Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

Welcome to the computing section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

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

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

   

How can I get my question answered?

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

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

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

See also:

• Teahouse
• Help desk
• Village pump
• Help manual

July 29

Game

What is the largest computer game ever made in terms of file size? Jc iindyysgvxc (talk) 00:47, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps some game/movie hybrid? One were they would have to record more than the normal movie lenght? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:07, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I am going to guess that it is World of Warcraft. Most of the file data is of course on the WoW servers. I'm sure they store a gigaton of data that tracks player activity. Tempshill (talk) 01:39, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I remember back in the good old days (ha) of CD-ROM gaming when games that used multiple CD-ROMs ran ads telling you how many floppies it would have taken to play the game as it was (Under a Killing Moon advertised itself as being the equivalent of HUNDREDS of floppy disks!). Ah, well. But yeah, as noted, are you asking about total size installed on a hard drive, or kept on local disks, or distributed on a network? Probably different answers in all cases. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 15:10, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots says "Guns of the Patriots is the first PS3 game that uses a full 50GB dual layer Blu-ray Disc, even after extensive efforts in data compression." This might be the current record for local data, since publishers are presumably loath to require two discs. -- BenRG (talk) 17:13, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

How many wikis are out threre?

Are there any reliable estimates on how many different wikis are out there? Wikia claims to host at least 1,500. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:06, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

It will be hard to reliably count. An overwhelming percentage of wikis are for "internal use only" in organizations, and are either not publicly visible or not publicly editable. If you intend to count non-public wikis, it will be very hard to come up with reasonable estimates. Nimur (talk) 01:32, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Since the software is completely free in many cases, this question is like asking "how many non-wiki websites are there out there", but it's certainly lower than that. Chris M. (talk) 12:16, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

SQL Noob needs help

Hi All,

Is there an easy way to do this using sql: generate a table with two columns, one a field from the database and the other the number of times it occurs? Something kinda like: SELECT COUNT(CustID) AS totalOrdersFromCust FROM Orders_table WHERE CustID='id-here' except it will go and loop through the database so I end up with the number of times each customer has placed an order?

ex:

custID    totalOrders
1         24
2         16

etc..

I know there's gotta be a better way the me having to write a loop with an external app.

Thanks in advance! PrinzPH (talk) 02:16, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

select CustID, count(*) as 'NumberOfOrders' from Orders_table group by CustID --Nricardo (talk) 02:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

Thanks Nricardo, Works! PrinzPH (talk) 22:31, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Windows XP Hibernate Mode

Hello. How can I stop my computer from turning on immediately after hibernating it? There is more than enough space for hibernation. I read an identical question but it was unhelpful.

My computer spontaneously turns on only at 8 PM (EST) everyday. Regardless of when I hibernate my computer, the hibernation finishes but the computer turns on.

I was able to hibernate my computer even when I had an Ethernet card. Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 03:54, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Reboot the computer and hit DEL (or whatever) to enter the BIOS screens, and scour the screens looking for the option to power on every day at a certain time, and, as was mentioned in the earlier thread, the option to power on when Ethernet packets are received. And any other options involving powering on; and turn them all off. Tempshill (talk) 04:05, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Also go to Scheduled Tasks in the Control Panel and see if there are any tasks scheduled for 8 PM with "Wake the computer to run this task" checked in the properties (Settings tab). -- BenRG (talk) 08:18, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

How do I make my Ethernet card not turn on my computer when it receives packets? --Mayfare (talk) 16:40, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Shell script issue

Resolved

When I run the following shell script, I expect domain names which return data to wget to be listed on the terminal where I run the script, and those which don't to be listed on /dev/pts/4. Instead, all domain names are listed on /dev/pts/4. I've tried commenting out the for loop and instead setting $line to just one domain; if I do this, it works fine. What am I doing wrong with the loop?

On a related note, when iterating wget over 2070 domains that may all be hosted on the same server, are any precautions necessary to avoid triggering the server's DoS defenses? NeonMerlin 07:05, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

#!/bin/bash
IFS="
"
for line in $(cat complete-scientology-domain-list.txt);do
  if wget -O - $line 2>/dev/null | grep ".*" >/dev/null; then
    echo $line
  else
    echo $line > /dev/pts/4
  fi
done

Setting IFS to newline means that any spaces in the input file will be treated as part of the URL. Don't set IFS and it should work. You should also put double quotes around all $line references. --Sean 14:41, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

To avoid triggering any defense mechanisms, check for a robots exclusion standard (GET /robots.txt). If the server is well-configured, the robots.txt file will specify rules for what you are doing (typically this means pausing between requests, e.g. pulling no more than one page per second, for example). Note that the robot exclusion "standard" is not really a "standard" - it is more of a guideline for "playing nice" with the host. A web server may choose to enact blocks or other defenses without specifying a reason. Nimur (talk) 15:40, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Tried dropping IFS and quoting $line. Still doesn't work. NeonMerlin 16:21, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Update: Does work correctly with the last domain name in the file (which doesn't end with a newline). Maybe it's an issue with how cat processes the line breaks. NeonMerlin 16:42, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The file might have Windows/DOS line endings. Do a "dos2unix complete-scientology-domain-list.txt" and then try again. --Sean 14:01, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Did the equivalent in kate, set sane timeout and tries for wget, and now works. NeonMerlin 14:25, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Bluetooth mice

Are bluetooth mice any good? I'm getting a laptop and wireless mice with a small receiver and bluetooth mice seem to be in the same price range, but I've heard quite a bit of bad press towards bluetooth mice. Are they really worse than normal wireless mice? Do they interfere with WLAN much? Thanks. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:11, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Not sure if what I'm saying is accredited but my Logitec one works great, just like a regular mouse, and works on pretty much any surface but ones with reflective coating. I'm glad I have one; the touchpads are pieces of crap in my opinion. -- penubag  (talk) 07:29, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Mind telling me the model? --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:45, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Bluetooth shouldn't (and hasn't, ever, in my experience with them) interfere with WLAN, or any other wavelength. Bluetooth has its own frequency, which coexists with the rest of 'em. [flaminglawyer] 13:18, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Both Bluetooth and 'WiFi' use the 2.4GHz band. (excluding WLAN that uses 5GHz) There is the potential for a bluetooth signal causing the WiFi to operate at a lower rate. Other devices also use this bandwidth (eg xbox 360 controllers, some wireless telephones etc), additionally your neighbours WiFi may also be wanting some of that bandwidth too.

For a discussion (very technical) see the first three links of http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=bluetooth+wifi+interference&meta=&aq=f&oq= to complicate things it seems that different devices may be better or worse than others - in terms of avoiding bandwidth conflict, as well as the relative power of there signals - it's complicated (business have to employ specialist engineers see if a big system can work) but a 25% reduction in WiFi WLAN bandwidth is possible even expected, and it can be worse.

In general though they work fine (in my experience) in a home enviroment.

You can get wireless mice that operate at other frequencies (eg 750MHz I think) - most suppliers will have this info about there mice, if you look at the tech specs.

If you are using WiFi WLAN as networking between computers and you require it to be as fast as it can possibly be then bluetooth is something to factor out. Under most conditions (internet browsing, small file transfers between computers) it shouldn't be an issue.

A lot depends on were you live - a new york office is going to be much more demanding (due to the number of devices all around) than a house in the middle of a park.83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:49, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The primary reason why I'm concerned about interference is because my desktop mouse interferes with my WLAN and freezes for a few seconds once in a while. If all bluetooth is gonna do is slow down WLAN I'm fine with it, since it's not like I'm transferring files over it anyway. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:45, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Updating system software on a PSP 2003

Does anyone know how to update system software on a PSP 2003?Chevymontecarlo (talk) 08:07, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

See Sony's PSP update page for instructions, at the bottom of the page, on updating your PSP, by using a PC, a UMD disc, or, the easiest way, logging in to a WiFi network anywhere and choosing "Network Update". Tempshill (talk) 15:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

It worked - thanks. Chevymontecarlo (talk) 10:34, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

imaginary vbScript

Can vbScript handle complex numbers? If so, how does the syntax work? Thanks —Akrabbim^talk 14:38, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

According to [1] no.

There are modules that will add support via functions eg [2] , there are more extensive librarys which could be adapted using the same methods. eg [3]

A here's a list of some languages that do [4] if you need it.83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:51, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

trackboard

complete information about trackboard in computer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.68.94.36 (talk) 14:58, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The only computer-related "trackboard" I've found is this product. If you have a specific question, please ask again and remember that you're dealing with people, not a search engine. --LarryMac | Talk 15:02, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Google finds a company by that name that makes keyboards with embedded trackballs. But maybe you meant circuit board? -- Finlay McWalter Talk 15:03, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

or perhaps Stripboard ? -- Finlay McWalter Talk 15:14, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Or maybe the mysterious semi-vaporware, Phantom Lapboard? Nimur (talk) 15:44, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Did you mean Touchpad aka 'Trackpad' ? 83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:33, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

linux backup/restore

A couple of kinda related linux questions
1)when i installed linux (fedora 10) i installed /boot, /, and /home as separate partitions. Now the other day i had a slight hd drive problem, and decided i needed to reinstall /boot, how can i do this without having to reinstall /, as when i used a live cd installer it told it needed to install /
2) after reinstalling fedora i used rsync under root to copy back all the files, as i had backed up / on a removable hard drive, but it doesnt seem to of copyed back programs, the files seem to be there in the backup folder but it doesn't seem to of copyed back to my pc, anyway to fix this?
3) i currently use rsync under cron doing this command "01 18 * * * root rsync --archive --compress --backup --delete --exclude-from=/home/rob/exclude / /path/to/backup/directory' and exculde the following /media/ /proc/ /sys/ /tmp/ /mnt/ /usr/share/man/
a)is there any other files/folders that can be excluded
b)would running rsysnc with any different/extra options be more beneficent?
thanks--90.207.181.210 (talk) 16:49, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

looks like 2 was due me writing a bad path on the rsync to copy the stuff back--90.207.181.210 (talk) 10:56, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

MATLAB string analysis

I have a string:

>> line = # GHZ S RI R 50.000000;

I want to grab each element as an individual string, and then convert the last into a number. After looking around, I tried this and got an error:

>> header = regexp(huh,' ','split')
header = 
   '#'    'GHZ'    'S'    'RI'    'R'    '50.000000'
>> str2num(header(6))
??? Error using ==> str2num at 33
Requires string or character array input.

For all I can tell, header looks like a matrix of strings so I don't know why str2num isn't accepting it. Maybe it's just because I don't understand all this regular expression nonsense, but what am I doing wrong? Is there a better way to split this string? Thanks, —Akrabbim^talk 19:04, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Does MATLAB indexing start at 0? If so, you'd want header(5). --19:37, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. It starts at one, so:

>> header(6)
ans = 
   '50.000000'

—Akrabbim^talk 19:40, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

While you're waiting for the answer - I can suggest a few things to try to see if you can find out whats going wrong - try the "ischar" and "isnumeric" functions on header(6), try the expression str2num("50.000000") to make sure the decimal isn't confusing it, also try passing header(6) to a single non arrayed variable eg 'tempv' and then using "str2num(tempv)" - to make sure the array isn't confusing the type checking on the function. I can;t actually see anything wrong myself.83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:28, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm just guessing (again), but since nobody else has jumped in yet ... I've been perusing the online documentation and can't find anything obvious, but can you try header{6} ? i.e. curly braces instead of parentheses. I think header might be a "cell array" and you need to access the contents of a cell rather than the cell itself. --LarryMac | Talk 20:33, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

That does seem to be it - described here [5]. Curly brackets should fix it.83.100.250.79 (talk) 21:35, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually I'm getting a bit confused because 'regexp' according to [6] has a different syntax, and doesn't do what you want - it checks for matches oh "huh" must be the strings name.- you want to tokenise.??

You could try "strtok" as well , see [7] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:44, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Larry, you are right. Is is a cell, so header{6} is what I need. I didn't know that cells were any different, so thanks for the educational link 83. —Akrabbim^talk 15:54, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

Time Machine on a Mac

Hi. I have recently purchased a 500GB Time Capsule to back up my iMac and MacBook Pro. I first set up Time Capsule on my iMac and all was hunky dory. However, when I tried to set it up on my MacBook Pro, it came up with 'Time Machine Error. The backup disk image could not be created.'. I haven't the faintest idea what this means or, more importantly, how to rectify it. Could someone help me out please? Thanks. 92.0.232.90 (talk) 19:42, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

That error means that the Time Machine program could not create the database for saving old versions of your file. According to this Apple discussion forum, you need to set your computer's "Network Name" (in the System Preferences utility, this can be set in the "Sharing" tool, under "Computer Name"). Time Machine probably requires a computer name to be properly set so that it can create a unique database just for that computer. Nimur (talk) 20:01, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

This is no doubt going to jinx it but setting a Network Name (which I did not have before) got everything going just like with my iMac. Thanks Nimur! 92.0.232.90 (talk) 20:22, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Apples ownership of adobe systems

Can you tell me what the high watermark percentage of Apples ownership of adobe was? I know that at one time they owned more than 16% but I think the high watermark was closer to 25%. Brafferty (talk) 20:31, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Switching from GPL to closed source

The AutoHotkey article states that the authors released their code under the GPL, became frustrated, and then declared their future work with the code base was to be closed source. In the cited source (it's a chat board thread), the apparent author of the software states, "As we wrote all the code we can depart from the GPL if we choose. Previously downloaded source would still be under GPL (as per the license) but new copies of the source would be under whatever license we care to make."

Is this correct? I know there's very little case law in any country regarding the GPL, but I guess I had thought that once the author releases code under the GPL, he is a licensee as well, and as a user of the code, would have to abide by the GPL's terms, including releasing free, GPL'ed source code of any derivative works. If the author's statement is correct (and it does sound logical to me that he doesn't have to be a licensee) then that's an interesting wrinkle. Tempshill (talk) 20:46, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is that only the copyright holders may sue if there is a breach of the GPL. If all copyright holders decide that they do not want the GPL and will not sue about ending the GPL license, then the license may be changed without any legal problems. It is the perception of the people that once something is GPL it is absolutely free and owned by the world. That is a completely false perception. Having such a perception leads to the perception that the copyright holders are stealing from the world by taking their code closed source. -- kainaw™ 20:56, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The question is really about whether a developer who has moved to closed source can sue YOU for using it under the old open source agreement, not whether the developers will sue each other over it. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 21:15, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict):I can't see any stand up argument that would prevent someone/group changing the licencing arrangements for their own work (assuming no other contributers disagree) applying to future products (retroactive license changes are non-runners/difficult/debateable though) - the license isn't a contract that requires the producer (ie the one with the intellectual property rights) to continue to license all their work in perpetuity.

As you say the manufacturer is not a licensee.I'm not a lawyer83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:57, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Copyright holders can release their code under multiple, non-exclusive licenses at different times. They are not obligated to release their new code under GPL just because the old code was, if they were the original copyright holder (the one who is issuing the licenses in the first place, not a derivative user). However, they cannot "withdraw" the GPL license on the original code. See [8] and [9]. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 21:15, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The Mocha (decompiler) was "licenced" (if one can count a single line in a readme.txt as a licence) thus: "The distribution archive (file "mocha-b1.zip") may be distributed freely, provided its contents are not tampered with in any way." - it's no GPL or open source (only .class files were distributed) but it was a distribution-permissive licence. According to this page the author died, and Borland acquired the rights to Mocha. The author of that site quotes an email he says he received from Borland telling him that, despite the readme, he couldn't distribute it any more. He says he told them to shove off and he's still distributing the software. The situation should be clearer for GPL software being retroactively pulled (as opposed to simply relicenced-from-now-on), as the GPL is a properly written licence rather than a passing one-liner. Note, incidentally, that to contribute to some GPL software (that is, to get your patches into the core tree) you need to assign copyright (not just GPL licence); I think that's always been the case for MySQL - the current Sun scheme is a bit more liberal, but you still need to jointly assign copyright (ref) - which would allow Sun (or Oracle, soon) to take future revisions of the software closed source. -- Finlay McWalter Talk 21:44, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The process is actually pretty simple. If (say) version 1.0 of a particular piece of software is released under the GPL, then the copyright owner (and nobody else) can choose to change the license on (say) version 1.1 to be a closed-source license. However, the source code to version 1.0 can still be redistributed under the terms of the GPL - it can be improved upon, added to - even made compatible with version 1.1 - and it'll STILL be under the GPL. However, the copyright holder's version 1.1 is now closed source - and you're not allowed to redistribute it. Only the copyright holder can do make that decision...and for most OpenSourced software were there are several (if not dozens or even hundreds) of authors, it takes the agreement of every single one of them to change the license terms (unless it's possible to identify the changes that a particular person made and back them out such that none of his copyrighted additions remain in the package). So most large/common packages are safe and cannot ever be closed off. But even when the original author does own the entire copyright - the community has lost nothing. The version that was out there on the day before the license changed is still out there under GPL - and you can try to put a team together to maintain and improve it. Since the community-maintained and the (now) commercially maintained packages are competing with each other on an (initially) level playing field, there is no reason to assume that the package will not continue to thrive as an OpenSourced package. SteveBaker (talk) 23:55, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for the answers. Tempshill (talk) 00:17, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Video Conversion

Is there any free software that i can use to convert dvr-ms (the format used by recorded tv from Windows Media Center) to a common format such as mpeg or avi. I have tried avidemux but the audio is really out a sync and i generally cant get it to convert correctly. Any ideas on good video conversion software or how to use avidemux properly would be greatly appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.127.22 (talk) 21:07, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Some options for editing, transcoding, and simple rewrapping are discussed in the DVR-MS article. -- Finlay McWalter Talk 22:07, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

MEncoder and ffmpeg support conversion of dvr-ms files. There's a good GUI for ffmpeg available here // 21:48, 30 July 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4k01 (talk • contribs)

Downloading flash-based video

I'm looking for a program or browser-plugin that enables downloading of flash based video from a web site, specifically this site, in a format playable by media players such as Windows media player, VLC media player or Quicktime. OS: Windows XP, or Linux (Debian or Ubuntu). Anyone aware of such a beast? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 21:16, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I was able to download the FLV file using FlashGot in Firefox. VLC can play FLVs and there are no doubt codecs that let you play it in everything else as well. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 21:24, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a million! Worked like a charm. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 21:55, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

Addendum: I'd like to add, in case anyone else is interested, that the file was easily transcoded to a format recognizable by Windows Media Player, using the transcoding wizard of VLC media player. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 22:12, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Also the VLC Player can output video as ASCII art, realtime.. probably worth a download just for that.. 83.100.250.79 (talk) 15:15, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

USB flash drive size conventions

Hello wikipedia!

Why do USB flash drives come mainly in sizes related to binary numbers? 256Mb, 1Gb, 8Gb, etc? Hard drives and CDs just have a number, presumably the biggest number they could get with the current technology.

A google search for 5gb flash drive returns a fraction of the hits for 8bg flash drive.

Thanks Fenton Bailey (talk) 21:53, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The drives are that size because the flash memory chips they contain are sized in powers of two. Those chips (like almost all memory chips, like the DRAM chips in your computer for example) use a memory addressing scheme to refer to the individual chunks of memory they contain. Those memory addresses are passed around on so many wires, each of which carries just a 1 or a 0; (simplifying a tad) that's an address bus. If I have n wires in my address bus, I can address up to 2^n chunks of memory. You could, if you really wanted, have n lines of addressing but a bit less than 2^n bytes of memory, but really there's no point in doing that (and it makes code that deals with the device as a whole more complicated, as it has to remember that not all valid address values correspond with memory). Additionally, frankly that's how electrical engineers have been doing things for so long that their brains, and the tools they use to do things, work much better in powers of 2. Now you might ask why this isn't true for hard drives too - again, hard drives expose the underlying technology, but as the geometry of hard disks is a lot more complex this doesn't make for nice powers of two, but a bunch of weird numbers. Lastly, back on flash-usb disks, you could ask "why couldn't they put in a 4Gb chip and a 1Gb chip and release a 5Gb drive" - they could (there's really only room in a usb flash drive for one or two chips) but the cost increment for them in going from a 1GB to a 4Gb chip is so little that they might as well put in 2x4G at little extra cost, and they can charge you (quite rightly) a good bit more. -- Finlay McWalter Talk 22:05, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Given the fact that pretty much every decent flash drive has circuits for wear levelling, the extra complexity for remembering which addresses are valid and which ones aren't is probably trivial. -- 128.104.112.87 (talk) 00:52, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Is that really true? The flash drives I've used all had capacities in decimal MB and GB (the 256MB ones hold about 256,000,000 bytes, the 2GB ones hold about 2,000,000,000 bytes). A 1GB drive is not twice the size of a 512MB drive, it's only about 95% larger. I know they have some extra sectors for defect management or wear leveling or whatever, but I don't see why the ideal fraction of extra sectors would be 1.024ⁿ where n is 2 or 3 depending on the unit used to describe the drive size. -- BenRG (talk) 18:15, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The acid test is to crack the thing open and we'll look up the flash memory part's datasheet. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:33, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

July 30

Compressed HTTP

In compressed HTTP, can transmission begin while compression is still in progress, and can decompression begin while downloading is still in progress? If so, what software actually does this? NeonMerlin 00:31, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

HTTP compression - yes and yes, sort of. It's not actually separate software, exactly, that does the compression/decompression. It's usually just a built-in feature, although it might be a specific library or plugin that the browser/server uses. Instead of compressing the files, then sending the compressed file, it usually gets streamed to the compression module which compresses it, then sent over the internet, received by the browser, which streams the compressed data to the decompressing module as it receives it, which then streams the uncompressed data to the rest of the browser. AFAIK. The links in the http compression article might help more. Indeterminate (talk) 01:35, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

difference between core 2 duo and dual core

Could anyone explain to me in what way core 2 duo processor is different from a dual core processor ? srini 05:02, 30 July 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Srini279 (talk • contribs)

Bear with me - there is some confusing terminology here. Intel has released CPUs under the brand names "Core 2 Duo" and "Dual-Core". "Dual core" can also be a generic technical description, which has nothing to do with the brand-name.

The term "dual core" can mean any system that has two CPU cores. A CPU "core" is the basic instruction processing pipe - so two cores means that the CPU can simultaneously process two instructions in the same clock cycle (rather, it has an entirely duplicated instruction pipeline, including fetch, decode, and execution logic). "Intel Core" is also a brand-name for a certain microarchitecture, designed by Intel. "Dual Core" refers to the brand name of certain Intel CPUs that use that architecture. The Core 2 Duo is a higher performance CPU than the Pentium Dual Core, because it uses a newer microarchitecture, the "Intel Core Architecture, version 2" - "Core 2". Core 2 Duo means that the CPU has two Core-2 cores. In my opinion, the marketing teams intentionally made the names confusing to obfuscate easy decision-making on the part of the consumer (but I'm a bit of a cynic). Pay close attention to whether "Core" is capitalized or not; and Dual-Core vs. dual core - this should help differentiate between descriptive vs. "brand-name" usage.

Take a look at Pentium Dual-Core and Core 2 Duo for technical overviews of the Intel CPU series/brands. Also see dual core (for the generic term) and how it is understood by computer architects. The technical details of the different Intel CPU series are a bit dense for a beginner; your best bet is to read these articles and also take a look at the different processors in each series]. But briefly, all Core 2 CPUs are 64 bit CPUs built with newer technology; the Pentium Dual-Core is sort of a souped up Pentium D (which is a souped up Pentium 4). The lowest-end processors in both series actually do not have two cores. Nimur (talk) 05:30, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

The second last statement isn't accurate. Pentium Dual-Cores have all been Core based, either 32 bit Core or 64 bit Core 2. They've had cut down cache and reduced FSB. Nil Einne (talk)

Are you sure? Can you find a specific Pentium Dual-Core processor that used the Core 2 architecture? Nimur (talk) 02:00, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out a small technical inaccuracy in the above explanation: "can simultaneously process two instructions" is not technically correct. At least in the Intel case, each of these two cores is superscalar, and hence it would be more technically correct to write "can simultaneously process two different instruction sequences", or similar, as each of the cores may at each time process more than one instruction that follow on each other. 85.228.22.219 (talk) 16:43, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Lenovo Laptop

I will be purchasing a laptop within the next two weeks and wondered if anyone had any experience with Lenovo. I had not heard of this company prior to reading an ad in the paper, and I did know if they were a good manufacturer of laptops. If anyone has any strong preferences for laptops, please let me know that as well. Thanks. --Think Fast (talk) 05:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Lenovo is the Chinese company which bought the PC division from IBM. They now own the rights to manufacture ThinkPads, and in my opinion, they continue to produce fine quality, sturdy computers. Every mobile computer I have ever purchased (in fact, every mobile computer I have ever used for business, too) has been either an IBM or Lenovo system; I currently use an Lenovo IdeaPad S10e mobile computer for portable computing. In the next few days, a story about my unconventional uses for my ThinkPads may be appearing on the Lenovo website; I'll keep you posted if they decide to publish it... Nimur (talk) 06:07, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

What is that? can you tell us, the cylinder bottom right looks vaguely like a thermolysis chamber but the metal plates on the end are about 2" thick. Is it safe/legal?83.100.250.79 (talk) 09:15, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Rocket Powered -Nimur (talk) 16:21, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Looks like I'm late for this one, but I'll stick my two cents here. The only two laptop companies I never heard anything bad about are Lenovo and ASUS. I've been selling computers for about two years. Mxvxnyxvxn (talk) 22:09, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Vista and USB flash drive

I'm new to Windows Vista and I just plugged my USB flash drive into my laptop whereupon Windows asked whether I wanted to scan the disk for errors that may have been caused by not waiting for file writes to complete. I elected to perform the scan but after a long period of scanning (about 30 minutes or so), no progress had been made at all, according to the progress meter. I note that when starting certain systems up with the flash drive already plugged in, Windows also asks to scan it and then seemingly makes no progress. Is it sensible to scan flash drives for errors in this way and if so, should it take such a long time? ----Seans Potato Business 06:48, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

As I understand it (most) flash controllers automatically isolate any bad(broken) sectors and remove them from the usuable memory - so there should be no need to scan for errors, also since it does work I would suggest not to use it.

However I seem to remember reading that vista has specific support for flash drives - so it should know what it's doing - which in a bit contradictory - I'll see if I can find out more, or maybe someone else will have the answer.83.100.250.79 (talk) 09:43, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Bad sectors aren't the real issue here. The issue is potential file system errors because writing to the flash disk may not be complete. This is more likely to be a problem if the file system is FAT, which it probably is Nil Einne (talk) 19:40, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I usually go ahead and run the scan, but if it looks like it's going to take a long time I just cancel it. If you eject/unmount the drive properly before pulling it out, this sort of thing shouldn't come up in the future. If the last files you copied over or edited on the flash drive weren't that important, you can probably skip the disk scan. But keep in mind, if it comes up a lot, it could be an indication that the drive is reaching the end of its useful life. Probably nothing though. Indeterminate (talk) 10:57, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I skip these scans and have noticed no ill effects. Of course, your mileage may vary. Tempshill (talk) 19:31, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Advantages and Disadvantages of Window Vista Ultimate

Can anyone tell me what is the advantages and disadvantages of window vista ultimate ? wait for your reply ya~ tq —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bebezaii (talk • contribs) 11:50, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Advantages and disadvantages of WVU as compared with what, exactly? -- Hoary (talk) 12:11, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

In comparison to other vista editions see http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/compare-editions/default.aspx 83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:09, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

The only disadvantage compared to other Vista editions is that it is more expensive, and maybe you won't really use the extra stuff you are paying for. (See the comparison link above.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:02, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

It probably takes up more disk space too. (a few percent perhaps?) - I haven't got any exact figures on that...83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:33, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the correct answer is not very much when compared to Windows Vista Professional Edition. Rjwilmsi 20:38, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

A freeware suite for Windows XP

I've already got OpenOffice installed. What other free software is worth installing for the general user please? 78.149.172.96 (talk) 12:01, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I find OpenOffice Calc agonizingly slow for the kind of work I most often want to do with it and have taken to using Gnumeric instead. In my case it's not for Windows XP or indeed Windows anything, but I suppose that the "platform" doesn't matter. Other free software for Windows? IrfanView, and of course some alternative to Internet Explorer (I have found K-meleon a lot faster than Firefox). And the Gimp. -- Hoary (talk) 12:09, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

What does the general user want to be able to do? And do you mean free gratis or free libre? Algebraist 12:19, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

This list might be of interest to you: 40 free Windows apps. — QuantumEleven 12:23, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

VLC media player to play audio and video; Mozilla Firefox to browse the web (and/or Google Chrome); Mozilla Thunderbird for email; GIMP for editing pictures; Inkscape to edit diagrams, maps, posters etc.; Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader to read PDF files and FreePDF-xp to create them; AVG free for anti virus; Audacity to edit sound files and Avidemux to edit video; TUGZip to read and write zip files and the like; InfraRecorder to burn CDs and DVDs; Spotify to listen to music online; uTorrent for bittorrenting; Filezilla for FTP; Spybot search and destroy to fight spyware; Scribus for desktop publishing; emule for file sharing; and Google Earth and NASA Worldwind for maps and stuff. -- Finlay McWalter Talk 12:50, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

HandBrake+DVD Decrypter to backup your legally owned DVDs; Password safe to store your passwords. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:58, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Celestia is a fun science toy. It's a really slick 3D astronomy simulator that lets you fly around the universe (accurately representing distances, if not travel-times). Nimur (talk) 15:05, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

For audio and video I would suggest Media Player Classic with ffdshow // 21:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Mp3tag for tagging MP3 files; TeamViewer for remote desktop; Recuva for file recovery; MyPhoneExplorer for my Sony phone (the Sony app sux); CDBurnerXP for CD/DVD authoring; GSpot to identify video codecs. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:28, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

If you use facebook or twitter a lot, flock is a browser you might want to try. If you want to rip your CD collection and move your music to your PC, you will find Exact Audio Copy useful, possibly in combination with the FLAC software. If you want to tag mp3 files, and hate iTunes and similar programs that want to take charge of your entire media collection, foobar2000 might be the media player for you. I wasn't aware of Mp3tag, thanks Gadget850, I will want to try that one out. If you want to compress and decompress files and folders, 7-zip is useful. I wasn't aware of TUGZip either, thanks Finlay McWalter, I'll try that one out too! --NorwegianBlue ^talk 17:38, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Solaris Operating System

Can anyone tell me what is Solaris Operating System?? What is the functionality of it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bebezaii (talk • contribs) 14:16, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Solaris (operating system). --LarryMac | Talk 14:21, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

See also Comparison of operating systems and (if you're a technical type) Comparison of operating system kernels. -- 128.104.112.100 (talk) 20:25, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Solaris is the largest (by market-share) true Unix platform that is commercially marketed. Unix is the operating system which inspired Linux; Solaris is one version that is designed and marketed by Sun Microsystems. Solaris had particularly strong support for Sun's hardware (espcially the SPARC processor series); it was primarily designed to support extremely high-end server and mainfraim systems, though its most recent incarnations are suitable for use on desktop and personal workstations as well.

Because of recent business changes (Sun was acquired by Oracle Corporation), as well as the increasing popularity of free Linux (and Unix systems like OpenBSD), it is not clear what the future holds for Solaris. Most of the system was released as OpenSolaris, a free, free version, in 2007; it is very likely that for this reason some incarnations of Solaris will continue to live on in enterprise environments. Nimur (talk) 01:22, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Cost of video streaming

Recently, I read that one hour of video streaming costs 0,25c. Is that correct? Since I am constantly in YouTube, I have caused them cost of some thousand dollars...--Quest09 (talk) 18:34, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Uh, what? The cost of the bandwidth, of course, might be counted but that's almost infinitesimal for a site as large as Youtube. I've never heard of a site charging $0.25 per hour for streaming video, although it sounds like a plausible business model. But despite what they charge, no, it doesn't cost a webmaster 25 cents to stream an hour of video. ZS 18:47, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Since YouTube has advertising on their pages (and in their videos), you're not costing them the full cost of streaming video to you. Ideally, they should be making more money from showing you the advertisements than it costs to stream the video. I recall hearing that the YouTube division of Google is not yet profitable (that is, their total costs are more than their total revenues), but I'm sure they're looking into ways of narrowing that gap. -- 128.104.112.100 (talk) 20:23, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

It really depends on how you want to measure costs. In some sense, the enterprise scale system costs a fixed amount to operate, whether it is serving a video or sitting idly and warming a server room. However, this is not actually an accurate representation of the way that enterprise business data centers work in 2009 - a modern content delivery network can be outsourced, and can bill based on actual usage statistics. The price point that a CDN will charge an organization is going to vary widely depending on what is actually contractually delivered. (You can think of this as renting a percentage of a data center for each second that it is being used; and closely monitoring to make sure that every moment, you only rent as many servers as you actually use). I believe that Google does not choose to outsource, but instead runs its own CDN and data centers internally; that means it is harder to put a precise number on their costs. Even if such a number exists, it is highly proprietary market data, so it is unlikely that the estimates you hear quoted are accurate. Nimur (talk) 01:29, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

What if it really was .25 cents (as in, a quarter of a penny) as the OP originally stated... --66.195.232.121 (talk) 17:10, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I just came up an advertisement for http:// streamapi dot com / pricing.do One hour of 256 kbit costs 5c and one hour of "Full HD" costs 20c. Of course, that's just some random advertisement I saw. It is a white-label solution so it probably as expensive as it gets. Kushal (talk) 20:00, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Note that these estimates vary by a factor of about 100x (20 cents to 0.25 cents) - that gives you an idea of the uncertainty in price estimation! In either case, the original poster brings up the valid point - your "free online viewing" experience is being heavily subsidized by somebody else. Is Google losing money on the video transactions? Or are they recuperating their losses by charging advertisers? If so, are advertisers really returning on their investment at such a steep price? These are all valid questions; but if you consider the cost of operating a television broadcast antenna, cable television network, etc., you might get some perspective. For the last fifty or hundred years, people have been paying top dollar to influence mass media. This sends up a red flag of paranoia in me - why is it so important that I see these people's productions, that they will spend so much money on them? Nimur (talk) 00:01, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I said 0.25 cents, that makes 4 hours for 1 cent. Apparently, this estimation is not far from the truth. --Quest09 (talk) 19:03, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

July 31

WP:CRYSTAL

How Wiki came up with the idiom Wiki is not a crystal ball meaning Wiki does not calculate futue events. Crystal is just a gem, so what does crystal have anything to do with guestimating?--69.228.145.50 (talk) 00:29, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

See Crystal ball. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Image a usb memory stick

I am looking for a program that can raw dump an entire USB memory stick to a single file - without adding any of its own crap to the image. As there any software that does it? I also want to be able to write the image back.--155.144.40.31 (talk) 01:33, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

'dd if=/dev/yourusbstick of=usbimage' should do it on linux. Reverse the input file and output file to write it back, bit for bit both ways. --M^ask? 01:37, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

If you're not fortunate enough to be a linux user, this site has a long list of disk imaging tools. Most of them are bootable cds, probably not what you want, but this program sounds like it'll backup a usb drive to an image file. Indeterminate (talk) 01:38, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I ended up getting cygwin so I could just do "dd if=/dev/sdb of=cygdrive/c/dump.raw" Thanks anyway!--155.144.40.31 (talk) 01:44, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

WinImage can do this // 14:57, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

SEO Optimization: URLs

Hi All,

When it comes to optimizing urls, does it HAVE to be the page name containing the keywords, or will something in the path be just as effective? Example

www.mysite.com/somecategory/file-name-with-keywords.htm

as opposed to:

www.mysite.com/key-words-here/2.htm

Will it make a substantial difference going from one to the other?

Thanks in advance PrinzPH (talk) 03:03, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

That will depend entirely on the search engine you are optimizing for. Google does not publish its indexing and ranking methodology, so it is not possible to give you a definite answer for Google's system. In general, though - it is probably safe to say that a modern web-indexing search engine will use some information from the URL to estimate search relevance. Nimur (talk) 14:11, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I see. My question really revolves around assuming that search engines do use the URL (the string itself), does really matter at what point in the string it occurs? PrinzPH (talk) 17:00, 31 July 2009 (UTC) EDIT: I just noticed my question is redundant (Search Engine Optimization Optimization? lol) :p PrinzPH (talk) 17:05, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

As I mentioned before, the answer to that question depends on which search engine you intend to optimize results for. Since no commercial search engine publishes its algorithms, it is not possible to accurately answer your question. Here is Google's SEO guidelines. Note that Google does not look too kindly on the concept of "Search Engine Optimization" - they prefer that you organize your site properly and make it easy to index and crawl; and let them decide how you rank. Ultimately, that is how search engines work - somebody else decides (or writes an algorithm to decide) how the pages rank, and they do not have to tell you why they made that ranking. This lack of openness was the primary reason that Wikimedia sought to develop Wikia Search, an open-source search engine, with published ranking methods and algorithms, and community intervention. However, the project did not perform, very well, and is no longer active. Nimur (talk) 00:09, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not a search engine, but I would prefer the first one. It is easier to remember and gives more information about the content (unless it's page 2 of "key-words-here"). Sites optimized for users get more links from other sites, so search engines rank them better. MTM (talk) 22:35, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Strange network behavior

So I'm visiting my parents' place for a couple of days and they had their internet cancelled for the summer. A neighbor has kindly allowed me to use their wireless next door, and the last time I used it I could access it from over half the rooms in the house.

This time around I could barely access it at all. For about 5 minutes, I could access google.com, and it was quite fast and responsive, but NO other sites would work at all. Meanwhile I could do Google searches to my heart's content, so I simply gave up.

Then I disabled 802.11n and connected with 802.11g. A little better, but most sites still don't work most of the time. google.com doesn't work anymore, so my previous success must have been a coincidence right? Well... I ssh'd into my work machine and tunneled VNC through that. The VNC is nice and responsive (as much as VNC typically is), in fact I'm typing this question into Firefox on my work computer through my VNC-over-SSH session.

I left a ping -t (in Windows) running for about 10 minutes to the machine I ssh'd into and got a 95% packet loss. Meanwhile the VNC session has been perfectly responsive the whole time, including various other things I had going on in my little Putty SSH session at the command line.

Can anyone explain this behavior, why I'm getting such a poor ping response while my VNC session remains perfectly fine (from what I can tell)? If the wireless is spotty, wouldn't that trigger wireless retransmits that are invisible to the ICMP layer? If these retransmits are taking too long and the ping is timing out anyways, why is my VNC session still so responsive? If it's a QoS thing where my SSH stuff is getting through at the expense of ICMP stuff, then why is most of my web traffic getting blocked when no VNC is running? These should hopefully give you an idea of my network knowledge--or lack thereof. Generally speaking, why is there such a huge reliability gap (perfect.....abysmal) between my VNC-over-SSH to my work computer and everything else I've tried?

I also tried OpenDNS with virtually identical results (not that that would explain the ping/VNC disparity).

Thanks. --Silvaran (talk) 03:22, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

what is the ping response with URL vs IP? use yahoo and not google as they have blocked pinging their servers. you can also try to uninstall and reinstall the network driver for your wireless. Then check the connection. Ivtv (talk) 05:19, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

How mysterious! Since an SSH tunnel works fine, I would also guess some kind of QoS issue. My best guess would be some kind of malfunctioning traffic control or deep packet inspection firewall on the neighbors' wireless router or broadband modem. What about HTTPS/SSL? I'd guess that it probably works fine too - it might just be unencrypted traffic that gets throttled or dropped. Could the neighbors be doing some heavy torrenting? Even combined with QoS, it seems unlikely that it could cause the problem, but hrm. As far as solutions go, my #1 suggestion would be to get the neighbors to reset their router & modem. I guess that might be a little rude to say to them...

Oh, you could also try a traceroute to a few different sites, see if it always drops out at a certain point. That way, if you can ping your neighbor's router and modem easily, you can narrow down the issue. Yeah, that's probably the best sleuthy solution. Indeterminate (talk) 11:26, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions! I'm grabbing nmap now, though I'm not positive what kinds of info it will give me. I can't get to the router web page very reliably (and the high SSH tunnel reliability won't help that!), so I don't think a tracepath would help, but I'll give it a shot. The neighbors are actually away on vacation for awhile, so I'm thinking what I might try and do is, if I can figure out the router web page's password and get there reliably enough for a few minutes, I'll change the WPA2 key and see if that fixes things. If so, I'll change it back, and suggest the owner change it when I get a chance to talk to him next. Thanks again! --Silvaran (talk) 14:16, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

No go on the router web page stuff, I can't figure out the password, nmap can't even detect it (but still gives me a fingerprint so its connection attempts must have been successful), I'll see how it works for my neighbor once he gets back. Having my SSH tunnel work virtually 100% of the time and everything else work only 1% of the time is really baffling though... --Silvaran (talk) 14:16, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Saving response for ping command in C

I know that with system("ping machinename") I can ping a machine in C. i'd like to save that output to a char array variable if possible. How would I do that? (if you could write up/copy paste some quick code, I'd appreciate it). Also, this isn't homework :). Chris M. (talk) 14:24, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

You can dump the output to a log file:

system("ping machinename > pingResult.log");

FILE* f = fopen("pingResult.log", "r");

// ... read and parse log file

Thanks, that worked exactly as I hoped. Chris M. (talk) 14:43, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Ack, no, bad idea. There are a million ways that can fail: if the current directory isn't writable, if the file isn't writable, if the user has a file by that name that they don't want to lose, if two copies of your program are running concurrently in the same directory, if your program is running with elevated privileges and someone creates a symlink or exploits the system-fopen race... just don't do it. Use popen:

          FILE* f = popen("ping machinename", "r");

          // ... read and parse output

In Visual C++ it's called _popen instead of popen. You still need to sanitize the machinename if you got it from a source you don't trust. -- BenRG (talk) 21:28, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. And it's also very wise to supply an absolute path for ping (e.g. /bin/ping). If you're going to be doing a lot of pinging, and need more control than the command-line ping executable can give, skipping popen and using a dedicated ICMP or ping library (or hand-writing it with SOCK_RAW/IPPROTO_ICMP, if you really must) like liboping (which Debian ships) might be for you. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:42, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Or, you can set up a named pipe, if you are on Unix, and open the pipe without ever writing to disk. Nimur (talk) 14:30, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

vista user pic

is there a way to ged rid of that bloody pic every user gets assigned in windows since xp to vista ??? i mean that there was no pic at all —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.35.47.159 (talk) 14:36, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

One easy solution is to assign all users a blank, transparent PNG file. You will never see any image logos for users; and you don't have to spend a lot of time mucking around with complicated settings. Here is a 1x1 pixel transparent PNG that will do the trick. [10], and this Microsoft page explains how to set the user's picture. Nimur (talk) 14:58, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

diagnosing monitor trouble

A while ago my laptop began to have a problem where after being off for a while and then turning it on, the screen image would be flickery and then often go out. Once it went out there would still be an image on the screen, but with no illumination so it was almost impossible to see. This led me to believe there was a problem with the monitor's backlight. The only way to get it to work again would be to turn the monitor off and back on (the quickest way was to put it in stand by mode). The problem seemed to go away as the monitor was on for longer, so after a few tries it would work better, and then once it was on for a few minutes straight it would be fine until the next time I turned it off. Over a few weeks this issue got worse and worse until it became unusable. I connected it to an external monitor, which worked with no problem. I've been using it like that for a few months since I've been too lazy to do anything about it. Then yesterday I suddenly started having the same issue with the external monitor. The external monitor is an LCD as well. Is this a common enough problem that it's conceivable I'm having the same issue with two different monitors in the span of 6 months or is there something with the computer that could cause this? Rckrone (talk) 17:57, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I had an LCD monitor (Samsung) with the exact same problem. After doing some online research, I found that it was due to a capacitor overheating (it can get pretty hot in my study during summer, which explains why the monitor worked just fine in winter/early spring/late fall). After replacing the capacitor (a half an hour job) the problem went away. If your monitor/laptop is a Samsung, that's likely your problem as well, but, of course, it could be a million other things.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:03, July 31, 2009 (UTC)

External HDD question

I think I know the answer to the question I am going to ask, but I'm gonna ask it anyway, just to confirm.

What is the worst that could happen to an external HDD (or the data on it) if it is connected simultaneously to two computers? The HDD in question has two connections (USB and eSATA)—if the drive is connected to a running PC via USB and also to another running PC via eSATA, what could the consequences be? The HDD contains a repository of data both PCs need to access, and neither PC is expected to update the data (not often anyway).

And yes, I know I can just share the drive over the network, so both PCs would have access to it no problem. I am just curious about this alternative approach (if only for access speed reasons). Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:58, July 31, 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... I'm not a expert in this, but I would assume it would work like a normal HDD. If a file is locked, you can't write to it, so there would be no corruption. Maybe someone else knows more? Thanks. AHRtbA== ^Talk 18:10, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I would imagine that the controller inside a consumer external HDD with two interfaces will only allow one or t'other to be active at a given time; that it'll ignore the other altogether. In the event that it does support both, I'd guess it would work like a multi-interface storage area network device - it deals only in reads and writes of whole blocks (LBAs), and maintains a queue for reads and writes, actioning only one at a time. Almost all filesystems expect that they're the only user of a given block level device, and two such filesystems blindly accessing the same block level storage in this way isn't something they know how to deal with, so there will be terrible corruption and total (cache-related) inconsistency. So, in short, it won't work, and if it does, don't do it. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:06, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, this one isn't a consumer-oriented HDD; it's industrial (and quite expensive), so it'd be silly to risk frying it with an experiment like this. The whole inquiry was just unbridled curiosity speaking. Still, if I had a cheap HDD with two interfaces, I'd try it out just for kicks, to see what happens :) Thanks anyway!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:16, July 31, 2009 (UTC)

I would certainly consider it defective if simply plugging in two interface cables actually broke the thing. I should qualify my above slightly: if there were two partitions on the disk (assuming concurrent access was supported) and you arranged it for one computer to access the first, and the other the second, then that wouldn't be a logical problem. Performance-wise it would be a catastrophe, however, as the two computers disk-scheduling schemes would fight with one another, causing the drive head to perform big seeks repeatedly, dancing inefficiently to serve two selfish masters. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:28, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The matters are complicated by the fact that it's actually two (physical) drives in a RAID1 configuration (one logical drive). At any rate, I have no inclination of moving almost two terabytes of data elsewhere (in case they become corrupted) just to try out a silly experiment like this :) It would be most interesting to see how badly the performance would be hit, though. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:39, July 31, 2009 (UTC)

Don't worry, there's absolutely no chance it would do anything interesting. Maybe there are external drives with multiple USB ports or multiple eSATA ports that are designed for concurrent block-level use, though I doubt it. But using two different interface standards to hook up two computers is obviously a hack, and there's no way they'd implement all the tricky arbitration logic that would be needed to support that hack, especially since in the vast majority of cases the result of all that effort would be to corrupt the file system and lose customers' data. -- BenRG (talk) 21:05, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Unless this was specifically designed and advertised to be used by two computers at once, I would be very surprised if what you're looking to do actually worked. I suspect that You'll need some sort of server in the loop. Tiny File servers are (Relatively) cheap these days. I've got one of these : NSLU2, but there are others out there. APL (talk) 07:18, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

How to use MediaWiki PAGENAMEE for custom page name?

I know that in MediaWiki, they have two variable expansions, {{PAGENAME}} and {{PAGENAMEE}}, where the second one is the first one with special characters URL-encoded, and spaces turned into underscores. However, suppose I want to make a template that allows people to link to an external wiki outside of the Wikipedia family using a direct URL link (since it's a wiki using MediaWiki, I need to URL-encode page names in the URL when I link it), but I want to allow people to specify the page name as a normal page name (i.e. with spaces and special characters). So my question is: is there some special MediaWiki function that performs the exact same transformation as {{PAGENAME}} to {{PAGENAMEE}}, but on a custom string. Thanks, --71.106.173.110 (talk) 18:21, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Mobile phone, voice recognition for calling

I have a Sony Ericsson W595 phone which I very often use with a bluetooth headset, and the first thing I did after buying it, was to try out the voice recognition feature for making calls. I recorded commands such as "Call Erik", "Call Ellen", etc. (I used the Norwegian word for call - Ring - and these are not the actual names). I did this for about ten or fifteen of my contacts. It worked beautifully. Beautifully, that is, in the quiet room where I was when I did the exercise. When I need the feature, however, it's a disaster. Outdoors, on the metro, when I'm running -- it hardly ever works. My question is - what should I do to make the feature usable?. My first thoughts are: don't say "Call" before the name of the contact, and keep the number of contacts that I use the feature for to a minimum. Any other suggestions? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 18:45, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Try recording the commands when you're in a noisy environment. --LarryMac | Talk 18:51, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I've thought of that, but I haven't tried it. The trouble is — I fear — that the ambient noise when I'm running, when I'm on the metro, when I'm in my car, when I'm in a shopping mall etc., are very different. I have, too, thought of making silly noises, whistling, gargling, singing falling and rising tones etc. to maximize the difference between the audio signatures of each contact. But that would really make people think I'm a lunatic. (I'm oldish, I don't really care all that much what people think, but still, there's a limit...). I would very much like this feature to work, because I would have used it a lot, especially when running (which I do for about an hour every day, on my way to work and back home in the evening). --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:08, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

My daughter just arrived when I was typing my previous entry, and asked if I had used the bluetooth headset when recording the commands, and the answer is no, I used the phone's mike. I'll re-record the entries with the bluetooth headset, and without the Ring before the names. I'd still like to hear if anyone has experience in using voice-activated calls for more than a couple of contacts, though. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:21, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Indirect sharing of contact info

On what social networking sites, if any, can I create a list of friends who can share my private profile with people I don't know, without allowing those friends to share the right to share the profile? NeonMerlin 20:37, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Just to clarify, what you want is something like a way to set up specific groups that have "friends of friends" access, in the Facebook parlance? --98.217.14.211 (talk) 21:59, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Note that this strategy is subject to the analog hole - (or rather, the digital hole). As soon as your data becomes viewable to others, they can copy it to some other unprotected system, and share it with others. Any copy-protection scheme is invariably prone to fail, because free information will proliferate. Such a system only functions as long as the data remains inside the closed system - which, by definition, is not closed, because you intend to allow "friends of friends" to view your data. You cannot vet these people for security clearance unless they are already in your "friends" group. Even then, you are assuming on good faith that they will not proliferate your data outside of the system you have asked them to use. I'm ranting here, but I'm still baffled how this minor bit of logic fails to register with the vast majority of Social Network users and designers. Nimur (talk) 00:12, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

But what they copy and share will be a static snapshot that can't be updated unless it's copied and shared again. So if you start getting e-mail spam and can find the "friend" responsible, you can cut them off and change your address. NeonMerlin 06:23, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

How to save a video clip to hard disk

How can I save the video clip here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8173285.stm to hard disk? My normal method of finding the .flv file in the cache does not work. 89.243.180.82 (talk) 20:41, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

BBC News has switched over from Realplayer to the same technology as BBC iPlayer; it uses a transport (and, it seems, encryption) mechanism that's much more sophisticated than the simple flash movie player used by, for example, YouTube. I'm not aware of any means of permanently storing iPlayer content. People in the UK can temporarily store iPlayer content with BBC iPlayer Desktop, but I don't know if that extends to video embedded in non-iPlayer pages, like BBC News. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:49, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

get_iplayer http://linuxcentre.net/getiplayer/ 87.194.213.98 (talk) 22:20, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I downloaded Get iplayer. But so far I have been unable to download the video clip linked to above - here's what I got:

"C:\Program Files\get_iplayer>get_iplayer --get --modes=flashhd,flashvhigh,flashh igh,iphone,flashnormal --type=tv --url='http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8173 285.stm'

get_iplayer v2.14, Copyright (C) 2009 Phil Lewis This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use --warranty. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; use --conditions for details.

INFO Trying to stream pid using type tv INFO: pid not found in tv cache ERROR: Failed to get version pid metadata from iplayer site

INFO: No versions exist for this programme"

What command should I use please? 78.146.243.101 (talk) 19:23, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

From a quick look at the get_iplayer website, it doesn't look like it supports the BBC news site yet. You may want to ask the author if he/she would consider supporting it Nil Einne (talk) 19:34, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

August 1

Amazon.co.uk, wish-list, Amazon's privacy policy

I just googled my own name (yeah, I'm bored, I've had a beer or three, my wife has longer holidays than I have and visits her parents, I'm alone etc.). As far as I know, I'm the only person on our planet with my exact name, and whaddayaknow: On page five or six of the search, amazon.co.uk kindly provides a wish-list for {My Name}. WTF is going on??? I've bought many books, both from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. The list was relevant, I might indeed have liked to read the books that were suggested. I hate to admit it, but I don't always read all the fine print when I register on a reputable site. Skim through it -- yes, spend half an hour reading every detail -- no. What have I missed, and is there any way I could disable this blatant breach of my privacy? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 01:31, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I think they make their wish lists public by default, the idea being (I guess) that you might want to send it to friends/family that don't already have amazon accounts. Still, not very friendly. They should at least ask first. I don't have an amazon.co.uk account, but on my amazon.com account, if you log in and click on the wish list in question, it should have a little box on the left-hand side of the window, with things like "This list is public. This is your default list.", etc. If you look down a little ways, there should be a button that says "Make this list private". IMO, they don't really make it easy to find. Indeterminate (talk) 01:59, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I found it. Personalisation → Wish list → Combo-box "This list will be viewable by:". Default is "Anyone who searches for me.". Still furious! --NorwegianBlue ^talk 09:06, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

On a side note as I read this...Google your email. watch what happens. That should pre occupy your paranoia :P 142.176.13.22 (talk) 02:35, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

You certainly managed to stir my paranoia, but... you're kidding, no? Which email sevice are you referring to? Do you have a source? I just googled my previous email address, which I've used for many years, but recently abandoned because of spam. The only thing that turned up was "Do you mean" {similar-address}@{emailservice}.com. I've heard stories about very unpleasant stuff turning up when people google their own national identification number. I'm reluctant to do that experiment, however, because google stores my searches. Might do it using tor (anonymity network), though, would that be safe? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 09:06, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I think NorwegianBlue might be getting different results than me. a Google search for my designated spam email has no hits, and a search for a different email I use only returns my (old) blog posts I signed with it. Not a huge return or any sites that seemed to have leak it. Freedomlinux (talk) 14:21, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Every had to put your email to "join" a site to get access to something you needed from it? Ever did the same, to comment or answer a question on a strange forum? Ever given an answer on Yahoo Answers, good enough for some fake forum to scrape it? (the ones who scrape via RSS get the email ID, not the Nickname). In the old days you'd get one email address from your ISP, made up as some version of your real name and no choice about it. (Or you used your own, figuring it's more professional for work emails than being called fghjklj@somemail.com).

Happy hunting. Maybe get one of these useful shiny hats first. - KoolerStill (talk) 09:26, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

As stated, I've had a huge spam problem which forced me to transfer all my mail from one account to another (fake emails that appeared to come from me, with autoreplies drowning my inbox). Nevertheless, there were no ghits for my old address. BTW, after the spam problem, I've taken the following strategy: I have a couple of domain names with associated email addresses that I can redirect. When I need to register somewhere, I use an address that I create for that site only. If the address is compromised, I'll know who did it, and the problem is easily corrected. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 10:51, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Currently-working robot certificate authorities?

Hey all,

All the CAs linked from robot certificate authority seem to be down/abandoned/otherwise not working, as do all those I can find via the first few pages of a Google search. Does anyone know of any that are still active?

Thanks, --Aseld ^talk 01:51, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Finding compatible graphics card for Acer Aspire

I have an Acer Aspire 5738Z (http://www.acer.co.uk/acer-v2/seu30e.do?kcond61e.c2att101=56845&LanguageISOCtxParam=en&link=ln400e&CountryISOCtxParam=UK&acond125e=56845&sp=page18e&ctx1g.c2att92=122&ctx2.c2att1=17&ctx1.att21k=1&CRC=3755713286) which has a JV50 motherboard and is currently using integrated graphics. I would like to upgrade the graphics. How do I find which graphics cards are compatible? ----Seans Potato Business 07:13, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

You're not going to find any. Only a limited number of very premium laptops have an upgradeable videocard, due to size, heat and power issues, as well as proprietary connections and components. That said, this machine seems to have quite a powerful video system, so I'm curious why you feel the need to upgrade it. If it's performance issues, proper system maintenance would probably make the most difference. --M^ask? 09:03, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

From Sisoft Sandra, I have deterined:

PEG Slot J6B2 (6h) : PCIe 32-bit +5V +3.3V Full-Length Available

PCI Express Slot J6B1 (7h) : PCIe 32-bit +5V +3.3V Full-Length Used

PCI Express Slot J6D1 (8h) : PCIe 32-bit +5V +3.3V Full-Length Available

PCI Express Slot J8B3 (9h) : PCIe 32-bit +5V +3.3V Full-Length Used

PCI Express Slot J8D1 (Ah) : PCIe 32-bit +5V +3.3V Full-Length Available

PCI Express Slot J7B1 (Ah) : PCIe 32-bit +5V +3.3V Full-Length Available

PCI Express Slot 6 (Ah) : PCIe 32-bit +5V +3.3V Full-Length Available

- doesn't this mean that I have a PCI-e slot available?

My laptop is available with at least two options with respect to graphics and I have the lesser of those two options (integrated Intel 4500M with 64 MB dedicated VRAM, as opposed to NVIDIA GeForce G105M with 512 MB dedicated DDR2). I'm guessing you thought I had the latter? ----Seans Potato Business 12:27, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Sandra reports what the PCI bridge controller reports to it; those are logical ports, which on an integrated laptop chipset don't always correspond with physical pinouts on the southbridge (some are instead on-die pci connections to other integrated peripherals. Moreover, those ports that are pinned out of the southbridge package aren't necessary connected to any physical header, and in laptops and small form factor systems (which don't have room for the PCI headers, never mind actual PCI cards) most are just terminated by the system builder to pullups. The only way to know what is actually mapped to a physical PCI header is to check the underside. Acer laptops have all their removable components accessible via panels on the bottom, which are labeled with (moderately) clear icons. My own Acer, a travelmate, only has panels for memory and the hard disk, although I've seen others that have one for the WiFi card as well. I've personally never seen an Acer (I've only seen mid-range ones, not the Ferrari ones) that had a removable graphics adapter. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:42, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I checked the Quick Start Guide for that model laptop, from Acer's UK support site. It shows a picture of the underside panels, and it only has battery, hd, and memory. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:53, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

windows downloads

I was told to download Windows NT4.0 service pack 3 from the microsoft website, but searching the site, it seems they only have service packs 2, 4 and 6. Does anyone know where I can find this service pack 3?

88.108.248.67 (talk) 10:58, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Later Service Packs will include SP3 as well as other cumulative fixes. Is there a reason you specifically need NT4.0 SP3? That's almost a fifteen year old operating system; are you having some type of compatibility problem? Nimur (talk) 13:19, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

bash scripting - testing if wget succeeds

I am writing a bash script that uses wget to download some files. I'd like my script to behave differently if wget fails (specifically, if it gets a 404). Other than testing if the file exists after wget terminates, is there a way to do this? I tried the wget manpage but didn't see anything. Also: is there a good scripting tutorial out there? 87.194.213.98 (talk) 13:51, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Try:

wget http://foo.com/blah
if [ $? == 0 ]; then
  echo WGET succeeded
else
  echo WGET failed
fi

This works because wget sets a 0 result code (that's $?) if it "succeeds", and 1 if it "fails". For the couple of sites I tested, a 404 does count as failure, but that may not be the case for every one. wget doesn't return more detailed information - this post explains why. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:15, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

That's brilliant, thanks very much. 87.194.213.98 (talk) 14:40, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

FYI, you can also use the command itself in the if statement:

if wget http://foo.com/blah; then
  echo WGET succeeded
else
  echo WGET failed
fi

--Sean 16:39, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Garageband for Windows

Is there anything that comes close to rivaling Apple's Garageband on a Windows platform? I sat down for 15 minutes at an Apple store with a mac hooked up to a USB piano keyboard and I composed a version of Pachelbel's Canon with 7 layers of instruments that took me completely by surprise. I couldn't believe that it was also notating each part on a score. It was so shockingly easy that it was an eerie experience. I'd considering jumping platforms to an Apple just for that piece of software. Is there a Windows equivalent? Sappysap (talk) 19:14, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

While I have never used the program, I think Adobe Audition could come close to what you want. Maybe you could get a trial version and see for yourself (and let us know what you think of it)? Thanks. Kushal (talk) 15:58, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

These [11] [12] may be of interest. There are of course a lot of professional apps for Windows, which may be harder to use but have existed for a long while [13] Nil Einne (talk) 19:29, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Wheeled mouse moves cursor extremely slowly

I have a wheel mouse I would like to use. When I plug it in it works OK, but the cursor requires about ten times or more as much movement on the mouse mat to move the cursor the same distance on the screen as my other non-wheel mice do. And yes, I have tried increasing the speed of the cursor in the mouse settings. I use Windows XP. The brand name of the mouse is Serif. 78.146.251.127 (talk) 22:00, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean a scroll wheel mouse?

Have you checked the sensitivity - maybe it's a very insensitive mouse.

Did changing the mouse sensitivity settings have any effect?83.100.250.79 (talk) 16:16, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Analog stick bearing

Eh...this only fits under computing tangentially, but it still deals with hardware. Kind of.

Anyway, a heavy console video game player should know this problem well, especially since the release of the fifth-generation consoles. This problem has to do with analog sticks. As you probably know, the analog stick is centered in a neutral position, and by applying some pressure you move it to trigger a response from the video game. A new analog stick is perfectly centered, but after several years of use (or a couple years of heavy use), the bearings (I guess) on the analog stick start to wear out, and the neutral position of the stick expands. For example, the GameCube is nearly 8 years old. My first two controllers, both bought at the same time I got it, are now nigh-unusable. As the bearings have worn out, the analog stick can be moved around quite a bit without actually triggering...whatever the stick triggers to register movement. Thus, when the stick is pushed as far left as possible, the video game will only register a slight left (i.e., only getting a walk from the game when you're trying to run). Buying a new controller is a bit of a kludge, and really can't effectively be done anymore to alleviate this problem with older consoles (Nintendo 64, PlayStation, etc.).

So, finally to the point: surely there must be a way to repair the bearings (or whatever) of analog sticks. Is there?--The Ninth Bright Shiner 22:40, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I can think of two problems that an analog joystick much have:

• The springs that push the stick back to the neutral position are, through wear, losing their resilience. The symptom of this is that the joystick doesn't settle at quite the correct centre, but at some centre-ish place instead. The fix is to replace the springs with new ones.
• The potentiometer has developed wear which affects its operation in its central area. The symptom of this is that small motions from zero aren't noticed, meaning that fine control is lost. The fix is to replace the potentiometer.

Either way, it's a component swap-out, with the associated desolder and resolder. Whether either procedure is cost-effective, when compared with replacing the whole controller, is doubtful. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:51, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Augh! Then it seems there's never a simple way. Is there any sort of service that can do this for hardware noobs like me?--The Ninth Bright Shiner 00:16, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Your local TV or radio repair place could certainly do it, but it's maybe 30 minutes of labour (including opening and closing the thing, ordering the part if they don't have it, and writing the bill out for you), so I'd be surprised if it is cost-effective (in places where labour is cheap and electrical components relatively expensive, this might not be true). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:57, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Then I must certainly ask about this at RadioShack or the like next time I'm at the mall. Thank you!--The Ninth Bright Shiner 20:07, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

August 2

Porting programs between architectures and operating systems

I've been thinking about this for a long time.. ..how difficult is it porting programs from, say, Windows to GNU/Linux and from Intel to PPC? Of course they have to change all the directories since the filesystems are differ between Windows and Linux but what else is there (let's say you have the source code)? I'm pretty sure porting between OS's a big task but it doesn't seem like porting between architectures is as difficult (Ubuntu e.g. supports a lot of architectures that have a small user-base and I doubt they'd go through immense trouble for the few PPC users that want to try Ubuntu) --BiT (talk) 00:22, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

It depends on the program. If you were just changing architecture (e.g. Linux Intel to Linux PPC) most programs will work just with a simple recompile; a small number that make assumptions about how structure and memory is laid out will need those assumptions readjusting. The same is true for moving Windows apps from IA32 to x8x-64 or IA64 (and formerly to Windows-Alpha). Moving between Window and Linux is orders of magnitude more work, because they don't share the same application programming interfaces; the extent to which a given program uses a platform's API defines how much effort it will take to move. Some APIs are fairly isomorphic between the two: network, process, thread, and filesystem stuff is a fairly obvious mapping. Some are conceptually similar but require a major overhall - e.g. changing from a Windows GUI interface to GTK, or from DirectX to OpenGL is a lot of work. And some technologies don't have easy analogs on the other platform - if you were translating a windows DCOM program to Linux, you'd probably rip out all the DCOM and write that part from scratch. But there are shortcuts: Linux programs written with GTK/GlibC can be moved to Windows, as those libraries are available there. And some Windows apps can run fine on Linux using Wine, or can be recompiled for Linux with Wine's "winelib" (that's how Google's Picasa works on Linux). So, in short, it depends very heavily on the program. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:08, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok so porting programs between architectures is not that difficult. But why does it take so long e.g. for Google to release a version of Chrome for Linux and OS X, since Chrome only has some minor GUI changes to GTK (which they actually fixed ages ago with both Chromium and the dev build of Chrome) and although being little-of-programming I believe Chrome includes minimal, if not no amount of DirectX. Where does the complexity lie there? Has it got something to do with the javascript..? bah, I dunno --BiT (talk) 01:58, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the specifics, but Chrome has worked fine for me on Linux for several months. I think their ports have lagged Windows because they don't send that much effort on them. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 02:19, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes I'm using the dev version of Chrome atm and it's working great except for lack of Flash and other minor issues. I was just wondering why it has taken this long to get Chrome working on other OS's than Windows when almost a year has passed since it's initial release. You're probably partially correct in assuming that they aren't spending that much effort on non-Windows versions but they do want their browser to become wide-spread and Unix-based OS's constitute for almost 10% of the entire world's computer usage. Why didn't they simultaneously release it on all OS's- or would that be too difficult? --BiT (talk) 02:28, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

There's a discussion about porting the UI to Linux/OS X featuring some of the Chromium developers here which you might find interesting. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 10:25, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Now that is interesting, thanks for posting that! It's helpful reading a conversation between professional programmers and trying to follow their train of thought. On a side note, is there any word on when the Mac/Linux version of Chrome is going to be completed? I've heard the Mac version is almost ready and the dev version for Linux seems very close to completion. --BiT (talk) 14:25, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

One thing that wasn't been mentioned is whether the code contains any assembly. It's not uncommon for highly optimised code, e.g. codecs, to use assembly. Frequently these will be in addition to more normal code, e.g. Xvid [14] but if it not, porting between architectures is likely to be significantly more difficult. Of course if assembly is used, even if porting is not that hard, the actual code may perform significantly worse. This is particularly relevant when it comes to x86-64 vs x86-32 since there the user often has a choice. Nil Einne (talk) 19:22, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Porting can be rather easy if you intentionally design your software to use APIs and libraries that work on both systems. On the other hand, if you design your system to depend on DirectX you're going to have a headache if you try to move it off of Microsoft platforms.

So why don't all software developers instantly release ported versions of their software? Well, for one thing, even if it's easy, they've still got to do it, and they may be busy with the deployment and support of the Windows version. But I think that the main hold-up is that they've got to restart their whole testing procedure to make sure that their newly ported version is robust. For a web browser, testing can be rather extensive. APL (talk) 07:23, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I get your point, of course the Windows version of almost every software is the first version that needs to be completed since Windows users are more than 90% of all users. --BiT (talk) 14:25, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

x86 instructions atomic?

I know that you can use the lock prefix to produce a multi-processor-safe instruction on x86, but are normal instructions somewhat atomic? That is, is there any chance of me using the add or mov instruction and another processor reading half of the new value? --wj32 ^t/c 08:16, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

With read modify-write instructions like ADD mem,reg you have the following race: both processors read, then processor A writes, then processor B writes, with the result that only processor B's change takes effect. That's not equivalent to A-then-B or B-then-A order, so the instructions aren't atomic. This can't happen with MOV.

Unaligned operands can generate more than one memory access for each read or write and I think that can lead to getting part of a value that another processor was in the process of updating. According to the docs, LOCK ADD mem,reg is atomic even when misaligned, but LOCK ADD reg,mem and LOCK MOV are illegal, even though they could potentially benefit from this aspect of locking. -- BenRG (talk) 08:48, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I get it now :) --wj32 ^t/c 06:37, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Can't get rid of Norton AntiVirus

For months now, I've been struggling to expunge this stupid program from my system. It no longer appears in Add/Remove Programs, but every now and then, MS Word crashes, and the error-report blames Norton. Sure enough, when I run the Norton Removal Tool, downloadble from the Symantec website, the problem stays fixed for a couple of weeks. Then the same thing happens again. Any tips? Thanks. ╟─TreasuryTag►stannator─╢ 15:04, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Run msconfig and look for any services/startup items referencing Norton. Rjwilmsi 15:58, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I can't immediately see any under "Services" or "Startup" – any idea of what they might look like specifically? ╟─TreasuryTag►constabulary─╢ 16:03, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Following that, I found one "Synaptics" entry in regedit (HK_LOCAL_MACHINE > Software > Windows > Run) and deleted that, I assume that will help somewhat? ╟─TreasuryTag►assemblyman─╢ 16:11, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Isn't Synaptics the manufacturer of laptop touchpads, and most Windows machines with such a laptop run a synaptics driver (which implements some features over the basic mouse functionality, such as tap-to-click). I don't think "synaptics" and "symantec" have anything to do with one another. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:24, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, my mistake. I meant "Symantec", it was that that I deleted. :P I hope... ╟─TreasuryTag►Captain-Regent─╢ 16:27, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't Windows Defender help detect (and delete) unwanted start-up and network programs. (I seem to remember discovering a quicktime network program using it long after I'd uninstalled quicktime) If so it might be worth running (or downloading) to check for any more programs left behind/ possibly that it's just a prettified version of regedit in that respect/83.100.250.79 (talk) 16:59, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

You could also search the file system and registry for anything starting "nav...". I've noticed that Symantec products also use a "common files" folder (either c:\program files\common files\symantec\ or c:\program files\symantec\common files\) ... or maybe it's "common tools". Of course, be careful deleting stuff and keep a backup incase you delete someting critical. Astronaut (talk) 14:23, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Create a windows 7/Vista restore disk.

I want to create a boot disk for windows 7 or Vista that will restore my computer to the state it is currently in from a disk but don't know exactly how to do this. I know it can be done with norton ghost but I'd like to use completely free software altogether if possible. If someone could help I'd appreciate it. Thanks! 65.184.21.210 (talk) 16:57, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Norton Ghost won't (or didn't i should say, its been a decade since i've used it) create a boot disk, but a disk image, a byte-for-byte copy of the drive, which you would then back up and write over the disk with when needed/written to other machines to clone system settings across an enterprise. Using free software to do this is pretty similiar to the usb image question up the page- just use dd with the drives dev path as input file and get a raw image. If you mean more the boot disk phrasing, i believe finding a web guide on slipstreaming windows install discs to add software, files and other such into the base system, and see if those methods apply to win7. --M^ask? 12:43, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

You might be surprised at how complicated disk imaging can be... but for a free, relatively easy one, I recommend Clonezilla. Indeterminate (talk) 20:24, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Unmount USB drive on unplug

In Kubuntu, how do I set my external USB hard drive to automatically unmount when I unplug it? If it makes any difference, I'll usually be unplugging the power cable first or only. NeonMerlin 19:00, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, things don't work that way. The drive needs to have power for a few moments to actually do the unmount sequence. By removing the power there is no way to "inform" the drive and the computer that you want to unmount it, hence it's impossible. The only way this could be done is through a sensor/button that tells the OS to unmount the hd/ssd. The moment when you remove the power/data connection it's too late to unmount. Mile92 (talk) 03:26, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

MS Access Help

I have 3 Tables in Microsoft Access.

1st Table has a list of nursing homes. (Field 1 - names of Nursing Homes - Facilites)

2nd Table has a list of Patients names. (Field 1 - names of Patients - Names)

3rd Table has a list of treatments in Field 1 - Treatments, and the Associated Costs in Field 2 - Costs.

What would be the best way for me to go about making a database?

What I have done is this:

I made Field 2 in the 2nd Table and I used "Add Existing Field" function under the Datasheet tab and added the Facilities field from Table 1.

So now, after adding the patient name in the 2nd table, I can select which nursing home the patient resides in using the drop down function.

Now in field 3 and field 4 inside Table 2 I am trying to add Treatment and the associated costs. However, I cannot make it such that when Field 3 = Field 1 of table 3 then automatically Field 4 = Field 2 of table 2

--33rogers (talk) 23:35, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I have to admit, I read your post a few times but I'm not quite following you, so forgive me if this is wide of the mark. It sounds as if you're trying put data from one table into another, based on a relationship between them. The concept I think you're missing is that you don't do that with tables; rather, the tables stand alone, and you join them up by using queries. Try creating a new query in Access and putting your relationship joins in there. --Rixxin (talk) 15:51, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I get it (I think). Each patient has a treatment, and for each type of treatment the associated cost is the same.

Technically I think you're trying to do it wrong - all you need is 'treatment' field in table 2, and a association between the 'treatment field' and 'associated costs' in a 3rd table. In openoffice these are called "relationships" but in MS access they are called something else.

If you do this you only have to enter the treatment for each patient - and the "associated costs" are automatically connected from the table of treatment/costs ... did that make sense.

I think they call them relations

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304466 (you want a 1 to many relationship - 1 treatment type in the treatment/costs table can link to many instances of a treatment in the patient table.

There will be lots of tutorials on this if you need it (search "microsoft access relations tutorial" or similar) - though the article I linked above is a good explanation.

Basically you shouldn't need field4 - but a relational link to a new table. I'm fairly certain that this is the thing you want to do - please say if you need more.

When creating queries you can include both tables.83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:01, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

By the way if you do a query on table2 and 3 - outputing all the fields (with no exclusions) the result will be the table you desire - with "costs" as an additional field tacked onto the end of table2 automatically83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:27, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Nasty vicious virus: "System Security 4.52", help!

Hello. My computer has been infected with "System Security 4.52", a very annoying virus. It won't allow me to open up most applications, won't allow me to access add remove programs, and won't allow me to run system restore. I have looked up various ways to get rid of it using google searches (safari and firefox wouldn't access the Internet but I was able to get on with IE and am clicking off bullshit popups from the virus as we speak). The two programs that came up in searches frr removing it, one was free but the download site was down, and the other was Spyware Doctor. I tried to download it but the virus wouldn't let me, Anyway, I logged on in safe mode after looking up how to do so, and tried to do a system retore but for some reason it wouldn't let me (I tried multiple times—it gets to the screen to choose a retsote point, I click next and nothing happens). Okay, so then I couldn't access the internet to do the download so then I figured out how to log on in safe mode with networking allowed. Long story short (I've been trying to remove this thing for many hours) I was able to dowload Spyware Doctor )I paid $30 to do so!) and run it in safe mode (the virus stops it from running otherwise). Spyware Doctor found the virus by name and removed "261 infected files". I then restarted and the virus was still on my computer, full blown. I restarted again in safe mode, ran the program again, and it found 89 files infected and supposedly fixed them. I restarted again and, you guessed it, it's still on my computer full blown. I tried again with a full scan and this is driving me crazy: it found something like "system security downloder codec" on the full scan, but, unlike the prior scans, it didn't say "do you want to fix this"; instead it just gave me a summary "1 threat detected" 0 threats removed", I guess meaning it couldn't remove it. I rebooted again and here I am with the Virus still making me its bitch. Any advice would be much appreciated.--70.23.79.67 (talk) 23:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Upload the infected files to Virus Total. Virus Total will then use 40+ different products to scan your file. I personally would suggest for you to download a free trial of Avira AntiVir to remove the malware, you can download it here [15] --33rogers (talk) 00:31, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Souns like Malware, fake AV crap. Try Malware Bytes, it's very effective. [16]. If it won't install read the 3rd post here: [17] RxS (talk) 00:52, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

August 3

Use one MySQL view column to calculate another

What's the most elegant workaround to the restriction that no column in a MySQL view can refer to another column's output from the same row of the same view? NeonMerlin 01:18, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know there is no such built in feature in MySQL. You could either have a program updating the dynamic column every so often, or implement that in the program that reads your database(when you read the db, you could just have a "virtual" column, in a variable and pretend like it came from the db) Mile92 (talk) 03:29, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

What I mean is that I have a view that contains the following two columns:

CREATE VIEW ... AS SELECT ..., least(max(copylimit.max_copies), maxdesiredcopies()) as desired_copies,
greatest(least(max(copylimit.max_copies), maxdesiredcopies()) - total_copies, 0) as lacking_copies
FROM ...

and I'd like to eliminate the redundant least(max(copylimit.max_copies), maxdesiredcopies()) if it's possible. NeonMerlin 18:21, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Downloading ALL attached pictures of a forum?

I need help Downloading ALL attached pictures of a forum, the pictures are posted on the website under \attachments. I have tried using Extremepicturefinder and picture ripper, but both programs have trouble following the links and threads. All of the pics are posted under a single category but in different threads. The only way I've found is downthemall but thats a grueling process of going through hundreds of threads! anyone have any ideas? --Gary123 (talk) 02:57, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

You could use the UNIX tool called wget. It is made for this kind of stuff. Here's a tutorial on how to download a whole site and the files on it using wget: [18]. Just read the documentation for wget and you can eventually filter all that to output just images and just from one category. And yes, you can run wget on windows, just search it on google. Mile92 (talk) 03:32, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I've used neodownloader for something similar and it's awesome. It's not a free program though, but *ahem* there are some cracked versions floating about the net which work a treat // 20:40, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Resetting a LayoutManager in Java

Resolved

Hi, Java programmers! I'm writing a Swing program that has my subclasses of JComponents that resize themselves after the main frame is resized (i.e. fires ComponentEvent.COMPONENT_RESIZED). The hierarchy is JFrame >> JLayeredPane >> JPanel, and I'm using a GridBagLayout. When the event is fired, all my JComponents resize themselves correctly, but they stay in the same position in the JFrame and overlap each other (when they resize larger). The problem seems to be with the LayoutManager, which isn't laying out my JLayeredPanes to give them the new space they need. I have overridden getPreferredSize() to indicate the amount of space needed after resizing events. What else do I need to do to get the GridBagLayout to space out my JLayeredPanes? Thank you!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 03:37, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

GridBagLayout disregards the preferred size of components (on most implementations, anyway). You need to specify the grid sizes using the GridBagConstraints object. Nimur (talk) 05:57, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I had a look at my code for creating the GridBagConstraints and fixed the problem, but now something else has cone up. When the user resizes the JFrame, the contents all resize themselves in response, but the LayoutManager doesn't re-lay them until the next resize (which can be as simple as clicking to drag the JFrame but not making it any bigger). I suspect that the LayoutManager is re-laying the contents before the resize each time. How can I make the LayoutManager not do its job until after my code resizes the contents? Thank you!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 19:46, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, just found the doLayout() method in java.awt.Container and think that solved my second problem. I try to look at all my possiblilities and be really stumped before I post, but sometimes I just for get to try one more thing.... Thanks again, Nimur, for your response to this and my previous questions. I appreciate your help and support despite my Java ineptness.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 20:07, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Blogging

Hello. I have no experience in blogging, but want to start a blog. Is it possible to earn money through blogging, i.e. through advertisement in blogs? Does wordpress allow advertisement in personal blogs? How to find/contact an advertiser? And which is the best weblog hostingprovider? --GeneticRobot (talk) 08:22, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

It's possible, sure, but it's not probable. If you're really funny, or knowledgeable about your topic, or famous, or otherwise interesting, you may attract advertisers that are actually willing to pay decent money, but chances of this happening aren't too good. Merchandising is probably going to be a lot more profitable than advertising, but again, you need to have a loyal (and large) reader base for that to be an option. You should understand that first you need to make a name for yourself as someone worth reading, and then you can start think about making money -- and for that to really work, you need to do it in a way that doesn't alienate those people who're reading you. It's not an easy trick to pull off, and you should understand that the odds aren't on your side. Making a living -- or any kind of income, really -- from blogging is the exception, not the rule. Still, if you're a good writer, you have a shot.

As for your other questions, I believe the free blogs you can get at WordPress.com allow advertising, but I'm not sure. You find advertisers the way anyone finds them: you find someone you think might want to reach your audience, and you ask them if they would be interested. That, of course, can take a lot of time and effort, and you need to have a product -- that is to say, your blog -- that they think is interesting and popular enough to be worth their dime. This means you already need to have a lot of popularity before you start talking to anyone. Some people are in a position where advertisers approach them, but you really can't count on that. I couldn't tell you which provider is the best. It largely depends on what your requirements are.

I don't mean to rain on your parade here, but if you're thinking this is an easy way to get some money, you really need to reconsider. I'm not saying it's impossible, but chances are it's not going to happen, and it's certainly not going to happen without a great deal of work. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 08:45, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

(Sorry - experience and opinion alert!) - Google is purported to send you checks for ads put on your blog on Google's Blogger, but I've been blogging for years and have never once received a check, because, basically anyone who visits my blogs does so because they want to read my blog, not run around clicking on advertisements (and you have to agree to not clicking on them yourself). In my experience, it's not a good way to make cash, but you can try it. As said above, if you a good at writing about your topic, you will certainly attract a lot of readers, and companies may pay you to host their ads, but I doubt you'd get much cash (if you a good at writing about your topic, you'd be better off writing a book) - good luck, anyway, though. --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 11:43, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

There are a LOT of articles online about how hard it is to make money while blogging. Some people pull it off spectacularly well (and get book deals, etc.) but they are actually quite rare. If you want to blog, definitely give it a shot! But I wouldn't quit your day job unless substantial income is coming in. As for ad revenue, most people use Google Ads at least in the beginning, because anyone can sign up for those easily. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:36, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

What do the clock and viruses have in common?

I work in a school in Korea and recently there was an announcement that government institutions were hit by a virus (three times), and we were advised that the best way to combat the virus was to reset the time on the clocks on all the computers to an earlier time. We did this, and luckily none of our computers were affected, but I am wondering why this advice was issued. What does resetting the time on the clock have to do with the viruses? Oh, and it wasn't a system restore, it was a case changing the time. This confused me, and nobody could tell me the answer. --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 11:51, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

(My guess)I guess that the virus was set to activate after a certain time, so setting the clocks before then eg 1 year back or something.? would prevent the virus from activating. I'd assume this was a temporary measure whilst they worked out how to remove the virus. 83.100.250.79 (talk) 12:05, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

See logic bomb — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 15:43, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Formatting strings in Python

I'm programming in Python and this trying to format strings with a code taken directly from the Python tutorial found here. This is the code I tried: print 'We are the {0} who say "{1}!"'.format('knights', 'Ni') and this is the outcome:

Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Oct  5 2008, 19:24:49) 
[GCC 4.3.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> print 'We are the {0} who say "{1}!"'.format('knights', 'Ni')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'format'

Why doesn't it work? Is it because I'm using an old version of Python, because I tried a lot of examples from the Python tutorial and they all failed. --BiT (talk) 12:09, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

str.format is new in Python 2.6 (ref), and you're running 2.5.2. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:17, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah, the shame. I'm at my girlfriend's place using her computer and decided to finally start learning programming but apparently she hasn't upgraded Python to 3.1. Bad thing is that I don't have root access so there isn't much I can do about it until she gets back from work =) thank you --BiT (talk) 12:48, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

It's unlikely you need Python3, and I wouldn't recommend updating, as too many tutorials will contain code that won't work (that'll be easy to fix, but that will confuse you as a beginner). You can do that same print with print 'We are the %s who say "%s!"' % ('knights', 'Ni') -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:09, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes I was just about to ask whether using "%" to format strings is exactly the same as using {}? Is one better than the other? Also, is it bad upgrading to the third Python version? I've heard about some changes like the print command being a function in Python 3.. but that's about all I know. Should I maybe upgrade to 2.6? --BiT (talk) 14:24, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd stick with % to begin with, again because most code you'll see and most tutorials will be written that way. Incidentally, % has a nice feature where you can print named elements from a dictionary, and locals() is a dictionary containing the list of local variables. So you can print local variables like this:

      name="john"
      age=23
      # then, some time later...
      print "my name is %(name)s and I am %(age)d years old" % locals()

which can be handy when you've got a large print with many fields, and you want to move things around without having to reorder the data tuple. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:31, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Audio Streaming

Is it possible to stream voice quality audio files over a LAN with a delay of less than a second? Is it possbile on a thin client system like citrix?--202.164.141.164 (talk) 12:40, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

On a good LAN, with "residential"-style traffic, you can expect network latency lower than 1 millisecond on average. However, audio acquisition, (from the microphone to the sound-card to the operating system) is always the bottleneck that I find - with latencies ranging anywhere from <1ms to 500 ms (totally unsuitable for "real-time" processing). Also, if you intend to encode, downsample, or otherwise operate on the signal, you can expect a delay equal to the computation time. Your best bet is to invest in a high quality sound-card which specifically advertises low-latency on linux. Nimur (talk) 16:19, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

"Volume Header needs minor repair"—2006 Intel MacBook 10.4.11

This is about my flash drive that seems to have some issues. Whenever I use Disk Utility to repair it, it says it repaired it successfully but it finds the error again when I "repair" the flash drive with the disk utility again. Could someone tell me what is wrong with my flash drive? Thanks. Kushal (talk) 13:23, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Here's the log of a typical event.

Disk Utility log snippet

|headerstyle=background:#ccccff}}

**********
Aug  3 08:12:14: Disk Utility started.

Verify and Repair disk “Mac”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Volume Header needs minor repair�
Repairing volume.
Rechecking volume.
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Mac was repaired successfully.
Mounting Disk

1 HFS volume checked
Repair attempted on 1 volume
	1 HFS volume repaired


Eject of “Generic USB Flash Drive Media” succeeded

**********
Aug  3 08:18:58: Disk Utility started.

Verify and Repair disk “Mac”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Volume Header needs minor repair�
Repairing volume.
Rechecking volume.
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Mac was repaired successfully.
Mounting Disk

1 HFS volume checked
Repair attempted on 1 volume
	1 HFS volume repaired


Verifying volume “Mac”
The disk “Mac” could not be unmounted


Verify volume failed with error Could not unmount disk




Verify and Repair disk “Mac”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Volume Header needs minor repair�
Repairing volume.
Rechecking volume.
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Mac was repaired successfully.
Mounting Disk

1 HFS volume checked
Repair attempted on 1 volume
	1 HFS volume repaired



**********
Aug  3 08:19:32: Disk Utility started.

Verify and Repair disk “Mac”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Volume Header needs minor repair�
Repairing volume.
Rechecking volume.
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Mac was repaired successfully.
Mounting Disk

1 HFS volume checked
Repair attempted on 1 volume
	1 HFS volume repaired

Kushal (talk) 13:23, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

When you say it "finds the error again", do you mean if you run Disk Utility again right away, or the next time you insert the flash drive? If the first one, then it sounds like Disk Utility isn't actually fixing the error, and if the second one, it means the disk probably isn't being removed/unmounted safely. Another alternative is that the drive is starting to physically fail, but I'd only consider this option if you've had the flash drive for a year or more, or if all else fails.

If Disk Utility isn't fixing the error, you can use fsck. First, open a command prompt, either with Terminal or single-user mode. Typing "diskutil list" should show you the device name for your flash drive if it's currently mounted. Then type "fsck -f flash drive device name". If it finds errors, it'll ask if you want to repair them. It should give you more information than Disk Utility, so if it still fails, hopefully you'll have more information for us. Indeterminate (talk) 20:18, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply, Indeterminate. I did what you asked me to do and here's the result for fdisk:

fsck -f /dev/disk1

• • /dev/rdisk1 (NO WRITE)

BAD SUPER BLOCK: MAGIC NUMBER WRONG

LOOK FOR ALTERNATE SUPERBLOCKS? no

Is that giving any indication to what we need? When I said it finds errors again, I mean both. It does it if I run disk utility right away and when I eject and reinsert the drive (I usually eject drives safely). The flash drive is almost two years old but I am not sure if it is physically failing yet. Anything else that I could do to give you more information? Thanks, Kushal (talk) 22:39, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Flash player is sometimes slow

Everything that runs flash such as Browser's Flash player , vlc player's flash video player etc runs (at times) slow for no apparent reason. Only cure is restarting the machine. Once it runs at normal speed, no problems until I shut down the machine. It does not matter even if I restart the browser or vlc player. I use flash player 10 on windows and the machine its self is fast enough- well over 2GHZ and hundreds of RAM. Please say how to fix flash. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.220.46.25 (talk) 13:28, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

What browser are you using? Also does the flash player stutter, or play like a slideshow missing frames.?83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:58, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

When it is slow, it is slow on both browsers ( IE and firefox). In both browsers, it would play like a slideshow when it is slow, after the movie is over (sound is track is finished and youtube shows play again icon) it would play the remaining video at slightly higher speed than slideshow. This lag between audio and video exists only in big ( greater than 10 minutes and better quality videos).

Cpmputer is freezing after 6 to 9 hours of use and dvd drive problem

Recently, I am having bitter experience with my newly upgraded hardware. If I run my system for 6 to 9 hours it gets freeze. The symptoms are: mouse pointer stops for a while then I can move it and again it stops, music gets crashed if I play. Same thing happens with keyboard. My usb modem also gets disconnected at that time. I tried to run my system with case cover open and blow a fan into inside (My pc case contains 4 cooler fan inside though). But nothing happens. It gets frozen (until I press power button to shut it off). I am using vista 64 bit ultimate. My mobo is 750i SLI Nvidia Geforce, Graphics card ATI Radeon 4890 1 GB (GPU Clock 850 MHz). All are 64 bit supported.

Another problem I have just faced is my dvd rom icon suddenly disappear from "my computer" and system gets frozen. The above mentioned symptoms were also happening. It happened when I inserted a dvd.

I checked system with diagnostics tools (prime95) and no errors. My all drivers are up to date.

Is overheating causing all these problems? Should I reduce my GPU Clock from 850MHz to 750MHz (ATI Radeon 4870 1 GB) or 625 MHz (ATI Radeon 4850 1 GB)?--119.30.36.54 (talk) 17:32, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Download and run PC Wizard, which has a temperature sensor button. Here are my temperatures: CPU=35C, mainboard=21C, GPU=47C, Hard Disk=30C. Also check that all your voltages are correct. If the figures you get are close to these, then you do NOT have a heating problem. If your GPU is for example 70C, then it IS overheating and it needs to be cooled OR replaced. Now if you do NOT have a heating problem, here is where things get difficult. First - go into your BIOS and select 'fail safe defaults'. Then, if you can, try different components one at a time. Disable your sound card and see if that makes a difference. Disable your network card. Try a different graphics card. Try a different power supply. Etc. If you're still not coming right, please don't post another plea here. Try techsupportforum.com, or go and support your local computer shop. Yes, sometimes you have to pay to fix problems, such as when you pay a mechanic to fix your car. Sandman30s (talk) 20:10, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

• Well, Ive downloaded its exe file and run it. It shows my CPU=27C, Mainboard=40C. But I could not find GPU and Harddisk temprature option. where are they? Thank you--119.30.36.33 (talk) 22:08, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Are you overclocking - if so stop - that could cause problems even if it is not overheating. Also is it a new problem - have you added any new devices - sounds similar to problems caused by having an underspecified power supply (amongst a 1000 other things). It's good that it runs for over 6hrs before problems - suggests the computer is not borked. 83.100.250.79 (talk) 23:23, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually all those problems (DVD, mouse, keyboard) are serial devices - you might want to focus on that area eg troubleshoot drivers etc.83.100.250.79 (talk) 00:07, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

eBooks

Can all PCs display all eBooks? • S • C • A • R • C • E • 18:41, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

No. A lot of eBooks are distributed only for hardware readers (chiefly Amazon's Kindle and Sony's reader) can only be read on those devices, not on PCs. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:46, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Is there any free way to split PDF pages down the middle?

I have a scanned PDF book with 2 pages on each page. Is there any way I could split the whole doc down the middle so there is 1 book page per page. --Gary123 (talk) 21:37, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

The Gimp will import PDFs and then you can manipulate them as you want.--80.176.225.249 (talk) 21:56, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

...which is exceptionally cumbersome for more than just one page. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:29, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

It's not easy to do, unfortunately. I've long struggled with the same problem. You can chain a number of free command-line programs (e.g. ImageMagick, pdftk) to do the actions for you, but it is slow and takes a LOT of fiddling. I had some success with using OS X's Automator to effectively just double the pages (so that the output PDF was 1,1, 2,2), and then use Acrobat (not free) to crop "even only" and "odd only", but this is also cumbersome. So far I don't think there's an easy solution to this even though it is a common-enough activity if you scan books or articles on a regular basis (which a lot of people do).

And just to reiterate, so that others are sure what you mean: if you scan a book on a flatbed scanner, you get one page of PDF that has two pages of book on it. The ideal program would create a new PDF where the left and right pages were separated. Effecting this manually is extraordinarily time consuming. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:29, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I know it is not what the OP asked, but would you normally want such software to take the original pdf file, and create two consecutive pages from each source page;thereby recreating the original book in page-by-page order? I would be surprised if software for that task doesn't exist. Astronaut (talk) 04:14, 4 August 2009 (UTC)