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January 31

time error

I have installed windows Xp sp2 when ever i adjust the exact (pakistani) time on my computer .It automatically changes after( first boot) some time and remains one hour behind .But one hour below it remains same .for example if at 7:00 a.m of pakistane time ,i adjust it 7:00 ,it changes one hour behind .but if i adjust it 6:00 a.m in place of 7:00 a.m it remains as it is .Sorry for my wrong English . —Preceding unsigned comment added by Khubab (talk • contribs) 02:16, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Windows will automatically adjust the time based on Network Time Protocol. It sounds like you need to modify your timezone setting so that Windows will adjust the computer to the correct timezone. To do so, double click on the clock in the system try, select the "Time Zone" tab, and use the drop-down box to select the correct timezone. You may also need to disable daylight savings time (a checkbox at the bottom of the page). Alternatively, you can use the "Internet time" tab to disable Windows automatic time adjustment. – 74  02:34, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

must be those damn indians hijacking your computer and changing it to their time --76.173.201.40 (talk) 05:03, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Software cracks

Are there cracks for all kind of softwares that is sold and have the trial version, whch mekans, that if i have a 30 days trial version of a software i can get it extended by entering a crack code for it? is it available for all kind of softwares? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.95.140.188 (talk) 07:35, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, yes. But for legal reasons, such circumvention of copyright protection is generally frowned upon by most software companies. My best bet is to try open-source software instead, like Gimp, especially if you can't afford the more expensive Photoshop. Blake Gripling (talk) 07:41, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

If you don't know how to find it on your own, you'd do best to not seek it out. All you're going to end up with is malware. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 07:59, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Most trial software comes in either two forms; a basic scaled down exe that only has some of the functionality of the full program or the full exe which has all the functionality but will not work without a serial code. For the latter you simply need to search for the correct serial code and it will work, but the other type will require you to get a full version first, either already cracked or then enter the serial code. As for if cracks are available "for all kind of softwares" that largely depends on the popularity of the software; the less known and used it is the less likely there will be a crack for it. SN0WKITT3N 11:13, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Try using a sandbox program like Sandboxie. Install it in the sandbox. When the trial period is over, delete your sandbox and install again. Repeat for as long as you want. --wj32 ^t/c 22:28, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

That may not work for software that 'phones home' over the Internet. 72.183.123.248 (talk) 23:19, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

How big is an ordinary portable harddisk??

How big is an ordinary portable harddisk?? What is the average size specification for a 160 GB external harddisk? Because I just found this amazing external hdd by samsung-- it's called "S1 Mini" and it's as small as a friggin credit card!! and it can hold 120 gigs!! They also have "S2 Portable" they come in 160, 250, 320 and 500 GB's and they are all 82x111x17mm (a bit bigger than the S1 Mini's) I suppose this is quite small by conventional standards, but I'd like to know exactly by how much. I tried searching on the internet, but collecting a few samples wasn't enough for me. So, my question is, how big is an average external harddisk?? for those of you who already own one, what its the exact size (both physical volume and digital capacity)???Johnnyboi7 (talk) 08:20, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Hard drives come in a few standard sizes: The most common are the 3.5 inch (101.6 mm × 25.4 mm × 146 mm) and the 2.5 inch (69.85 mm × 9.5–15 mm × 100 mm). The Samsung S1 mini is a 1.8in (54 mm × 8 mm × 71 mm). The largest available sizes are 2000GB for 3.5 inch, 500GB for 2.5 inch and 250GB for 1.8 inch. Note the above measurements are for the harddrive itself. Add a cm or so for the enclosure. 121.72.165.189 (talk) 11:12, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

how big is an average external harddisk?? I really don't know. for those of you who already own one, what its the exact size (both physical volume and digital capacity)??? I've got two: each is about 13x8x2cm, and one holds "30GB" and the other "160GB" (NB these are sellers' gigabytes, significantly less than users' gigabytes); the technical terms for the pair are "ancient" and "cheap" respectively. I think that if I had one as small as a friggin credit card [and that can] hold 120 gigs I'd probably mislay the frigging thing and then I'd certainly feel frigging stupid. So I'm happy with my cheap, boring external hard drives. -- Hoary (talk) 11:10, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Just as an indication of things, an internal laptop harddrive is pretty small indeed, and those can hold quite a bit (I just installed a 320GB one into my laptop and it is a small thing—credit card dimensions, although thicker). The difference between an external and internal hard drive size is just how clever the engineers are in putting it all together. The toughest thing, I'd imagine, would be making sure a tiny tiny hard drive was cooled adequately. Of course, flash drives are now getting comparable to that, and they are even smaller. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:59, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Then there's the tiny hard drives made by Cornice that are used inside some iPods. They are about the size of a box of matches, yet store 160GB. --Mdwyer (talk) 18:28, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

There are some Compact Flash-style hard drives that hold 32GB+. Very usefull for some aplications, but pointless for others. If you mean "harddisk" in the most generic sense there are thumbdrives and memory cards in all sorts of configurations and sizes. 63.80.111.2 (talk) 17:38, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

https and Wireless Hotspots

If a Website is https and we are in a wireless hotspot, and we decide to visit a financial site like paypal, is our details secure? Or are we supposed to use VPN? --33rogers (talk) 10:31, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

A VPN connection would theoretically provide an extra layer of protection, but as long as you are only accessing secure https sites your data will be encrypted and reasonably secure. – 74  12:47, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Be aware that some sites only use HTTPS for login transactions (so the password isn't sent plaintext), and then switch back to HTTP for the regular transactions (like GMail), making them vulnerable to the man-in-the-middle attacks associated with fears about wifi hotspots. If the site stays in HTTPS mode the whole time, though, then you're fine, as the browser is encrypting/decrypting the information (not just the server). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 17:17, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

For Gmail there is an option (Settings -> General -> Browser connection) to have it always use HTTPS. But some other sites, most notably Facebook, unfortunately don't provide such an option (Facebook uses HTTPS for login, but not for the rest of the site; I don't get this, as my Facebook account has much more personal information than my bank account).

I also want to say that, if you don't have access to a VPN, if you have access to an SSH account, you can use SSH's dynamic port forwarding to easily forward all of your Internet applications over the secure SSH connection. All common SSH clients and servers support this. --76.167.241.45 (talk) 01:11, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

domain names with the f-word in it

I just searched to see if one I was interested in is available (its not sexual or anything, its grammatically like fuckedcompany). It's available, but do you think I'll be able to register it without any problems?

Well considering all sorts of other curse words are present in .com domain names, they don't seem to be too picky about it. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:04, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't know how aggressive content-control software can be but I guess it's possible that some computers, ISP's, or even entire countries could block surfers trying to reach the domain. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:05, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah - you shouldn't have problems registering it. What people will think about the site and how it'll get blocked will be entirely predictable though! SteveBaker (talk) 15:50, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I remember reading a blog a while ago about some guy who was trying to register fuck.com but was always being denied. Then apparently they allowed the name but he was too slow to get it.

A domain name like that would be worth a small fortune to porn site owners. Most likely the domain registrar was in negotiation with some sleaze-bag and the price negotiations were going on behind the scenes. Once the deal was agreed - nobody else would have had a chance. You can read the saga about another domain name in our article Sex.com - now imagine that your example probably went through the same grief behind the scenes. Someone just going to a domain registrar hoping it would "become available" for $100 has no chance whatever. You'd have to be paying millions for a name like that - and such amounts of money don't change hands without lots of haggling! 72.183.123.248 (talk) 23:17, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Companies regularly register domain names that are offensive to themselves, if only to keep them away from people who would use the name against them. --Mdwyer (talk) 18:25, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Colour Selector in Windows 7

Does anyone know if Microsoft Corp. has upgraded the Colour Selector in Windows 7? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 14:10, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Not as far as I can see - the GUI is definitely the same. I guess it could change between Beta 1 and release, but I doubt it — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 14:33, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. A new GUI would be nice, though. It has not changed significantly since Windows 3.1... --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 14:39, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

What's Google's problem

Does anybody know what is causing this? When I try to see why Wikipedia is such a dangerous site all I get is a 502 Server Error. It's seems to be the same no matter what I search for, almost all sites, including Google, will "harm my computer". This was not happening earlier but is visible on different computers indicating that it's not my computer that is the problem. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 14:50, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't know, but I've been trying to figure it out for the last 15 minutes myself. Looks like Google has a really bad bug. Every site on every search is marked with "this site may harm your computer", and it gives you a malware warning page when you try to go there. Antandrus (talk) 14:53, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, something is wrong. I bet it'll be fixed within the day. Unless it's a general cultural disclaimer: Warning: The Internet May Make You Stupid. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:55, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

shy of relief. i thought my comp screwed again.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.122.36.6 (talk) 14:57, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Just to join in the relief at finding this is Google-side and not my computer. Thanks! 79.66.89.178 (talk) 15:05, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I bet they're regretting laying off their weekend techs. Maybe someone will write a knol about the problem ... except that you won't be able to read about it without harming your computer. Bet Yahoo search gets lots of new users today. Antandrus (talk) 15:07, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I just realised that the problem makes Google usless right now. Unless you know the site already or have something like Site Advisor there is no way of knowing which, if any, of the "This site may harm your computer." notices are correct. If you don't know the site then what's the chances that you are going to look at something that Google is warning you about? CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 15:09, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

why don't they just TURN IT OFF - turn it off turn it off turn it off!!! they're losing credibility by the second —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.120.227.157 (talk) 15:13, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Google is effectively down. Every site is marked as "harmful", and you can't click through if you try. It is astonishing they haven't fixed it by now. Antandrus (talk) 15:16, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Looks fixed from this end...RxS (talk) 15:20, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Yep. Fixed now. And no doubt just because I complained about it! CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 15:21, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

There is a story about it on Slashdot so I guess it was pretty widespread. SteveBaker (talk) 15:48, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

It was apparently caused by a misplaced '/' which matched all domains.[1] It took one character to bring down Google. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:03, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Probably 20% of all software bugs come down to a single character. Here is one I've been particularly upset by in the past:

if ( this_is_should_always_be_false ) ;

{

this_seems_to_happen_when_it_shouldnt () ;

}

But a plus that should be a minus - two variable names that differ only by one character (Xcoordinate, Ycoordinate) getting swapped over...this kind of thing is all too common! Big errors involving lots of code are often easier to find - but programmers can become 'blind' to tiny, tiny typo's. In the example above, you don't even see that extra semicolon on the first line...your brain somehow skips over it. Anyway - I bet someone at Google got seriously "talked to" over that one! Hopefully their management recognise that "bugs happen" and realise that their procedures for testing code before they "release it into the wild" are what's really at fault here.

72.183.123.248 (talk) 23:11, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

In this case it wasn't code, it was data. Of course, similar considerations apply. --Anonymous, 06:08 UTC, February 1, 2009.

Hello World!

It seems like that computer language creators are born with a copy of thesaurus in hand. I don't know why there can be so many verbs for English-based computer languages to describe even a simple act of putting words on the screen or paper. In addition to syntactical differences, e.g., semi-colon, parenthesis, capital or lowercase, indent ..., the verb for printing can be print, echo, display, write, message, output, show, type, alert, ?, . (a dot) ... etc. and some variations of the above verbs.

Some specialized languages, such as Logo or Forth, are fundamentally different from other general-purpose languages. Some GUI languages may have more overhead. Some languages are created for fun. But most high-level languages, especially commercial ones, are not that different from each other. Isn't print a good verb that we all understand? -- Toytoy (talk) 15:25, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I can't explain all of them - but for example - when the C language (which uses both 'printf' and 'write') was developed, there were very few CRT-based terminals ("glass teletypes") - almost everyone talked to the computer via a teletype or a DECwriter - both of which print the computer's responses on paper. Hence "print" was a good choice. Subsequently, printing terminals have almost completely vanished - so "print" is archaic. Some language designers seek to fix that (hence "display" and "show") and others say "well, we've all used 'print' for so long, that the meaning of the word has changed to 'send data to the user'" - so they stick with "print". "type" is another anachronistic one - since what a teletype does is "type". "write" comes about because (at least in C and C++) it tends to be used mostly in the context of sending data to disk drives and other peripherals...which we all call "writing" because there just doesn't seem to be another common English word ("inscribe" maybe?!) for placing data onto magnetic media, etc. I believe that "alert" actually does have a genuinely different meaning - alerting a user to a problem rather than merely displaying information that'll generally be ignored...but I don't know which language you are referring to so I can't be sure. You missed a common one '<<' (from the C++ stream I/O package). That one comes about because of the way it's implemented by overriding one of the arithmetic operators ('<<' means shift-left). They had to pick one of the standard C++ operators and '<<' is the only one that really looks right for sending something from the object on the right into the I/O stream on the left. SteveBaker (talk) 15:43, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

To me, you can "print" just as well on a screen as on paper, so that term seems to apply to both. StuRat (talk) 01:34, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, yes - to me too - but back when these things were new, it wasn't clear what words to use to describe that. You wouldn't say that your DVD player "prints" things to your TV screen would you? But in the end, it's just a word. The computer doesn't care what word you use and we programmers are adaptable enough that we can get used to almost anything given time ("grep" means "searching through files looking for patterns"...we got used to that OK!) SteveBaker (talk) 05:48, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

And the P in "grep" stands for print, ultimately relating to the p command in QED (text editor), and there we are again. --Anonymous, 06:11 UTC, February 1, 2009.

Yeah - grep was originally there to give you a 'command-line' version of a command used in that editor. I didn't think it was QED but rather ed (text editor) because QED doesn't support true regular expressions as ed does. So you'd type /hello world/ to search for the next occurrance of "hello world" (which could be any regular expression) you could append a 'p' to the command to tell the editor to print the resulting line and you could preceed any command with a 'g' to tell it to do the command globally throughout the document. Hence entering g/hello world/p into the text editor would do what grep "hello world" does. Hence Globally: find a Regular Expression then Print it. Both QED and ed were designed to work with printing terminals though - so 'print' made sense. However, QED became 'ed' which became 'em' which became 'ex' which had a 'visual-mode' for glass terminals - which became 'vi' which became 'vim'...which is the editor I still use the most today - 43 year old technology, still going strong! In 'vim' you can still type a ':' to get out of visual mode, then type g/hello world/p and it greps the file for you! SteveBaker (talk) 14:02, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

You're forgetting "draw" for computer graphics! I'd say the DVD player draws the video to the screen. A terminal also draws text, but that text is echoed or printed by the shell/program. Or maybe technically the program echoes to the terminal, the terminal draws to the window, and the windowing system draws the window to the screen. .froth. (talk) 18:41, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Currently, I am working on a weekend WWW project of my own. I find myself forced to switch among six or seven languages or markup languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Perl, SQL, regular expressions ... Sometimes I find it not the most pleasing experience to change the language. In addition to the "Thesaurus" problems, I find the syntax issues especially annoying. Many of these languages are created during the past 20 years. They are created to do mostly the same kinds of jobs: server-side (PHP), client-side (JS), CGI and offline data processing (Perl, Python, Ruby, ...), extraction of tabular data (SQL), matching of patterns (regex) and maybe AND, OR, NOT, proximity search (the full-text search of some SQL databases), tree-like structured data retrieval (XML database). They look very different to each other.

I think certain rules, like using indent to designate code blocks (Python) are created to force programmers to adhere to the rules. They may be very artificial (e.g., XML's requirement to close all tags: <br />, <img />), but they help to reduce syntax errors and typos. Many other syntactic requirements, such as if you can use /* ... */ or # or * or REM in this language to add remarks are pretty trivial to me. I wonder if these language-specific rules actually make programmers' lives more miserable.

It's like having dozens of cars. Some of them have doors while some others are entered from any of the windows. Some car's steering wheels are placed on the roof, in the trunk, on your seat back, inside the glove compartment, some doesn't even have a steering wheel, some have more than one ... . -- Toytoy (talk) 07:58, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, I've been a working programmer for a VERY long time and I've used an insane number of languages over the years. These days, I have it down to C++ and JavaScript...plus markup languages XML and MediaWiki...and shell scripting in 'bash'. HTML and CSS are essentially just sloppy XML. PHP and JavaScript are sufficiently similar to each other and to the basic syntax to C++ that it doesn't bother me to have to use PHP for a few simple applications. Bash works under Windows/Cygwin and Linux so I can forget the god-awful DOS scripting crap. Perl, Python, Java are all great languages - but they don't seem very useful to me because C++ does the job perfectly well - and usually, better. I can (and do) sometimes have to work in a wide variety of other languages because of the need to work with some other system - but that's fairly rare.

The trick to efficiency is NOT to pick up on all the latest whizz-bang tools just because you can. Instead get very good indeed at using the small set that you like. Sure, there are some jobs that Python can do in half the number of lines of code that C++ takes - but then there are things you can't really do at all in Python. Rather than switch back and forth all the time, I happily absorb the 'hit' for staying with C++ because in the end the total time to implement any given thing is vastly less.

Your car analogy is close to the truth. Cars are indeed all a bit different (not as drastically as you say) - my MINI Cooper has a stick-shift, my wife's Mazda is an automatic. The turn signals work 'weirdly' on the MINI but conventionally on the Mazda. Things like headlamps, wipers, seat positioning, A/C and radio controls are wildly different between the two cars. The only things they really share are the steering wheel and the brake and gas pedals. Even those work a bit differently because the Mazda has 'kick down' and the MINI has brakes that hold for three seconds for hill starts - and the MINI has switchable power steering modes that are unlike the 'feel' of the Mazda's steering. But I can drive both cars easily and without thinking because my brain has "MINI-mode" and "Mazda-mode". Since I'm British and I have to drive in both the UK and the USA - I also have "Left-hand-drive" and "Right-hand-drive" modes and I can comfortably drive my 1963 Mini (which has the steering wheel on the right) on Texas roads - which is yet a third 'mode' (and another complete set of car controls to get used to).

We humans can keep those things in separate 'partitions' somehow. Programming is much the same deal. When I'm working on C++ code I automatically say "int i ; float f ;" and when I'm in JavaScript mode I don't even have to think about typing "var i ; var f ;" instead. However, when I get into a new car - or have to learn a new language - it takes a while to get that 'muscle memory' back.

SteveBaker (talk) 14:02, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Authentication handling for Excel hyperlinks

Hi,

At work, I'm trying to put together a formula or some code that will access data in Excel format on one of our secure websites, pull some data from it based on a URL I've generated with user input (it has a date portion that is variable). If I just create a bog standard hyperlink in a cell and then click it, I'm prompted for my LAN ID and then the remote xls file opens. However, if I put the same URL in a cell reference like so:

='https://www.somesite.com/blah/blah/[somefile.xls]'A1

It cannot pull the data (assuming I haven't already authenticated to the server) from the remote source. My workaround for this has been to use a FollowHyperLink function in VBA when the command button (which drives all this) is clicked. It's a bit cludgy, but it works. However, I was wondering if there is some way I can authenticate more quietly, perhaps by passing credentials somehow, perhaps using the Windows API in some way? Any help is greatly received.--Rixxin (talk) 17:28, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

The http protocol supports passing along authentication in the URL. For example: http://username:password@www.example.org/ It isn't recommended, since the password and username are in cleartext and might get recorded in history files, caches, etc. It also no longer works in some browsers -- or pops up warnings -- due to recent misuse of this feature in phishing. But it is worth a try, I think. --Mdwyer (talk) 18:22, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Good idea, but that's not working in IE6 (mandatory work browser) probably due to the security measures you mentioned. The fundamental difference seems to be that an authentication request is returned when opening the entire file, but just referencing a range within the file doesn't. Le sigh.--Rixxin (talk) 17:58, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Encrypting single files

I am presiding over a student association and would like to protect membership details. Membership records are kept in a simple spreadsheet file and are kept on my hard-disk, the hard-disk of my secretary, and on my USB-drive. There will also be occasions when the secretary must e-mail me the spreadsheet file. Thus, I would like to find an open-source program that can be used with Windows (and ideally also with Linux) that is capable of compressing a single file simply. I'm new to encryption so I don't know what's possible but I don't really want to create a virtual partition just for this one file... besides which, I'm not sure that would protect the file during e-mailing. Thanks. ----Seans Potato Business 18:24, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

TrueCrypt is a free program that is able to encrypt entire hard drives or just single files. Good luck. E smith2000 (talk) 20:00, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Alternatively, you could just use a password-protected ZIP (file format). This has the advantage of being a fairly ubiquitous format that virtually anyone on any system will be able to open with the password. Disadvantage: a persistent attacker will probably be able to circumvent the encryption. Its use is therefore discouraged if this is a contingency you strenuously wish to avoid. dr.ef.tymac (talk) 22:15, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

ZIP and 7z are both common archive formats created by open-source programs that support AES encryption based on a password. AES is pretty good encryption so I don't think that should be a problem if your archiver uses it and you have a good password. Alternately, GnuPG has an option (gpg -c on the command line) that allows it to use password-based encryption; and there are many graphical distributions of GnuPG for Windows and Linux. --76.167.241.45 (talk) 01:03, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Who would like to get their hands on your file? How much money are they willing to spend? If they are not too serious, I also concur with the recommendation about TrueCrypt. 121.72.165.189 (talk) 11:08, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Try dsCrypt or any of the other tiny encryption programs from Dariusz SN0WKITT3N 11:20, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it is alwase important to consiter how imporant is the data realy. You need to balance security with convience. A password protected zip is easy to use, but less secure then other methods. Also, having the data exist in multible locations is not a good idea, for a number of reasons. First of all it is an issue of keeping all copies up to date. Secondly, each new place it is stored is a new point of failure. Perhapse a single shared resource somewhere? You can share a password protected/encrypted directory over your internal network. If the data is super important then I releay sugest not keeping it on something that is notorious for getting lost. :) 63.80.111.2 (talk) 17:48, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

With a sufficiently long key, it could take longer than the expected age of the universe to break a file encrypted with TrueCrypt or GPG. The problem is keeping your keys secure, but if you're going to be working with the spreadsheet (necessarily in unencrypted form) on both computers anywasy then you might as well just store the keyfile somewhere on both hard drives; in that case the encryption would only be useful if the flash drive were compromised in transit. .froth. (talk) 18:30, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Weird problem with PDF file from customer

My father told me yesterday he had had a weird problem with a PDF file from a customer. A customer of my father's company had sent him an e-mail with a PDF file attached, claiming it contained information about their deal. When he opened it, it contained an advertisement about a Finnish interior decoration company. My father then went to another person's workstation and opened it again, and it did the same thing. This again happened on a third person's workstation. My father then called in his company's IT support person and asked him to look at it. This time the PDF file contained the correct information about the customer deal. What the heck had happened? I have heard of Microsoft Word files containing version history of a previous customer's deals, but aren't PDF files supposed to essentially be snapshots of printable papers? My father thinks it had something to do with the filename resembling another filename on his computer system, but computers don't actually understand names, they operate on a purely factual "is or is not" basis. Does anyone have any idea what had happened? Please keep in mind that I have only heard this second hand and have not seen the files myself (I wouldn't have been allowed to, anyway). JIP | Talk 20:29, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Thought: maybe the company's IT department has software to strip attachments and scan for viruses, and the PDF in question was named something descriptive like "file.pdf", which was overwritten by a different "file.pdf" before your father opened it from the "attachment store". The IT person pulled the correct version off the "attachment archive" and everything was fixed. – 74  21:37, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I've gotta put this down to "user error" - PDF's aren't like WORD documents...they are essentially PostScript files. I'm betting that your father picked the wrong file a couple of times - but got it right when showing it to the IT guys. The fact that he had another file with a very similar name explains it perfectly. If he doubts that then he should show the IT guy what happens on his own PC. 72.183.123.248 (talk) 22:57, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I've noticed something similar which may shed some light on this: When I first open up a Word document, it shows me the previous file I was editing first, then the current file pops up. Sometimes the delay is a few seconds. It sounds like they are doing something quite inefficient, in loading the "default" file (last one edited) first, then replacing it with the current file. If PDF does the same thing, and if some error occurs in loading the current file, then it might just leave the last file viewed up instead. Could this Finnish ad have been the last thing viewed ? StuRat (talk) 01:28, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

MS Word Spell Check

Hello! I know MS Word has spell checks for languages Spanish, English, and French, but are additional spell checks available for download somewhere for other languages? Thank you!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 21:19, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Is this what you are looking for. BigDunc^Talk 21:32, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Thank you!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 04:11, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

PC Games...and Vista

This subject has probably been beat to death, but I'm going to bring it up anyway. Last night I bought a new comp. Its spec's are as follows: 4 GB RAM, 452GB HDD, Windows Vista Home Premium Service Pack 1, Intel Pentium Dual CPU E2220 @ 2.4 GHz, and an Intel G33/G31 Express chipset family with 256MB of memory. I installed Battlefield 2 and Call of Duty 2, neither of which will work, and UT2004 and Battlefield Vietnam, both of which do work (although I cant get voices or music in BFV, with the exception of menu and loading music; can't play songs ingame). When I start Battlefield 2, the banner comes up, the screen goes black, and then crashes to desktop. When I start CoD2, the banner comes up, disappears, and then I get a message saying "DirectX has encountered an unrecoverable error." Also, when I try to run CoD2, a window pops up saying that this game has known compatibility issues. Thanks in advance.--AtTheAbyss (talk) 22:10, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, take CoD2 for example. It was released for the PC in June 2006. Vista was still in development in June and the final version wasn't released for game programmers to test with until October/November 2006 and it wouldn't really hit the streets until sometime in 2007. So that's an unfortunate case when the game developers would not have been able to test their software on Vista (because it wasn't finished yet) and yet the Vista programmers were so close to completion that they would not have had time to fix problems relating to very recent games. Hence it's likely that neither set of people had a reasonable chance of making it work. It's debatable whether the CoD authors would have cared anyway - they planned to sell most of their product over Xmas'06 and shortly after - and there were no Vista PC's around then anyway. So the cost of developing it to work on Vista wouldn't have had a big enough payback to be worth the considerable cost. The game was obviously developed for DirectX9 - and Vista uses DirectX 10, I don't know whether there is a DirectX 9 compatibility pack you can download for Vista - if there is then that might get CoD2 working - but there are not guarantees. Your best chance is to check the Activision website and see if there are any patches for CoD2 that you can download to make it work. Battlefield 2 was released in November 2006 - so it has the same problem. UT2004 was developed two or three years before Vista - so the UT developers OBVIOUSLY couldn't test against Vista - but there was enough of a window for the Vista developers to have tested UT2004 to make sure Vista would run it. Battlefield Vietnam is another 2004 game - so again, it couldn't possibly have been tested on Vista - and perhaps it was not a sufficiently popular game to have made it onto the Vista team's "must work" backwards compatibility list.

I guess the message is "Vista is crap" (which we all knew already) - you should probably stick to games that are modern enough to have "Vista capable" stickers on the boxes. Certainly games from the Xmas 2006 lineup are a poor choice because of that unfortunate overlap of game and Vista development windows. Try to find patches - either for Vista or for the games at their respective web sites - you may get lucky. 72.183.123.248 (talk) 22:34, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I've, uh, played Battlefield 2 in Vista, so I can confirm that at least works. I've also played several other slightly older games, but none of the others listed. Are all your drivers up-to-date, AtTheAbyss? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The standard suggestions for running older games on Vista are: 1) play about with compatibility modes (r-click the game icon -> 'Properties' -> 'Compatibility') and 2) either 'Run as administrator' (r-click -> 'Run as administrator') or install to C:\Games instead of C:\Program Files to get around Vista's User Account Control - a lot of games made for XP assume they have administrator access rights, which they don't with UAC. I wouldn't advise disabling UAC though, unless you want to go back to the Windows XP malware free-for-all. Using this method, I've gotten really old games working on Vista, such as Total Annihilation and Homeworld. Apart from this, make sure all your drivers are up-to-date and the games are patched up to their latest versions. By the way, what graphics card does your new PC have? If it is just that Intel G33/31 (meaning that you probably have an Intel GMA 3100), that may be your problem right there, since that really isn't up to much. You can probably get a GeForce 7 or maybe 8 Series working on that hardware. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 02:36, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm not sure if my drivers are up to date. I just got this computer last night. BTW, I just installed the original Call of Duty and it works just fine. I used to have an ATI Radeon 8500ST or something like that, but I accidentally broke a piece off of it. Maybe if I can find the right adhesive I can reattach it and use it. I know it works with all my games. --AtTheAbyss (talk) 02:58, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it's definitely your GPU. It's essentially useless for gaming. You're not going to have any luck glueing the piece of your graphics card back on; you'd probably have to solder it and stuff, and that would likely be excessively difficult depending on how you broke it and how it's made up. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 03:05, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Plus the Radeon 8500s date from the AGP era. Your hardware almost certainly uses PCI Express. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 03:36, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Strange. I can play Call of Duty 2 on my Vista laptop with no compatibility issues, except for some lag because of a less-than-stellar processor. bibliomaniac15 03:39, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, probably MS compatibility updates. Considering how popular the CoD series is, it wouldn't surprise me if CoD2 was on the list at some point. Abyss; hit Windows Update (Start -> Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Windows Update) and make sure you've got every update available. Then see if there's any improvement. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 19:20, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Reverse-engineering EULAs

Say ACME Software Company makes Great Program. When I download Great Program, there is no EULA presented to me; I can just download it. Great Program's EULA prohibits reverse-engineering. I could reverse-engineer the setup program to make it install the program even if I decline to the EULA. For example, I could make the "Cancel" button go forward a page, or change "Accept" to "Decline". Is this illegal? Have I agreed to the EULA then? --wj32 ^t/c 22:33, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

It would be hard to argue that you hadn't read the terms of the EULA during your reverse-engineering of the install program. If your argument held water then you could close your eyes during installation - cover your ears and yell "Not Listening!" while clicking at random on the screen until you hit the 'AGREE' button at random. You could then argue that you didn't agree to the EULA. Anyway - none of that crap would stand up for a moment in court. If you're going to steal the hard work of others, you might as well come right out and say it - because morally - that's what you're doing and you know it. 72.183.123.248 (talk) 22:53, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

What exactly am I doing? I'm asking a question here on the Reference desk. Calm down for a moment and please don't make unverified or untrue claims about people. See WP:ATTACK. --wj32 ^t/c 01:20, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

None of that crap would stand up for a moment in court, indeed. .froth. (talk) 17:42, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Quick answer to both your questions: yes.

Simply speaking, your question can be answered under Contract law. In the scenario you describe here, you are basically asking, "If I am clever enough to modify a contract in such a way that I never actually see the terms of that contract with my own two eyeballs, can I still be bound by the terms of that contract?"

The quick glib answer is "yes". For example, Under the Uniform Commercial Code ambiguities are resolved by industry custom. In the case of software sales, it is a well-established custom that the use of software constitutes agreement with the terms under which that software is licensed.

In some jurisdictions you may be deemed a "user" of that software merely by downloading it. Therefore, that is the point you would be considered "in agreement" with the license terms. The EULA and nag screens at that point are really just a courtesy so you can't claim ignorance if push comes to shove and you really end up in litigation.

From a legal standpoint, this use of industry custom makes sense. It's what prevents you from going into a restaurant and getting a free meal by claiming you thought it was free, since they didn't charge up-front just like every other retail business.

From a **practical** standpoint, let's be real, no one ever reads those annoying things anyway, except perhaps the first lawyer who wrote it. Even if you did waste the time necessary to prevent the EULA from popping up, your cleverness could be considered a form of trespass and subject to both civil and criminal penalties.

The EULA is really just like those little toy locks on someone's personal diary. It's not there to keep dishonest people from breaking in ... it's there to remind honest people to stay honest and play by the rules by respecting the interests of the software maker, regardless of how easily those interests may be thwarted or ignored by "clever" people. dr.ef.tymac (talk) 22:58, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer. --wj32 ^t/c 01:22, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Even if you did waste the time necessary to prevent the EULA from popping up, your cleverness could be considered a form of trespass and subject to both civil and criminal penalties. Hmm I definitely disagree. Anything's fair game on your own computer; if you want to just extract files from the installer binary with winrar instead of using the included extraction code that makes you accept the EULA, then there's absolutely no law that can stop you. It's ridiculous to suppose that's some kind of criminal trespass.

Just make sure that the installer archive isn't encrypted or otherwise protected by a copy protection mechanism, because distributing methods of defeating it would put you in trouble with the DMCA. But an EULA is not a copy protection mechanism and there's no law forbidding you from bypassing it.

Also regarding the interests of the software maker, should we just "respect Microsoft's wishes" and not install Linux on our machines that come with Windows? I know they'd appreciate that. I'm sure software makers would love controlling their customers' computers so their products are impossible to pirate. There are plenty of wishes that software makers have that conflict with reasonable rights for consumers.

Also I'm not impressed by your moral argument; there's no law against it and I can do it so why shouldn't I if I want to? We're not talking about abortion here, we're talking about corporations maximizing profits at the cost of the general good. .froth. (talk) 18:14, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

The thing is, why would someone even bother to do all the reverse-engineering when you could simply click Accept and install the program? --wj32 ^t/c 07:15, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Well you brought it up; I guess the issue is using the software without agreeing to the EULA, which doesn't bind you by clauses that forbid you from disassembling or whatever .froth. (talk) 18:08, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

JQuery equivalent to PHP preg_match

Is there a JQuery method for seeing if a string matches a regular expression. I know of filter and replace, but both those methods change the string or html code. I'm looking for something that will tell if a given input matches customized regural expressions, like PHP's preg_match method. As in $("input").val().______($regexp) and returns true or false or the number of matches, but takes no action. Thanks24.181.20.108 (talk) 23:08, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Try the standard Javascript match method of the String object, or the test method of the RegEx object [[2] [3]]. dr.ef.tymac (talk) 23:10, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Brand new to JQuery. How exactly do you call the javascript method on a JQuery object? Is there some weird nested function requirement? Like, I know you can't do $("input").val().test()... so is it something like $("input").val().function(){this.test()}; [note to be used in an if statement, so I'm trying to get a boolean out of a JQuery match] Thanks again24.181.20.108 (talk) 23:42, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

The trick with jQuery is to remember that it's just JavaScript with some handy built-in shortcuts for working with browser programming. Whenever you use $(), or methods attached to it, you have to remember what your method is returning, and what you are allowed to pass into the parenthesis. So for example, if you are using jQuery.trim(mystring) .. this can be re-written as $.trim(mystring). If you take a look at the documentation, it tells you that $.trim() takes a string as an argument, and returns a string as the result. At that point you know that you can use all of the JavaScript methods that apply to Strings. For example ...

   var upstring = $.trim(mystring).toUpperCase();

Probably the best way to get sorted out is to use visual jQuery [4] while you are coding, and pay close attention to what function you are trying to use and what it returns. If you don't find what you are looking for in jQuery, then just look in a JavaScript reference (microsoft has one that's pretty well written). dr.ef.tymac (talk) 23:54, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Flash drive appearing Device Manager, not Windows Explorer

I have a USB flash disc which won't show up under the list of drives in My Computer. I've restarted, replugged it in, reinstalled drivers etc. and I still can't get it to appear. Even though it does appear in Computer Management>System Tools>Device Manager>Disc Drives as "USB2.0 USB Device." It did work before, but I couldn't get it formatted into NTFS - that's even after I changed the policies to "optimise for performance" to make NTFS appear in the drop down list of filing systems.My name is anetta (talk) 23:41, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

In my experience, Windows has a habit of assigning removable drives a drive letter already in use by mapped network drives. If you have any mapped network drives near the top of the alphabet, unmapping them and reconnecting the flash drive might let you access it. If you don't have any mapped drives then it's obviously some other problem. – 74  00:23, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I've got no network drives.My name is anetta (talk) 02:26, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Does it show in Computer Management>Storage>Disc Management?121.72.165.189 (talk) 11:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

No, nor Disk Defrag or Removable Storage.My name is anetta (talk) 13:39, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Is this "Points System" possible?

Hi, I am trying to create a new operating system, and I was wondering if it was possible to make the system described here? Would that be possbile? Or it would be too easy to hack/trick the system? Hacktolive (talk) 23:51, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Sure it's possible, and yes it would be possible to "game" the points system just as it's possible to "game" entire world economic systems. The bottom line is you'd probably be better off pitching your idea to existing open source communities and learning about what's already been done. Your entire "points" system will be irrelevant if you do not have a community of people already participating and gaining points.

This idea is actually already in place on several websites. See for example perlmonks and StackOverflow.com. dr.ef.tymac (talk) 00:00, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

February 1

how do you type in a filepath and other stuff on a mac

How do you accomplish the following things on a mac:

• you know the path to a "folder" on your machine and you want to type it in, instead of visually navigating through a bunch of finder GUI windows
• specify the root drive while typing in a path (i.e., what is the mac equivalent of c:\mydocs\shoppinglist.txt)
• get the dock bar to show up using the keyboard if you have it on auto-hide
• get the windows on your desktop to do the msft windows trick "cascade windows" or "tile windows vertically"
• navigate the icons in the system preference window using the keyboard (up and down arrows seem to work, but left and right does nothing)

Any solutions whatsoever are welcome, including but not limited to going out and downloading some third party software to get these done. dr.ef.tymac (talk) 00:40, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

1. Open finder, hit Cmd-Shift-G, or Go -> Go to Folder
2. As with other normal POSIX OSs, the "root" is '/' . So, applications are at /Applications, for instance. Individual partitions can be directly accessed from /Volumes
3. By default Option-Command-D. The hotkey can be set in the Keyboard & Mouse system preferences pane
4. Holding down Option, clicking Window, and clicking "Arrange in Front" does something similar, but it's per-application only. Not sure otherwise. There is expose, but I know that's not exactly what you're wanting.
5. You could tab to the search bar at the top-right and type in what you want. Dunno otherwise.

-- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:28, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Issue with sending/receiving text over UDP connection in Java

Resolved

Greetings! I am having an issue with a simple UDP based client/server Java program. The source code and their output can be found here, but I shall summarize the code, and the issues I am having here.

The server program, WriteServer, listens for any UDP packet on a port that is entered in the console when the program is executed. Upon receiving this packet, the server transmits a 'greeting' of sorts back to the client. The server then waits for a message from the client, and converts the string that is contained within the datagram to uppercase, then sends it back to the client.

The client code, ReadClient, takes a message from the user, the name of the machine to connect to, and the port to contact, all entered upon the code's launch. The client then sends a single packet to the server to initiate communication, then listens for, and then displays a greeting message that the server transmits. After that, the client then sends the message that was collected upon the code's launch, and then waits for a packet containing the uppercase message that the server sent back as 'confirmation' of transmission.

The code seems to work on the surface, at least when run on the same machine. However, there are issues. First, the client program has a string of boxes displayed to the right of the text, however, I am going to assume the boxes are just null characters. I am not quite sure how to get rid of those.

The second and third issues I shall lump together. When the client transmits the message given to it, the server seems to acknowledge this, as I am seeing a string of boxes that matches the length of the message. However, the message transmitted should be displayed within the server's console, and likewise, the message transformed into uppercase should be displayed in the client, however it is only displayed as a string of boxes within the client.

I am not quite sure what exactly is going wrong with this code relating to the transformation of the strings to bytes, and back to strings. I have tried running this code multiple times, however I haven't had any luck with getting it to work. I have also tried making a separate packet to receive each of the packets on the client/server side, even though I don't think that is a necessity.

I would appreciate any help that is provided, and I hope everyone has an utterly wonderful day! ~Shawna 137.155.187.56 (talk) 03:33, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

You've got a pair of lines like this in ReadClient.java:

 (1)      byte[] retMsgBytes = new byte[rcvPacket.getLength()];
 (2)      retMsgBytes = rcvPacket.getData();

That basically says (1) create a reference named retMsgBytes and have it point to a newly-allocated array of bytes, and then (2) throw away that newly-allocated array of bytes, and have retMsgBytes instead point to the results of getData(). Why not skip the allocation and combine the two statements into the following?

 (1)      byte[] retMsgBytes = rcvPacket.getData();

As a side effect, it will fix your problem, which arises from forgetting step (2) in WriteServer.java. --Sean 15:13, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Worked like a charm, Sean. Thank you very much, and I hope you have a wonderful day! ~Shawna 137.155.187.45 (talk) 20:45, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Javascript and 'onMouseMove' events.

I've been playing with writing a browser-based game in JavaScript (using 'canvas' graphics) recently. I want to use a full-color shape instead of the mouse cursor - so I'm using 'onMouseMove' events and redrawing the shape as needed. Everything works as programmed - but the timing is terrible.

The cursor will alternately track smoothly for about a half second - then freeze for another half second. Suspecting performance problems, I started trimming the game code back and back until I had NOTHING but a simple sprite redraw in the 'onMouseMove' event...and the result is the same.

I know my sprite redraws are fast enough because during the half second where everything works OK they track nicely. If I were to draw an 'X' in the onMouseMove function and then move the mouse rapidly from left to right, I'd get something like:

 XXXXXX       XXXXX       XXXXXX     XXXXXXX     XXXXXXX

I'm doing this in FireFox on OpenSuse 11.0 64bit on a really fast computer - but I've seen the same behavior on other systems too.

Is there something inherent in the scheduling of browsers that makes this inevitable - or is there some 'trick' to make this work OK?

SteveBaker (talk) 05:56, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is that different browsers' versions of Javascripts have some things they do well and some things they do horribly. (See this article from a couple years ago.) I would not be surprised if one got different performance with different machines for something like this. It used to be—and might still be, for all I know—that Firefox is actually one of the slowest when it comes to Javascript activities if one doesn't take into account the fact that IE just up and dies if you try to do complicated string manipulation. The only "trick" I can think of is to not do the development in Javascript, but to do it in Actionscript or something that is a little more robust and standardized in its implementations... but that's not much of a trick, I admit. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:51, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

It's not really about the performance of JavaScript itself - the smooth reporting of mouse events goes away for HALF A SECOND - that's not about JavaScript performance - it's about scheduling or something. When it runs, I get dozens of mouse position updates, processing though a dozen lines of stripped-down JavaScript code in a tiny fraction of a second with no problems - then NOTHING for an entire half second. I want portability - Actionscript won't cut it for me. SteveBaker (talk) 01:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

(Well... Actionscript can probably run easily on maybe 95% of all computers out there.. but anyway...) Hmm. Have you tried it with other browsers? The question is whether or not this is something Javascript specific or browser specific. It sounds browser specific to me. (And again, browsers have specific Javascript issues/advantages. There's no reason to assume they'd have equal performance, scheduling, etc.)

From a strictly programmatic standpoint... what if instead of using OnMouseMove you instead had a timer that turned on and ran at some very fast rate whenever you entered the canvas, and the timer function triggered something that checked up the mouse position, etc.? It's a hack, obviously, your own MouseMove alternative, but it might be worth cobbling together a little test version to see if it gets around the scheduling issues... --98.217.14.211 (talk) 02:49, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Google maps

In google maps, when you search for a place, it puts a "lollipop" as a marker on the point it has found. Is it possible to ( how do you ) remove said lollipop? The only means I have found of doing it is to look for a prominent place a little way away, to search for that - thus putting the lollipop there - and scroll back to the part of the map I am interested in. But that seems completely wrong. -- SGBailey (talk) 11:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

It goes away if you click "My Maps". Google have been changing the interface over the last few months so it's not clear whether that disappearance is a bug or deliberate. It would be nice to have a 'Hide lollipops' button in the top-right menu though. SteveBaker (talk) 13:08, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

You can also clear the search box and hit enter (ie search for nothing) — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 16:24, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks -- SGBailey (talk) 19:37, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Hide active programs

I share a computer with my little brother and whenever he gets on he messes with my active running programs, such as utorrent and boinc and he constantly restarts the computer when installing games. I need a way that I can hide these programs from view, even from the system tray, but they will keep running in the background and will automatically run when the computer is turned on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 14:56, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Open taskmanager and kill explorer.exe. This will hide your taskbar, open programs, system tray, and icons. To get programs to open at startup, go to start, all programs, startup (I'm on Windows 7, this may be different for previous OSs) and drag a shortcut of the program into this folder. Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme!

If you kill explorer.exe that basically makes the computer unusable, and OP states it is also being used by someone else. Also, when the pc is restarted explorer.exe will be back. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 19:50, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Theres a couple of different ways you can go about doing this... You could download Microsoft Virtual PC, and use that to essentially 'give' him his own computer to do what he wants. Another thing you could try is to set up Virtual desktop which would allow you to switch over to his desktop when he wants to play. But i think the simplest and quickest way to deal with that is to set up multiple users. That way when he wants to play you can just switch users. I hope this helped – Elliott  19:22, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if this is revelvant but on MS Windows, if you type msconfig is the Run... window and click the startup tab, you can prevent apps from starting up.-- penubag  (talk) 20:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Autoruns is very good to control programs that start at startup of the computer (on Windows) SF007 (talk) 03:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Regarding tracking of information

Is it possible to track the websites that have been browsed using the IP address? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.71.98 (talk) 16:00, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Not usually without access to their ISP logs (which could be subpoenaed, for example, if it was relevant to a criminal case). The exception to this is that websites that share a common cookie or otherwise share IP information amongst themselves can tell when a given IP visits those sites that are in on the sharing. This comes up in case of advertising servers—if you frequent sites that use the same ad software (like DoubleClick) then DoubleClick and its affiliates will be able to know quite a lot about your browsing habits. But I interpret your question to be, basically, "if I have someone's IP address, can I see what pages they have visited," and in that case the answer is usually "no" for most "I"'s of the world. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 17:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Mouse decision

I suppose this is not a technical question... but i would like to know what you (the reader) thinks is a better mouse. A trackball or an Optical mouse. This will help me decide what my next mouse should be. Thank you. – Elliott  22:25, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Optical mice are so cheap these days (I've seen them under $5) that you might as well get one anyway. Trackballs are good for some kinds of stuff - bad at others - but it's a very personal thing. Some people love them - others hate them - so there is no objective test other than to buy one and see. But if that turns out to be a bad thing, it's not gonna cost you much to buy an optical mouse to replace it. SteveBaker (talk) 00:49, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. Sure, you can buy a mouse for some ridiculously low price, but I would recommend you purchase a "good" mouse instead of a "cheap" mouse. The net price difference may be $50, but with even occasional computer use the mouse will pay for itself several times over. Particular features that *I* find useful are high precision, wireless, forward/back buttons, and an ergonomic shape. Visit one of those "big box electronic" retailers and find a mouse or trackball that works for you—it'll be money well spent. – 74  04:37, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I love Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 11:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

The best mouse ever is the IBM 3-button travel wheel mouse :) I guess it's a personal preference but I don't understand how people can use those trackball mice. People actually play FPS games using those! σ_ο .froth. (talk) 17:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I pwn noobs with my trackball. :) -----J.S (T/C/WRE) 21:34, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I find ordinary mice are quicker for general use; but trackballs are a lot better for small movements and dragging, and they often have extra buttons that you can redefine for things like dragging or double-clicking. So I use a small optical mouse most of the time, but when I have to do precise work I plug in a trackball or use MouseKeys. Also, if you have to use computers other than your own it's probably best if you don't get completely out of practice with ordinary mice... AJHW (talk) 11:38, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I have switched to a trackball several years ago due to very limited desk space I had back then, and have used one (actually the same one) ever since. Wouldn't switch back to an ordinary mouse. For me it's just more convenient to use, but I remember the first two weeks I had it - I was literally afraid to use the computer because I couldn't come to grips with the trackball. --Ouro (blah blah) 11:14, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Wait, trackballs better for dragging? How do you spin the ball if your index finger is holding down the mouse button? Do you use both hands? .froth. (talk) 18:10, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

My trackball's got the buttons on either side of the ball (like this) so I hold the button down with my thumb and roll the ball with my finger. I don't know how people can use the trackballs that you have to roll with your thumb... but then I am left-handed! AJHW (talk) 21:54, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

That's the exact mouse I'm using right now. One of the major advantages of using it is the it sits in my lap; I have practically zero desk space for moving a normal mouse around, and having a trackball makes (lack of) space irrelevant. I gotten very used to the style of using my thumb to move the track ball around, and I can play FPS games quite nicely. - SigmaEpsilon → ΣΕ 22:41, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Mine is a Trackman marble by Logitech. The thumb rolls the ball, and the fingers control the buttons. With practice this can get very comfortable as it requires less coordination of the hand to control the cursor. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:19, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

February 2

Getting wikipedia's version of tex running on my computer

Resolved

This year, I am going to need to write quite a few equations on a computer and I was thinking that TeX would probably be a good idea. What I would like to know is, is there any way I can get Wikipedia's implementation of TeX (<math> tags) up and running on my computer, as I believe that it uses some special typesetting specific to maths (i.e. the - sign always produces a minus sign instead of the dash and letters are always interpreted as variables and are italicized). Is there a specific package I can download or typesetting configurations I can add to the TeX installation I am currently downloading? I am running Mac OS X 10.4 and am downloading BasicTeX and TeXShop, what else to I need to do (once I've set everything up)?. It would also be ideal if I would somehow embed TeX (in tags like math) in TextEdit. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 00:08, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I always just use OpenOffice.org math for my TeX editing. The syntax is a bit different, but it's not that hard to get used to. [5] link is for intel mac Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 01:34, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Out of interest, is there a particular reason you want Wikipedia's stripped-down weak version of TeX rather than a proper version? Algebraist 03:30, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I've now read up on TeX, and my problem is now solved, thanks for all your help guys. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 03:34, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Give root powers to me (Ubuntu)

Is there a way to give me root powers on Ubuntu? I know I can enable the root account and use it, but that is not what I want (I am forced to use the username "root"), What I want is be able to login with some username "SF007", and that account having root powers (without the need for "sudo", etc...). Is this even possible? SF007 (talk) 00:50, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Runing as root or as an account that has root powers is high inadvisable. I am fairly new to Ubuntu, i have no idea how to do what you ask but i would suggest that when you need root access you sould use 'sudo' or log out and back in as root... i hope this helped. – Elliott  01:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

It's definitely not recommended, but it's possible. Set your user account's numeric ID to 0. It's a very bad idea, and when I see this kind of question, it's usually someone trying to solve another problem and using a bad solution. What is your real problem? -- JSBillings 02:12, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

That does not work: I created a new user with ID 0, enabled "allow admins to login", but I just can't login with the new username (I get "user/password wrong" or some error like that), and I also noticed that the new user I create just "disappears": if I create the user, then log out, and then login, if I go the the "user" section, it is not there! Any ideas why the user vanished? Any other solutions? (There is no real problem, but I really wanted to know if this was possible) SF007 (talk) 04:12, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Damn! I know why it does not work, the "user id" must be unique, and since the root already has "0" as uid, I can't have it! SF007 (talk) 10:00, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I've never done this, but I've always understood that you could set a user's groupid to 0 and gain (most) root powers that way. Is this wrong? APL (talk) 13:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Ubuntu does something special in this regard - it's different from other Linux's. If you have a number of tasks to do as root, their approach can be a bit of a pain. One possibility is to say: 'sudo bash' - which opens up a command shell running as root. I believe you have to change some kernel options in order to be able to actually log in as root. But as others have said...running as root for even a moment longer than you need to is "A Very Bad Idea". SteveBaker (talk) 02:32, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

'sudo -i' or 'sudo -s' is the right way to do that. --76.167.241.45 (talk) 05:30, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to join the annoying herd of people saying: NO! DON'T DO IT! FER CRYIN' OUT LOUD!!!. Running as root when you don't need to is a horrible idea, just say no. If you want to do something with root powers, use sudo. If you're going to do a lot of things with root powers, type in "sudo -i" or "su" at the command line, and you will be granted root access (but you will still be identified by the username "root"). If you absolutely must, use "sudo passwd" to set a root password, and then you can login as root, but even going that far is going too far, IMHO.

I'm not sure why it is exactly you want this? Why would you want to assign root powers to your regular old login? If you need to do something as root, just do it as root. No need to muck up your usual login. I agree with my esteemed colleague JSBillings, it seems like you want to solve some problem, but doing it in a bad way. Can you give us any information on the reason for all this privilege escalation? Belisarius (talk) 05:12, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I run a Virtual Machine as root (only for testing software/"playing", so security is not important there), and I use the root account, but I wanted to use a "regular" username... That's just it... SF007 (talk) 09:46, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

You could try switching to Windows. (I kid; I kid.) – 74  09:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Dell laptop screen fading (resolved)

Resolved

I have a Dell latitude D610. I have installed Ubuntu on it. I am having a problem with the screen dimmer. When I boot it up everything is fine except the screen brightness, over the course of 2 minutes it will slowly fade down, once it has faded i must bring it back up by holding down the function key and repeatedly hitting the up arrow (standard brightness control for most dell laptops.) Once I stop hitting the up arrow it starts fading again. It seems to start fading at random times, but once it starts fading it will continue to fade until I restart the computer. It is really starting to get annoying having to turn the brightness up every few minutes. I do not believe that this is a problem with the controller chip or the screen's inverter, this problem does not happen when I boot in to WinXP. Thank you – Elliott  01:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I know this is an odd question, but does the display work normally when it's on battery? RxS (talk) 02:01, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

No, it acts the same way.– Elliott  02:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

It could be a screen saver, which for some reason thinks you aren't using the computer. Try disabling all screen saver/hibernation/sleep/etc., modes. StuRat (talk) 02:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Could it be as simple as a sticky 'down-brightness' key? SteveBaker (talk) 02:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Key no; as the OP mentioned it requires a combination of keys to change the brightness. It could, however, be some input device that is sending (presumably erroneous) key codes. Does this problem occur when nothing is connected to the laptop? My guess would be that something in Linux is calling into BIOS incorrectly and the result is a reduced brightness setting (StuRat's suggestion of disabling BIOS-interfacing features is a good avenue of investigation). – 74  03:05, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you,StuRat (talk) was right, I turned off the screen saver and turned off the automatic dimming. – Elliott  17:16, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

TFT monitor flickering

Dear friends, My TFT monitor is flickering i has did an autoadjust, and checked resolution etc, but i can't get solve, monitor has parchused just before four month please reply ASAP. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rajesh4028 (talk • contribs) 08:15, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Try powering off the monitor (at the plug) and leaving for a few minutes, then turning it back on. If the problem persists contact the seller or manufacturer - a four month old monitor should still be under guarantee. Exxolon (talk) 09:12, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Also check that the video cable is securely connected to the computer and the monitor--these cables can be quite finicky to get attached. – 74  09:37, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Do you know the refresh rate ? Is it adjustable ? What's the model ? StuRat (talk) 09:45, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Open Office tutorial

I have a text document with a table in it. It's a 2x2 table that covers one page. Each cell has a bit of text in it. Basically it's set up so that I can cut the paper in quarters and have basically the same text on each slip. The text goes something like "Here are your pictures of XXX. If you would like more pictures of (him/her)..." I also have a spreadsheet with names, gender, and some other info.

Each week, as names (and other info) are added to the spreadsheet, I'd like to print out that table again with the new names in place of the XXXs and the correct pronouns used according to the gender associated with that name. I need quadrant 1 to be the first name/gender in the spreadsheet, quadrant 2 to be the second, and so on. Yes, there are too many names each week to do this manually, not to mention the pronoun switches.

I want to use Open Office for this. What I'm looking for is a tutorial to show me how to get this done. I'm not sure what I need to search for though since the most obvious keywords get me a LOT of ghits. Any help? Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 10:49, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like you want to do a Mail Merge. This site (http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid39_gci1167989,00.html) suggest it will show you how to do it. Your best bet (by far) is to get all the data in shape in your spreadsheet and then have it placed into the word-doc for printing/layout. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 11:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

perl convert date to readable value

Using perl language, how do I convert active directory badPasswordTime to readable value ? Here is an example of an unreadable value: "128708024625164794". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.47.34.2 (talk) 12:57, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

What date/time is that supposed to represent? IMHO it doesn't quite fit as a unix timestamp... or I could be wrong. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 13:03, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

maybe this will help:

“

use POSIX;

use strict;
use warnings;

my $sec  =  6;
my $min  =  7;
my $hour =  8;
my $day  =  9;
my $mon  = 10   - 1;
my $year = 2004 - 1900;
my $wday = 0;
my $yday = 0;

my $unixtime = mktime ($sec, $min, $hour, $day, $mon, $year, $wday, $yday);

print "$unixtime\n";

my $readable_time = localtime($unixtime);

print "$readable_time\n";

”

dont know what the relationship is between windows and unix time. it seems to be similar to the times you post, since when I go perl -we 'print localtime()' I get 545115211091320, which is more or less as long as yours. Maybe yours starts at 1900 instead of 1970 (?) or something. Anyway just use the script above, take a known date, see how wrong the script's answer is, and add or subtract that many seconds from the windows badtime. good luck. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.120.227.157 (talk) 14:34, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

perl -we 'print localtime()' is so completely wrong it is amazing. You are evaluating localtime in list context, so it will return the list of 9 components of the time, converted to string, and concatenated together by print. You probably wanted something like perl -e 'print time' or perl -e 'print scalar localtime'. --71.106.173.110 (talk) 19:07, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Googling badPasswordTime tells me "This value is stored as a large integer that represents the number of 100 nanosecond intervals since January 1, 1601 (UTC)". Brilliant! --Sean 15:30, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

So what is the PERL code to convert the time from a date in 1601 ? If I start with that time value: "128708024625164794" , how do I get a time that looks like a human readable date ? I *think* the UNIX time script above is close. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.47.34.2 (talk) 22:50, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

use Math::BigInt;

my $unixtime = Math::BigInt->new('128708024625164794') / 10_000_000 - Math::BigInt->new('11644473600');

my $readable_time = localtime $unixtime;

print "$readable_time\n";

--128.97.244.85 (talk) 02:11, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Google images

Can someone confirm if google images is acting up or not? I'm trying to search porn but I can't change from "SafeSearch" to "Do not filter my search results". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 19:00, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

You need to change a setting in you browser to accept cookies– Elliott  19:39, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Cookies are enabled. I've tried on Opera, Firefox and IE; same problem on all but not on other websites such as yahoo. I've also tried google.ca and google.fr, no luck. Clearly there is a problem at my end if you're able to removed the filter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 19:43, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I just tried on 2 different and i have determined that the problem must exist on google's end. Silmply give it time. – Elliott  19:52, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, that's cool, I just wanted to know if it was google or me. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 19:54, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Computer sporadically turning on

Resolved

Here's my setup that's not working. Asus P5N32-SLI motherboard, Intel Q6600 2.4 GHz (not overclocked), 4 GB of DDR2-800 RAM (4 sticks), Thermaltake 500w PSU, GeForce 8600GT video card, 4 x 1TB HDD's.

Until this morning, this PC ran 24/7 as a headless home router/firewall/file server. Right now, it only sporadically powers up, but when it does, it lets out 1 long beep, which repeats. Award BIOS codes indicate a RAM error, although I'm not convinced this is the problem since it only rarely actually powers up. The motherboard power light is on when the PSU is plugged in. I'm leaning towards it being a power supply issue since the PC doesn't even turn on consistently. Thoughts? --Chasingsol^(talk) 21:53, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

To quote my A+ manual, replace suspected bad with known good. Replace the power supply. If that doesn't resolve the issue, replace the ram. If thats not it, replace the MB, if it's under warranty still. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 22:13, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, I had a feeling that would be the direction to head in. I'll try another PSU first. --Chasingsol^(talk) 22:17, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Along the lines of J.S, take out everything not nessasary for the computer to run. (i.e. all but 1 ram chip, the video card if it has a built in one, cdrom drive), then if the computer turns on turn it off and place one item back in to the computer. Keep doing that until you reproduce the problem, then take that item that caused the problem and remove it and put everything back together (except that one item) I hope this helped. – Elliott  23:14, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Just to provide a status update on this one. It did indeed end up being the power supply. Thanks for all the suggestions. Best regards. --Chasingsol^(talk) 04:01, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Canon Pixma MP220 printer problems!

Hi I tried printing a document earlier but the trouble is I pressed print and then realised I hadn't plugged the cord that runs from my printer into the USB slot on my computer in. When I then plugged the USB into my computer in the printer would not print. I tried turning off the printer and re-sending the print job but the printer won't do anything now. When I try to print a pop up comes up saying printer is in offline mode - I don't think it was before. I had a look in the instruction manual but I can't find anything that helps. (Also have a little notice saying black ink low but its been like that for ages, I don't think thats the cause of the printer not doing anything but correct me if I'm wrong.) Please help and thank you in advance! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.222.240.81 (talk) 23:05, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I know that this may sound generic.. but restart your computer. If i am to give you any more help I would need to know what type of printer you have. – Elliott  23:17, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?" Theresa Knott | token threats 23:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

My sister had a similar problem a while ago. As I recall, it is related to the black ink being low. When the ink gets below a certain level, the pronter stops working. There is a mode to force the printer to use the colour cartridge only - but I can't for the life of me remember how I did it. Try changing the black cartridge. DuncanHill (talk) 04:39, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi all I have replaced the black ink cartridge - put a brand new one in there but it still won't print. When I try to print a little window pops up saying printer is in offline mode. I've tried turning it on and off and restarting my computer to no avail. Please help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.222.241.80 (talk) 14:20, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, here you go!

Open Printers folder:

For Windows Vista Click / Select 'Start' from the bottom left of the Windows screen, 'Control Panel', 'Hardware and Sound', and then click on 'Printers'. Note: If you are in 'Classic' view, Click 'Printers' directly from the 'Control Panel'. For Windows XP Home Edition

Click / Select 'Start' from the bottom left of the Windows screen, 'Control Panel,' 'Printers and Other Hardware,' and 'Printers and Faxes.'

For Windows XP Professional Edition

Click 'Start' from the bottom left of the Windows screen, and 'Printers and Faxes.'

For Windows 2000/Me/98

Click / Select 'Start' from the bottom left of the Windows screen, and 'Settings,' then 'Printers.'

Right-click your printer's icon and select 'Use Printer Online'. The document will print.

If the document does not print and the job remains queued, a printer icon will appear to the left of the time on the Windows taskbar.

Double-click on the printer icon to open the 'Printer' window.

Click on the document title below the 'Document Name' column.

From the 'Document' menu select 'Restart'.

Hope that makes sense and works for you. DuncanHill (talk) 16:39, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Duncan many thanks for your post. I put the printer back into online mode (thanks for the clear instructions regarding how to do this) but when I tried printing a document a little pop up comes up simply saying 'printer is not responding'. I have no idea why. I tried turning it off and on again and tried re-sending the print job but still I can't get it to print. Any more help would be great. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.222.241.80 (talk) 22:49, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe the problem is solved - I can now print! When I went onto control panel > hardware > printer there were 4 icons that came up, even though I only have one printer... Something called 'Canon MP220 series printer (copy 1)' was set as the default printer. I changed the default printer to an icon called 'Canon MP220 series printer'. Selecting an icon without the '(copy 1)' bit seems to have made all the difference. There's also 2 other icons in my printer window one called 'microsoft XPS document' and 'send to one note 2007'. I have no idea what any of the other 3 do. Many thanks to all who helped and does anyone have a clue what these other icons are? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.222.241.80 (talk) 23:02, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Adding A Shopping Cart to a .asp Photo Website

This is a complicated one, and I'm not sure I know if I'm asking the right question, but here goes. I maintain a photo website written for me in .asp script that I now wish to add a shopping cart and payment facilities to. I've tried using romancart.com and have been nudged in the direction of mal's e-commerce too. These websites encourage you to "simply" create a hyperlink and drop it into the code on your site. Unfortunately this doesn't work when I try and I have to revert to the original design to get the page working again.

The second problem is that even if I could drop a link in, I wouldn't know how to put a different link for each individual photo because each photo doesn't have its own individual page/hyperlink in the way that websites selling their products usually do. As you click on a new photo the address in the bar above stays the same.

The website is www.stucktothefridge.co.uk

Can you help? I hope that I have made my problem clear enough.

Lukerees1983 (talk) 23:15, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi there. I think a solution to your problem might be found here: Paypal's shopping carts. PayPal is a fantastic website if you are trying to buy or sell things on the interweb and you dont feel like throwing your credit card number or bank account number all over the web... i hoped this helped. – Elliott  23:23, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

You clearly don't understand this enough to be doing it yourself. Whoever wrote you the asp scripts could help. Also I think the idea of the one hyperlink is that it takes you to a remote-hosted storefront from which you can browse for products; you could probably link directly to a certain product but you'd probably have to keep a list of store URLs or something corresponding to photos on your site that would be loaded by the asp script.. As for the paypal shopping carts I've never touched them but you would definitely need to add a "buy me" sort of link to photo pages and I doubt it would be at all straightforward to dynamically add new photos to your database of items/prices because it looks like paypal hosts that.. .froth. (talk) 18:21, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Graphics upgrade possible?

Ok, my friend's computer currently uses the GeForce 6150 SE nForce 430 graphics card. I'm trying to help her upgrade, but I'm not sure it's even possible. Does anyone know if this is an integrated chipset rather than an actual "card"? If so, does that mean that it's not possible to upgrade to a better piece of hardware to improve performance for gaming? Dgcopter (talk) 23:38, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi there! I would love to help but in order to do so i would need to know weather you are on a laptop or a desktop. Either way there is a possibility that you might beable to upgrade. – Elliott  23:42, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, it's a desktop. Running Vista, if that makes a difference. I'm kind of a hardware noob, so I don't know all the ins and outs of this stuff...Dgcopter (talk) 23:45, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Lol, we were all noobs at one point in time. Knowing that it's a desktop running vista tells me that you can buy an upgrade, the upgrade would not replace your current card (unless it is a card and not a built in chip). I will need to know a little more about your computer, what's the computer's brand? (i.e. dell, emachine, sony... so on). i would also like to know the model number. This can sometimes be found on the front of the computer, it would normaly be a 4 - 6 digits, sometimes with a few letters. An example would be: Dell Latitude D610 – Elliott  23:49, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Dell Inspirion 531s...is that what you're looking for? Dgcopter (talk) 23:52, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, thank you, i am sorry that it took me so long. It looks like you have a PCIe x16 slot and a PCIe x1 slot. Just give me a few more minutes to find a few upgrades for you. (to you what this means is: Yes, you can upgrade your card, but that information was mainly for anyone else who wanted to help you) —Preceding unsigned comment added by E smith2000 (talk • contribs) 00:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Hang on, an Inspiron 531s? I'm worried about the 's' bit - Dell's irritating series of nonstandard slimline cases. I can tell you that you'll need a 'low profile' card and probably a low profile bracket kit to go with it. I recently upgraded an Inspiron 530s with this combination, if that's helpful. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 00:09, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

you beat me to it Captain. I was going to suggest that. Anyways, that is a good video card, depending on your budget i would suggest that you take it to a computer repair shop and have them install it for you. Or you can install it your self, here is a guide from Dell's website explaining how to take the computer apart and how to install the card.– Elliott  00:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, Cap and Elliott! I'm glad to know it's upgradeable. I'm a little worried about the extra hitch with the "low profile" kit... I was feeling pretty confident that I could handle replacing a normal graphics card, but I don't know anything about that. Any opinions on how hard/easy it is to do for a novice? Dgcopter (talk) 00:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

The front of the card (where the port is) can come off by removing a few screws. That part is not hard but you should be careful not to touch the card it self with the screw driver, and you have to be careful while handling the the card itself. Hereis a site that will help you with the safe handling of the card. Since your a novice at this I'd suggest that you wear latex gloves and place the card on a towel on a table before you take off the from of the card. Or an even better idea is to just go to your local computer store and ask if they have any Low-Profile videos cards, Remember: a 'good' video card is going to have about 512MB (megabytes) of ram. —Preceding unsigned comment added by E smith2000 (talk • contribs) 00:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

It's not too hard, just fiddly. On the brackets, there's a couple of screws that normally the monitor connector screws into. All you need is a pair of pliers or something, and you can remove them, and the bracket'll just fall off. Fit the new one, replace the screws, sorted. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 00:44, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

You're supposed to use nut drivers on those screws, but if you don't have them, pliers will do. Also remember to install the drivers afterwards. 121.72.165.189 (talk) 08:28, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

February 3

Problems with iTunes

I just got an iPod touch and I downloaded and installed iTunes and I'm having problems with it. My PC uses XP and it meets all the requirements stated but something seems to be wrong. When I first connected my iPod iTunes opened automatically, I did somethings like organising music and then when I tried closing iTunes it wouldn't. I had to go to End Task in Task Manager and now it won't open at all. --RMFan1 (talk) 00:11, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like the program is stuck in between opening and closing... Try restarting your computer and try it all again.– Elliott  00:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I restarted my PC and it seems to be working fine now. However, I have another problem: I have some mp3s (lets say 10) that all belong to the same album and I have given them all the exact same album name but some of them appear as belonging to a different album. Why is this? --RMFan1 (talk) 00:37, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry, i am not that familair with iTunes. try removing the mp3's from iTunes and then draging them back in. – Elliott  00:49, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd try selecting all the tracks in the album and edit the tags (get info). Go through all the tags (except track number and track name), rewriting them. The problem may lie in the fact that although you know they're the same album, you may have a typo in the album name, or the "year" field may differ – giving three "different" albums. Cycle~ (talk) 01:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I've experienced the same issue and it drove me nuts initially. The problem is with the ID3 tags. What happened with me was there 2 different artist tags. One of them is simply artist the other is album artist. If they're both present and don't match, iTunes and your iPod Touch will treat them as different artists. Hope this helps. Best regards. --Chasingsol^(talk) 03:56, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

The easy way to do it is to select all the songs of the same album at once and change all their album titles at the same time. It'll guarantee they are in sync. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 04:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I had the same problem, also solved by going into the album, selecting a track, right or control click, 'Get Info', info tab and checking the 'Part of a Compilation' box - then rinse and repeat. Also stops compilation albums overflowing your cover flow. For forced quits you will need to Ctrl-Alt-Delete and finish terminating some other programes - they are most 'i' prefixed, e.g. iExample. Means you can run it again without rebooting. Lanfear's Bane | t 12:02, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, LB that was it! As I said the album names etc were exactly the same it was just that "part of a compilation" tag that was the problem. Also, thanks to everyone else as well for your suggestions —Preceding unsigned comment added by RMFan1 (talk • contribs) 16:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Spyware

Who does information collected by spyware go to? JCI (talk) 00:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Advertisers, in particular. Deep understandings of a target demographics browsing and purchasing habits can be funneled into quite a revenue if one knows what one is doing. Though I wonder how many of the makers of spyware actually channel that well. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:16, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I suppose the answer to your question would be the same as the question: 'When i buy a computer, who gets the money?'. – Elliott  00:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I think the OP was asking about the ultimate destination of it, not that it went to whomever made the program. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 02:30, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

If the "spyware" (per its name) "spies", and steals your personal information, then I imagine that it could end up in the hands of identity-thieves. --71.106.173.110 (talk) 08:41, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

If you are just making it up as you go along, please... don't bother. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 12:38, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

To your bank for instance. With a request to transfer your money out. Dmcq (talk) 15:12, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

How often is Launchpad updated and what is the criteria for including a language in the installer?

How often are the projects that Launchpad hosts updated? I looked all over the Launchpad website but didn't find anything (I'm talking about the translations for Ubuntu in particular). Secondly, what criteria does a language need to fulfill to be included on the Ubuntu live CD installation disk? Is it chosen by the number of native speakers or by how much the debian-installer has been translated? I would really like to know. --BiT (talk) 02:43, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone know the answer? Should I send an e-mail to Launchpad, I asked at Launchpad itself but got no answers. --BiT (talk) 04:38, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Image search engine

Are there any search engines that will take an image from me as input and search and find other similar images on the web? Thanks for the reply.--202.88.229.115 (talk) 08:55, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

There are a number of services that claim something similar: TinEye, tiltomo, Live Search, GazoPa (limited beta--probably not much help here), pixolu. You can find even more search engines with Google. – 74  09:56, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Pixsta does something similar. Jay (talk) 10:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.196.141.3 (talk) 20:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

PHP safe mode

Resolved

Sometimes I have problems on my website, and they are related to "PHP safe mode". Now... my host offered to disable it. Should I say yes? Or would my website be more insecure with that disabled? Any disadvantages of disabling that? Thanks. SF007 (talk) 15:56, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Since you don't say what the problems are, I can only assume that you are attempting to use $_POST and $_GET variables without fully declaring them. For example, instead of using $_GET["username"], you are just using $username. You should not enable this "feature". It is a terrible security hole that hackers know how to exploit. If that is not the case, please explain what the problems are. -- kainaw™ 16:38, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

At this time I have no problems, but sometimes I have errors that I know are from PHP safe mode in my MediaWiki installation. I don't mess around coding, I just use the software the way it is... Anyway, all I want to know is if it is safe to disable PHP safe mode... What are the advantages of having that on? SF007 (talk) 17:18, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

If you haven't run into limitations with safe mode then just leave it on. There are a few places where having it off is necessary but usually if you learn to program with it turned on you can get around it. If you want to know how to get around the problems of your website related to safe mode, post them here, there is almost always a "safe" way of dealing with it. --140.247.249.208 (talk) 18:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but I just asked for them to disable that. I don't think there were any advantages in having that enabled. SF007 (talk) 19:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Welcome to a botnet. Just putting that in as they often miss out on the welcome message when they recruit you. Dmcq (talk) 21:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Why? From what I have learned PHP safe mode is designed to protect the server from scripts that run on the server, not from the outside. Besides, even the developers say it is defective by design, and it will be removed in the next version. I see no reason to keep this on... SF007 (talk) 23:50, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Right, but if someone outside gets your PHP to execute arbitrary code.... you can see the problem. The reason the developers removed it is not because it is "defective by design" but because one really ought to be taking care of this at the server level, not the PHP level. But many ISPs do not do this.... again, if you're running into problems with safe mode, it's probably because you're doing something dangerous... --98.217.14.211 (talk) 02:32, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

What file types can one import into Blender?

What is the most cross-platform 3d file type? --80.58.205.37 (talk) 17:18, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

.3ds and .obj, which are very common 3D file types, are both supported, though a quick google search discovered a "they're patchy" thread from 2002. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 20:47, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Collada is designed for maximum portability. Dunno how well blender supports it though. There is a plugin. Personally, I load and save in blender's native format and write my own Python plugin to write files in a format that my application can understand. When I have to move files to another editor - I pick a format that they both support the best - there is no "one best". There are an enormous number of file importer/exporters in blender. SteveBaker (talk) 03:21, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but .max files are not supported. Apparently due to some proprietary issue... :( —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.58.205.37 (talk) 18:18, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

What are "stand-alone, unattached server side processes/deamons"?

Resolved

I am looking for a new webhost, and I came into one that says that "stand-alone, unattached server side processes/deamons" are not allowed... What the hell is that? Can you give some examples? Does it include MediaWiki? TorrentFlux? Opentracker? SF007 (talk) 19:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

It's a daemon that runs on their server, one that runs all the time (rather than just a process that is created to handle a request from a web browser, email client, or whatever). They put this stipulation in because it's a shared system, wherein their calculation as to how much capacity to provide (for a given price) depends on most customers using 0% of the system almost all the time. If someone made a program that ran all the time (like a p2p program, or something that crunched the CPU like BOINC) then you'd be using much more than they'd planned for. 87.113.74.22 (talk) 19:30, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

So that means Mediawiki would be allowed (because it just runs when a browser tickles php scripts via the hosting company's web server) - but if you wrote a special "image cleanup" script that ran in the background all the time and resized uploaded images to a given size, that would be "unattached", and something they'd not want you to do. I don't know much about TorrentFlux, but it itself appears just to be a web interface to BitTornado - and it's things like BitTornado that they're worried about. 87.113.74.22 (talk) 19:34, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, I think I understand now. It is something that is always running even if no one is visiting the website. Thanks. SF007 (talk) 23:08, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki question

How does MediaWiki store the version history of articles? Does it keep an exact snapshot of each version, or does it only keep the earliest version and maintain a list of differences, or does it employ a sophisticated combination of both? Or does it do something far more sinister? JIP | Talk 19:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

It stores the current version in a MySQL table called "cur". For older versions it stores "backwards deltas" made using a variant of the diff algorithm in a separate MysSQL table. So to recover the current version, it need only query cur. To get the second newest, it recovers the cur version, and then recovers a single diff, which it patches against cur to recover the second newest. To recover the 3rd newest it as to find and apply first the newest patch then the 2nd newest patch, and so on for older versions. So getting the current state of an article is very fast (deliberately so, because that's overwhelmingly what it is asked to do), and recovering older versions becomes more and more time consuming the more you're trying to move back (which again is wise, as that's an infrequent operation). 87.113.74.22 (talk) 19:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, so it just maintains a list of differences, but in the opposite order as it is usually done. Thanks! JIP | Talk 20:02, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

This way is a lot easier on the server, if you think about it. If you save the earliest revision and the diffs, then you have to re-make the current version every single time someone visits the page (even with Squid caches that's still a big task). When you save the current, then it'll only have to re-make the old ones, which are visited far less often (plus the Squids, making it almost 0 server load). flaminglawyer 03:44, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

WordPerfect table to text

Office software has become so advanced, some things that I could do with a single keystroke ten years ago are now obscure or impossible. Is it still possible in WordPerfect 9 to convert a table to tabbed text? —Tamfang (talk) 21:25, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

February 4

Youtube

On Youtube, who is the fastest person to reach 1000 videos? JCI (talk) 00:19, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

YouTube doesn't keep official records of that, so it'll be pretty hard to find out. Also, it's entirely possible (and quite likely) that there are no users with 1000 videos. flaminglawyer 00:28, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Furthermore, if such a statistic were available, it wouldn't take long for someone to render it completely meaningless simply by uploading 1000 videos that were about a second long each just so that he could break the record... -- Captain Disdain (talk) 00:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

(Note that videos have to be at least 1 second long. 3 months ago, I tried to upload a video that was 1 frame long, and it's still in "Upload processing..." stage, meaning it'll never work. This is almost completely irrelevant, but is a bit useful.) flaminglawyer 03:41, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

@Captain, again: It would be a bit more challenging because Youtube doesn't allow you to upload duplicate videos. flaminglawyer 06:10, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

There's no reason why the videos would have to be identical (and in fact, I didn't propose that they would be). It would be a completely stupid use of your time to make them, of course, but far be it from me to underestimate the time people on the internet are willing to use on something completely pointless. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 08:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

... (Windows XP)

Are there any computer users who have never heard of Windows XP? JCI (talk) 03:38, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

No doubt, if you really mean "any". I mean, there are probably 6 year old kids who just got on the computer today for the first time who haven't heard of it. Or the very elderly who have put off using computers and just got involved with them. Or lots of people in between who are more tuned out than you'd likely believe (cue statistics about people who can't find their own country on a map). But if you mean, "is the existence of Windows XP pretty well known and should be considered a part of basic knowledge of someone on computers," then yeah, probably. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 03:47, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I just finished working on a computer for an old lady. When I first talked to her, I asked what operating system was on her computer, and she said, "Oh, Lord. I don't know." I replied "So, does it say 'Windows XP' or 'Windows Vista' when it starts up?" She replied, "No." It turned out it was Vista, but then she wasn't sure how she connected to the Internet. She thought it was cable (she was wrong). You get the idea.--K;;m5m k;;m5m (talk) 04:01, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Dang. I was going to tell that exact same story. You beat me to it. I'll confirm that old people know nothing about computers. My grandmother even has a book called The Computer Hater's Handbook (which she actually uses quite often). flaminglawyer 06:56, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I am sure that the Matis Indians of the amazon rain forest have never herd of WinXP. I am also sure that the Afar, Anlo-Ewe, Amhara and the Ashanti tribes of Africa have never even seen a computer.– Elliott  16:28, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

True, but it's also likely they're not computer users. 62.172.106.180 (talk) 17:35, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I can confirm that there are plenty of such people, but they don't hang out on the refdesks (any refdesk, not just the computer one). I work with university-educated professionals and our organisation has a decent IT helpdesk, we have non-ancient machines (less than two years old), etc. Some of my colleagues... [sigh]. I had to show one how to turn off her computer. Another wanted to know whether the memory stick could go in the floppy drive "because it stores things, right?". Another declines to ever touch a computer, and finds out about staff meetings by osmosis, or misses them. I wouldn't care to ask any of them what their operating system is. People can be of reasonable intelligence but of Luddite tendencies; many prefer ignorance. (All the desktops here run XP.) BrainyBabe (talk) 16:24, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Children who have received laptops from the One Laptop per Child scheme might be good with computers and be able to do 'fancy things' with the Linux system on there and applications on that system but not have heard of Windows XP. --Joe^Talk_Work 02:26, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

(Yes, and likewise for some Apple users.) I highly recommend a 15-minute film called "Yellow Smiley Face" about two computer-illiterate middle-aged parents trying to make their son's computer work so they can contact him now that he is abroad. I wish I could show it to all highly computer literate people who have to deal with neophytes, to awaken their compassion. It is also extremely funny. BrainyBabe (talk) 07:18, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Wireless router/hub

I have a question about wireless routers - is it necessary, if you want to connect the computer(s) in your house wirelessly to the internet, to buy one of these? Or could we buy a wireless access point? I ask because we already have a hub provided by vonage, and if I can buy something for cheaper I will. I absolutely cannot continue to work with a wire - my computer does not work properly with them! Magog the Ogre (talk) 06:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

A wireless router is a wireless access point with network features built in. If you don't need networking, get a WAP. If you need networking, get a router. I bought a Linksys router instead of a WAP a couple years back because I though that one day I might need networking (at the time I had only 1 comp in the house). Now I have 2 comps, but I still don't need networking because of an invention called "e-mail." So it's a personal preference. Routers tend to look better than WAPs, though. flaminglawyer 06:52, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

So the HUB will only allow one computer... how can I assure that mine is the computer working on it? Does it have a built in ability to only work with certain MACs? Magog the Ogre (talk) 06:58, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Well the main difference is that a router (gateway) acts as one device to the outside. So if your internet connection only gives you one IP address (it depends on your ISP), and you want to connect multiple computers, you will need a router at some point. A wireless router is just basically a wireless access point hooked up directly to a router. But you could also connect a wireless access point to a separate router, for example if you already have a wired home network. If you connect to the Internet through something like a DSL modem or cable modem, depending on your modem model, it may already have a router built-in, in which case you would not need another router. But having an extra level of router doesn't really hurt (the inner one just acts as one device to the outer one, which then acts as one device to the outside), except make networking between computer on the different routers more complicated. Most people usually get wireless routers instead of access points, because routers are needed in many cases, they are pretty cheap and more widely available in stores, and you can't usually go wrong with a router. --76.167.241.45 (talk) 08:00, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean you have a "hub provided by vonage"? If vonage is your ISP, then what they provided you is probably a DSL/cable modem, which may or may not have a router built-in. You would have to find that out. --76.167.241.45 (talk) 08:02, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I will be compleatly honest with you; You should go to your local Best Buy, CompUSA or Fry's and explain what type of ISP you have, explain that you want to be able to connect more than on computer to the internet, they will be extremely helpful. – Elliott  16:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

What are you talking about? If you have multiple computers and only one IP address you NEED a router, unless your modem also functions as a router. What does email have to do with it? You need a network connection for email to work too. .froth. (talk) 20:15, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

By "network connection," you mean the Internet. You don't need a wireless network to send email, but you do need an Internet connection. flaminglawyer 01:04, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Already have a router guys, through Vonage. I was thinking access point bc they come much cheaper on ebay. Magog the Ogre (talk) 05:02, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

How to make .png images visible again on my Internet Explorer 7?

Recently I've realised that .png images are not being displayed on my IE7 browser, although other pictures are. This might be because I uninstalled all traces of quick something (I forget the name), an intrusive media program. How can I make .png images visible again please? 89.240.202.111 (talk) 11:10, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Apparently, this isn't a completely uncommon problem. First off, I'd like to suggest you get Firefox. It's a powerful browser with a similar setup to IE, only it doesn't break nearly as often as IE, it actually displays pages correctly, and it has fewer security issues.

That being said, it appears your problem is related to removing QuickTime, but that's not because QT has anything to do with .png files, it's because IE decided to break. I don't use IE, but I found some discussions on the topic here and this place has a link to download a fix. Hope it helps! --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 11:25, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I will follow your links. I just wanted to add that none of the images on this webpage http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/ show, EXCEPT oddly for one only: the metal-plate like image that says "</gif><png>" which appears in the section headed "What It Be (An Informal History)" on that page. 89.240.202.111 (talk) 11:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for help but I applied the registry fix as suggested by your second link, restarted the computer, but unfortunately I still cannot see png images - I cannot see the two small png images at the base of this page for example. Another change I have recently done is uninstall AVG Free antivirus and install Avast! Free antivirus in its place - why I particulary wanted to see png images was so that I could see the phg image security code so that I can register the program. 89.240.202.111 (talk) 12:09, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... I really don't know what else to try. I saw someone suggesting you reset all of your settings (although that'll delete your cookies), check to be sure your file associations haven't been messed up, or try reinstalling (although it sounded like people didn't have much success with this method). Hopefully this works; if not, it might be easier just to get Firefox or Opera. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 22:31, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Making Animated Flowcharts

I am drawing a flowchart for an electronics project and it is required to have some basic 2d animations to explain its working. Like the pulses being generated and where the're travelling to, etc. Can anyone please tell me of such free software by which I can make, maybe, animated gifs. Vector based ones would be better. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.248.70.235 (talk) 11:54, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Synfig is a free vector-based animator. --Sean 13:35, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

GIF

I need a small free program that makes gifs from a few images. thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 12:26, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Although it's a bit basic, you could do worse than trying Microsoft GIF Animator - It's a rather old product now, but it might do what you're looking for. ZX81 ^talk 13:03, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

If you're using Linux, the ImageMagick tools will do it handily. It's not clear what you want to do, but to convert a non-gif to gif, just do:

convert image.jpg image.gif

or to create an animated gif from other images do:

convert frame1.gif frame2.gif frame3.gif animated.gif

--Sean 13:33, 4 February 2009 (UT

By "makes gifs", do you mean that you want to convert an image from something other than a GIF to a GIF -or- do you want to take a bunch of images and make an animated GIF? As mentioned nearly every time someone asks an image question, GIMP easily converts images. Just open the image and select "save as", then change the extension from jpg or bmp to gif. It also does animated GIFS. Each layer in the image is a frame in the animation. -- kainaw™ 13:33, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm looking to make an animated gif from a series of images. I don't have a Linux, I'm a bit of a n00b when it comes to these things. I did try Microsoft GIF Animator but the quality of the images in the final gif was much worse than the input. How can I preserve the original quality, even if it means a bigger file size? Thanks again —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 13:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

The Gimp can do this. It's a bit tricky though. APL (talk) 14:05, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

ImageMagick is also available for Windows. You can get it here — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 14:12, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec)ImageMagick works fine on Windows. Depending on the kind of images you're animating, you'll find that GIF badly restricts available colours. To begin with GIF only supports a palette of 256 colours. Worse, that palette is shared between all the frames of animation. The restricted palette means that any GIF animator program has to dither your source images down; this means that GIF animations derived from photos will generally look grainy and horrible (although animated diagrams, which have more restricted palettes, work okay). Oh MNG, wherefore art thou. Mimetic Polyalloy (talk) 14:14, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Me again. I don't understand how to use ImageMagick, whenever I double click the program it flashes a screen of text for about a second and then closes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 14:25, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

You need to do it from the "command prompt". Assuming you are on windows, you press <windows>+r, type in cmd (hit enter), and then on prompt that opens you type convert <your image path here> <your new image path here ending with .gif instead whatever it was earlier>. If you are completely new to these things you want to see cd (command) to make things a bit easier.k Also I think windows cmd has tab completion even though I can't verify it right now. --194.197.235.61 (talk) 14:47, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it does — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 14:59, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I did that and it converted my jpg to gif, but it's not animated. Is there no simple gui for doing this? Ah well thanks anyway, I guess it just wasn't meant to be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 15:06, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Be careful - ALL images (animated or not) look much worse in GIF than in other file formats. That's because GIF uses a 'paletted color' trick to get the file size down. There can only be 256 unique colors in a GIF image. That's fine for simple cartoony graphics with no subtle color blends - but if you put any nicely rendered or photographic material into a GIF - it will look terrible and there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do to fix that. Having said that, GIMP is a great tool for the job - just load up the individual frames of animation into layers and tell it to animate them - then save as GIF. But any loss of quality that results is just a fact of life. SteveBaker (talk) 21:04, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Amount of dvorak users

How many dvorak users there are in the world? It might be because of my limited English, but I couldn't find anything useful with google. Other numbers than the amount of users in the world would also be helpful. (and should this question be on some other reference desk?) --194.197.235.61 (talk) 13:06, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I can't find any current information, but did you notice that Dvorak Simplified Keyboard says "In 1984, the Dvorak layout had an estimated 100000 users"? 81.98.38.48 (talk) 19:54, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

You might also want to note that recent studies have revealed that:

1. The dvorak layout is no faster than qwerty.
2. The early promoters of dvorak cheated, lied and otherwise finagled their way into their claim to be faster.
3. The early testing done by various arms of the US government was done with faulty experimental technique and isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

Dvorak needs to "just die already" - it's a pointless waste of everyone's time. SteveBaker (talk) 20:59, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the answers (keep posting if you still have any), especially for the 100,000 I managed to miss, even if it's not too recent/accurate. I switched to dvorak something more than half a year ago so I have to disagree with SteveBaker a little bit, my wpm rose with about 10 with accuracy near 100%, but of course that was as much due to the extra practise it took to get used to dvorak and getting an easy chance to dump my old bad qwerty habits as it was due to dvorak being somehow better than qwerty. I do have a lot less wrist pain now, but the previous point pretty much covers that too. It might be nobody should really switch if they have had years of nothing but good experience on a different layout, but the "pointless waste" piece is slightly exaggerated in my opinion. Depends on from which direction you're looking at this I guess. --194.197.235.61 (talk) 22:09, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Where are these studies? Algebraist 22:13, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

The thing is, Qwerty is clearly less than optimal. Consider letter frequency: the 8 most frequent letters in English text are E T A O I N S H. Qwerty places 3 of the 8 on the homerow, opting for winners like j and k instead (23rd and 22nd, respectively). Dvorak, however, places all 8 on the homerow (with an unfortunate transposition of U and I). Then we can move on to bigrams: the top 8 in English text are TH ER ON AN RE HE IN ED. Qwerty places 0 of the combinations on the homerow; 4 combinations (TH AN HE ED) have 1 key on the homerow, but one combination (ED) uses the same finger. Comparatively, Dvorak places 6 of the 8 entirely on the homerow. (Incidentally, Dvorak manages a much wider "spread" for these common combinations than Qwerty, which should dispel the myth that Qwerty was chosen to separate subsequent keys for a typewriter.) So, from a purely practical efficiency perspective, Dvorak would indeed seem to be better than Qwerty. Realistically though, the performance gains probably aren't that significant compared to the cost of retraining (and certainly not anywhere near the figures Dvorak claimed). – 74  02:18, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Implementing structures at a lower level

In programming languages, for example C, you can create your own structures using struct. However, I am interested in finding out how structures would be implemented at a lower level i.e. assembly --212.120.245.203 (talk) 15:19, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

You'd do something like having the address of the structure in a given register, and then you address the fields in the structure with a register+offset instruction (e.g. move #0x21 -> R1+8). Assembly generally has almost nothing by way of type, so such implementations are implicit in the code. That's essentially how C code that addresses structures is compiled. Incidentally if this all feels a lot like handling arrays, that's because array code works in much the same way (except that +8 is computed rather than constant). Mimetic Polyalloy (talk) 15:39, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

You need to be careful choosing that offset if you are interfacing with other than your own assembly code. I believe 99% that standard c requires only the first field of struct to be "on it's place", ie you can cast the struct pointer to the type of first field pointer and get meaningful results. More stricter rules depend on your architecture/os/compiler, google is your friend. If you are on linux go to http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Specifications and pick the most relevant. --194.197.235.61 (talk) 16:02, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Most assembler languages I have seen have no "struct". A struct is just a short-cut in C language to allocate many bytes and tell the compiler how each byte should be interpreted (e.g. first few as an unsigned int, next few bytes as a pointer, etc). It is a shortcut for doing the same set of data operations every time it appears in the code. If you want to allocate several bytes and interpret them in special ways, you simply do that with individual assembly-language instructions. I would go so far as saying that any assembly-language which included complex forms like struct probably gets compiled down to a lower-level language at some point. Nimur (talk) 16:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's right (and it's the downfall of many a cleverdicky piece of C, never mind assembly). Some architectures mandate than n-size objects be on n-bit boundaries; to try to address them more finely either makes for un-compilable code (where the assembly can't be rendered into machine code, because that granularity is implicit in the instruction coding) or code that will SIGBUS. Even on architectures which do allow mis-aligned access (IA32, SPARC(kinda)) there is often a penalty of additional cycles to pay. Of course if someone is coding in assembly they don't get to be ignorant of such things (and this is one case C programmers can't ignore either). Mimetic Polyalloy (talk) 17:03, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Many assemblers (as distinguished from assembly language) do support a "struct"-like keyword. Nasm for example has 'struc' (note: no 't'), and gas has '.struct'. The way these are declared/used is not standardized of course. -- Fullstop (talk) 22:39, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Ubuntu Question

Is there a program that will let me install Ubuntu on to a different hard drive in my computer while running Ubuntu? I am not sure that i phrased that currectly so let me explain. Lets say that i have installed Ubuntu on to a flash drive, i take that flash drive to a friends house and plug it in to his computer, he starts playing around with Ubuntu and desides that he wants me to install it on to his computer, but alas i have forgotten my CD... What i want is to be able to open a program that will go through the instalation of Ubuntu from within Ubuntu. Similar to the built in utility "Create a USB startup disk" Thank you – Elliott  16:54, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

You can put ubuntu on to a memory stick and go from there see here for details. BigDunc^Talk 17:41, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Also see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromLinux. --194.197.235.61 (talk) 17:45, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Open a terminal and type: ubiquity (that is the official Ubuntu installer), it should work... SF007 (talk) 17:50, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Importing whole iTunes Library

hi, ok basically a few days ago i copied the iTunes library/database/whatever file onto my external HD since i have now stripped down and re added everything to my computer. I have now also re downloaded and installed iTunes, so my question is 'how do i re-add/open my previous iTunes library into iTunes, with all the right information and stuff?'. A quick look around the options revealed nothing. (I am using Windows XP). Thanks, --84.68.135.13 (talk) 17:47, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Make sure iTunes is closed and then just copy the libraries files that you backed up in the first case (iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Music Library.xml) back to your "My Music\iTunes" folder overwriting the new ones that iTunes made when you re-installed it. I would recommend copying the files rather than moving incase there is a problem so you will still have a copy of them. After doing this just reopen iTunes. If the location of the music on the hard disk has changed (i.e. not the same drive and path) you will need to go into the iTunes options and change this to the new path. Hope this helps! ZX81 ^talk 17:59, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Since I am going to be doing the very same thing soon, please post the results if you try this. I would love to know it works before I take the plunge. thanks and cheers, 10draftsdeep (talk) 21:11, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

As long as you copy both library files (and obviously all the music!), it will work. I've done it myself many times. Sometimes there are other temporary files in the My Music\iTunes directory so you may wish to copy them too, but only the files mentioned above are the ones that are needed. As a side note, I store my album artwork IN the MP3 files, but if you store them on the disk they'll be in subdirectories of the iTunes folder so just copy the whole folder/all files to be sure. ZX81 ^talk 21:27, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Hacking Challenge

My professor has challenged our class to 'hack' into his laptop that just sits at the front of the room. The strange part is he's a biology professor and this has nothing to do with our class work, apparently he just challenges all of his students to do this. I am very computer literate but I don't really know where to start; I guess I'd need to find his IP address. We're on the same network so it can't be that hard. Any help with this would be great; not only would it just be cool, but I'm always looking to impress my profs! -Pete5x5 (talk) 17:58, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

While your professor is not looking, get to the laptop, (assuming he has windows) press <windows>+r and type in msg * Hacked by <your name here>. That should convince him, but won't be so easy if he's not logged in all the time. --194.197.235.61 (talk) 18:06, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if having his IP address would be helpful, but the easiest way to get it is to send him an e-mail that links back to server of yours. (Sometimes even just looking at e-mails he has sent will have the IP address of the sending computer in the headers.) If it were me, I'd probably use the fact of my being a student as a way to get my foot in the door; try to send him an assignment or program or something that was really a custom virus or backdoor program. Of course, whether he'd actually appreciate getting his security very much compromised, despite making it an open challenge, is questionable. --140.247.254.112 (talk) 18:31, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

If you're sure you have permission... well, the obvious way that you can't help learning if you know anything about networking at all..... if his laptop is connected to the network and advertising itself on the windows network as "BioProfLappy" it's pretty obvious which is his, otherwise you're probably going to have to guess. To find his IP address run nbtstat BioProfLappy. You can run something like nmap or I guess Nessus (software) to see what services are facing the network and metasploit or an online database to find shellcode matching one of the daemons (and version).. I've never used it but I think the metasploit client thing lets you inject the shellcode automatically and handles the connect back or socket reuse.. well that gets you shell access, I guess that's what you mean by 'hack'. Just create a text file on his desktop that says "hi it's john jacob jingleheimer schmitt" or whatever your name is and you win the contest. If he's behind a software firewall or a NAT there's nothing you can do that I know of other than just intercepting his traffic, if that counts as a hack. You can sometimes do this on a wireless network by just passively listening ("promiscuous mode"). I guess if you waited for him to log into wikipedia (it still doesn't use secure login right? And anyway the login cookie's being sent in the clear) then you could show him his password and sort of win the contest. Apparently you can add http.cookie to your wireshark filters to get just HTTP requests with cookies, and then you can use one of many firefox extensions to import and use it. This can be a very educational excercise but don't get carried away and turn it into a negative experience.. .froth. (talk) 19:00, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

If it were a CS professor's assignment I'd say "have fun", but in this particular case I have to advise against the attempt. It would seem that the professor doesn't understand/realize exactly what he is suggesting, which would imply shaky consent at best. "Hacking" is probably against the code of conduct, and even if the professor accepts the results in good humor (including potential damage to his computer), the network administrators whose network you used to "attack" another computer might be significantly less understanding. – 74  19:18, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Is it connected wirelessly? If so, it should be pretty easy to crack it by using a tool like Wireshark or Kismet. If it's a wired connection, try typing ipconfig /all inside a computer attached to the network to find your subnet mask. Then, you can try scanning all computers within the network (represented with a zero or two) with nmap or Nessus. You can also try typing net view to find his laptop. Let us know what the results of the nmap and Nessus scans are, and we'll be able to point you in the right direction. If that doesn't work, then just send him a virus inside your next assignment. ;) Just embed it into a Word document (as VBA) and use it to install Netcat.--K;;m5m k;;m5m (talk) 19:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. He is connected wirelessly, and I really like the idea of sending him a virus embedded in an assignment (he'd think that was clever, although I'm almost positive he'd catch it). I'll look up the software you've mentioned and hopefully the results of the scan will tell me something useful (with help deciphering, of course). I was also thinking that there's probably a way to do it using only the terminal/command prompt (I've heard of running commands on a local computer by giving yourself admin access) and that might be another thing to look into, if I could figure out how to do it. Thanks again. -Pete5x5 (talk) 20:56, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

You wrote "That just sits at the front of the room". If you have physical access to the PC, boot it with an Ophcrack CD. If the password is 14 characters or less, you're Administrator within half a minute. Then you can configure it however you like, add extra accounts etc, and later log in from the network. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 22:18, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Try Metasploit. --wj32 ^t/c 05:05, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

You don't even need Ophcrack. Just reset the password using a bootable CD (there are plenty out there) --wj32 ^t/c 05:07, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Yea, but there's nothing more l33t than to walk up and tell him his password. --76.167.241.45 (talk) 06:58, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

You could try humor - just email him this:

BAD NEWS:

You have just been infected with the Honor System Virus.

As it's name implies, this virus works by the honor system

please reboot your computer, delete three files at random

then forward this email to five of your friends.

Thank you.

<insert your name here>

SteveBaker (talk) 20:50, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

(Oh crap - now I've gone and infected half of the WP:RD staff...sorry - my bad!) SteveBaker (talk) 20:52, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm safe: I use Linux :-) Carnildo (talk) 22:28, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Steve, Steve, Steve! You only made 1 grammatical mistake in that message - you need at least 4 per sentence, or it sounds totally unrealistic! :) - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 22:00, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Need Help with A Shell Script

Resolved

Hello wikipedians,

I've recently made the move to ubuntu, and have been loving it. One thing I miss tho, is being able to use VB Express to write my programs (I'll probably move on to C++ shortly). I need a quick fix to my programming needs tho, so I've come here lookin for help.

I have a big text file with lines consisting solely of ten digit numbers (file is close to 1gig in size). I need them "converted" into "file+path" thingy. What I mean is 1234567890 would be turned into a relative path 1\2\3\4\5\6\7\8\9\0.txt, with nothing in the actual text file (or maybe just a single space).

Thanks in Advance - PrinzPH (talk) 18:26, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

This thingy will do it: sed 's/\(.\)/\1\//g; s/$/.txt/; s/\/\././' < your_numbersfile | awk '{system("touch " $0)}'. If you regret/I misunderstood your question replace touch with rm. --194.197.235.61 (talk) 18:49, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I thought you'd need something like 'mkdir -p path' to create the various subdirectories. Does 'touch' create the path in addition to the file? Anyway, the request seems rather odd; PrinzPH, would you be willing to elaborate on what you are trying to accomplish? – 74  19:00, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

The following Perl script will do what you want (the script above has problems). You might consider learning Bash, Perl or Python rather than C++ for VB-level tasks. C++ is *way* more difficult to get anything done with. --Sean 19:18, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use File::Path;

while (<>)
{
    s/\s//g;
    my @nums = split '';
    next unless @nums == 10;
    my $filenum = pop @nums;
    my $dir = join '/', @nums;
    mkpath $dir;
    open F, "> $dir/$filenum.txt" or die $!;
    close F or die $!;
}

Oops, touch doesn't create directories. I'm sorry if there was any trouble. --194.197.235.61 (talk) 19:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt responses. Btw, am I missing something? I can't seem to make out where the script sean was kind enough to give takes in input from the 'source' text file. Also, this is an experiment of mine. The text file is actually more like 2+ gigs (its the Do Not Call List), and I was considering ways of checking if a phone number was included. I was initially thinking of just using some form of database, but i thought that something like ' if exists('5/5/5/1/1/1/2/2/3/3.txt')' might have advantages. I was thinking using directories might save on disk usage too (a couple of bytes in a text file vs a 0byte directory/file). I dunno, I guess am just crazy ;) - PrinzPH (talk) 20:09, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Sean's script reads input from stdin. Save it to a file, do chmod a+x scriptfile to give all users permissions to execute it, and then ./scriptfile < numbersfile to execute and pipe numbersfile to scripts input. --194.197.235.61 (talk) 20:29, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec) The '<>' above is a little bit of Perl magic that reads input, either passed to the script via a '|' (cat foo | ./ex.pl) or from files added to the command line (./ex.pl foo). Your storage scheme will hide the disk space cost in directories (many, many directories) instead of the index file. This will be significantly less efficient for several reasons: 1.) directories will use more disk space total (file system overhead); 2.) the information will be spread out on the disk, resulting in longer access times; 3.) file systems were not intended to store information in this manner. A database makes much more sense in this case—this is a problem they were designed to solve, after all—and should provide close to optimal performance without "reinventing the wheel". – 74  20:32, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

A close-to-optimal solution to your problem would be to sort the file and then do a binary search on it:

sort do-not-call.txt > do-not-call-sorted.txt
look 5551112233 do-not-call-sorted.txt

--Sean 23:43, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all the feedback, I've learned from all the examples / reason you have given. I will go the database route. Thanks again! - PrinzPH (talk) 01:24, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Keeping a hard drive in a fridge on a permanent baisis

Here's one that'll probably give you folks a laugh. I have a hard drive with frequent heat problems- ones I originally mistook for its total breakdown, but which I now understand are a transient if frequently-recurring problem. I have an ordinary mini-fridge within three feet of my computer- and, with a little experimentation, the hard drive can fit within indefinitely, with the door sealing capably around the cables and not pinching them. My question is if there's anything about this setup that could cause permanent damage to the drive- humidity within the fridge, for instance. -199.89.180.65 (talk) 20:53, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

There are hazards to over-chilling - the mechanical parts may become brittle and may actually decrease lifetime; thermal contraction may cause out-of-spec hard-drive head float distances; etc. I have never run a harddrive in a refrigerator, but I have run computers outdoors for extended periods of time in arctic winters, and as a general rule this is bad for device lifetime. Nimur (talk) 21:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Overheating of the drive is probably an advanced sign of failure; I wouldn't put anything important on the drive. I don't have any experience with refrigerated disk drives, but I suspect the cold temperatures could have an adverse effect on the mechanical components, particularly during start-up. If the drive is worthless on its own then you might as well run it in the fridge (even if its lifetime is effectively reduced), just don't depend on it to store vital information. – 74  21:49, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Why not just get a big fan and blow on it? --76.167.241.45 (talk) 05:23, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

A "mini fridge" is not that cold, is it? If you could set the temperature to, say, 10°C it might just work. I have no practical experience in this matter, though. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 08:45, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

...but, of course, the disk is surely designed to be operated at room temperature, so if it becomes overheated, there is a problem with it. Do not store the only copy of your latest novel on it. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 08:55, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Fridges are actually very dry places - so once the drive has cooled down, humidity shouldn't be a problem. However when you take it out of the fridge, it will immediately come into contact with warm, humid air and water will condense onto it. That could possible ruin it. SteveBaker (talk) 20:31, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

You could possibly get a drop of water falling on it in a fridge, especially one with a defrost cycle. That is, frost can build up, and then melt during the defrost cycle, and drip. Normally they design a fridge not to do that, but they can screw up, of course. One drop of water could ruin a hard drive, so you might want to put something on the shelf over it, like aluminum foil, to prevent this. StuRat (talk) 21:03, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Startup sound copyright

Are certain computer sound effects copyrighted? For example, the Windows XP start up sound, or the old Mac OS Chimes of Death sound. Would it be considered copyright infringed to used these examples in particular? --Randoman412 (talk) 23:16, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why they shouldn't be copyrightable, but copyright law is shrouded in difficulties. What purpose did you intend to use them for? Algebraist 23:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, they are certainly copyrighted. I even recall reading an article once about the guy who made the Windows XP start up sound, though for the life of me I can't find it. As for infringement, that's a totally different determination—if they were, say, incidentally used in a movie that would almost certainly fall under "fair use". If you're remixing an entire sound around them, then it's a different determination. The fact that they are start up sounds (and not, say, music from a rock star) would certainly play into a court's assessment of whether it is "fair use" (nature of the work in question matters), but still, there's no blanket way to know yes or no. This is not legal advice, just a warning: could potentially be infringement, but might not be. Even a lawyer would only be able to tell you what they feel it is—only a judge would be able to really tell you one way or another (which is not a situation you want to be in). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 01:48, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

If you used the sounds on a computer they were installed on by playing the file, there would be no infringement issue. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:24, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Remember that anything that CAN be copyrighted - automatically IS copyrighted. The author doesn't have to do or say anything special to make it so. Hence, for things like sounds, music, pictures, movies, software and text - your assumption should always be that it IS copyrighted unless there is something specificially saying that it's not. SteveBaker (talk) 20:28, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you can pretty much assume that Microsoft doesn't release something under the Creative Commons ;) --BiT (talk) 13:11, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

February 5

Elysium MIDI Sequencer on the PC?

Is there any generative midi software similar to the wonderful Elysium (Mac) that will run on a PC? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.82.79.175 (talk) 01:24, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Although far from a complete answer, you can have a look at this previous RD question. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 08:38, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

nameserver questions

I'm setting up a nameserver using BIND along with Apache for server-ing. I've got 3 questions:

1. Can I set up BIND to point to itself? i.e., can I run BIND and Apache on the same machine?
2. How do I set up a second nameserver? Godaddy requires one plus a backup, which means two nameservers are required (1+1=2). I only have 1 IP address. What do I do about this?
3. Can I make Godaddy's nameserver settings point to an IP address instead of the standard "ns1.(example).com"? flaminglawyer 01:50, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

1. Yes you can run both BIND and Apache on the same machine, the two processes don't interact at all.
2. If you can get a second (Internet routable) IP address you could assign them to the same machine and have them both pointing to the same nameserver, although obviously this would defeat the redundancy that the 2nd nameserver is supposed to provide. Will Godaddy themselves provides either a master or slave DNS server?
3. Nameservers in domain records have to use DNS hostnames (ns1.domain.com etc) but you could always use something like DynDNS to create a virtual hostname, although if you have a domain already it might be just easier to set up ns1.domain.com in that domains DNS? (you can use the same domain for DNS, you just have to specify the IP/glue records at the point the nameservers are setup as well as the name - the process varies depending on the type of domain).

Hope this helps! ZX81 ^talk 15:12, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

There are also free secondary DNS servers, like [6]. MTM (talk) 15:23, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

HTTPS and Hotmail

When I log into Hotmail the login page is encrypted via HTTPS, but the page that displays the list of emails and the emails themselves are not. Does this mean that the email list and the email themselves are potentially readable by anybody between me and the hotmail web server? Thanks Middle Bug (talk) 14:30, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

If the message content was delivered by regular unencrypted HTTP then yes, potentially it's readable by someone between you and them. ZX81 ^talk

Yes, if transmitted using http your email is viewable by anyone between your computer and the server (and, potentially, someone who isn't directly between). You might check if Hotmail includes an option in user preferences to enable full-session SSL (https) encryption—some webmail services do. – 74  14:48, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

If every page were to be transferred by HTTPS, won't the page load very very slowly, if entire e-mails (and attachments) are to be encrypted? I would like to know the experience of anyone using a full-session SSL. Jay (talk) 15:41, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

It's more intensive for the server which I imagine is why Hotmail only do the login via SSL and obviously there's more work for the client computer to do, but I've personally found the speed difference on the client side with modern computers to be negligible (this is using an Exchange server with and without SSL). ZX81 ^talk 15:55, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I use a VPN all the time and I have never noticed it to be a slowdown over unencrypted traffic. --140.247.242.231 (talk) 17:38, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Gmail allows permanent SSL. It doesn't feel any slower, but all that AJAX and prefetching probably help — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 18:28, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

The SSL overhead is slight, and any content encoding should (not sure) happen pre-ssl layer, so it won't be any larger. I don't think hotmail has a constant SSL mode. I don't think yahoo does either, but gmail does. Hotmail does encrypt your login credentials, but that doesn't help for session hijacking purposes. Best advice is to either tunnel the connection as best you can, or just make sure to log out when you're done (this will help with session hijacking, but not your other concerns). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shadowjams (talk • contribs) 10:27, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Receiving a web-page through email

Is there any service where I can type an http address and receive the content of the page on my email? It may sound useless, but I need it sometimes to pass the filter of my proxy. Some legit pages are wrongly classified as 'racist' or 'violence' when they are only normal news about racism or violence. And no I have no way of changing the filter rules. Mr.K. (talk) 16:00, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Try webtomail.co.cc SN0WKITT3N 16:15, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Having problems installing Microsoft office communicator 2007

I bought it yesterday and whenever I try to enter product key it tells me:

The Microsoft Office Activation Assistant was unable to request your trial activation key. Please check your Internet connection and try again. If the error continues, go to www.microsoft.com/office/pctrial2007 to request a trial activation key. The Microsoft Office Activation Assistant was unable to launch your 2007 Microsoft Office release. Please re-enter your selection or open Microsoft Office from the directory. If the error continues, go to www.microsoft.com/office/pctrial2007 for additional information.

I am not sure how to install it from the directory and I can't seem to find any help on the aforementioned web page. It even told me the same thing when I downloaded the trial version from Microsoft. I figured I could just bypass the possible glitch on the disk and then add in my product key to that version, but that didn't work either. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 18:27, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

PC keeps restarting

What could be wrong with my PC? It keeps restarting whenever I open my computer, go to the C drive, or whenever I select something similar from a drop down list in, for example, a dialog box for saving or opening files. Whenever I do any of these something inside starts to make a loud "WHURRING" noise and then the PC just restarts. --RMFan1 (talk) 21:10, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

There are two primary sources of PC rebooting (and trillions of secondary sources - so you may have one that isn't a primary reason). The biggest reason is overheating. The computer gets too hot. You often hear the fans kick into high speed. And reboot. The other is power drain. Some device sucks too much power. The power supply can't keep up. Reboot. Overheating can be caused by many things - often a component that is breaking down. A device sucking too much power can be anything (nVidia video cards and Via bus controllers are notorious for this problem). So, it is impossible to say exactly what is wrong. The normal fix is to swap out parts one by one until you find the one that is bad. -- kainaw™ 21:17, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately I experienced one of these secondary sources last week. My power supply seemed the problem so I changed it. Still experienced random rebooting. Exchanged network, graphics and sound cards - no difference. In the end it had to be the motherboard - and it was. Sandman30s (talk) 10:17, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

You can try running the computer with the case off and a fan blowing on it to see if overheating is the problem. StuRat (talk) 05:22, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

To add to StuRat's advice, take a can of compressed air and use it to clean the inside of your computer (my removing the accumulated dust); see if that brings any improvement. If not, you can take your computer completely apart, and reassemble it piece by piece: first only the motherboard, power supply, hard drive, graphics card (if your motherboard doesn't have integrated graphics). See if it runs without rebooting. Now add another component, and test again. It's a slow method, but probably your best bet for identifying the culprit. — QuantumEleven 11:51, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I strongly suspect it is PC over heating. The free software, PC Wizard, at http://www.cpuid.com/ can help determine that. That software can show you your processors temperature and you can see how hot the processor gets. I think my PC over heats at around 80 degrees if I remember right. Does your processor have a heatsink on it? I'd be shocked if it doesn't. Make sure the heatsink is making good contact with the processor. You may have to add some grease that is used for connecting the two and transferring heat. A small tube is available at Radio Shack for less that $5. If the heat sink and processor did get pulled apart and put back, there is a good chance you have to add grease.

Does the processor have it's own fan? Make sure it is working. That whurring noise you hear may be that fan kicking in. Maybe it's bearings are bad. PC Wizard also give you fan info. Processor fans are also pretty inexpensive. Some times the processor does NOT have it's own fan, but has a piece of plastic that diverts the air pulled from a fan on the back of the PC from off the processor. If the processor does NOT have it's own fan just above the processor, It probably is supposed to have one. If it has one, make sure that piece of plastic is in place. --Wonderley (talk) 02:10, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Web really slow

So I have one PC cabled to the modem, which also broadcasts the signal to two laptops. For several months all was fine; the PC (Vista Home Premium) got a slightly faster connection than the laptops. Now, the PC's internet connection slows down to a crawl. It's got a connection, but a very, very slow one. The laptops are fine, so it's not the supply. It just happened so fast - and not straight after I changed any settings. As a precaution, I'm running full virus scans. Any other ideas? - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 21:21, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Spyware scans in addition to virus scans. Does Vista have a "boot in safe mode with networking"? That might let you see how the connection is without a lot of things starting up at boot time. Also, try a bootable CD of some type, e.g. gOS which will let you run a browser and verify that it's not a problem with the router/modem. --LarryMac | Talk 21:26, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Update: in short, it's got worse, to a point of having no connection at all. The router doesn't list the computer among its list of attached devices, yet if I plug the same wire into one of the laptops and turn off wireless, I can still access the net. This leads me to believe that the problem is with the port on the back of the computer, and I will probably order a USB-Ethernet converter later today. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 10:47, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Your going down the right path for debugging. But, I'd also look at Device Manager and Event Viewer for error messages. That's under (Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management), Then there is Device Manager and Event Viewer - System. --Wonderley (talk) 02:28, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Problem installing Linux

I have recently been trying to install Xubuntu 7.04 on my laptop and while the first steps on the text installer work fine I have been getting troubles when I reach the partitioning part; the installer prompts me to choose and option to partition and I have chosen "Resize IDE1 Master...", then it asks me for how much space to partition but when I fill that and go ahead, the screen changes to start the partition but the partition process never moves from 0% until an error screen appears which reads "Resize Operation Failure. An error ocurred while writing the changes to the storage devices. The resize operation is aborted." I have clicked continue and it takes me to a new screen that lists my partition settings and which gives me two options; a) Undo changes to partition, b) Finish Partition and continue. I know b) sounds like the logical option but if there was an error I don't want to go ahead and found out I messed it up. Does any know why this could be happening and/or how can I fix it? Any info is appreciated. Thanks! PabloClark (talk) 23:25, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

A resize (to a larger size) may only work if you have unallocated space available to add to the partition. Is this the case or has all disk space already been allocated to partitions ? StuRat (talk) 05:19, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

This is the first time I have partitioned the hard drive and it should have enough space available, however, I will double check that. Is there any other things that might cause that error to occur? Thanks! PabloClark (talk) 01:01, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe there is an issue with the units on the amount of space you typed in ? Perhaps it was asking for the number of GB and you typed in the number of MB, for example. What value did you type in ? StuRat (talk) 09:25, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Can you get to a console from the installer (through some menu or by pressing ctrl-alt-f1 or some other f key)? It's likely there's a more verbose error message in somewhere, at least on my 8.10 there are some logs in /var/log/installer/. --194.197.235.61 (talk) 09:45, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I will try to look for those logs. Now that you mentioned that StuRat, I think I might suspect what the problem is. I typed in 27 GB (that is 44% of PC HD, and 44% is also that amount of HD already occupied in my PC) which is the minimum it allows me; is that amount in typing in is the amount in giving to Xubuntu or the amount I am keeping for Windows? PabloClark (talk) 15:48, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

From the behavior that sounds like the amount it's keeping for Windows, although that certainly seems backwards from how I'd expect it to work. Another thought is that you may have a hardware problem with the hard disk. Perhaps it can't write the allocation info to the portion of the disk where that info is stored. Try running SCANDISK. StuRat (talk) 22:57, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

February 6

Switching keyboards in Windows Vista

I recently installed WinVista Business (32) on a computer in an office here. It's English-language Windows, with a standard US keyboard, but because "here" is Japan, I set it up to have the Japanese IME (i.e. the option of inputting Japanese), and of course to be in the Japanese time zone. Perhaps it's for this reason that sometimes Windows "thinks" it is or should be in Japanese; e.g. Gnumeric installed itself with a Japanese-language menu system, without my asking it to do so (and with no obvious way of changing to English). Today Windows announced that it needed various updates, so I stupidly agreed, and it downloaded and installed them. As a result it thinks that it has a Japanese-market keyboard attached. (Thus for example the apostrophe is Shift-7, which I only remember as I happen to have a Japanese-market keyboard right next to me. Just typing this message is a pain, as parentheses etc. are all in different places.)

I want to change back. But how?

Yes, "Regional and Language Options" in Control Panel does have the tab "Keyboards and Languages", which has "Change keyboards..." (and nothing else). But this is merely about inputting languages on your given physical keyboard. Meanwhile, "Keyboard" in Control Panel has "Keyboard Properties", and within this is "Hardware". This tells me that the "Manufacturer" is "(Standard keyboards)" (actually it's Compaq) but it says nothing about a Japanese layout. "Driver" offers "HID Keyboard Device", which lists kbdclass.sys and kbdhid.sys, which Explorer shows me as dated 2 February, which is when I set up the system.

Um, WtF am I supposed to do?

My problem isn't Japanese specific. If anyone knows how to change from a QWERTY to an AZERTY (or Dvorak) keyboard, or vice versa, that I think would answer my question.

(And no, I don't have a backup. I have a freshly burned Clonezilla Live CD ready for that job, and was going to back up immediately after updating Windows. Duh.) Tama1988 (talk) 08:56, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

There's Microsoft's own guide to switching to dvorak (applies to others too I think) at http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsvista/dvorak.aspx. Maybe somebody else here would know why vista decided to switch the layout in the first place? --194.197.235.61 (talk) 10:13, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Edit conflict! Thank you, 194.197! In the meantime. . . .

Extrapolating from the advice here (for installing Dvorak on XP), I installed an English-US keyboard. In "Text services and Input Languages" I now see:

EN English (United States)

Keyboard

• US
• United States-International

JP Japanese (Japan)

Keyboard

• Microsoft Office IME 2007

This seems to conflate hardware and software. And sure enough in reality it does conflate the two. I have a choice:

• Type as expected (e.g. ":" on the keytop brings ":") but not Japanese script;
• Type in roman letters or Japanese script (though plenty of characters are in the wrong places, e.g. ":" on the keytop brings "+").

Therefore typing Japanese script is most laborious (quite unlike the ease with which it was possible just 24 hours ago on the same computer, running Vista, with the same keyboard).

I have one [physical] keyboard. It's a US keyboard. I want to install Microsoft Office IME 2007 for it, and not for the Japanese keyboard that I don't have.

When I highlight either "EN English (United States)" or the line "Keyboard" immediately below this, the "Add" button is operable. However, I can't add "Microsoft Office IME 2007": this choice is bold, presumably meaning that it's already present.

I'm trying hard not to say rude things about Windows Vista.... Tama1988 (talk) 10:18, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm. I definitely had exactly the same problem when I was in Japan last year. I know your pain. But I cannot seem to remember how I solved the problem... I'll keep thinking about it, and if it comes to me, I'll let you know. Good luck! がんばって！ LordAmeth (talk) 11:30, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! What irritates me immensely is that it was working well yesterday, and then Windows so "updated" it. And what I find bizarre is that all these menus seem to confuse two quite different things: (1) what physical keyboard you have and how it works for Roman letters, and (2) what extras (e.g. Japanese script) you want for it. (Surely French speakers should be able to type Japanese on AZERTY keyboards, etc.) Well, I have to leave the office now; I really hope I get a reply during my night, otherwise my fellow-users of this room will have it in for me. Tama1988 (talk) 11:37, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Once you get the update sorted out you might want to look at the Advanced Key Settings tab in the Language Bar settings. Certain key combinations can be used to switch keyboards. I had a similar problem with the language & keyboard settings apparently changing spontaneously, until I realised that I was sometimes lingering on some keys while typing. Astronaut (talk) 00:43, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but I have to get things sorted out first.

Four pages about installation for Vista -- first, second, third,fourth -- all show that once you've correctly installed the wherewithal for a non-Roman script you end up with two (or more) "Installed Services" (under "Text Services and Input Languages"), each of which has a "Keyboard"; for English and Japanese, you prototypically get:

EN English (United States)

Keyboard

• US

JP Japanese (Japan)

Keyboard

• Microsoft IME

As far as I can see, there's nothing indication there of which keyboard layout you have; I mean, nothing to tell you whether (for example) shift-semicolon is colon (US) or plus (Japanese).

What's interesting is that in the first and second of these links we see "Japanese (Japan)|Keyboard|Microsoft IME" being selected for the installation process, but not also "Japanese (Japan)|Keyboard|Japan"; in the third, it is selected (by mistake?). Anyway, the result of the installation procedures looks (in "Text Services and Input Languages") pretty much indistinguishable from what I have here.

(Oh, at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 are rather more informative-looking pages about XP, if anyone's interested.)

I can't think that I can be helped by installing anything afresh. Rather, I want to uninstall whatever's specific to Japanese, and then to reinstall it with fingers crossed. Windows lets me uninstall, but for reinstallation I fear I'd need the distribution CD/DVD -- which I don't have, as the dual Windows system (you make a one-time selection between Japanese and English; the one you don't want is deleted) was placed on the hard drive by an IBM serviceman. Tama1988 (talk) 05:44, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Fixed (or perhaps resolved) thanks to Oda Mari's pointer (on my talk page) to this informative page. REGEDIT: it's one useful part of Windows. I think I shall now drink a beer. Tama1988 (talk) 07:19, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Voip

how can we implement mobile to mobile phone calls via internet —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nidheeshks (talk • contribs) 10:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Have you read our VOIP article ? What more do you want to know ? StuRat (talk) 15:59, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

ymmetrical face

is it ture that, Contrary to popular belief, if you actually encountered a perfectly symmetrical face, you would be repulsed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 11:42, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

What -- a face with its right side completely matching the left? Why would you be repulsed? Is this some kind of an urban legend? Let me put it this way: if it was true, it would be easy to reproduce such a face and make it look completely lifelike, and see if it repulsed people. In fact, faces like that have undoubtedly been produced already...

...in fact, I just made one myself, and it took me about a minute in Photoshop. Take a look. I used the image here as a source, simply because it was the first image that popped up when I did a Google image search for "face" -- it's not a photograph, but a composite image of 32 male faces, an "average" face, but that shouldn't matter. Do you feel repulsed? I don't. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 13:10, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I do, thanks for comfirming my theory. I'm sure it's just an urban legend for most other people though —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 13:29, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

You're repulsed by that? Well, okay then. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 13:33, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

There's the theory that a minor imperfection in the appearance makes one look even better, as in women who put fake moles on their faces in former times. However, at least for me, it doesn't make them look more attractive. StuRat (talk) 15:57, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

This effect (well, not this exactly, but pretty much) is called the uncanny valley effect. flaminglawyer 21:51, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea why this is in the computing desk but anyway. AFAIK, nost studies show the more symmetrical a face, the more attractive it is. We even have an article Symmetry (physical attractiveness). I'm not sure whether a perfectly symmetrical face will problematic but I doubt it, there are various ways, e.g. highlighted above we can get a highly symmetrical face and I believe there are used in some of the experiments. I don't think the uncanny valley thing is that relevant, it's describing things we know and associate consciously as unreal. Actually more accurately it's desribing things which are almost human but not close enough for us to regard them as human. Edit, remind myself to always read article before linking

"Measures of human body symmetry correlate with attractiveness, but studies manipulating human face images report a preference for asymmetry. These results may reflect unnatural feature shapes and changes in skin textures introduced by image processing. When the shape of facial features is varied (with skin textures held constant), increasing symmetry of face shape increases ratings of attractiveness for both male and female faces. These findings imply facial symmetry may have a positive impact on mate selection in humans."

So it sounds like you were almost right. Facial symmetry is believed to be important, and perfect facial symmetry probably even better but imperfect facial symmetry is not and in fact worse. The problem is testing this. You can't do subjective modifications to try and improve the face to make it seem more perfectly symmetrical since it could easily be you're just making the face seem better in other ways. So it turns out the uncanny valley is more relevant then I guessed (I'm not that surprised that artificial symmetry isn't preferred actually just didn't occur to me it's what we're talking about). P.S. Obviously since most of the imperfect symmetry images were produced with computers the desk is more relevant then I thought but I still feel science would be better Nil Einne (talk) 13:39, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd wondered about why it was asked here as well, but it led to the interesting result of Captain Disdain creating such a face on a computer. I imagine if asked on the Science Desk we would have had answers about the evolutionary pressure to find fit mates, and symmetry of the face being one indicator of fitness. If asked on the Humanities Desk we might have had references to symmetrical and non-symmetrical faces in artwork, and aesthetics in various cultures. If asked on the Math Desk we might have had discussions of X- and Y-symmetry. If asked on the Entertainment Desk we might have had refs to famous actors with symmetrical and non-symmetrical faces. If asked on the Language Desk we might have had some foreign language words for beauty that also mean symmetrical. The Misc Desk might have produced some personal opinions on which is better. StuRat (talk) 15:31, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Dial-up speed

Roughly how long would it take to download 1Mb of data using a 56 kbit/s modem. I've read the article and similar articles, but I still cannot figure out the speed in practical terms. Thanks.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 12:08, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

1 megabit is 1,048,576 bits, and 56k modem can download 56,000 bits per second, so the time in seconds is 1048576/56000 = 18.7 seconds (assuming by Mb you meant megabit - for 1 megabyte, multiply this by 8). That's the theoretical minimum - in real life it's likely to take longer — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 12:40, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

A couple things come into play that affect the real download time vs the theoretical maximum. In North America, most "56k" actually have a maximum connection of 53k, so that's about a 5% decrease in throughput right off the top. No matter where you are, it takes a very "clean" line to achieve the top speed. The protocol overhead must also be taken into account. Assuming some kind of TCP/IP connection, each individual packet will have a number of bytes attached to it which are used to control the transmission, so a 1MB file will actually result in more than 1MB of data being transferred. And of course there's traffic on the internet to consider, loads on the server and the client, etc. I Googled "calculate download speeds" and found any number of online calculators, two out of the three I tried came up with 2 minutes 29 seconds for 1 MB on a 56k modem, one of them was 3:09, but none of the three I looked at gave any information about their methodology. The 2:29 corresponds to Matt's calculation (18.7 * 8 / 60 = 2.49). So roughly two and a half to three minutes, given ideal conditions. --LarryMac | Talk 14:15, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

My old dialup used to run at 7 kbit/s, and that was near the telephone exchange. Thank goodness for broadband —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 22:32, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I was on 56k dial up until about a year ago and I remember it taking about 5 mins to download a typical 4-5 megabyte MP3 file. Astronaut (talk) 00:28, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Quite many of the at least more modern phone modems support standards for data compression on the fly, which could give actual linespeeds above 56 kbits/second if the information entropy is low. See ITU-T V-Series Recommendations#Error control and data compression. TERdON (talk) 02:04, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Technically, the actual linespeed is still limited by actual linespeed constraints, however the apparent linespeed can indeed be increased by compression (though this is generally less valuable on larger files because they are more likely to already be compressed). – 74  14:58, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

adobe flash player

From where can I download adobe flash player to install in another computer which has no internet connection. thank you. 124.43.56.205 (talk) 12:50, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/ — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 13:03, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Windows' emulation

Why is so difficult to run Windows' games using an emulator? (like Wine) Somewhere I read something about access to the hardware, but I want a more detailed answer. --Mr.K. (talk) 15:46, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

First of all, Wine is not an emulator. Second, it isn't that difficult to run windows games in wine; you just need the correct libraries installed in your OS (i am assuming you use linux) to run stuff. For example, running a DirectX game in Wine will use OpenGL/Mesa3D libraries to generate the 3D graphics. I'm not sure what difficulties you may be experiencing with running windows games using wine, most work perfectly (or with only small problems).  Buffered Input Output 17:48, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Windows APIs are undocumented and buggy, so it is hard for people to re-implement the exact behavior in open-source. --71.106.173.110 (talk) 19:59, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, coping Windows APIs is probably illegal or you have to have a Windows license... :(--Mr.K. (talk) 12:15, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Legitimate and legal FREE photo editing software download?

Hi, I am not an expert photographer but I do like digital photography and I am busy scanning my old emulsion pics into my computer. But quite a few need to be cropped in some way to eliminate unwanted people, buildings etc. None of my computer-supplied stuff will allow me to do that and I know I can go out and buy some sophisticated software but it would only get used for this one-off exercise as I don't ever intend buying expensive camera film again. Is there a legal download that I could access that would allow me such limited use? Thanks in anticipation. 92.20.48.243 (talk) 16:03, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

GIMP seems to be what you're looking for.  GARDEN  16:10, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

If you have a PC, Paint.NET might be what you're looking for. It's a little easier to use than GIMP, and for your purposes should be fine. --140.247.240.142 (talk) 19:33, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

And the free software that is supplied with many printers often allows cropping etc. Dbfirs 21:23, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

ASP alternatives

Hello Wikipedia,

i'd like to add a form to my website (nothing fancy, just a space where users can input some key information) Anyway, I'm told that the best way to do this (to recieve the imputted information) is by using Microsoft ASP which is available free on the more expensive versions of Vista. Sadly, my budget dictated that I bought the cheapy cheapy version whcih, apparently, doesn't support it at all.. Does any one if there are any alternatives out there which one might acquire without spending any money?

Thanks81.140.37.58 (talk) 17:40, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

You don't need ASP yourself as such. The key information is whether your host supports it. There's tons of free software for developing ASP, but actually I think your best bet would be to get a simple email form script of the Internet - and that wouldn't require you to have ASP at all (yay). This one doesn't look too bad, but if you don't like that particular one there are thousands out there. Let us know how you get on! - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 17:56, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

There are a million other scripting languages out there that don't cost a thing. PHP is very popular; Ruby is popular amongst a certain section of geeks. I'd go with PHP myself—almost all hosts support it, and it's easy to use and learn. --140.247.240.142 (talk) 19:37, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

One other thing about ASP is that is it rarely supported by free hosting companies. Astronaut (talk) 00:22, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

If you are using a free hosting company, they might have some pre-built solutions for you, which actually might be the easiest to implement. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 09:21, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

February 7

Multichannel audio from computer to amp

Hi. I have a rather basic amp that supports Dolby Digital. However, I am unable to get any audio from my computer to turn on the "Dolby Digital" mode of the amp. My sound card configuration has an area which allows one to test "which of the following formats your Digital Receiver is able to decode". It lists DTS Audio, Dolby Digital, and Microsoft WMA Pro Audio. When I test Dolby Digital, I see that my receiver goes into that mode (and that is the only test that succeeds). However, absolutely no media that I have played on my computer has put the receiver into DD mode. Is this because soundtracks are more often in DTS now? Is there some way in software to convert the audio signal for my amp (in real time?)? Does anyone have an example audio/media file they could point me to, encoded in DD5.1, that I could play on my system to confirm that my hardware/software will send the DD5.1 signal when it's available? Thanks...... Birchcliff (talk) 03:08, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

What's the best way to share files between computers?

I'm not sure if what I'm talking about is a server, but I want to be able to have a continuously running computer at home which I can access from e.g. my school, my friend's place or China (I primarily use Linux, so naturally I would like to do this on a Linux OS). An example of what I'd like to do would for example be to be at my girlfriend's place and be able to access my music or movies from her place. If possible I also want to be able to add more files to my computer and changing existing files from afar. I heard you should use something like SSH for this but I know embarrassingly little about that. Can anyone tell me a good place to start? Do I need to pay money for a domain? --BiT (talk) 04:28, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

That's a lot of question wrapped up into a neat little package. Starting from the "client" computer, you first need a way to identify your server (which is an appropriate term here). If your ISP supplies a static IP address then you can just use that ID; if not, you'll probably want to use one of the online dynamic DNS services, which allows your computer to post its current IP address in a known location. So, once you have the "address" of your server, you need to ensure that your messages can get through. If you have a router on your internet connection, you'll need to enable port forwarding of the port that you decide to use (which is related to which software you want to run). Now that you can send messages to your server, you need software on the server to listen for the messages. An ssh daemon is a good choice; ssh encrypts your communications, allows you to open a remote terminal on the server, allows you to ssh tunnel many other services, and has free clients for most any OS. Finally, we can get to the part where you install file sharing software on the server. Samba is a good choice for interfacing with Windows machines—it functions like a Windows "network share". From the client machine, you'll need to open an ssh tunnel for access to the samba service, at which point you will be able to access your shared files. Another option is to set up a VPN (some routers support openVPN with DD-WRT firmware), which, once connected, allows the client to communicate with the server as if they were on the same network segment (allowing, for instance, the use of Samba mentioned above). – 74  05:25, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Quite a lot of computer jargon you've got there :) even tough I'm rather computer literate I'm still a newbie at all this server stuff so posting some good tutorials or tips on how to do this would be helpful. Before some smarty pants gives me this link, I have looked for "How to make your own server", but didn't find what I was looking for. --BiT (talk) 01:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

An easier route might be to set up an SFTP server. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:28, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Easier in what way? --BiT (talk) 01:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest a portable hard drive. They come in big enough sizes to store all your music and loads of films, and are small enough to fit in your pocket.

I have a lot of portable hard drives and I do store all my music and films on them, but what's the fun in that. ;) --BiT (talk) 01:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

GIMP (zooming into selection)

In Gimp 2.6, is there a way to easily zoom so an area you have selected takes up the whole window. Thanks, 82.32.53.160 (talk) 09:26, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know of a "zoom in on selected area" tool. It isn't very useful compared to the existing zoom tool (the magnifying glass in the toolbox). Select the magnifying glass. Then, click on the top-left corner of the area you want to zoom. Without letting up from the mouse button, drag a rectangle shape. When you let up off the mouse button, it will zoom in on the area you selected with the magnifying tool. -- kainaw™ 23:19, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Desktop Auto-Refresh in Vista

Just since yesterday, my Vista (Home Premium) has stopped displaying new icons and files in the desktop. I have to right-click and refresh every time I make any sort of change. This is a sudden thing, as I have not played around with any settings, nor have I downloaded any new software (besides VLC Player - but this has been happening since before then). Can anyone help out here, and show me how to sort this out (I'll be honest and say I don't want to reboot - only as a LAST resort). TIA. --KageTora (talk) 11:27, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you want to reboot? This is the sort of glitch that probably would be fixed on a reboot, it's certainly not a Windows feature (there's a policy that that can hide all icons, but not disable the auto-refresh). However, you could attempt to restart Explorer, the main Windows interface. The easiest way to do this is to logoff and then log back on again, but if that's not an option for some reason you could take the more drastic option to kill it. To do this press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to get up the Task Manager and change to the "Processes" tab. Click "Image Name" to sort them alphabeticallly and right click any copies of explorer.exe and select "End Process". When you have killed them all DON'T close the task manager down, but instead from the File Menu select "File" menu and "New Task / Run". Type in: explorer - This will reload explorer. Some icons from the system tray may not display properly and I really would recommend rebooting as the primary method of seeing if this fixes it. ZX81 ^talk 12:01, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Database question

I`m interested in starting a database to keep track of my purchases. It is entirely for personal use, which means it would be preferable if I didn`t have to place it online somewhere. I would like to store it on my own HDD and access it directly, via a graphic interface. -- 58.89.206.76 (talk) 13:35, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

How in particular do you intend to use this data? A simple solution would be to track the values in a spreadsheet, but that would limit your ability to do data-mining and report generation (though such data could be imported into a database at a later date). – 74  15:02, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree. A spreadsheet is likely a better option for most operations. If you want to do odd things like find the total of all money spent on lunches at one particular restaurant on Tuesdays, then a db might make sense. If you're using a Windows computer, you likely already have Microsoft Excel as part of the Microsoft Office suite. StuRat (talk) 15:15, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Even then, a little familiarity with Excel can get that kind of data (I use it for this purpose at tax time all the time—it's easy to say, "sort this by place I spent the money" and then take that smaller subset and say "sort by date"). Personally I think a db would be overkill for such a situation—the opportunity costs in learning how to use it and setting it up far outweigh the small performance benefits in this case. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 15:41, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

If you don't have Microsoft Office (or if you prefer to avoid Excel for some reason), there is a list of spreadsheet programs in the spreadsheet article, including several free alternatives. (The reference desk does not endorse any specific software.) – 74  15:46, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I sometimes try to use somehting for personal use just so i have the experience of using it. Maybe he wants to do the same thing so he set a simple goal of setting up and maintaining a database just for the sole purpoose of being able to say that he has experience in doing so. To answer your question; Off the top of my head i can only think of OpenOffice as being a free solution, but you can aslo try Microsoft Sql, But i quest it really all depends on your goals. – Elliott  20:10, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Photoshop layers

The other day, I'm pretty sure I saw a "automatically select layer" option somewhere in Photoshop. It seems I've turned it off, and now can't find it to enable it. Can anyone help? Cheers. Cycle~ (talk) 15:33, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

When you click on the selection tool (or press v), a check box appears in the top panel for automatically selecting layers.--K;;m5m k;;m5m (talk) 17:01, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Aha! Cheers. It seems I'd turned it on, but wanted it off. That's probably the only place I didn't look – I couldn't think of any search terms (for using the help file) that weren't ridiculously ambiguous. Cycle~ (talk) 18:48, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Not a problem. Cheers.--K;;m5m k;;m5m (talk) 00:27, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

America's Army

Is it possible to play America's Army offline?--KageTora (talk) 15:52, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I dont think so, From what i can tell it looks like its an online game. – Elliott  20:02, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it seems that way. You spend two hours downloading various files and installing them, and you end up having to play online, anyway.--KageTora (talk) 23:17, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Mater to Energy conversion (Moved)

Moved to Reference_desk/Science#Mater_to_Energy_conversion

how good is pentium 4 at 3 ghz?

I am thinking of buying a used computer which is a pentium 4 at 3 ghz (with 1 gb of ram). What percentage of the performance could I get of a modern core 2 solo processor? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.81.87 (talk) 19:42, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like my old computer. I use to have an emachine with a pent 4 / 3.06 Ghz with 1 gig of ram. I upgraded to a newer computer running an AMD 4200 / 2.4Ghz dual core with 2 gigs of ram, i did notice an increase in performance but that may be because i also upgraded to a raid 0, a better motherboard, faster networking card, and a much much better video card. I suppose it really depends on what you plan on doing with your computer. – Elliott  19:59, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

transparent fill in Paint.NET

Resolved

In Paint.NET how do you use the fill tool with transparency? For example removing a white background when pasting an image over another image? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 22:29, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know Paint.NET very well but generally you don't fill with transparency; you use something like the magic wand selection tool (which selects based on color, just like Fill tools do), and then you delete the pixels, leaving transparency behind. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:42, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes that's exactly what I was looking for, thanks so much

would a pentium 4 era motherboard would have USB 1 or USB 2

I'm thinking of buying a used computer which has a pentium IV 3ghz processor in it. Would that motherboard have a USB 1 or a USB 2 in it? Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.81.87 (talk) 21:29, 7 February 2009 (UTC) also - it has 4 memory slots. What do you think the maximum amount of RAM is that it would support? Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.81.87 (talk) 21:30, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

We would need to know more about the motherboard or the computer, like a model number or something. But i can tell you that Windows supports a max of 4gigs of ram. If this computer does not have USB 2.0 you can always buy a PCI card that does have USB 2.0– Elliott  21:47, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Editing conflict :) Regarding the USB 2, probably, but it could go either way. Although USB 2 was out by the time the 3GHz chips came along, that doesn't necessarily mean the manufacturer put it into the computer. You could always add a USB2 PCI card if needed though. For the memory it could be anything from 512Mb to ~4Gb, quite probably around 2Gb. Without knowing the manufacturer/number there's no way to tell, but if you do have those details you can go to Crucial.com and run it through their site (or even better use the memory scanner if you have the actual PC). ZX81 ^talk 21:51, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Virulent?

My favourite media news site, IGN, and all its affiliates give me a "Warning, this site may harm your computer" message from McAfee (my antivirus program). I use IGN and Rotten Tomatoes for everything, so I was wondering if this warning actually has any merit, as in does anyone else have the same problem? Is IGN actually distributing malware? BeefJeaunt (talk) 21:54, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Probably not, but their ad servers probably do questionable things with cookies (tracking browsing behavior across sites, for example), which is probably what is setting it off. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:55, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

uTorrent Download Location

What is the default download location for uTorrent? I have just downloaded a file, and can't find it anywhere, even after using Explorer to search.--KageTora (talk) 23:51, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Don't worry. I found it.--KageTora (talk) 23:54, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

it was in the last place you looked, wasn't it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.81.87 (talk) 00:15, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, who'd have thought it would be in a folder called 'Downloads'? You'd think it'd be easier than that!--KageTora (talk) 00:30, 8 February 2009 (UTC)