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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)

you can "fake it" in languages that won't allow "bit toggling" (i've done it in SAS); the trick is to convert your bit level variables into hex and/or decimal then multiply by whatever power of 2 is necessary to shift them, and add. similarly in reverse to get your individual data back. for instance: you have two levels of gender, call them 0 and 1. and 4 levels of ugliness, call them 0,1,2,3. Convert ugliness to binary, you got 00, 01, 10, 11. you can now collapse both variables into one bitfield variable by: use gender as is for bit 1. shift ugliness over one bit to the next spot, so it becomes 000,010,100,110 (equivalent of multiplying by two). convert to hex, so gender is still 0 and 1, ugliness is now 0,2,4,6 hex (luckily the same as decimal, so far). add them. if you play with it, you can see that you can recover the original data intact from the sum by reversing the process. and you've still got 5 bits left over to store more variables. it sounds bitchy, but after a short while you can do it in your head so that you don't need to explicitly go through the binary or hex steps, you just know that a variable of two bits in positions 2 and 3 in your bitfield will have the values 0,2,4,6, etc. and just use plain old addition. Gzuckier (talk) 19:34, 19 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)

The simplest way to find it out, would be to try. (moving SIM card from one phone to another should not cause any damage to either component (unless one of them is badly damaged already (short circuit in SIM card, card reader in phone supplying too high voltage)). Generally, phones, which are sold with contract (at price, which is lower than for phone without contract) are simlocked. There are possible exceptions. -Yyy (talk) 17:05, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm a bit worried that I could lose my minutes if I do an "unauthorized SIM card transfer". So, I'd like to know if a transfer will work before I attempt it. StuRat (talk) 18:35, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I have never heard of such restrictions (If they are real then it might be a problem). Some phones might have codes (which can be keyed in to check simlock status), but these are specific to particular model (and usually are not found in user manuals)(might be in service manuals). Usually, if phone is simlocked and rejects inserted simcard, it just does not work, it does not damages that simcard in any way. (I never have had any simlocked phone, so i am not 100% sure). -Yyy (talk) 15:46, 19 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)

Not sure if this would work for your case, but if you download WAMP you can run an Apache server with PHP interpretation locally, as long as the files with PHP in them are in the www (or equivalent) WAMP directory. Hiram J. Hackenbacker (not logged in) 128.100.36.93 (talk)

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 [1].

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)

Opps, I have been slightly misleading. I can download and install Firefox successfully (just as LimeWire), but when I try to access a website that is block (i.e. Youtube), instead of getting the blocked message as I do with IE, I rather get a "Connection Error" and no matter how many times I click <Retry> I will still get the same error. It is really quite frustrating. All I need is to download maybe three videos and a couple sound clips for my project.

Now, philosophically, why can't my administration grant an exception? I'd be willing to do it supervised, even. I'm in the top of my class, I never get in trouble; you would assume that there would be a certain level of trust. But yet, they even have google images blocked. Yeah. Go figure.

And, addressing the WiFi theory, I have already tried that, to the same effects. I haven't, however, tried to use an apartment building or a single family house. I live in rural, western NC, and WiFi is hard to come by--especially with my lack of Laptop.

Finally, thanks for the compliment, but I'm really not that good. Yeah, I know synonyms for "hacking" to search google (they have word-specific searches blocked to, hacking being one of them), and the common sense to not get caught and delete everything I do at the end of a session. I don't think there are any jobs that would pay me for having common sense. And, to be quite honest, I have never even tried making a website or anything...and this LANs you speak of...I had to wiki-it. :D Seriously, I'm not modest--I'm honest. —Preceding unsigned comment added by EWHS (talk • contribs) 20:40, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

When I was in high school we also had a school filter that was too strict. Granted most of the machines ran Windows 98 or Windows 2000, but I made a VB Script and stored it on my student network drive that basically set the proxy in the registry to nothing, i.e. turned it off. For some reason or another the domain policies at the school let me run VBScript, even though I wasn't able to run .reg files, open regedit, or anything like that. It might be worth looking into. If I had the script still, I'd give it to you, but alas I do not. --Anthonysenn (talk) 03:11, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

We run XP; and I'll look into VBScript, whatever that might be. This is where my un-goodness shows, if you will. But anything is better than nothing.EWHS (talk) 20:24, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

"certain level of trust" wait until you get into the world of "business", where you are allowed to daily make decisions with minimal or no supervision or checkup, on the basis of which your company risks millions of dollars, but they still block google images because they know for sure that if they didn't you're too immature not to spend the whole day looking at porn. then you realize why financial meltdowns happen.Gzuckier (talk) 19:40, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Downloading from YouTube

[2] 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)

Have you tried using "Computer Management" as shown here? I am not absolutely certain about it but perhaps the 'installation' of Windows on D: is still registered with your bootloader. You can use the instructions here to find out for sure. Kushal (talk) 11:12, 21 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 [3] --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)

Thanks. As for last.fm, I'm not an artist or a label. Plus, I'll be hardcoding the account info into the uploader so each doc that uses it will be uploading to the same account. One might, for some reason, upload a song. Usually, they will be uploading just a bunch of spoken notes. Who wants to download and jam to a bunch of random notes about hypertension? -- kainaw™ 13:06, 17 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)

You only have two choices - buy a graphics card (get one with an nVidia chip - ATI are behind the curve on Linux - forget ANY other chip brand) - or you have to resort to S-L-O-W software emulation. The only working, modern OpenGL emulator in existence is "Mesa" - which should already have been installed by Ubuntu (search for 'libGL*.*' in the /usr/lib and /usr/X11/lib directories to see if it's installed). If any OpenGL programs are running - then you have Mesa installed for sure. It'll do most of the things that a decent graphics card can do - but it'll be painfully slow. The features Mesa lacks are optional in OpenGL - so correctly implemented applications should be able to cope without whatever it might lack.

But basically - if you want 3D graphics - buy a 3D graphics card. (The SiS 661FX is a joke - even if there was a driver for it - (which there isn't) it's complete and utter crap). Don't bother messing with virtual machines - they don't virtualize the graphics anyway, they use the underlying graphics API so you'd be back to the SiS 661FX and either no OpenGL or Mesa - which would now be double-slow because of the virtualization.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:53, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure Compiz Fusion checks for DRI; and I'm also pretty sure that Mesa doesn't support texture_from_pixmap properly (which Compiz Fusion requires). --wj32 ^t/c 05:38, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

It's been a long time since I used Mesa - and I have never played with Compiz Fusion - but if Compiz doesn't fall back to doing an image glReadPixels or a glCopyPixels to recover from hardware that doesn't support render-to-texture or whatever - then it's not a very well written application and you're kinda screwed. Properly written code should either have fallbacks or very carefully list the hardware it actually needs in order to run. SteveBaker (talk) 05:30, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for you two precious advices. However, please try to be nice in response to other guy's questions and try not to be too emotional. If you think I have any ridiculous misunderstanding about Linux, OpenGL, X Window or whatever, you can directly point out the specific errors I made. I'm just new to Linux system and there are many thing I don't know and make me curious. Pleas don't think that I was criticizing the Linux or whatever I've mentioned. If I didn't like things from Linux community, I would not ask qustion here and try to install it. - Justin545 (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

There was nothing emotional in my reply!...it's the straight truth and it's independent of your knowledge of Linux, etc. SteveBaker (talk) 05:30, 18 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)

A better source of help than the Wiki reference desks could be either the Ubuntu forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/ and/or the Ubuntu mailing list: https://lists.ubuntu.com/ . You're much more likely to get the help you need from those resources. Both are packed with volunteers with a great depth of knowledge on all things Ubuntu/Linux related. - Akamad (talk) 01:57, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Not being rude..but that last statement was very ironic. I actually tried those two first. The site...well I could not figure out why it would not let me login even though I had confirmed my email and allowed all cookies. The second..I never got a confirmation email from them. So I am pretty much boned. Rgoodermote  05:30, 17 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)

Check out Melodyne Direct Note Access. You can see in this 14 minute interview with the creator that the program, besides being able to show you the individual notes within recorded chords, can also analyze the harmony of passages. Just around the half-way point in the interview the fellow gives an example where the program has determined that the passage he's using as an example is in Am. Good luck! --dw

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)

Irfanview! Freeware, small, fast image viewer (with some limited creation/modification capabilities). Dead easy to learn/use and will open just about any image/video format. (Well, bulk image transforms are a little complicated; lots of options.)

And will rotate in degrees. (Even in bulk!) 66.214.189.209 (talk) 23:49, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I definitely recommend GIMP - it's not that tough to get into - it's pretty similar to Photoshop - and it's free. Run GIMP, load your image using the usual "File/Open..." - from the little 'toolbox' window it brings up. Then a new window will open with the image inside. Right-click on the image - a drop-down menu will appear - click on 'Layer' then 'Transform...' then 'Arbitary Rotation...'. Slide the 'Angle' slider around - or type in the exact angle you want in the box marked 'Angle'. You can also change the point about which the image will be rotated by click-dragging the black dot in the middle of the image - or by typing numbers into the two boxes in the rotation dialog. When you have it how you like it - click the 'Rotate' button to make the rotation permanent. Now right click on the image again - select 'File' then 'Save...'...and you're done. Easy! SteveBaker (talk) 04:15, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

One more - PhotoFiltre. You can get an old version for free from http://photofiltre.free.fr/frames_en.htm . It's easier to get into than GIMP and has all the basic features such as colour changing, rotating and filters - and quite a few of them have single-click buttons. AJHW (talk) 12:25, 17 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)

Well: Cases, power supplies, fans, switches, speakers, microphones, keypads, LED's, resistors and capacitors, connectors - those are all useful. LCD displays...maybe useful if you can find documentation for them. The actual chips - less so. Most modern consumer devices take all of the small, interesting universal functions and roll them all up into one gigantic custom chip. Even embedded computers tend to have their programs stored in internal ROM memory so you can't reprogram them. Worse still, the documentation on those chips simply isn't available. So you're screwed for sure with the phone chips. Non-consumer products (maybe...MAYBE like your hub) might have used more general purpose devices - you could look at the top of each chip in turn - read off the part numbers (and note any manufacturer logo) and start typing them into Google to see if anything interesting shows up. You may get lucky. The older the hardware you're pulling apart - the better off you'll be. A computer from 20 years ago would be stuffed full of cool stuff. A modern laptop...nothing. SteveBaker (talk) 03:28, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't think a computer from 20 years ago would be helpful... I had a late 1980s workstation motherboard with zero standard logic devices, all of the logic was either in application-specific integrated circuits or programmable logic array. A minicomputer has lots of usable components, but I wouldn't advise scrapping those since they should be (and many are) in museums. If you want to play around with electronics, use TTLs or 4000 series ICs, they are versatile, easy to use and pretty cheap, around 80 cents each in quantities of 25. Rilak (talk) 09:55, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

The problem is made more difficult by surface mount components. Those are extremely dificult to solder by hand. (Not impossible, some people with really steady hands can do it freehand, and there are special tools for dealing with surface mount stuff.) APL (talk) 14:18, 19 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)

This is one of the most common and general BSoD errors. It can mean anything from failing memory to bad antivirus software to a corrupted file system. A quick Google search leads to this MSDN article which gives some troubleshooting advice. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 02:00, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Besides that, it may mean that you have some viruses in your system, or you may have that BSOD screensaver thing. Try performing a full hard disk scan using an antivirus, and/or a chkdsk scan; it worked when one of the computers at home crashed with a BSOD on boot. Blake Gripling (talk) 02:18, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Most likely, some driver is trying to access an invalid memory location. The BSoD you're getting should display the name of the driver which is causing the page fault. Then do a Google search on the driver and find out what it is - anti-virus/anti-malware software (they install drivers to implement their protection mechanisms), device drivers, even virtual machine drivers. --wj32 ^t/c 05:51, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Could also be bad RAM. I've seen this BSOD a few times in systems with a bad stick. It also may spit out others in that case, but this seems to be the most common. 24.76.161.28 (talk) 10:04, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

24) Could the following be other BSoD errors associated with bad RAM? "Attempting to write to read-only memory", "Memory Management", "Driver IRQL Not Less Or Equal" -Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 22:54, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes to all 3. Especially if you're seeing them all. I personally had a computer that was doing just this after a RAM upgrade; I replaced the stick with another one, problem solved. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 16:22, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Crustacean and to everyone else who answered. -Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 21:57, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

November 17

Please help with viewing problem

On my laptop, I must have hit something. I run Windows XP and now all program -- browsers, etc., are sideways with what should be the top now on the left side of the screen. Any suggestions on how to fix this would be greatly appreciated. Thanking you in advance. Mike B. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.235.67.132 (talk) 00:39, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, I was able to fix it. Sorry for the bother. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.235.67.132 (talk) 01:09, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

If anyone else is wondering, it's ALT+CTRL+UP ARROW. 24.180.87.119 (talk) 01:17, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Through stumbling around I found a solution through an icon "Graphics Media Accelerator Driver for Mobile." I'd love to know what I did to begin with. The real fun is trying to negotiate a touch-sensitive mouse when all the directions are skewed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.235.67.132 (talk) 05:20, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

You probably accidentally hit ALT+CTRL+one of the arrow keys... doesn't seem like something that could happen easily, but it can! Either that or some unscrupulous person did it to your computer! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.180.87.119 (talk) 06:05, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm on Ubuntu and I sometimes accidentally hit Windows-M, and the screen colors are inverted. It's kinda cool actually. The first time I was freaked out. --76.91.56.34 (talk) 19:38, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Problem Connecting to Internet

My Internet provider is Charter, so the connection comes and goes at times, but if it can't connect, the browser I'm using will come up with a "Cannot find server" message or something. However, recently it simply won't load *anything*. Trying the ping test proves that the Internet is actually connected (usually), and both the router and my computer claim I'm connected to the Internet, but no matter what browser I try (IE 7, Firefox 3.0.4, Chrome), it simply will not connect to any page. For example, I try to open up Firefox. Instead of going to my homepage (which happens to be AOL), it loads for a while and then just stays blank. The tab's name is just "Untitled". It doesn't matter what website I try to go to, it simply won't finish loading.

I was deleting some files the other day (McAfee, for example) and I don't know if I somehow deleted something I needed to connect to the Internet, but I really need some help! The computer in question is a Windows XP. I don't know the technical terms, but there's a router hooked up, so our laptops work fine through the wireless connection, but the desktop simply will not connect. Help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.180.87.119 (talk) 01:06, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I've seen this problem on computers with rootkits. Did you actually delete McAfee's files or did you uninstall it? I recommend that you get IceSword [4], open it up and click the "SSDT" item. Check if any items are in red and if they are, tell us what driver is hooking it (e.g. rootkit.sys, sysprotect.sys, anything.sys). --wj32 ^t/c 06:04, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

The uninstaller wouldn't work (just came up with an error), so yeah, I did just delete it... probably wasn't a very smart thing to do! I'll have to try IceSword and get back here when I do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.180.87.119 (talk) 09:02, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

That would explain it. You probably only deleted the program files in C:\Program Files. McAfee probably has drivers in C:\Windows\system32\drivers which load, can't find any configuration files/necessary files and then block all internet access (silently). Look in the drivers directory and move fw220.sys and naiavf5x.sys to some backup directory. --wj32 ^t/c 10:04, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

You're right; I found naiavf5x.sys but not the other one, though. I also deleted AOL Security Center (still dunno why that was on there); are there any files I need to find for that? It still isn't working. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.180.87.119 (talk) 19:16, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I also found a file called MpFirewall or something like that- it said the company was "McAfee" so I got that one too. 24.180.87.119 (talk) 19:29, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Did you run IceSword? Tell us what items in the SSDT are coloured red. --wj32 ^t/c 05:26, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

OK, I got IceSword and I don't really know how to use it (not being able to read the Chinese help files), but I clicked on the icon that said "SSDT" and... nothing was colored anything. It was a list of different things and nothing was colored anything other than just ordinary black. 24.180.87.119 (talk) 20:27, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Very strange. I guess my original theory was incorrect. Does your network connection icon have an yellow triangle with an exclamation mark in it? --wj32 ^t/c 22:01, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

No, it doesn't... at least, it didn't the last time I checked earlier today. 24.180.87.119 (talk) 02:12, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Just in case, would reinstalling and then uninstalling McAfee be a good idea, by the way? Just to make sure it wasn't that, after all. The internet worked before I messed with those files, but not after, so... 24.180.87.119 (talk) 20:08, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Asymmetric Cryptosystem

I'm looking for an asymmetric key encryption system that does not involve raising a number to variable power like in RSA and is medium to highly secure. --Melab^±1 01:17, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Font Editor

I'm looking for a free (as in no cost) font editor besides FontForge (too much of a pain the ass to have to download a Linux virtual machine to run). Any suggestions? Deshi no Shi (talk) 01:59, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Dell Inspirion 1300

I just got this laptop for free but with no OS so I was just looking for some recomendations as to the best Linux to go with it. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 02:21, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I use OpenSuSE 11.0 - it's free, it's easy to install and it's VERY complete. However, you're going to get as many recommendations as there are respondants. If your laptop has a DVD drive then you can burn everything (the OS, all the documentation and about 1600 other programs) onto a single disk with a single download. You boot the laptop from the DVD, answer questions about timezone and such - and come back MANY hours later to find it all done. Easy! If you don't have a DVD then lots of CD's is painful - so I'd recommend the network installer. You download a single CD-worth of data - boot from that - then wait an ETERNITY while it pulls everything else over the network. It's still pretty easy - but S-L-O-W! SteveBaker (talk) 03:09, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll give that a try. Just so long as I can get that 4 GB file before anyone else wakes up and want's to use the internet. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 06:35, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

The most common answer to these kinds of questions is Ubuntu, which is a fantastic Linux distro for new users. I would recommend that, I love it. The great thing about Linux is that since it is free, you can try a few different versions, and see which ones you like. Ubuntu installation-disk (which fits on a regular old CD) doubles as a live-os, meaning you can just download it, pop it into your drive and start it up, no installation required (OpenSuSE probably has this too, I don't know). I'd recommend trying both, see which one you're most comfortable with. 83.250.202.208 (talk) 09:24, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I had thought about that but it was not clear from the site if I was going to get a Live CD, which I didn't want, or an installable OS. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 18:14, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

It's both, actually. Once you've booted with the LiveCD, you can choose to install. --LarryMac | Talk 18:33, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Portable Apps on Linux?

I have been searching for a long time for an (easy!) way to make (and run!) portable apps on a Linux system (even if they would only run on some distro with some kind of special software), I have tried many methods, but none of them worked properly, I just wanted to know it someone would know a method not already mentioned in this page: http://hacktolive.org/wiki/Portable_Applications_(Linux)

Any more ideas? Or is this just "a dream" for now? Thanks (PS: I have already checked wikipedia articles, of course!) SF007 (talk) 02:35, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

It's a tricky question - I have no problem writing a C++ program and moving the binary from Ubuntu to SuSE (for example) - it works just fine. However:

• Linux machines are everywhere. I have a complete Linux computer that fits inside a USB dongle - it won't run anything that runs on my PC because the PC has an x86 CPU and the dongle has an ARM processor. So there is the issue of CPU variability.
• Then there is the issue of what libraries you use and where you expect them to be installed and how picky you are about what versions you are using. If you rely on a particular version of (say) the SDL library (which is notoriously incompatible from one version to the next) then you have no chance of going even from SuSE 10.1 to SuSE 10.2. But if all you need is the standard I/O and math libraries - there is rarely any problem.
• Then there are data files. If you rely on all of your files being installed in (say) /usr/local/yourpackage - and some distro installs it in /usr/share/yourpackage - then you're screwed.
• Then there is the issue of installers - do you use RPM or APT or...gazillions of others.
• Do you even try to install a binary - in lots of cases you can distribute source code. I have source code applications that run on Solaris, Windows, MacOS-9 and MacOSX - and on every flavor of Linux - but you've gotta use the 'autotools' suite to build them and you need to install GNU C++ on platforms such as Windows that don't have them by default.

So it depends on your expectations. Some things are simply NOT going to get fixed...other things are easy.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:02, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Steve, I just wanted something simple to use (no compiling/coding/etc), ideally, what I wanted was something like VMware ThinApp for Linux... Anyway, regarding what you said, let's assume I want to make portable apps that only run on Ubuntu 8.10, on x86 computers, and that I only care if the app runs or not (meaning: the settings and user data don't matter), would it be easy? and what was that thing about coding in C++ to move a binary? Assuming we have a program with no dependencies on Ubuntu 8.10 x86, and if we copy all the binaries to other Ubuntu 8.10 x86, would the program run? And is there something like a "linux registry"? (similar to windows registry) or something besides "regular program files", that might complicate things? or the only thing that matters are the program binaries and it's dependencies? (assuming we already have 2 computers with exactly the same OS and architecture) SF007 (talk) 03:33, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

If all you want is to run the same app on multiple Ubuntu 8.10/x86 machines - then you don't have to do anything special! Just copy the application's binary file over onto the other machine. Easy! There is no "registry" under Linux - the only things you need to make a runnable program are:

• That the program file is a valid binary executable (which it is because you just had it working on your other computer).
• That the file permissions are marked 'readable' and 'executable' (eg Run 'chmod a+rx myprogram') - they're probably already set that way - but it depends on how you copied the file over.
• That either:
  • The executable file is in one of the directories in your 'PATH' variable (Run 'echo $PATH' to find out what those directories are)...or...
  • You type in the path to the executable file when you want to run the program (eg run it by typing '/home/SF007/bin/myprogram' instead of just 'myprogram')

...which will almost certainly be true if you put the program file into the same directory it was on the other computer. Generally - all of those things "just work" - so don't bother with all that stuff I just explained unless it doesn't "just work". SteveBaker (talk) 04:06, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! This really cleared up my ideas regarding Linux and software! Thanks again SF007 (talk) 04:39, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

batch things

OK, I've got a couple questions. 1) When I have batch file a.bat, and the only thing it contains is the term a.bat, and I run it, it opens itself in the same window. But when it contains START a.bat, it opens in a different window. Why is that? 2) When file a.bat contains

START NOTEPAD.exe
a.bat

it opens Notepad, then opens it again... endless. The only two ways I have found to stop the cycle is shutting down my comp -or- CtrlAltDel, rightclick the cmd.exe and click "end process tree." Are there any other ways to stop it? flaminglawyer^cneverforget 03:21, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Type start by itself at the command prompt and another command window opens. But if you don't want another window to open when you open notepad, just take it out:

notepad

When you type start /? you get this:

 C:\>start /?
 Starts a separate window to run a specified program or command.
 ... ... ...

That's what it's for. As for the loop thing, one way would be to circumvent the a.bat, like this:

 notepad
 goto :eof
 a.bat

In which case a.bat never executes, because it goes to the end of the file ("eof") first.--Areateeth34 (talk) 03:39, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Wait... so you're making a batch file... that calls itself... and then wondering... why it keeps calling itself infinitely? See recursion. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 04:59, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I was wondering about that. I wasn't sure whether to reply or not. I now realize that it was a waste of time. He wanted to show us he knew how to make a batch file and show us a neat little trick he learned that's been floating around the net for a long time. Then I waste part of my day replying to a "question" of his and he doesn't say thanks. I feel like an idiot.--Areateeth34 (talk) 08:45, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

First, I'd like to point out that some 'pedians actually spend some time on other things than Wikipedia (hard to beleive, I know, but it's true). I am one of those people. I do most of my edits between 3:00 and 9:00 PM Central time. That was posted at 10-ish(?) last night, after which I went to bed, got up late, and went to school, where I saw your post (but couldn't respond, because WP was having login "errors" and the school IP is indef-blocked). My point in saying this is: don't be so quick to say that I didn't say thanks, because I was sleeping at the time of your 2nd post, and had been since my original question. So I am saying a cold, lifeless thanks now, because you answered the first part of my question (and taught me a new trick, the command \? for command info thing) ( =] new trick, =[ criticism of me ). And, as a closing thought - don't feel like an idiot. That's self-degrading. flaminglawyer^cneverforget 21:53, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

iMovie '08: Editing Slow Motion & Fast Motion

Dear All,

Apologies for my repeated question but I still as yet haven't found the information I am looking for. I'm looking to learn how to insert clips in slow motion or fast motion into iMovie 08 projects. Does anyone know if this requires a plugin to be downloaded or if there is a feature I am missing within iMovie? Specifically I have a 7-minute clip that I want to insert into my video sped up so that in real time it passes in 10 or 20 seconds.

Many thanks again.

Lukerees1983 (talk) 05:16, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Googled "Slow down movie in IMovie" and it was the first one. Read this tutorial here Rgoodermote  05:32, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Scaling PHP and MySQL

I have spent the better part of the week reading about scaling MySQL, PHP, and so forth, but I really find it difficult to find information on how to do it - most specifically with MySQL. While MySQL has a lot of documentation on their site about scaling, what I am interested in are some PHP-based approaches to scaling (preferably Master+Slaves) with MySQL. I browsed around the MediaWiki code, but it's loadbalancing class is very large and complex.

I was wondering if anyone knows of a place where I can get straight forward information about using PHP, plus examples, to scale MySQL. I have spent some time googling around for this, but it's mostly power-point presentations telling me that I should scale, not hot to exactly.

Thanks, --Anthonysenn (talk) 06:58, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

A big problem here is that "scaling" is a generic term for a thousand different things. When I use it, I mean "taking a single server and making multiple mirrors that update when the master updates". So, I use a master with dozens of slaves. That is rather easy. I set up replication on MySQL (easy - just google "mysql replication") and I set up SVN for my php files so changes on the main server get sent to all the slaves every night. But, there is a problem here. What if the site allows users to add data to the database? If it is a slave, the slave database is updated, but I'm only replicating from the master to the slave, not from the slave to the master. So, it won't work. Luckily, I don't do that. If you can be painfully clear about exactly what you mean by "scaling" for your project, I can provide a much better answer. -- kainaw™ 12:52, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, what you're talking about is exactly what I mean. I basically want to have a master and two slaves (at first), and I read about that on mysql's site, but the problem comes with PHP, I know how to connect to the mysql master and update/insert/delete with that, but when it comes to slaves, how do I connect to them for my selects? I was hoping perhaps there was a class out there in PHP that at covered soemthing like that. --Anthonysenn (talk) 17:55, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

In MySQL, the slave databases have the same data as the master. So, a server with a slave MySQL will have PHP that queries the slave. Nothing special in any way. Just select as you would if it wasn't a slave. The issue is with updates. Updating a slave does not update the master or any other slaves. In fact, it can break a slave. So, if you want a situation where two servers work together, each mirroring each other and each containing a separate MySQL database that has to be mirrored, you cannot use a master-slave setup. -- kainaw™ 23:01, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

If you wanna do simple load balancing of queries, here is my suggestion:

• At the start of the page initialize connections to all three servers and make two different connections, like $dbmaster, and $dbslave. Which Slave to use would be randomly picked at init. That way users are randomly assigned to different slaves. (and hopefully both slaves will have same load)
• Change your SQL class's query method (or if you always manually use mysql_query function, make custom query function). If the query has "SELECT" or "(SELECT" as the first word (the other option is if you are using UNIONs), then use the slave connection, otherwise use dbmaster connection.
• Or, you can manually choose the connection when using queries, to send update/delete/alter/... queries to master DB connection and to use slave connection for SELECT queries. — Shinhan < talk > 11:58, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Laptop Brands

Hi,

I am keen to buy a new laptop, but want to know which brand is best (e.g. dell, apple etc.) i am looking to buy a light weight laptop with a large memory and small screen. any suggestions?

Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.108.160.123 (talk) 07:20, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

What do you want to accomplish with the laptop (e.g. image/video editing, general use (internet, word processing), games, etc)? Are you limited by price? I've owned an IBM Thinkpad, now Lenovo, laptop and have been quite happy with it but they tend to be a bit more expensive than brans like Dell and I have friends who swear by Apples.--droptone (talk) 12:52, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Don't get a screen larger than 13.5 inches, and make sure you get 2 gigabytes of RAM or more. You haven't mentioned anything that indicates specific use, so that probably means you're going for general use. :) Mac Davis (talk) 02:40, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

If you are in the US, are ready to buy now, watch out for Black Friday (shopping). Word is^{Ars Technica} that Apple may announce price cuts ... Very unlikely? Yes. But still worth a shot. Kushal (talk) 13:19, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Personal abuse on YouTube

Someone has uploaded (for the second time, it was taken down once already) a hate-video to YouTube, featuring images of me from a video I uploaded, graffitied with sexual abuse, with abusive captions and an abusive song. Their profile-pic is also abusive against me. It's been 12 hours since I reported the video for "bullying" - and it's still up. Can anyone suggest a way to get it taken down? Its info includes my full name, so it now comes up in search results. Thanks. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 08:05, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Wow, that sounds awful. Have you tried using this form, where one can report abuse? Don't know if it does anything different than just using the "Flag" function on the video, but it's worth a try, I guess. 83.250.202.208 (talk) 09:29, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

It has images that you uploaded, so if it doesn't meet the legal criteria for fair use material, you can send a DMCA takedown notice. For the intricacies of this, I'd look elsewhere. Legal advice isn't kosher here. 24.76.161.28 (talk) 10:01, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that would work; they could say that it "parodies" or "criticizes" the victim. --wj32 ^t/c 10:06, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Youtube doesn't make fair use judgments. They recieve a take-down, they take it down, without hesitation, fair use or no. The other party can send a counter-take-down notice, but at that point the two people have to battle it out in court, and I suspect that the other party in this dispute would take it that far. 195.58.125.52 (talk) 14:00, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Parody has a specific meaning under the law—it is not a free-for-all license to attack people. This is not parody. This is just harassment. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 03:07, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Short clips (<30s) = fair use. Kushal (talk) 13:21, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

That's not true. 30 seconds out of a 31 second movie isn't fair use - if you make profit from your 30 second clip it's not fair use - there are a bazillion ways in which a <30 sec clip could infringe on the law. SteveBaker (talk) 01:53, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

download website using webripper

Hi. I need to download some webpages with the following format: www.somesite.com/page[0-99].htm. I am using webripper. Any alternative open source software will also do. Care is also to be taken of the images appearing at the web pages (which isn't downloaded using the flashgot->build media), and needs to be downloaded. 218.248.70.235 (talk) 11:19, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

On something Unix-like, the following will do it:

for i in $(seq 0 99); do
  wget -p www.somesite.com/page$i.htm
done

--Sean 15:55, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Can I merge .debs?

Is it possible to easily merge .deb files? I have a program with about 30 dependencies, and I wanted to make only one deb, the program + dependencies, for offline install, is it possible? is it easy? I know I can automate the installation with a bash script and dpkg, but that's not what I want... SF007 (talk) 15:39, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

PC Upgrade

Okay, I'm currently running an Athlon FX-60 (2.6 GHz, dual-core) on a socket 939 motherboard with 3GB of DDR. I am also still using IDE hard drives (200GB and 160GB). I'd like to upgrade, but just to switch my CPU, I'd have to switch out pretty much everything. The FX-60 is the fastest socket 939, so I'd have to switch motherboards to upgrade my processor. Doing that would also require that I upgrade my RAM from DDR to DDR2 (or DDR3) and probably my hard drives from IDE to SATA because it'll be impossible to find a mobo with two IDE ports (one for optical drives and one for hard drives). So, the question becomes, what do you guys think of this setup? Is it good enough to get me bragging rights over my peers? Is it future-proofed enough to last me a year or two?

• Motherboard: MSI Intel X58
• CPU: Intel Core i7 920
• RAM: Corsair 4GB of DDR3 PC10600
• HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB

That setup would cost me $832.96. I am also using a GeForce 8800GT Superclocked and an 850 Watt PSU. Any suggestions would be great or if any of those items are incompatible, I'd really like to know that, too. Thanks. 76.8.208.7 (talk) 17:28, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

The bragging rights will only last till your peers upgrade themselves. If you buy the best you can now, it won't be better than what can be purchased in 9 months time. But even your current setup sound like it could be useful to you. Your new system is not much of a memory upgrade. My rule of thumb is that the new system should be 4 times the memory/disk/speed of the old system. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:37, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Spending $800+ just for bragging rights sounds daft to me. Your current PC sounds pretty well specified already and can't be more than a year or two old. Hang on to your $800 until the current PC really needs upgrading and get something bleeding-edge then. Astronaut (talk) 07:54, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Just for the record, Socket 939 was obsoleted 2.5 years ago. I bought my Socket 939 system almost 3 years ago, and it had SATA drives by that time. I would guess that he might not have a PCI Express slot for modern graphics cards, either. Depending on what he does (e.g. gaming), I don't think it's unreasonable for him to be upgrading now. -- Coneslayer (talk) 14:59, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Gaming is my main use. Yes, my motherboard does have PCI-E, but it is not SLI-capable. I'm using IDE hard drives because I've had them for awhile and haven't yet replaced them with SATA. My mobo can support 6 SATA drives, I just don't have any. The motherboard also has 2 IDE ports, which is good, one for my optical drives and one for my hard drives. 76.8.208.7 (talk) 02:44, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Setting up LaTex

Can somebody talk me through the software I need and the process for installing a LaTex system for use alongside GNU Emacs on XP. The internet is full of tutorials for how to use LaTex but there's very little attention given to how to actually set it up in the first place and what I've found is either outdated (perfect example being that I'm yet to find one which deals with a relatively recent version of MikTex) or makes too many assumptions about user knowledge and what has already been done. --Kiltman67 (talk) 19:36, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I'll tell you the software you need. It's called Ubuntu. Half a smiley. --Trovatore (talk) 21:25, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Frustratingly you're probably right, but stuck with Windows for now... I think I have it set up properly now and it seems to be working fine, though may die on me when I ask it to do anything more complicated then print out one line of text. --Kiltman67 (talk) 22:01, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I don't know if this is what you were planning anyway, but you could see what AUCTeX can do for you. You should be able to install it and point it at your MikTeX installation and away you go. Good luck. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.164.115 (talk) 21:36, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I can't help you with Windows stuff, but if you just need to do a litte LaTeX work, there are some online versions, like here. --Sean 12:54, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Are you talking about getting the LaTeX system itself to work, or about getting Emacs to work with it? If you're stuck installing the software, I would think that MiKTeX's web page would be a good place to start.

If you already have some distribution of LaTeX installed, it should be a simple matter of customizing variables (M-x customize-option) like latex-run-command, tex-bibtex-command, and tex-dvi-view-command. For large projects you might want to set up file-local values for tex-main-file. You can find other options to play with by doing M-x customize-group tex RET. See also tex-mode in the Emacs manual. (AUCTeX, mentioned above, is a more powerful and more complicated TeX support system for Emacs; you can try it too.) --Tardis (talk) 17:17, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone else use Google as a spell checker?

I'm just curious. Does anyone else use Google as a spell checker? I do because loading Microsoft Office takes longer than running a Google search. Plus, Google's suggestions are usually more accurate than Microsoft Office's. Does anyone else use Google as a spell checker? 216.239.234.196 (talk) 20:02, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

As a student, I've found that WordWeb is an excellent dictionary/spell checker that is extremely light on system resources...and free! --71.117.39.132 (talk) 20:26, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I might use it for things like names which wouldn't be in a regular spellchecker, yes. But spellchecking an entire document with Google would be painful. StuRat (talk) 20:43, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

You're right. I was not clear. I didn't mean spell checking an entire document, I meant spell checking a word or name. 216.239.234.196 (talk) 20:51, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

You know, sometimes I wish that the Wikipedia search would have a decent spell checker. --128.97.244.10 (talk) 22:07, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

You should know, Hungary is such a shit, backwater country, culture, and language, that it doesn't have normal dictionaries people consult -- in fact most people are forced to resort to googling two forms of a word and seeing which one has more matches!! (English analogy: book-keeper or bookkeeper). Some guy actually rigged up a whole web interface to doing comparisons of two alternatives the poor user is forced to guess between. As an adult learner of the language, having not gone to school in Hungary but only speaking it fluently, I am saddened by this absurd situation. Also, to learn the meanings of words, there's nothing like Websters or anything else -- I have to use a Hungarian-English dictionary (even though I speak the language perfectly) because they just have no lexicographic culture. Never forget how lucky you are that you can just type Define:_____ into google and get a boatload of definitions. /rant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.27.195.51 (talk • contribs) 22:22, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I use google for spell check often when my computer's spell check isn't working well for the certain word. Mac Davis (talk) 22:45, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I have never used Google for a spell checker. This may be because all popular OS's come with a spell checker. I have used Windows for most of my life, Mac for a considerable portion of it, and Linux for not very long (but long enough for me to mention), and have never used Google for that. Ever. (and in my opinion, Hungary should be much more populated and popular than it is, even if it was just because of the name - hungry) flaminglawyer^cneverforget 22:50, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm on a Mac, and the system-wide spellcheck mainly works by alphabetical order. If you've got the letters wrong somewhere in the beginning half of the word it often doesn't work very well. Google's "spell check" is based on the errors that people actually make. Mac Davis (talk) 02:38, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Hungarian wiktionary anyone? [5] ? SteveBaker (talk) 01:31, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

That's what I'm talking about! The Hungarians don't even know what a dictionary is. Unlike normal wiktionary, which is like thefreedictionary, will tell you the meaning of words, the Hungarian one WON'T. It'll just give you translations into other languages. What a bunch of losers. They have no culture or scholarship to speak if, if a Hungarian would like to do science, he or she should write it in English.

It depends on where I am entering in text. If I am sending an IM or talking on IRC, then I'll use Google since it's quicker. If I am using Firefox for entering in text online, I'll let Firefox give suggestions first then I will fire up Google if Firefox's dictionary isn't sufficient. I use both quite often since my spelling is atrocious.--droptone (talk) 13:11, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I use Google for the odd word. I thought I was unique! -- Q Chris (talk) 13:21, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I often use Google for misspellings that 'stump' other spell-checkers. Google's spell-check seems to be much smarter than any other I've used. I suspect that it's based on a giant database of actual misspellings rather than the approach other spell checkers seem to use, but I have no idea. APL (talk) 14:19, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Check out Google's list of how people misspelled "Britney Spears". 118.92.127.61 (talk) 00:30, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

most people are forced to resort to googling two forms of a word and seeing which one has more matches!! is googlefight still operating? that was very useful. i've used it for deciding which of the various spellings of somebody's name was most likely, for wikipedia bio articles. but the reason i'm writing is.... the google toolbar has a spelling checker which when clicked will do all the text edit boxes on your page. i'm assuming they use google as the basic data, because it does the most amazing job, much better at guessing what my various typos are intended to be than spelling checkers in word, etc. Gzuckier (talk) 19:56, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Spyware redirecting my browser

I have a spyware/malware that is slowing down my browser and redirecting certain youtube links to other sites, and google.com won't work at all. I used adaware to remove the 4 spyware files, but everytime I reopen mozilla or IE, they reinstall automatically. How do I get rid of them for good? 128.6.30.197 (talk) 20:09, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Run Spybot and then look at its advanced tools to figure out what the problem is. It is probably playing with yours HOSTS file or something like that. Spybot can take care of that. --140.247.243.142 (talk) 20:36, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

And if you couldn't fix it any other way, you could always reinstall the browsers or get other browsers (like Firefox and Opera). StuRat (talk) 20:40, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

That doesn't make sense; spyware can't just reinstall itself when you open your browser. Maybe you mean you're directed to another website other than your home page? What error message do you receive when you try to open Google? --wj32 ^t/c 05:38, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Sure spyware can reinstall itself from a hidden file (one the spyware remover doesn't find), when you do something like start a browser. Another favorite trick is to have a startup process run that reinstalls the spyware as soon as it's removed. StuRat (talk) 06:03, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmm...I need a Laptop

Alrighty then. I'm going off to college, and I need a laptop. Here are my needs/wants/etc.

• INTERNET USE! Youtube, Myspace, Facebook, research, etc.
• Some picture storage
• Preferably not crazy expensive
• Definitely music (iTunes, Limewire) friendly
• Maybe lightweight? Not a must, though.
• Very lightweight gaming. Like, probably just Furcadia and pinball.
• CD Burning, etc.

Hit me with suggestions! :D —Preceding unsigned comment added by EWHS (talk • contribs) 20:59, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like you can get just about anything out there made today. Make sure you take good care of it, don't buy on how they look, remember to get a CD (R/RW) burner and/or DVD. Mac Davis (talk) 22:47, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Mac daddy is right - pretty much anything is good for you. If you could elaborate on what you meant by "crazy expensive," I could give you a real list. But for now, I'll reccommend a MacBook - they're a bit xpensive, but they'll do everything on that list and more. Otherwise, I reccommend a Windows laptop - that's right, I didn't even specify a brand, because it really doesn't make a difference, as long as you have the right stuff inside. (as long as you know how to open up your laptop and install new parts, that is) flaminglawyer^cneverforget 23:03, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

As for a Macbook, Apple will be having its Black Friday sale pretty soon which could be topped by a student discount. The Macbook is pretty easy to use, reliable, and doesn't get viruses, so it might be a good option for you. It also turns out Furcadia runs on Mac OS 10.4 or higher.[6] How lucky for you! Oh, and under internet use you meant JSTOR too, right? ;D Mac Davis (talk) 02:36, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

another vote for apple, the student-on-campus version of recommending a honda to anybody who wants to buy a car. also, there's a thriving market in used macs, unlike PCs which become landfill very rapidly on the basis of resale value Gzuckier (talk) 19:52, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

AES

I'm looking for a fully debugged source code for a program implementing the Advanced Encryption Standard, NOT FROM A LIBRARY. I also want to know how to hook Dev-C++ up to GCC and how to compile in Code::Blocks. --Melab^±1 23:17, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Check Advanced_Encryption_Standard#Implementations first. 118.92.127.61 (talk) 22:34, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Usernames

Is there a good reason why Wikipedia usernames are case-sensitive, or was that one of those decisions that "seemed like a good idea at the time it was made"? CBHA (talk) 23:29, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I think this would be best suited for the help desk. it does seem like a good idea though to me NOW even. 66.216.163.92 (talk) 23:43, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. I will post the question at the Help Desk. CBHA (talk) 01:53, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

November 18

Firefox not viewing images

I'm using Firefox 3.0.4, though I've stumbled upon this before. Sometimes when I try to "view image" from a webpage, FF tries to open my graphics program to view it rather than simply showing it in-line. Anyone else get that? Here's one I just found. Try viewing the picture of the ships spilling over the edge. Or the others on the page. What's going on here? I can save the image if I want... Is the page protected somehow? Matt Deres (talk) 00:55, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Images uploaded via Blogger are served with the header "Content-Disposition: attachment". This header doesn't cause problems when the image is part of a webpage, but when you open the image address in a new window, it triggers your browser to bring up a download box (or start the default program you previously selected). --Bavi H (talk) 05:06, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

It does it with my Firefox 2.0.something as well. I got a box asking what Firefox should do with the image, from which I chose "Open with", then Other... from the dropdown box, then browsed to my Firefox and clicked Open. It opened a local copy of the image in a new tab.

So if you want to view the image in Firefox and you get the same box, that should fix it. If you don't get the box (your graphics program opens immediately when you try to "view image"), you'll have to change Firefox's setting for what it does with JPGs. You do this in Firefox 2 by going to Tools - Options - Content - File Types, clicking Manage, clicking the entry for JPG in the list and clicking Change Action. You can then choose to "Open them with this application:" and browse to your Firefox. Firefox 3 may have put this in a different place... I'll put an update on here when I can get to a computer with FF3. AJHW (talk) 11:24, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. Unfortunately, AJHW's fix did not seem to work. When I chose FF as the application, I got the error message, "C:\DOCUME~1\Matt\LOCALS~1\Temp\flat-earth-society-1.jpg could not be opened, because an unknown error occurred. Try saving to disk first and then opening the file." Strange, eh? Matt Deres (talk) 11:38, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I think you might have found a bug there! I had a look at Bugzilla (Mozilla's bug-reporting system) and found three similar bugs (nos. 331544, 193868 and 434638). Incidentally, doing the above works OK on my FF3.0.4 - so it can't be universal. It seems to be rather long-lasting, though - 193868 has been around since 2003. Sorry I can't be more help! AJHW (talk) 16:19, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

How do I install VLC

I want to install VLC on a server running Debian. It turns out I don't know what to do. Perhaps going starting here would be the easiest way: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ So I click on Debian GNU/Linux. Obviously I don't have much experience with this stuff, and can't understand how to install it from here. It says: For a normal install, do:

  # apt-get update
  # apt-get install vlc libdvdcss2

But what? How does it get VLC out of nowhere? Also, I'm not in the sudoers file. Apt-get doesn't seem to work also for permissions reasons. Thanks! Mac Davis (talk) 02:18, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

You need to install stuff as root. So you need to either switch to root first with "su"; or run commands with "sudo" if you are a sudoer (which you should be if you are the user created during the install). It gets VLC from the Ubuntu software repositories. --71.106.183.17 (talk) 05:25, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

71.106 obviously meant that it gets VLC from the Debian software repositories. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 21:04, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

apt-get fetches software from an online repository [7] (which you can update using apt-get update). You have to run your commands using sudo - e.g. sudo apt-get install vlc libdvdcss2. If you're not a sudoer, you can just download the source code and compile it. --wj32 ^t/c 05:41, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

You can check where apt-get fetches the installation files from by looking at the file /etc/apt/sources.list. I believe it's possible to make it use CD's or DVD's instead of downloading from the web, although I've never tried that, except for the initial installation. As others have stated, you need to be root to install programs using apt (or its gui cousin, Synaptic). If you don't have root access, your options are either (1) to convince someone who has, that you really need the program, and they'll install it for you, or (2) to compile it yourself, as Wj32 suggested. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 21:04, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

'Build your own PC' - Help please

My cousin in his infinite wisdom is building his own pc. As the family computer-guru (no experience of building a PC mind) i've been drafted in to provide support. I advised him to go to Dell or wherever and buy a customised pc but never mind...Anyhoo can someone please provide a list of the main components you would need to get to build your own (internal stuff, not monitor/keyboard etc). So far I figured you would need...Motherboard, processor, RAM, video-card, sound-card, graphics card, power supply, fan, Hard-drive, optical drives, network card.

Additionally my (primative) understanding is that you will need to know the motherboards spec to be able to source the right processor/ram etc. so that it is compatible with the motherboard.

Beyond this anybody able to provide a compelling argument in favour of NOT building one. He is building it to use as his school-work computer, just needs to be able to do a bit of MS Office, basic photoshop/illustrator, general web-browsing. I believe 100% he could just buy a DELL (or whatever) for about £400 and get a more than capable machine but hey ho... 194.221.133.226 (talk) 10:52, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Like you I'm my family's computer-guru also with no experience of building my own. I am though, familiar with the insides of the family's various PC and building my own would not be a problem - I believe it's actually quite a simple task needing only a couple of screwdrivers and a few spare hours. However, the reason I buy a customised PC from the likes of Dell, is the warranty service. When it goes wrong I simply pick up the phone and get them to send replacement parts under warranty complete with a trained engineer to fit them for me. My PC is back in action the next day and I have someone to chase if its still faulty. If I had built my own, I would be worrying if I would be accused of incompetance during the install, going back-and-forth to the local computer parts supplier, and finding the time to fix it myself. Astronaut (talk) 12:00, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Less expensive to build one yourself, and if he has time and wants to try, he might as well go ahead with it. It could be argued that buying a pre-built computer is more convenient, or as Astronaut said, the warranty might give you some peace of mind; of course, if you buy separate parts, they all come with warranties as well (just need to keep track of them all). · AndonicO ^Engage. 12:20, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Your list of parts looks pretty complete. Don't forget you'll also need a case. (Some things may be rolled into the motherboard, however. ie: motherboards often have reasonably decent built-in audio nowadays. The built-in video may also be acceptable if you're not planning on playing the latest and greatest games.) Don't forget that you'll also need an operating system. If you're planning on running Windows I think they charge you a couple hundred bucks for that disk.

Make sure you get COMPATIBLE parts. You can't just pick out any CPU you like and any motherboard you like. You've got to get a motherboard that's designed to work with that CPU. A common trick is to try to look up what components a current Dell or Alienware machine is using, and then just buy those parts. Even so, you might want to have your parts list looked by someone who knows what they're doing before you purchase them.

On the bright side, once you've got the parts actually building the computer is very easy. It looks impressive to be up to your elbows in computer guts, but really it's hard to screw up. Everything is keyed to only fit one way.

All that said, for a ~$500 cheap computer, the savings will probably be minimal. APL (talk) 14:09, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I build myself a custom computer every year and donate my previous year's computer to a local middle-school student. So, I've been through this many times. I have found that there is an order to follow to be able to do it easily. First, purchase the motherboard. This will determine the rest of the computer. Pay attention to what comes on the board. Many boards have on-board audio, networking, USB ports, and sometimes on-board video. If you need something and it isn't on the board (ie: networking), you will need to get a card for it. Once you have a motherboard, get the following: cpu w/fan, memory. Now, you've spent a good chunk of change and you can estimate how much you want to spend on video capabilities and harddrive space. Your video card will decide what power supply you need. A standard card doesn't need anything special. One of those high-end super 3D graphics cards will force to you buy a 500W or more power supply. Make sure it works with your motherboard. Then, get a drive (or two). The motherboard will decide if you need IDE, SATA, or whatever. With a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, you can technically plug this all together and see what you've got. It is better to put it in a case first. Do you want a single CD drive or two? Do you want USB ports all over the front of the case? Make those decisions and you'll have a case, cd drive, and any other accessories you like. Now, you can put it all together, install an operating system, and see what you've got. It should be complete, but you never know. You may have overlooked something like audio. In the end, I spend about $400/year purchasing a brand new computer. I don't use Windows, so I never have to buy an operating system (which probably costs more than my computer). -- kainaw™ 15:42, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies everyone, proving very useful. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 16:14, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

(I know this reply is a bit late but...) I found a couple of wikibooks that might help:

• b:Buyers Guide For Building a Computer
• b:How To Assemble A Desktop PC

Cheers, davidprior (talk) 21:29, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

another late entry: go to a site like tiger direct or some of the competitors; you can get anything from individual components, to motherboards with processors preinstalled, to "barebones" machines with the board/processor/case/power supply assembled and the rest left to you; combos like drive plus board, for instance, which go together well; advice, etc. etc. one thing about rolling your own is the ability to get as generic as possible which makes upgrading a breeze, so you don't end up like me with a whole spare bedroom full of obsolete IBM, Dell, Compaq etc. machines which have reached the limits of their upgradability and are not standard/generic enough to accept a major transplant of whatever is holding them back.Gzuckier (talk) 19:50, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

laptop slowdown

Okay, I don't know what the fuck happened to my laptop, but it's pissing me off. Everything is running ungodly slow today. Can't play Spore since the stars you click on to play won't load, and the 'pedia and creators are lagging like molasses, even on all low settings, which is my default. You can click on the invisible planets, but have to do a shitload of pixel searching. Once going into the game, it is literally unplayably slow. Can play Dawn of War, but it lags horribly.

Cutscenes in everything lag like crap, when they were fine yesterday. The internet is sloooooooow and every time I boot up Firefox or go to certain pages, it says 'A script on this page may have stopped responding. You can stop the script or continue to see if it will complete.'

I took about 300MB of shit off my hard drive and relocated it to my external HDD and defragged everything but it hasn't helped. My music even skips when I'm playing it. Even fucking Keybored lags.

Also notable: -I play all my games on the same external hard drive I moved all this shit to. -My laptop is about 3 years old. -The only thing I downloaded yesterday was about 200MB of classical music.

Thanks in advance.Avnas Ishtaroth _{drop me a line} 11:23, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Try defragmenting your hard drive. Was the language really necessary, though? · AndonicO ^Engage. 12:17, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

The OP did note they had 'defragged' the drive (their language is a bit dubious but each to their own). Have you gone onto something like trend-microscan (free online virus scanning) to check there isn't something infecting your laptop? 194.221.133.226 (talk) 12:41, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Also check your anti-virus software. For some ungodly reason, both Norton and McAfee feel that the best time to use up 99% of system resources to scan every file on the harddrive is when the user is actively using the computer. It must be impossible to do when the user is not using the computer. Every time my wife complains that her laptop isn't responding, I walk over, right-click on the McAfee scan icon, cancel file scan, and the problem is magically fixed. -- kainaw™ 14:10, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

With that kind of language, this person deserves some other kind of help.

You may have a virus, or at least adware/malware. Try running antivirus scans and AdAware and Spybot. Don't attempt to use the computer during such scans. Also look for any unrecognized processes running under the Task Manager, and kill them off to see if the problem is solved, even temporarily, which will help to locate the problem. Also check to see if the paging space is set to some bizarre value. If all else fails, you can wipe the drive and reinstall the operating system and any apps/games you want. Do a backup first, though, in case you need to restore something later. StuRat (talk) 20:03, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Open Windows Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and use the Processes tab to see which process is using the most CPU time. --wj32 ^t/c 22:04, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Search around for how to fix your hard drive going into PIO mode :) cheers .froth. (talk) 23:30, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I apologise for being a bit nasty but I was really frustrated and I esentially just copy-pasted from 4chan. Anyway, I found out what the problem was, it turns out helpsvc.exe was using an ungodly amount of resources, so I installed Service Pack 3 which fixed it. Pretty sure that's what it was. Sorry for being an idiot. Avnas Ishtaroth _{drop me a line} 01:40, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Blog with access control

Hi, is there any free blog hosting service which allows me to password-protect my blog? I would like a simple interface with only a password so I can distribute this to friends and family. Wordpress and Blogspot both have access restriction features, but they require you to make a "dummy" user and distribute its login information, which I believe is a bigger obstacle for people to log in. Thanks! Jørgen (talk) 19:14, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Livejournal lets you restrict your blogs to specific people, I believe. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 23:31, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Right, when I want to restrict it without requiring all my friends to register at Google, Wordpress, Livejournal or something like that. Ideally I would like something similar to .htaccess with a password, but I don't want to go through the work of setting up a site myself. Anyone? Jørgen (talk) 05:38, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Limewire

Is Limewire a PITA or is it just me? I look for 'Whiplash' by James, and I end up with 'Whiplash James shaking orgasm' or some such, so I change the word 'James' to 'Tim Booth' (the lead singer of James) and I get 'Whiplash Tim Booth shaking orgasm'. Totally annoying.--ChokinBako (talk) 22:26, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that happens with everything. I quit Limewire a long time ago. Torrents are so much better. Avnas Ishtaroth _{drop me a line} 01:41, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Eh... I don't know what a "PITA" is, nor have I ever experienced any problems like that when using Limewire. Limewire doesn't do that - or, I should say, it doesn't do it on its own. You might've downloaded some form of adware/malware that was included in something you got from Limewire, and the ad/malware is doing it. Or you could have gotten the ad/malware from some other source. But watch out, because with most software like that, that's not the only thing it'll do; it might include a keylogger, comp-crasher, etc. I suggest running AVG, Norton AntiVirus or similar. flaminglawyer^cneverforget 01:43, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

"PITA" = Pain in the ass. With P2P systems like Gnutella (which LimeWire uses), clients are free to "insert" whatever files they want to share into the network. For example, if you conduct a search for "Windows Vista", the request will be sent to many different computers, some of which may be malicious and return search results like "Windows Vista shaking orgasm". A search for "Winamp Pro" may return "Winamp Pro shaking orgasm". These two "files" will probably be the same if you try to download them, and both will probably be viruses. Unsuspecting users may download these and run them, leading to more malicious computers spreading these kinds of search results. --wj32 ^t/c 05:58, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I've seen the same thing; no matter what you type into the search feature, from "cats" to "sj@@e2jsds", there is always the same result - whatever you typed appended by "sexy girl has shaking orgasm during sex". Interestingly this does not happen on FrostWire. Chemical Weathering (talk) 12:49, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

decidability

What's that theorem that says that you can't design an algorithm that's always able to decide whether a statement is true in a (sufficiently powerful) formal system? .froth. (talk) 23:29, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

There are a lot of undecidability theorems. Are you talking about Gödel's incompleteness theorems? Algebraist 23:35, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Godel's theory is the mathematical proof that there are theorems that you can neither prove nor disprove. The algorithm problem is a part of the 'halting problem'. That (basically) says that you can't come up with an algorithm that'll tell you whether any given computer program (well, any Turing machine) will halt or whether it'll loop forever. So if I make the statement "This program runs forever" - you can't write an algorithm to prove whether that's a true statement or not. SteveBaker (talk) 01:03, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

See also Undecidable problem. --Sean 13:55, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I found it; it's called Church's Theorem. No article on wikipedia for it, but there is Entscheidungsproblem. One of these days I'm going to compile a list of the most interesting metamathematics articles.. .froth. (talk) 18:07, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

How might I prevent websites from...

...resizing my browser window without my permission, or opening up new windows without all the usual, expected toolbars at the top? I'm using Firefox 3.04. Heh, I used to know how to do this... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 23:58, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I believe you want tools/options/content/advanced button opposite 'enable javascript'. Algebraist 00:04, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that looks like it. Thanks! --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 00:07, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Of course, by doing so, you have effectively thrown the baby out with the bath water. Turning of all javascript when all you really want to do is disable a couple specific functions (basically you don't want it to create any new windows or to resize the existing window—only two out of a million functions!) is a little silly. Might as well stab out an eye so it doesn't see anything you don't want! Don't be surprised if many of the sites you frequent don't seem to work like they used to... --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:24, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Who said anything about turning off javascript? Algebraist 00:25, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

No one's turning off any javascript - FF3 (maybe 2?) can disable certain aspects of it, but it's not turning it off by any means. flaminglawyer^cneverforget 00:29, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I haven't disabled javascript. Just clicked off a couple of checkboxes to prevent sites using javascript to do things that annoy me... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 00:27, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

November 19

3 quesshuns in one

Q1 - How would I (if possible) install MediaWiki on a remote server (i.e., a free hosting site)? Q2 - Is/are MediaWiki (along with php5 and mySQL) able to be installed/run on Windows? I see a couple of Windows help things on the MediaWiki installation FAQ's, but they're really not helping me at all. Q3 - Is there a script/program/software-of-any-type that would compute an infinite value (i.e., e (number) or pi (number)), then, at timed intervals, put the number into a text file? flaminglawyer^cneverforget 00:26, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

And adding another one - what's the best/most-space you can get with a 40-pin harddrive? flaminglawyer^cneverforget 01:16, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

For this last question, by "40-pin", I assume you mean ATA. In AT Attachment#Drive size limitations, it says that the limit for the latest version of ATA, with 48-bit addressing, is 144 petabytes. --128.97.245.116 (talk) 02:32, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Wow, that's over a million times increase from the previous limit of 137 GB; they don't mess around with small upgrades, do they ? I wonder if you could take up all that space with every TV episode and movie ever made ? StuRat (talk) 14:24, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Also note that no current hard drive is anywhere near that size. I found a 1.5 TB (Tera Byte) drive here: [8]. That's a few months ago, so there may be a 2 TB drive out by now. StuRat (talk) 14:37, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

If the max size is 144 petabytes, why hasn't anyone made one with that much space? Besides the fact that no sane person would ever need that much space. flaminglawyer^cneverforget 21:19, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

There's a world of difference between the theoretical addressable limit and what can be built given current manufacturing techniques and reasonable physical size limitations. --LarryMac | Talk 21:25, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Nobody would be willing to buy such a large hard drive because then they would be arrested for being a petaphile (or is that members of PETA ?). :-) StuRat (talk) 01:29, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Weird Internet problems

Occasionally - about once a day - my wireless connection to the Internet will sort of mess up. I'll suddenly not be able to access any websites in any browser, but I can still ping sites successfully and, if I'm connected to an instant messenger or file-sharing program, I'll stay connected to it unless I exit it and start it again. The only way I can fix this problem is to restart my computer. Disconnecting from the server and reconnecting to it or even turning off and on (or uninstalling and reinstalling) my wireless card doesn't help. This occurs no matter what server I'm connected to. Windows Firewall is deactivated (I'm using Vista) and I don't have any other firewalls or similar software. Anyone have any idea what might be up? Thanks. -Elmer Clark (talk) 01:54, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

i dont know if this is any help or not but sometimes on my computer when im using a P2P program (uTorrent in this case) and i use it alot the internet will stop working properly (eg my web browser: either Int. Exp. or Safari, will not display webpages and will say 'cannot connect to server'). However uTorrent and MSN instant messenge will still work fine. In my case i find that if i just leave my computer alone for a while (with any P2P programs off!) then after about 10 mins the internet will work again fine, however it could be as much as 1/2 hour. I dont know if thats the same problem or not but i thought it might help. --81.77.103.76 (talk) 12:36, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I can think of two potential problems here. It might be one or both of them. First your DNS server might be flaky for some reason. Try using OpenDNS and see if that doesn't help. Second, you might be saturating your upstream line. This happens a lot with file-sharing, you're going to want to set uTorrent up so that your maximum overall uploading speed is no more than about 75% of your upload cap. (I don't know what yours is, but Comcast caps me at a measly 30k!) Hope this helps! APL (talk) 13:55, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Java Script Problem

I'm trying to write a java program in which a prompt comes up and asks the number of items a person would like to purchase (got this part done). There is a price and tax scale so the first 25 cost $100, second 25 cost $75 and so on. The first 30 are taxed at 5% the second 10 are taxed at 4% and so on. Then the program prints the breakdown and total cost.

I don't want someone to write the code I just need to know how to go about doing it so I can write it myself, I just don't know where to start or how to go about doing it. I don't need anything special, it needs to be as basic as possible.

Thanks in advance for any help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.200.138.120 (talk) 03:53, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

This might not be the best way to do it, but try using a counter variable. For example (in C, but Java should be similar):

int items;
int i = 0;
int totalcost = 0;

scanf("%d", &items); // get the number of items the person would like to purchase

for (int i = 0; i < items; i++)
{
    int cost;
    
    // first 25
    if (i < 25)
    {
        cost = 100; // costs $100
    }
    else if (i < 50) // next 25
    {
        cost = 75;
    }
    ...
    
    totalcost += cost;
    printf("Item %d costs $%d.\n", i + 1, cost);
    
    // do tax, first 30
    if (i < 30)
    {
        ...
    }
    ... // do next 10
}

printf("Total cost: %d.\n", totalcost);

Of course, a more elegant way would be to use an array of rules. --wj32 ^t/c 06:14, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh wait, is this Java or JavaScript? --wj32 ^t/c 06:18, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

JavaScript if that makes a difference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.200.225.124 (talk) 15:22, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

The difference between the two is the difference between night and day.--Rjnt (talk) 00:26, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'm not getting anywhere. Basically I need to have an input and if it's between 1 and 50 it needs to go through an equation and if it's between 51 and 100 it goes through another and so on. So I need to do something like: var i = promptInt("how many bowling balls would you like to buy")

if(i <= 50) { document.write((i * 100)+(i * 100 * .08)) }

if( 101> i >50) { document.write((540) + (i * 100 * .07)) } --143.200.225.124 (talk) 00:04, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

var i = prompt("how many bowling balls would you like to buy");
      
if(i <= 50)
{
	var lt50 = (i * 100) + ((i * 100) * .08);
	document.write(lt50);
}

if(i > 50 && i < 100)
{
	var gt50 = (540) + ((i * 100) * .07);
	document.write(gt50);
}

--Rjnt (talk) 00:25, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I guess that's a better method than mine - no pointless loops. --wj32 ^t/c 05:06, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

information about some Computing history

may I have some information on the history of computing hardware? image scanner history? mouse history? keyboard history? Ram and Rom history?--Ebn-sadiik (talk) 04:57, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Did you mean something like History of computing hardware or History of computing? CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 05:18, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Umm didn't you get any relevant information by searching it up on google or wiki? Cause i'm pretty sure all the information you'll need ,will come up if you just google or wiki it. IF you still don't then i'd be happy to help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vineeth h (talk • contribs) 11:48, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

HOW TO JOIN TWO EXE FILES!

Hey all, So i made this kind of simple "virus" in dev-c++ . You can't really call it a virus but what i've basically done is made an infinity while loop and then using data file handling i opened up a file.txt and did cout<<"ANY GARBAGE VALUE"; So it'll keep doing this over and over again cause its in an infinity while loop and i ran it once and to my surprise i saw that the size of the file.txt increased by about 1.7GB/minute. So it uses up your hard drive space pretty fast thats why i said its like a "simple virus". Anyways so then i put in some more coding and ended up hiding the output screen. So when you run the exe file you won't see a window since i hid it and it'll keep running and you won't even realise it's running in your background but when you open task manager you'll see it in the processes.

Now i decided to take it another step and wanted the .exe file to get copied to the startup folder in windows XP whenever someone ran it so that first it'll copy itself there and then run ,so that even if you shut down the computer the next time you restart the computer the program will automatically start running at startup without your consent. But this feature to copy the file to the startup folder seemed a bit of a problem in c++ cause the copy command require the folder not to have any spaces between the folder name. So i then made a temporary batch file, "temp.bat" and in that i put in the copy command to copy the .exe file to the startup folder and it worked perfectly. So now i have two files! 1. the .exe file which is the program and 2.the .bat file to copy the exe file to the startup folder.

So then i got a .bat to .exe converter off torrents and converted the .bat file to .exe. But now i want to know wheter there's any software or method to join these two exe files. Such that first the .exe file with the copy command runs and copies the .exe file to the startup folder and then it executes the "virus".

And if there isn't any such software could you please tell me another approach to this so that it'll work properly? Don't think of this as a serious virus thing, i just want to know wheter this is possible. Cause this is like a good prank i can play on my friends' computer and all.Vineeth h (talk) 07:08, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

You don't copy files using the command line interpreter. There's a Windows API function named CopyFile. --wj32 ^t/c 08:37, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

yeah i've tried using copy file but even copy file works ONLY and ONLY if there's no space in between the folder names. Or maybe i haven't clearly understood how to use the CopyFile function like that,because when i did look up the copyfile function the examples given along with it had folders which had no space between the names.

So if you can just write in the CopyFile function for the path names that i give you i'd appreciate it. I want to copy the "file.exe" to the path "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Start Menu\Programs\Startup" So if you can just write the copy file function for this path i'd appreciate it. --vineeth h ^t/c 12:07, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

CopyFile does work with file names with spaces: CopyFile("file.exe", "C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Startup\\");. That's a bad idea; ideally the program should copy itself to the startup directory and check if it's already in the startup directory. --wj32 ^t/c 05:09, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

OPEN GL question.

Hey, Not to be rude but i just want someone who knows open gl to answer this question because if you don't then your answer might be something regarding the spefications of the computer and stuff which know can't be the problem and anyway isn't what i want.

So i wrote a code to make a basic 3D car model which can move around in the screen in any possible direction and stuff.

Now here is the problem:

I also used texture mapping to put up a picture of grass as a floor on which the car moves . I got a picture of grass off google images. Then in the open gl code i wrote all the GL_Begin (QUADS) and drew some squares using 2 for-loops after i used linear filtering and saved the details to texture[0] . This part of the code is as follows:

glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D);						
glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture[0]);
float left=5000.0f,last=5000.0f;
for(int i=0;i<200;i++)
{
  for(int j=0;j<200;j++)
  {
    glBegin(GL_QUADS);
    glTexCoord2f(0.0f, 1.0f);glVertex3f(-left,-10.0f,-last);
    glTexCoord2f(0.0f, 0.0f);glVertex3f(-left,-10.0f,-last+50.0f);
    glTexCoord2f(1.0f, 0.0f);glVertex3f(-left+50.0f,-10.0f,-last+50.0f);
    glTexCoord2f(1.0f, 1.0f);glVertex3f(-left+50.0f,-10.0f,-last);
    glEnd();
    left=left-50.0f;
  }
  last=last-50.0f;
  left=500.0f;
}

So this drew the quadrilateral and texture mapped it with the picture of grass and the floor looked good and it worked perfectly with the car moving around the screen on it.

So the compiler made the .exe file of this code and i ran the .exe file also and it worked properly. But when i copied the .exe file along with the picture of the grass onto another computer , my dad's, the texture mapped background was all white in colour instead of the grass background!!!!!! The quadrilaterals were drawn but there were all white!!!! The picture was in the same folder as the .exe file and it definitely must've loaded else at the time of running it would've given an error, but despite being loaded it still wasnt displayed. But the picture wasn't displayed on the floor and stuff. And it's not only his computer ,i even tried it in my school lab and even there the same problem came. The pictures weren't shown. And then i copied the same .exe file and picture back to my own comp. and tried it and it worked perfectly again!

So if you have ANY IDEA as to what the hell is happening please enlighten me.I'd be more than happy to get a solution for this ASAP. If you wan't me to paste the entire code feel free to ask.Vineeth h (talk) 07:30, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Can you please stop using indented text (which makes it pre-formatted)? Your problem can't be with your OpenGL coding if it works on your computer. Did you use an absolute path to load your image? Have you tried moving your executable and image to some other place on your computer? --wj32 ^t/c 08:46, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Sure. No i didn't use an absolute path. The picture loads from the same folder as the .exe folder. So i used LoadBMP("grass.bmp") function, so it directly loads from the current location of the .exe file and it works.and yes i did move it to another place in my computer and it worked perfectly because everytime the loadbmp function loads from the current folder ! So i really can't find the problem!--Vineeth h ^t/c 12:15, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I took the liberty of removing the indenting except for the code sample. Is it possible that the program is picking up the bitmap from the environment variable "PATH"? Astronaut (talk) 12:24, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. What exactly do you mean by environment variable "PATH"??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.162.73.32 (talk) 12:32, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

When in doubt, put square brackets around it unknown thing like this: environment variable. -- kainaw™ 13:33, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm a UNIX programmer, but some of this may apply to you as well: The issue with the PATH variable, which describes where programs look for executables, and related LIB_PATH variables, is that they don't always look in the current directory. Some other complexities are that the the search paths specified aren't always the same for the program as for you and the directory the program thinks is current isn't necessarily the same as what is current for you. So, to verify such info, you need to print out environment variables from the program itself, using system calls. StuRat (talk) 14:10, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

If Windows has something like strace, you could do:

strace myprogram.exe | grep grass.bmp

to see where it's looking for the file and why it's not finding it. --Sean 13:52, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Question : Are the texture dimensions powers of two? (32x32,64x64,128x128, etc) Some older video cards will refuse to allocate textures that are not powers of two dimensions. It sounds like that could be your problem here.

Suggestion : It's not the most useful thing in the world, but it can still be handy to check glGetError to see what, if anything is going wrong. (Check your texture first, though.) APL (talk) 13:49, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Assuming we can believe your claim that the file loading process isn't generating errors (which would not be an OpenGL problem - but which is BY FAR the most likely problem) - then all of this stuff about paths and such is irrelevent. The "non-power-of-two" map dimensions thing looks the most likely thing to go wrong. I suppose it's also possible that the image is too big - a few cards have limits on the maximum texture size that are around 2048x2048...it the image is freaking huge - then that would do it. It would help to know what graphics chip is in each of the three machines. It is an OpenGL requirement that every texture must be an exact power of two in size - so 256x256 is OK, 64x512 is OK - but 248x734 is NOT OK. Some of the most modern graphics hardware has eliminated that restriction so you may be 'getting away with it' on your machine - but for portability, you should always stick to powers of two. SteveBaker (talk) 19:55, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks stevebaker. I think that must be the problem then. Because as i said the file loading process isn't generating errors. So I will definitely try to resize it to powers of 2 and see if it solves the problem.--Vineeth h ^t/c 21:10, 19 November 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.162.73.116 (talk)

ReadyBoost good idea?

So I'm getting a new computer, for general computing use, maybe some Visual Studio programming. I will be getting 4GB of ram. Is there any point in buying a dedicated USB drive for this machine so I can use ReadyBoost? 121.72.170.238 (talk) 10:25, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I doubt ReadyBoost will have much effect on a system with 4GB of RAM already. I think you'll manage fine without it! Pretzels^Talk! 13:45, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Just make sure you have a big enough /swap partition. (page file). Good luck with Vista! Kushal (talk) 22:18, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

HDR program

hi, im looking for a free, internet-downloadable HDR creating program.....any suggestions anyone? thanks, --81.77.103.76 (talk) 12:29, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by HDR? If you mean Hard disk recorder then MythTV download or Ardour download might be what you're looking for. If you mean High dynamic range imaging then Radiance website looks good. Chemical Weathering (talk) 13:51, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I do mean High Dynamic Range Imaging thanks, --81.77.103.76 (talk) 14:00, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Also consider the unpronounceable Qtpfsgui. -- Coneslayer (talk) 16:51, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

How do i download the 'Qtpfsgui' thing. Im not the most technical person and i cant work out how to download the program as one usually does:S....--81.77.103.76 (talk) 16:58, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

The setup file is here (assuming you're on Windows) — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 17:18, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Basic Linux Regex

Resolved

Hi all,

Am just now learning to play with linux, and I need a bit of help. How do i list files in a directory that match a regular expression (using the commandline, i have used regex's before in programming, output can be just printed on screen, but my ultimate goal is to actually copy the files to subdirectory if it matches)?

TIA PrinzPH (talk) 16:33, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Try using find with regex. ie: find . -regex './.*mp[34]' -- kainaw™ 16:42, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Kainaw, actually ended up with LS | grep 'pattern'... now, how do i pipe the output to copy it to a sub directory? thanks! PrinzPH (talk) 17:05, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

By "copy it to a sub directory", do you mean "write the output to a file somewhere" or "copy the files that appear into another directory"? -- kainaw™ 18:10, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

To quote myself from above "... but my ultimate goal is to actually copy the files to subdirectory if it matches", so yeah, i need the matching files themselves copied to a subdirectory ;) Thanks for the Blazing fast responses <3 PrinzPH (talk) 18:19, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

If you used ls as above, you could do something like: ls | grep 'pattern' | while read i; do cp "$i" subdirectory; done

If you used find as above, you could do something like: find . -regex 'pattern' -exec cp {} subdirectory \; --71.106.183.17 (talk) 18:31, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

The really sexxy way is:

  tar cf - pattern | ( cd destinationDirectory ; tar xf - )

...this has the advantage of allowing you to preserve ownerships, dates, permissions, symbolic links and other stuff - or to override them. The 'tar' program has lots of options for that. Change 'xf' to 'xvf' if you want to see the names of the files as they are created. You'll soon learn that there are a million ways to do ANYTHING in the shell.

SteveBaker (talk) 19:42, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Apologies in advance - what I'm about to type is so obvious that I've probably missed something. The bash shell itself supports regular expressions, so you can list matching files in a directory by typing

ls REGULAR_EXPRESSION

and you can copy them to a subdirectory by typing

cp REGULAR_EXPRESSION subdirectory

--NorwegianBlue ^talk 21:51, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to Everyone for their responses, I was most interested in the scripting-type solution posted by *.183.17, but I'll look into all suggestions you guys gave. Am closing my eyes, and taking a deep breath... And now I move to Linux for my daily computing. PrinzPH (talk) 22:23, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

screencasting from your computer workstation directly to youtube

Greetings folks, I am looking for a way (hopefully straightforward and hopefully opensource) to create a screencast of me doing stuff in my apps and posting that to youtube. I do not have a video camera. I do not have any software for creating AVI files. I am a bit tech-savvy so I can work with something that requires a little programming or scripting.

A tutorial on how to do this would be great if anyone has any suggestions can you help please? Thanks. NoClutter (talk) 16:53, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Did you see List of screencasting software? --Sean 19:25, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I've even tried some of them. The problem is they don't all send output to the correct format and YouTube apparently prefers AVI. I was kinda hoping I could get a response from someone has actually done the process from start to finish and knows what specific software works well for this purpose. NoClutter (talk) 19:40, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I've done it with Camtasia. It's not direct to YouTube, but screen-cap to .avi, then upload to YouTube. JoshHolloway 22:21, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Dreamweb

There was a game a few years ago called dreamweb, I wish to play it again, and have downloaded it from abandonia, a site for abandoned games for free. However it does not work on my pc. i remember that it did not work on my 486 way back when, i did something back then toget it to work. What can i do now? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.3.145.61 (talk) 21:05, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Try it with DosBox. You'll use that to mount the program, using (for example) the following commands:

1. mount c c:\games\dreamweb

Defines the directory (c:\games\...) that the game is located) as well as the mount command and the destination drive.

2. c:

Changes the current drive to c:\

3. dreamweb

Launches the executable file.

Hopefully you're away! Booglamay (talk) - 00:18, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

thanks but no luck, it says something about looking in my autoexec.bat file for soundblaster 17, i dont need sound atall. any more ideas please —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.3.145.61 (talk) 00:33, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Does it have any settings? A setup program? Whatever the case may be, you're probably going to have to get it working with DosBox one way or another. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 01:04, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity (and it sounded like an interesting game), I downloaded it too. I got the same message the first time I tried to run it from the DW.BAT file. But when I ran just DREAMWEB it loaded up fine (and the sound worked just fine). This is in DosBox on a Mac so I should hope it'll work on yours just the same. Just load up the directory and type in DREAMWEB and you're set. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 01:31, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Apple Keyboard malfunctioning as mouse

My Apple Wireless Keyboard is acting as a mouse. Pressing the letter i is a left click, and the keys around it (789uojk and l) move the mouse. I've already been through VoiceOver Utility and System Preferences' pane on the mouse. Does anyone know how to fix it? I've only just restarted both Mac and keyboard, and set up the keyboard from scratch, to no avail. My name is anetta (talk) 21:44, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Is it under the system prefences bit with the blue-circle (forget the name exactly but the place you can make everything inverted/giant text etc.)? Also try looking under the mouse-options, it may be that there is a setting for turning the mouse 'off' and using the keyboard as one. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 13:43, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

This page (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343) might help. It looks like Ctrl+F1 turns on 'full keyboard access' which turns on 'mouse keys', try doing Ctrl+F1 again and it'll maybe turn it off. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 13:46, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

You mean Universal Access. I found it there, thanks. It's mouse keys.My name is anetta (talk) 17:49, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

The Brookings Institution on Twitter

Does The Brookings Institution have a Twitter account? It sure does not look like https://twitter.com/Brookings belongs to The Brookings Institution. Any ideas? Kushal (talk) 22:14, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Does that twitter account profess to be the Brookings Institution? I mean, Brookings can mean more than just that. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:55, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I was just throwing some ideas. Its not urgent but it would be cool to be able to follow them on Twitter. :D Kushal (talk) 04:41, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

November 20

ANT build process.

I'm messing around with a system that's compiled using ANT (under Linux) - and I need to see what commands it's actually executing as it builds my project. I can't find a command-line option for Ant to have it display the commands as it executes them - something like 'make -n' ('make --dry-run'). Neither the '-d' (debug) or '-v' (verbose) options to Ant seem to do that.

Help!

SteveBaker (talk) 01:26, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

In this situation I would do:

strace -f -s1024 -o /tmp/log ant_command
grep exec /tmp/log

--Sean 13:12, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

You might wanna try asking at stackoverflow. — Shinhan < talk > 13:11, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Steve, you didn't include a wikilink, and I had never heard of ANT, but you're asking about Apache Ant, right? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 18:10, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Amazingly Realistic Graphics

I recall seeing a video a few months ago of a woman speaking about a new computer graphics technology that allows amazingly realistic graphics and later in the interview admits that the entire time she has just been a realistically rendered image. Does anyone know what I am talking about and can anyone maybe give me a link to the Youtube video? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Strifeblade (talk • contribs) 01:34, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know exactly what you are talking about - but these days, you really can render absolutely anything with complete realism IF you are prepared to spend enough computer time and you aren't in any kind of a hurry. So this kind of thing doesn't amaze me as much as it once did. The difficult problem (and what I do for a living) is getting the computer to draw things realistically at interactive rates - so instead of spending hours to draw a single picture - you've got maybe 16 milliseconds. Anyway - you might want to read our article on the Uncanny valley. SteveBaker (talk) 02:16, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I believe you're referring to this. She's still firmly in the uncanny valley, in my opinion. --Sean 13:21, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Strict NAT on DSL modem?

I posted an earlier question about the trouble I'm having with my PS3 and Xbox360. They were both giving me "strict" NAT type 3 warnings when I had them connect to my router. I removed the router and plugged each console in turn into my DSL modem directly (a Moto 2210). And I'm STILL getting the strict type 3 warnings -- even without a router! The configuration settings on the modem doesn't seem to have any settings for opening up specific ports. A call to AT&T (my DSL ISP) assured me that they do not port block except for spam email (which was some low port number like 30). So what to do? Do I need to buy a different DSL modem? Do I need to configure my consoles in a specific way? --71.158.221.237 (talk) 02:35, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Your modem appears to have some limited NAT ability. Here's some information about it from Broadband Reports: Motorola 2210. If you connect the modem to a computer, you can log into its settings page by going to 192.168.1.254 in your web browser. Try selecting the option to "use public IP address" and see if that helps it work with your game consoles. --Bavi H (talk) 03:22, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

HP Compaq Presario

Hey guys, I was wondering if you had any ideas about a HP compaq that has a misbehaving display that looks like this. It just started doing that right now and it seems to be a hardware issue (the video out or the lcd itself) as it just shows the screen immediately after a hard boot. I don't think it had anything to do with Windows Vista which it was running.

Any ideas? Kushal (talk) 04:32, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

That looks a lot like bugs I've seen on LCD panels many times before - so I can only say that I agree with your diagnosis and commiserate over the impending damage to your bank account. There is (I suppose) a remote chance that it's the graphics chip or it's memory that's failing. But sadly, the vertical streaks speak of failures in the column addressing circuit...which is a part of the LCD panel. You can figure that out for sure if you can hook up an external monitor to the video-out from the laptop. If the external monitor is OK (as I expect it will be), then it's definitely the LCD panel that's died - if the external monitor looks the same as the LCD then it's the graphics chip or it's RAM that's at fault. Assuming it is the LCD panel then if you don't actually use the laptop for 'mobile computing' - then an external monitor will likely be a cheaper fix than repairing or replacing the laptop. SteveBaker (talk)

My new-ish laptop did that a couple of weeks ago. I didn't even get to see the BIOS screen during booting. I got an engineer from Dell to come round and replace the motherboard (and it's builtin graphics chip) under warranty. He said there was a problem with some NVIDIA(?) graphics chips that were used in my particular model for a while... maybe your machine has the same chips? The LCD panel itself was OK, and everything has been back to normal since the repair. Astronaut (talk) 11:46, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I found a link that might help explain what to do next - seems only HP and Dell are affected so far. Astronaut (talk) 12:08, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much guys. I guess the next step for me is to connect the computer to an external monitor. I will probably try to dock it in my friend's laptop dock, if the dock supports it. :( Do you think docking would work? I am not sure if I have the proper cables/adapters to connect it to an external monitor. I will be back to you soon with more information. From the above CNet link:

“ Owners of 24 HP laptop computer models need to be concerned. See HP Pavilion dv2000/dv6000/dv9000 and Compaq Presario v3000/v6000 Series Notebook PCs - HP Limited Warranty Service Enhancement and HP Limited Warranty Service Enhancement. ”

Thank you once again and I hope I will continue to get help from you ...

Kushal (talk) 12:35, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

The laptop is a V3019US series with product number EZ680UA#ABA. According to HP^here it is eligible for free repair. We will call HP to find out what they think of this issue. I will be back with details soon. Kushal (talk) 13:10, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Problem in starting Microsoft Age of Mythology Gold Edition.

I've recently bought the Age of Mythology Gold Edition Pack, including the original game and the Titans Expansion. The setup was done correctly and the game was successfully installed. But when I tried to start the game, I found that It is asking for the CD, and saying that 'Please insert the correct CD-ROM and restart the game'.I have inserted both the CDs and tried a lot, but the game can't get started. Then I replaced the AOM.exe file with the AOMTrial.exe file and found that It is running and even I can play the full campaign. But I can not play the Random map fully, nor can I start the editor. So,can anyone please give me an Internet address from which I can download the AOM.exe and AOMX.exe files to start the game without checking for the CD? Any help is heartily welcome.117.201.98.83 (talk) 15:48, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Does anything on this page help? Laenir (talk) 16:22, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

underline in spanish

I know bold is negrita and italics is bastardilla but what is underlined/underline in spanish?63.165.5.103 (talk) 16:59, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Subrayado means "underlined," assuming the noun you're talking about is masculine.--Rjnt (talk) 17:09, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

so would it be "subrayo" then?63.165.5.103 (talk) 18:27, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

History of MATLAB's "why" function

This is completely trivial, but I was wondering about the history behind MATLAB's "why" function. "Why" is it included with MATLAB? Is it merely for demonstration purposes? And who is the eponymous "Pete," and why did he want "it" that way?