They go through 100% of the time for me. There are also often web interfaces on the carrier's web site to do this, but gets to them faster if you just e-mail them.--Areateeth34 (talk) 19:14, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Follow-up: How do they reply?

Well, my further question would be how do they easily reply back? Ideally, I'd like a solution where they have to have little or no foreknowledge of how to reply. I've had the "computer -> sms phone" part down, but how to do the reply: "sms phone -> computer" is the tricky part.

Any aid greatly appreciated --Alecmconroy (talk) 19:29, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Have them send their message to your e-mail address. When they enter you as a contact, instead of entering your phone number, have them enter your complete e-mail address (someone@something.com).--Areateeth34 (talk) 19:49, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

ImageMagick coordinates after crop

I want to use ImageMagick to crop a region out of the middle of a larger image and draw a rectangle in the upper right-hand corner of the cropped image. So I tried this:

convert -crop 2050x1475+300+240 -draw 'fill black rectangle 1800,0 2050,300' in.jpg out.png

However, ImageMagick seems to be interpreting the coordinates in the draw command as relative to the original image. I tried using +repage after the crop, but that appears to have no effect. How can I get ImageMagick to treat the upper left pixel of the cropped region as (0,0) after the crop? —Bkell (talk) 15:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I think you need two invocations of convert:

convert in.jpg -crop 2050x1475+300+240 - |convert - -draw 'fill black rectangle 1800,0 2050,300' out.jpg

Superm401 - Talk 20:19, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Any freeware to rotate a jpeg image n degrees?

I have some photos where the horizon is not level, and I want to rotate them a few degrees. Can anyone suggest any freeware that can do this please? While a zillion programs can rotate an image 90 degrees etc., I have not found any that can rotate n degrees. I thought Xnview could do this, and it is mentioned in passing in the help file, but after downloading and installing Xnview I have not been able to find out how to get it to do n degree rotations. (Note - losing some of the edge of my image does not matter, loss of quality does not matter) Thanks. 78.151.145.226 (talk) 18:20, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure Paint.NET can do it. It's been a while since I've used it though. Louis Waweru  Talk  18:42, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

GIMP can definitely do it, but it is a bit daunting for a novice. Having said that if you take the time to learn it you'll be rewarded with a program that can do nearly anything you could ever want. Theresa Knott | token threats 19:45, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I would use ImageMagick's convert for something like this:

convert file.jpg -rotate -30 file_rot.jpg

will rotate the file 30 degrees counter-clockwise. Superm401 - Talk 19:57, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

For this particular job, I'd use GIMP. It is hard to learn (as Theresa noted), but there are MANY tutorials online to get the basics down. The advantage of GIMP for this is that you can use the measure tool to accurately measure how many degrees the picture is tilted and then rotate it specifically that number of degrees. -- kainaw™ 20:08, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, after some more searching with different keywords I have found that Google's Picasa 2.7 will do n degree tilting, although its difficult to steer it to the particular image you want on your hard drive. I will have a look at ImageMagic. GIMP although doubtless very good would be too complicated for me. Thanks 78.151.145.226 (talk) 21:29, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Building Electronics

So, I got a rather large hub and I stripped it out without damaging anything. I have the circuit board with all the little processor looking things (what are these) on it; I have the power board, and the fan. I also have the guts of a cordless telephone I stripped. Is there anything other than a hub or a phone I can make with these without having to buy many parts? TIA, Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 19:41, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

You aren't going to find this helpful, but the simple answer is "No". Modern electronics is very specific and the components you would need to make something simple - like a doorbell or a light flasher - wont be found in a hub or a phone. -- SGBailey (talk) 21:25, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Free HTML template/gallery software

Is there any free software that can automate the process of maintaining my website? The tasks I'll need to perform are:

• Add new images to both the screen and print versions of a page at once, have them reformatted, and in the print version have the row breaks move automatically.
• Remove images from both versions of a page, and again have the row breaks move in the print version.
• Update text on both versions of a page, including both "Copies in Stock" and text outside the galleries.
• Add, remove or edit text, code or styles on multiple pages (which are not versions of the same page) at once. (I don't want to use an external stylesheet, since they sometimes fail to load.)

I may not have access to server-side scripting. I'll be uploading the pages from machines that run Windows XP Professional and on which I don't have admin access; I can't upload them from elsewhere directly, since the server works by mirroring a folder on my network drive. However, I also have a laptop running Kubuntu where I do have root access, and could e-mail or sneakernet files from the laptop to be uploaded. NeonMerlin 20:57, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

"Page Fault in Nonpaged Area"

My laptop keeps BSoD'ing for the above reason, which is starting to irritate me since it is actually *functional* for once. What does it mean, and what steps can I take to fix it? -Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 22:00, 16 November 2008 (UTC)