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September 29

Cannot edit in K-Meleon?

I was browsing with K-Meleon, and I found that I could not edit the text in the edit window. I could edit the edit summary, Subject/headline, and search window, but not the text. At first I thought the page was protected, but the logs indicate that it was not. I cannot edit sometimes, but at other times I can. This is very annoying, as I'd like to use K-Meleon to browse Wikipedia, as it has features I like that are similar to Google Chrome, but it is much faster than Chrome and a bit faster (and a lot easier to use) than Safari. Any idea why I cannot edit? Intelligentsium 02:33, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried both while logged-in to Wikipedia, and while not logged-in? Do you have any extensions enabled on K-Meleon? Which version of K-Meleon are you using? Have you noticed any similarities between the pages you are able (or unable) to edit? For example, are all the pages which you cannot edit very large?–RHolton≡– 18:15, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Be it resolved...

I have an LG monitor and Vista Home Premium SP2. When I leave the PC unattended for a while, the screen resolution changes. LG technical support was unhelpful. Is there a way to lock the resolution? Clarityfiend (talk) 07:43, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you have a screensaver which is changing the resolution? Nimur (talk) 09:22, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like the issue. One circuituous way to lock the resolution would be to use an account on your computer without admin privileges (which hopefully you are doing anyway). I believe that Vista requires admin rights for a screen resolution change. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:04, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Aha! I don't seem to be the only one having the problem.[1] The recommended solution seems to be to disable Transient Multi-Monitor, which I'm going to try. Odd that it didn't happen on my defunct Philips or a new Samsung I tried though. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:01, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

How To Get Google Search Results To Only Show Results Which Include Every Word In The Search Terms....

....rather than lots of links with only one or two words from the search included? Interestingly enough, I wanted to get an example to illustrate my problem, but googling 'Paris Hilton' didn't give me loads of links to the city of Paris or the Hilton hotel chain. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 10:07, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Use " " or click on the advanced search button and narrow that way. --Cameron Scott (talk) 10:14, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

(e/c) By default, Google searches for pages that contain all words in your query. To find pages that contain your query in the exact same order, which is useful for longer queries, use quotes (e.g. "Paris Hilton"). You only get what you describe when you type "Paris OR Hilton". Xenon54 / talk / 10:17, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Google will often use synonyms for some of your search terms, for example expanding US state abbreviations like NY to New York. You can use the + operator to force it to only use the term you entered. You can also use the "allintext:" operator at the start of your query to eliminate "these terms only appear in links pointing to this page". More nifty tips here. --LarryMac | Talk 11:48, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

LarryMac said "You can also use the "allintext:" operator at the start of your query to eliminate" that stupid google excuse for not finding search terms. This IS NOT TRUE. See the following link: when you click the cached page or the regular page, you won't be able to find the word "mohican" ... http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=ubv&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=allintext%3Amohican+gaza+strip+%22war+news+updates%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq= 66.91.111.24 (talk)

Flaming

When I say flaming, what comes to mind?Accdude92 (talk) (sign) 13:27, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

My first thought is "why do you ask?" Vimescarrot (talk) 13:42, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

A friend of mine, dosnt think it means attaking an internet user.Accdude92 (talk) (sign) 13:53, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Tell him to see Homonym and Flaming. Vimescarrot (talk) 14:00, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

While we're at it, see Context (language use). In other contexts, there are a lot of possible interpretations. Nimur (talk) 15:01, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

The act of writing intentionally inflammatory emails or web posts, specifically to belittle someone you disagree with. APL (talk) 15:26, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I've ever seen "flaming" in this sense. I've seen "flamed" and "to flame". Perhaps it is simply because it is rare that anyone would write about the act of flaming while it occurs. They write about it before or after it happens, as in "He is going to flame..." or "He flamed...". -- kainaw™ 15:36, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

"Bob has a lot of posts in the beginner's forum, is he helping those newbies?" "No, he's just flaming them." APL (talk) 15:43, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Alternatively : "If you'd spend less time flaming people, and more time listening to what they say [...]" APL (talk) 15:44, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Forum rules section: 'No flaming other users'. I would think this one would be flaming obvious! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 03:23, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

"I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my homosexuals flaming". Oh wait, that's not the same .... --LarryMac | Talk 18:38, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I must say that the Reference Desk is not for polls like this; you should go to a discussion board for that. Now that I have said this, I'm going to be your enabler by answering for myself: "Inflammatory posts criticizing a user of the Internet". Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

There was once a time when "to flame" meant to talk (or post) excessively about a topic that fascinates that person - but is generally boring to everyone else. However, that's not a particularly modern usage - and for at least the last 10 years, it has come to mean something like "Being overly critical or insulting to another user". But I think some sense of the original meaning is still there. The simple statement "Joe is an idiot" isn't really a flame. You've got to go on for several paragraphs, going into every detail of WHY Joe is an idiot before you could truly say that Joe was flamed. SteveBaker (talk) 04:20, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Video of computer monitor

I'm looking for a school project. I thought I could make a program that reconstructs the original video from a video of a computer display or tv (as often seen on the internet). Unfortunately my English is quite limited, so I need a little help to find any existing studies on this (google tells me 'hand-captured video' isn't canonical English). If anyone can hint where to find lots of suitable videos or has anything else to say they would also be welcome. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 17:41, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you referring to capturing the video directly from the computer, or clearifying the picture and eliminating scan lines and other artifacts that come from taking video of a CRT? The most common way of acomplishing a clear picture of a computer monitor or TV (especially when CRTs were more common to see in movies) is to either use bluescreen techniques or to otherwise overlay the screen's video on top of the "real" monitor. If this is not the answer you are looking for, you might be talking about eliminating scan lines and other artifacts from existing video that contains TV screens. This seems to me to be incredibly difficult to accomplish as the "interlacing" that you'd be reversing can be anything from an annoying flickering effect to a large black bar movnig slowly from bottom to top (or top to bottom) of the screen... even potentially a stationary black bar in the middle of the screen if the framerate and refresh rate match up. You could probably get a pretty decent reconstruction of the video on the screen in the event of a flickering type effect as you are getting full frames at roughly half the framerate as normal, but for a slow crawling scan bar you would need to reconstruct the missing portions of the image which in many cases would be next to impossible to do as the black bar moves too slowly to fill in the missing information from other frames. Caltsar (talk) 18:28, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm referring to the existing video case. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 18:43, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

If you want to capture the screen, then I would recommend using Camtasia. It's a program. If you use a camera, it will look horrible and take up un-necessary disk space.--Drknkn (talk) 20:07, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Memtest working too fast

Hello there, I have just burn memtest86 3.5 on CD and boot system from it. I noticed that it was testing the ram too fast (without any error) and soon after that it was booting constantly. Most of the time percentage reaches to 48. During booting interval I rejected CD from cd rom. Is it normal? How many times should I test?

I have 4 gb transcend ddr2 800 MHz ram. Thank you--119.30.36.42 (talk) 19:38, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I have not seen this occur personally, but would suspect that memtest86 is hitting some bad memory at the 48% point; so bad that the CPU resets. Try unplugging your memory DIMMs and rearranging them (while the computer is off! And be sure they are all well-seated after you move them!), and seeing if memtest still chokes. If this behavior keeps occurring, I would get new RAM and see if that fixes the problem. Are you experiencing crashes or sudden restarts when you use the computer normally? Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:22, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

• No, I am not experiencing any crashes or sudden restarts right now, just testing this software. Is there any problem with memtest86 3.5 version? or what else?--119.30.36.49 (talk) 13:05, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

• Update: Ok, I have figured out problem from here.It was because of the version. Thanks--119.30.36.49 (talk) 13:19, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Other messengers?

Can anyone give me any other programs that access the same function that AIM does? IE, a friend of mine is stubborn and won't install AIM. What other programs can I use to communicate with him using my AIM account? --76.120.179.184 (talk) 19:57, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

If he uses GMail, the Google Talk client built into the GMail interface can talk to AIM. The Comparison of instant messaging clients article lists several other programs that operate with AIM. --LarryMac | Talk 20:12, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

There is Pidgin. (Formerly "Gaim") This is an opensource client that'll connect to the AIM network. No reason to ever install any software created AOL. (Pidgin is better, anyway.) APL (talk) 21:29, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

From the Pidgin article, you will see versions of Pidgin and programs that use its libpurple library to get the same functionality. In my opinion, these are better than AIM because they designed to be useful. They are not designed as a marketing tool to track and harass the user. -- kainaw™ 21:42, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Amazing what you learn on the refdesk - I hadn't even heard of this AIM program before reading this, seems to be loved in the US though. Nanonic (talk) 22:40, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

It makes sense that AIM is only widely known in USA. It's an offshoot of the America Online service, which is primarily a USA-only service. APL (talk) 17:58, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

iPod Touch Current Location Malfunction

Alright, I've had my iPod touch for a few months, and the current location device has worked perfectly. However two weeks ago I spent 3 days in Sumter, South Carolina, and used my iPod (and apps requiring current location) there. I get back to Banner Elk, North Carolina, and now any app that requires my current location puts me as still in Sumter, South Carolina. How can I change this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hubydane (talk • contribs) 23:49, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

What puzzles me is how it knew your location in the first place! The iPod touch has no GPS and no cell-phone capability to fall back on. I can't imagine how it could possibly know it's location. SteveBaker (talk) 02:33, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Maybe the programs use the wifi's ip address? But that would mean it would automatically change when I came back to Banner Elk. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hubydane (talk • contribs) 02:37, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

But your WiFi's "address" is just an internet address - you can't get any kind of precise location from that. Your ISP must work over thousands of square miles and (assuming you have a dynamic IP), it'll allocate specific addresses to individual customers at random. I don't see how the iPod could use that productively. Anyway - the online iPod touch manual says:

iPod touch uses Location Services to determine your location. Location Services uses available information from local Wi-Fi networks (if you have Wi-Fi turned on). This feature isn’t available in all areas. If Location Services is turned off, you’ll be prompted to turn it on. You can’t find your current location if Location Services is turned off. See “Location Services” on page 118. To conserve battery life, turn Location Services off when you’re not using it. In Settings, choose General > Location Services.

So I think it's relying on the WiFi provider giving your location. That might work in commercial places like coffee shops and airports that offer free WiFi - but WiFi access points in general don't have to do that. My WiFi gizmo in my house certainly doesn't know where it is any more than the iPod does...unless I tell it. So anyway - it looks like you need to go to "Settings" choose "General > Location Services" and turn it back on (presuming that it's somehow gotten turned off) - and perhaps you're locking on to a different WiFi system than you used to pick up...perhaps you're getting a stronger signal from some new WiFi node that doesn't offer this service?? SteveBaker (talk) 03:53, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

September 30

Mindspark search engine

There is a search engine called Mindspark that, uninvited, got onto the toolbar of our computer. We thought we got rid of it but it's back again.(But not on the toolbar.) Has anyone heard of this thing? Thanks.Rich (talk) 04:53, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

This suggests you run Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:49, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

thanks. 04:17, 1 October 2009 (UTC)Rich (talk) 04:20, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Quick C question

/* Convert Fahrenheit to Celsius*/
#include <stdio.h>

int
main(void)
{
        double fahrenheit;
        double celsius;
        scanf("%lf", &fahrenheit);
        printf("The temperature in Fahrenheit is %.2f.\n",  fahrenheit);

        /* convert */
        celsius = 5 / 9 (fahrenheit - 32);

        /* display celsius */
        printf("The temperature in celsius is %.2f degrees.\n", celsius);

        return (0);
}

Why doesn't this work? My compiler says:
FtoC.c: In function âmainâ:
FtoC.c:13: error: called object â9â is not a function

which makes little since to me. What can be done to make this work? (I am an extreme newb at C) -- penubag  (talk) 06:51, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

You have to have an operator between the 9 and the parenthesis. Try "celsius = (5 / 9)*(fahrenheit - 32); and see if that works for you. Dismas|^(talk) 07:03, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks it now compiles correctly! But unfortunately, when I execute it and input any number for Fahrenheit, the program always returns 0.00 degrees. What has to be done to fix this? -- penubag  (talk) 07:17, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

(5. / 9) *(fahrenheit - 32);. Because 5 and 9 both have type int, the result of 5/9 will always be zero (see integer division). Adding a "." will cause one of the literals to have type double, and the other will be implicitly converted to that type. decltype (talk) 07:34, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much, it works now! But one more question, why are Fahrenheit and Celsius ints? I told them to be doubles at the top? -- penubag  (talk) 07:43, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

They're not. But 5 and 9 are ints. --Spoon! (talk) 07:46, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes. It is the types of the operands that determine the type of the result. Consider the expression:

 double d = 1 / 2;

Because 1 and 2 both have type int, the result of the division will also have type int. The result is the algebraic quotient with any fractional part discarded, yielding 0. Then, d is initialized with the value 0 converted to double. That is, the conversion to double happens after the expression (1/2) has been evaluated. decltype (talk) 08:06, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I always teach first year C/C++ students that math expressions are right-to-left and boolean expressions are left-to-right. So, the example of

double d=1/2;

makes sense if you realize it goes right to left. You get a ;, so you know it is a statement. You get a 2. That's an int. You get a /. Division. Cool. You get a 1. You can do the division now. That is 1/2, which is zero (int division). You get a =. You need to assign the zero to something. You get a d. It is a variable. You get the double. You need to turn the int 0 into a double. No problem. You put 0.0 in d. So, while this "right-to-left" rule is not exactly true, you can (hopefully) see why it is beneficial for first year programmers who are trying to understand how things work. In the next year, I divulge more about how things really work because they should be past parsing math and boolean expressions. -- kainaw™ 12:37, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Ohhhhh, I get it now! The compiler reads right to left. That makes much more since to me now. Thanks kainaw -- penubag  (talk) 17:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

YIKES!!! No, no, no! The compiler does not read from right to left - or left to right for that matter. (Sheesh! Baaad advice, Kainaw!) It uses the rules of precedence - just like in regular math. So divisions and multiplications happen before additions and subtractions - which happen before assignment. Somewhere in that book of yours, there is almost certainly a table listing the order that things happen in. The compiler actually says something like (at the beginning of the line) "I expect to see either a statement or a close bracket ('}') next...which is it? Well, no bracket - so it's a statement. Does the statement start with a name (in which case this is an assignment statement or a function call) or is it a reserved word of the language? Yep - it's the reserved word "double". Is that a type description or something like 'for', 'switch', 'while', 'do' or 'if' ? No - it's a type description. OK - so this is a declaration. What is being declared? Well, that's "d" and now we know it's a 'double'. OK - so now, we could either have a comma and another declaration - or a square bracket indicating that this is some kind of array - or an equals sign meaning that this is an initialised variable...and it's an '=' so this is an initialised variable. OK - so what is the initial value? It has to be an expression - so let's fire up the expression parser. The expression parser, figures out the math of an expression - then we look for either a comma (indicating that another variable is being declared - or a semicolon. It's a semicolon - so the statement is complete and we can go back to the beginning again."...Expression handling is hard to explain in words - but it does things in the order that they are done in elementary algebra or arithmetic. It's easy to find cases where it most certainly doesn't think right-to-left (eg x = 1 / 2 + 3 ;) and cases when it does (eg x = 1 + 2 / 3 ;) - as well as cases where it starts in the middle (eg x = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 * 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 ;)...it's just not as simple as Kainaw says. SteveBaker (talk) 04:12, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Then, what does x=y=z=5; produce? Order of precedence is only half of parsing mathematical equations. By telling someone that that is ALL there is to it, you are short-changing them. They'll hit this example and no clue what to do. If they were taught that math is right-to-left, they will understand this easily. Teaching is based on what confuses students. You start out with a simple foundation and build upon it. I find that many (if not most) programmers feel that the best way to teach is to cram as much complicated garbage down the throats of the students as possible and then laugh at them when they get confused. -- kainaw™ 17:16, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

You're right that in the event of equal precedence, the order on the line matters - but it's not the first thing to care about...and it's most certainly not a good rule to impart to a complete newbie! Read what you told our OP - and how (s)he leapt on it as making things so much simpler to understand! That's because it's not true. I agree that it's a part of the answer - and I'm sure you're aware of what the true answer is - but what you actually wrote was grossly incorrect!! The simplest and clearest way to explain it is that the compiler obeys the normal rules of arithmetic/algebra - but in difficult cases, and situations where you use operators that aren't in 'normal' mathematics, you need to read what the book says VERY carefully because there isn't one simple rule. When in doubt (and for clarity, even when you aren't in doubt), over-bracket. I don't want to have to remember what this means:

           x = a & b + c << d ^ e % f * (int) g+++++h ? -i-----j***k : l ;

Even if I do know - I'm going to bracket the shit out of that expression so that the next guy (or me, a week from now) will know what order it's going to be evaluated in. But for absolute 100% certain - it ain't anything close to "right to left" - which is what your post said! SteveBaker (talk) 15:47, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

In C, if you write a number without a decimal point, the compiler treats it as an integer. While it's evaluating math, it's lazy. If it sees an integer divided by another integer - it does integer math. So 5/9 is zero. When you subtract 32 from the Fahrenheit number, the compiler sees that although 32 is an integer, 'fahrenheit' is a double - so it knows to do that using double precision math - so it converts 32 to 32.0 and does the subtraction. Finally, it has to multply the result of 5/9 (which is the integer: zero) by the result of (fahrenheit-32.0). It sees that because one of the numbers is a double that it has to do the math in double precision - so it converts the zero to 0.0 and does the sum. Putting the decimal point in there tells the compiler that these are double-precision numbers - so it's forced to do all of the math in double precision.

In nicely written C code, all of the numbers in that expression ought to have decimal points because it's quite a lot of work for the computer to convert an integer into a double - so all of the constants (including 32) should be given as double's - even when (as in the case of the 32) it would have come out right. In general, it's awfully easy to screw up when you mix integers with floats or doubles - so it's safest to always use '.0' on the end of numbers used in expressions where you expect to get a float or double as a result. Also, it's bad form to write 5./9. (even though that's perfectly legal) because the '.' is kinda invisible to people reading your code - so to be super-professional, you should write 5.0/9.0 which really emphasises that you remembered to put that decimal point in there.

The art of good programming is not only to keep the computer and the compiler happy - but also to make things super-clear to other people who have to read your code. (And 'other people' includes you - a couple of weeks into the future when you have to read and re-understand your own software!)

SteveBaker (talk) 12:39, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for further explaining the point, my C book did not mention this process at all. I'll be sure to do this in the future. -- penubag  (talk) 17:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

That's good advice for another reason too, you'll avoid having to convince your co-worker / instructor that (5./9) really is correct, portable, and guaranteed to produce the "right" result (although that may have a net positive effect in the long run). Regards, decltype (talk) 12:57, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Not to veer into style and "best practices" too much, but ... in my experience 5.0, 9.0 (or maybe 5.0/9.0) and 32.0 should all be constants. If you declare them as const doubles, then there's less confusion about what decision the compiler is making for you. Constants also can make life simpler when programs have to be changed - suppose this was a larger program with calculations like this scattered throughout and that the value at which water freezes on the Fahrenheit scale changes in the future (not likely, but bear with me); you could search for every occurence of "32" in your source code and hope you change all the right ones, or you could change the declaration of "FahrenheitFreezingPoint" once. --LarryMac | Talk 13:19, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Writing clear code is an art. Hard-and-fast rules are usually a bad idea. What we must strive for is a mind-set where readability is on the top of everyone's minds. So, in general, I agree that obscure constants should be named (either with a 'const' or a '#define' or whatever your programming language allows). However, in this specific case, I think that would do more harm than good. What could you possibly name them that would carry more meaning? Almost everyone knows that 5/9 x F - 32 is the equation to convert F to C. And replacing those numbers with names like 'const double five = 5.0 ;' doesn't add anything. You could perhaps name (5.0/9.0) as "FahrenheitToCentigradeMultiplier" and 32.0 as "FahrenheitToCentigradeOffset" or something - but if I'm trying to find a bug in this code, that's only going to annoy the heck out of me because now I have to hunt back up the source code - possibly through a bunch of header files in order to convince myself that you really gave those constants the correct value. Imagine how much harder this problem would have been for us to debug for our OP if (s)he had followed your advice! We might never have bothered to go find the definition of "FahrenheitToCentigradeMultiplier" - and just naturally assumed it was 5.0/9.0. As you explain - there is no way on earth those values will ever change! So in this specific case - I'd advise not moving the numbers off into 'const' variables or anything. Now - let's be really careful about that - I don't want to see 3.14159 written in there for 'pi' because the precise value has to be set up very carefully to get the best precision for float and double math - so you should be using something like 'M_PI' (the machine-specific value of PI for this hardware). Also, if you see the constant 16239 - you would doubtless prefer to see "STEVES_AGE_IN_DAYS_ON_JAN_1ST_2000". But in this case - I think the code is clearer with the numbers left precisely where they are. But better than that - in this case - I'd have liked to have seen:

   inline double FahrenheitToCentigrade ( double fahrenheit ) { return fahrenheit * 5.0 / 9.0 - 32.0 ; }

...and placed into "UnitConversions.h" someplace.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:51, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Converting integer literals to doubles is not expensive, it's free, because it happens at compile time (even when optimizations are disabled). There's no reason to write them as doubles unless you think it helps clarity. Integer division doesn't happen because of laziness, but because it's a useful operation that's often what you want when you're dividing integers. (5.0 / 9.0) * x or x * (5.0 / 9.0) will compute 5.0/9.0 at compile time and do just a single multiplication at runtime. In contrast, x * 5.0 / 9.0 parenthesizes as (x * 5.0) / 9.0 and will most likely do a multiplication and a division at run time. There are circumstances where that might actually be better, because 5.0/9.0 is not exactly representable as a double while 5.0 and 9.0 both are. -- BenRG (talk) 00:33, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

You see - that's where things go off the rails. Where does it say in the C/C++ specification that this happens? It doesn't - you can't guarantee that. When you start writing sloppy code and saying "Oh - that's OK, the compiler will fix that." you're running into a slippery slope where you'll start to assume things that aren't true. There may well be some strange reason why the compiler can't - or doesn't fix it - and then you're screwed. Right now - you're code is being compiled - but who knows whether in 10 years time, there isn't some "just in time" compiler that has to compile your code at runtime or something? You can't know that - and you shouldn't assume it when it's just as easy to make your code "right by design". SteveBaker (talk) 03:51, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

On the other hand, your time is probably better spent making your code efficient on an algorithmic level, instead of this kind of micro-optimization. decltype (talk) 11:44, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Finally, you can get rid of the weird characters in the error message by doing an "unset LC_CTYPE". --Sean 15:07, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

That did not seem to work. -- penubag  (talk) 17:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Hrm. Try doing an "env | grep -i utf" and do an unset on anything mentioning utf8. This will probably make your greps and such 10 times faster, at the cost of not handling non-ASCII correctly. --Sean 21:33, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry I'm pretty much illiterate here. I tried typing "env | grep -i utf" and my compiler says "LANG=en_US.UTF-8". It still does not fix the issue but am I forgetting a step? -- penubag  (talk) 00:17, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

"unset LANG" might fix the messages. --Sean 16:57, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Yup, it did. Thanks sean! Now my adventures in C should be a little easier. :)-- penubag  (talk) 00:47, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, great. Just add that command to the bottom of ~/.bashrc or whatever to make it be in effect the next time you log in. --Sean 14:14, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Wait, so I have to type "unset LANG ~/.bashrc" and this will become permanent? -- penubag  (talk) 05:57, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

One last question:

#include <stdio.h>

int
main(void)
{
        char color, O, o, B, b, Y, y, G, g;
        printf("Input the first letter of the color: \n");
        scanf("%c", &color);
        if (color = O || o ) {
                printf("The content is ammonia\n"); }
        if (color = B || b ) {
                printf("The content is carbon monoxide\n"); }
        if (color = Y || y) {
                printf("The content is hydrogen\n"); }
        if (color = G || g) {
                printf("The content is oxygen\n"); }
        else { printf("Invalid color type\n"); }

return (0);
}

This simple program is supposed to return chemical names for the first letter of its color. When given a letter, the program says all of them are the chemicals. How can I make it skip each if statement if it is not true?-- penubag  (talk) 17:44, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Your if statements are saying something like "if (color = O)" or "if o". "if o" will always be true (as will "if b", etc). You need to have the complete comparison on each side of the ||. A couple other things to conside would be using either toupper() or tolower() on your input, and/or using a switch statement instead of the ifs. --LarryMac | Talk 17:55, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I haven't read that far into my book yet and don't know the syntax for any advanced commands (or basic ones for that matter). The first 130 pages do not mention switches yet. -- penubag  (talk) 00:17, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Also if(color = O) {foo;} doesn't compare color to O, it assigns color to the value of O. And the if statement gets the value of that assignment operation, which IIRC is equal to the value of O. You should use if(color==O) instead.

Finaly at no point do you initialize the characters you are comparing with. So even the above whould compare color to a variable with random content. Taemyr (talk) 18:02, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Ahh, thanks, that makes since. -- penubag  (talk) 00:17, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

dammit. i've always had a mental block on = vs ==; reason 489 why I'm a system designer not a developer --LarryMac | Talk 18:05, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

About that, some coding guidelines recommend placing the constant-expression (if there is one) at the left hand side, so that the compiler will catch those errors. For example:

if('O' = color) return 0; /* ill-formed */

I don't like it one bit, but I can understand the arguments in favor of it. decltype (talk) 18:53, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I've heard that said - and I agree that the compiler can help out - but it makes reading the code really tough. I don't do that. SteveBaker (talk) 03:51, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Others have pointed out your grave errors (your program has undefined behaviour, and is likely to make demons fly out of your nose^[2]). When you've fixed those, you should prefix all your ifs, except for the first, with "else" or use a switch. That way, your program won't test your color against "B", when it's already determined that the color is "O". decltype (talk) 18:48, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Basically you should be writing

if ( (color == O) || (color == o) { etc...

This was mentioned above but no-one seemed to say it explicitly. The reasons are given above. It's also explained here [3] 83.100.251.196 (talk) 22:45, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

That did the trick! Thanks very much! I'm still having a little issue with the "else": even if I define a valid letter, the program reads the else statement and prints the invalid chemical message.-- penubag  (talk) 00:18, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

The "else" block is only paired with the previous "if" block. So in this case it fires when the color isn't 'G' or 'g'. If you want it to go off only when none of the previous conditionals are true then use "if", "else if", "else if", ... , "else". Rckrone (talk) 01:04, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

That worked! My book didn't seem to mention this at all. Thanks !-- penubag  (talk) 01:10, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Some final advice: Nobody can teach anything more than the bare rudiments of programming. The only way to get good at it is to write LOTS of code. Do it all the time - not just for class assignments - make up your own problems. You have to love doing programming for it's own sake. Most really good programmers come home from a day of programming at work - and think "Wow - now I can get to work on my home project!"...and think of that as a way to unwind and relax. You have to arrive at a point where you're no longer thinking about the programming language details - but at the algorithmic level. That probably seems tough now that you're still being mystified about why putting a '.0' after a nice round number should matter - or when to use '==' instead of '=' - but that phase goes away after not too many weeks of working at it. Eventually, you should be able to trot off dozens to hundreds of simple code snippets without your conscious mind having to think about it. You shouldn't have to think through things like: "How do I make a hash-table of these objects so I can look them up quickly using their ASCII names - yet still be able to loop through them all quickly with a simple 'for' loop?" - that level of coding should be almost automatic - so it comes out right every time. That leaves your mind free to examine 'the big picture' - to think at the level of an algorithm designer rather than a coder. This takes years to achieve - but you can tell when people reach that level of zen-like comfort with the art because the rate at which they create bugs drops off dramatically and their productivity can easily be 50 times that of a person who is still wondering whether to use a 'while' loop or a 'for' loop or a 'do...while' each time they need to loop. So: practice, practice, practice - and if you find yourself hating it - find a job in a different industry. SteveBaker (talk) 03:51, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Why is license agreement popping up every time I start Photoshop or other adobe programs???

I got Adobe Web Premium CS4 Student Edition.

I used to serial I got from Adobe.

Everytime I start Photoshop, dreamwaver or another adobe program I have to accept the license agreement.

Why does it do that?? And how do I make it stop? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.74.217.62 (talk) 09:26, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

It seems like you may already have a solution, or at least the start of one. The Adobe forums are probably the best place to get advice on a problem like this; they have the highest concentration of experienced users and Adobe "pros". The corrupt/incomplete installation already mentioned there does seem the most likely solution. Having said that, searching adobe photoshop "license agreement" "every time" gives some promising results which might offer alternative fixes. --☇Kateshortforbob _talk☄ 13:37, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Update script, part 2

Continuing from my previous question, I'm trying to write a greasemonkey script that will refresh a page and load any new changes, but will automatically stop refreshing if it detects a 404 error (I don't want it to keep refreshing because then all I'll have is the 404 error). So far I've managed to come up with this

var numMinutes = 5;window.setTimeout("document.location.reload();", numMinutes*60*1000);

That refreshes the page. Now all I need is a way to automatically stop the script when it detects 404. Any suggestions on how to do this? Many thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.133 (talk) 11:57, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

How about something like this (not tested)?

function my_reload() {
    GM_xmlhttpRequest({
        method: 'GET',
        url: window.location.href,
        onload: function(responseDetails) {
             if (responseDetails.status != 200)
            {
                 alert("request failed");
                 return;
            }
            document.innerHTML = responseDetails.responseText; // Wrong: see note below
        }
    });
}

Here are the AJAX details for GM. --Sean 15:20, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I see you can't use document.innerHTML. Perhaps add an iframe, and replace its HTML with the new document. You could also just refresh the iframe or current page if the AJAX call works, of course, but that leaves a small race condition where the first call works and the second one doesn't, which might be acceptable for your application. --Sean 15:51, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

ln -s not supported

Assume you have a program that requires ln -s. However, your Linux box mounts from a Windows NFS. Windows doesn't support symbolic links. Is there a common solution or do you have to fiddle around with tricking the system into thinking a local Linux drive is somehow mounted under the Windows drive to trick the program into running ln -s on the local Linux drive? -- kainaw™ 16:32, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

A Windows... NFS? Do you mean a Windows Shared Folder using Samba? or Do you mean NTFS? Can you clarify the following: What file-system is the symbolic link target on? How is that file-system seen or mounted by the local linux environment? What file system is the symbolic link intended to be on? Nimur (talk) 17:46, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

The system between the local Linux machine and the remote Windows machine is unknown. /home on the Linux is NFS mounted (not Samba) in some way to the Windows machine /nethome (or should that be N:\\). The goal is to place a symbolic link in home (which is technically on the Windows machine) to the local Linux drive in /tmp. The error is a simple "Operation is not supported". I suspected Samba, but sambaclient is not running and I can see the entry for the Windows drive in /etc/mtab. Is it possible to use mtab to mount through Samba without having a sambaclient running? If so, then my suspicion that the problem is with Samba would be verified. -- kainaw™ 17:53, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX has a Windows hosted NFS server; this was more necessary in the past, when Samba's netbios/smb client wasn't so hot, than it is now. Perhaps this is what Kainaw's windows machine is running. Incidentally NTFS does support symlinks (well, kinda) - NTFS junction points - I'd guess it was the WS4U-NFSd that doesn't (junction points are a tad esoteric, really). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:38, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

The only way I can think to do something like this is with a UnionFS overlay. Do the following sudo /bin/mount -t unionfs -o dirs=/tmp/kainaw:/home/kainaw none /home/kainaw2 (where /tmp/kainaw and /home/kainaw2 are intially empty directories). Now you can create symlinks in /home/kainaw2 (including ones that overlay stuff already there) and the changes are infact stored in /tmp/kainaw and leave /home/kainaw untouched, but /home/kainaw2 looks like your homedir, but with the symlinks you wanted. If you really need the symlinks to be in /home/kainaw then you'll have to figure out how to make the automounter mount that directory somewhere else. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:30, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Parallel ports and Linux kernel drivers

The first part of my Commodore 64 games restoration project - install a PCI parallel port replicator - is now completed, and so far works without problems. Still waiting for the next two phases - attach the 1541 disk drive, and install the necessary driver software. So therefore I have questions:

1. How "hot-pluggable" are parallel port devices? Am I in danger of damaging the adapter, or my computer, if I plug/unplug the 1541 while the computer is on? What if I keep it plugged in, but power it up/down while the computer is on?
2. I have only seen OpenCBM being mentioned as a 32-bit Linux kernel driver. My computer has a 64-bit processor and 64-bit Fedora Linux. Will the driver still work? JIP | Talk 16:52, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

In general, the IEEE 1284 compliant devices are very hot-pluggable - though watch out for devices that use a common ground / common live voltage in "unconventional" ways (other than setting a reference - in theory, there should be buffer amplifiers if the 5-volt is used for anything, but some creative hardware designers might be drawing power over the interface!). On the PC side, as long as the driver is properly written, the worst that should happen is a data timeout or error; but I assume that you know this, since you are writing the driver. (Avoid blocking I/O calls in the hardware access code - Whatever you do, don't hang the whole computer on bad/missing data! ). Are you writing the C64 emulator driver or just planning to use the OpenCBM driver? Nimur (talk) 17:32, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Commodore serial-488 ports are very sensitive to being connected when powered - I once blew two 1541s when daisy-chaining them with the power on; the PC's parallel port is fairly robust by comparison. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:35, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Like many parallel-port devices, that hardware is probably not standards-compliant. Technically the hardware must accept any voltage between -15 and +15 volts relative to the common ground - and I doubt the PC was even supplying this. It sounds like something was leaking power onto the parallel port unintentionally - maybe daisy-chaining shorted a pin which was otherwise assumed to be floating, etc. Again, well-designed hardware should never explode when you plug it in backwards (etc). Nimur (talk) 17:40, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I should therefore be safe with keeping the 1541 plugged in but only powering it up when I'm using it. (The 1541 is notorious for getting quite warm when powered up, so I wouldn't want to leave it on all the time, as I do with modern hardware.) I'm going to use the OpenCBM driver, which I'll compile from the sources. I don't know nearly enough about Linux kernel programming to write my own driver. JIP | Talk 17:38, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

It's been a quarter of a century since I last had to do this, but if memory serves one always turned the 1541 on before the c=64, and off after it. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:47, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

With me, I usually did it the opposite way, and never had any problems. We'll have to see if the 1541 still works after nearly two decades of inactivity. JIP | Talk 17:56, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Software To Find Out What's Hogging All The Space On My Disk.

Is there anything for Windows Vista that does this (preferably free)? I'm noticing that my disk space is getting noticeably smaller each time more or less every day (60GB disappeared over the weekend!) and I'd like to find out what's going on. TIA! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 19:00, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I can't say for sure, but I'd assume at least one of the programs in this archived section should work with Vista. --LarryMac | Talk 19:04, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

OverDisk makes nice pie-charts. Nimur (talk) 19:15, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

As per LarryMac's archive link, let me re-iterate: forget every other suggestion you might get here about SequoiaView and WinDirStat etc. Just get FolderSize for Windows. It adds a "folder size" column straight into Windows Explorer so you never have to run a separate application just to check out your folder sizes. I'm using it on XP but I'm sure it works on Vista too. It just WORKS. You'll easily be able to see and clear out your space-hogging files in no time. Check it out. Zunaid 23:03, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I find the SequoiaView-like applications much better. The problem isn't just listing folder sizes, it's being able to really see where the memory is being taken up. With a graphical display, you instantly know, "oh, crap, I have a much of MPEGs I forgot about." With FolderSize, you see that a folder (probably WINDOWS) is huge, and have to drill down a few more times to figure out what's going wrong. Anyway, different strokes, different folks, but I do think we can say that these two programs provide different functionality. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:04, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with Zunaid, I recommend using a graphical tool. The best part of SequoiaViewe and WinderStat is that it allows you to see INSIDE your folders at a glance.

Sure, I know my "Downloads" folder is large, It always is. But with SequoiaView or WinderStat, I can see that inside my downloads folder I have one huge folder that's substantially larger than all the others, and so I check it out. With Zunaid's method I probably wouldn't have even bothered investigating my "downloads" folder because would have expected to see a large number of moderate sized files that would have been a pain to search through.

With a graphical tool unusually large files and folders jump out at you, even if they're several layers deep and mixed in with a whole bunch of moderately sized files.

(Of course, FolderSize is a neat tool, too. But in my mind it is not a valid replacement for a disk visualization tool. ) APL (talk) 13:39, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

WinDirStat, ftw!!! --98.108.37.202 (talk) 00:12, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

memorex mini traveldrive MS-DOS boot problem

Dear Wikipedians:

I have a 512 MB memorex mini traveldrive USB keydrive that I got from a friend ~2007. I used HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool to format it as an MS-DOS 6.22 bootable drive using the MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS found in the first partition of my hard drive.

However, when I reboot into the USB key, the message "Starting MS-DOS..." is displayed, but then the system hangs. However it is still responsive to the Vulcan nerve pinch.

Note that I have previously used this USB key successfully as the boot-stick for my Slackware Linux.

I also have a Kingston DataTraveler 1GB USB keydrive that boots up MS-DOS perfectly. I also got the Kingston one in 2007. So I am greatly bewildered as to why one USB key can do it and the other one can't?

Thanks for your help.

70.52.150.94 (talk) 19:30, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Blackberry Daylight Saving Time problem

I'm in a country which is in the same time zone as a large US city, but is not in the US. The Blackberry Time Zone options list the US city only, so that is what it is set to. However, there's one big difference - the country I'm in does not use DST (Daylight Saving Time).

The BB software does not seem to have any options for turning off DST. When I sync it to my computer it takes the time from the computer, but touching the Date?Time applet on the device causes it to revert to DST, meaning that it sets the clock forward by an hour.

Does anyone know of a setting on the device I can use to turn off DST permanently? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.183.8.194 (talk) 19:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you far enough west to be in the US's Mountain Time Zone? If so, try telling BB you're in Phoenix -- Arizona doesn't use DST.

If you're in (or "below") the Caribbean, that won't help much :-)

--DaHorsesMouth (talk) 20:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

XFX or Gigabyte (motherboard)

I am looking for a motherboard for gaming. Which brand is better? I don't want SLI or Crossfire. Thank you --119.30.36.40 (talk) 21:29, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
P.S. I have heard number of freezing issue with XFX board

Have you gone to Newegg and browsed the Motherboard section to read the user comments? I have found the user comments very useful. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:48, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

My second Gigabyte mobo just failed. I sent the first one back, and they sent me a new one after two weeks. It won't post. I think I'll order an Asus. After a few months with the first Gigabyte mobo, I smelled something burning, then the ethernet stopped working, and it wouldn't POST most of the time.--Drknkn (talk) 22:20, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

• I have changed my mind. Both of them have lock up or freezing issue. I am thinking to get Asus board (ASUS P5Q-EM LGA 775 Intel G45 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard). Any suggestion? --119.30.36.40 (talk) 22:53, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

October 1

The wireless charger

Dell has a new high-end laptop that charges wirelessly. I haven't seen this computer yet, but it comes to me that this design may have some serious inherent problems. How do they solve them? If you have to install an induction coil in the bottom of a laptop, how do you:

• Keep the coil in the same place for the next generation's product?

Since laptop computers are compact, they may require rearrangement of parts from model to model.

• If the coil is very large in size (certainly much larger than the coils for electric toothbrushes), how do you use the bottom of computer for heat dissipation?

Many laptop computers use the bottom to dissipate heat. However, wireless charging requires touching of two parts to maximize efficiency. Certainly I can make a bottom that sits 1/8" apart from the charging stand. This shall enable the air to flow freely to remove the heat. It just renders the charger much less useful.

If your computer has a large footprint (this one has a 16" monitor), you probably have the land area to install the coil. What if you want to install it on a much smaller computer?

• Can the charging stand be used internationally? I mean voltage.

Many years ago I have seen a creative use of inductive charging on a Japanese-made PHS phone. The charging stand makes half of a transformer and the handset makes its another half. When the handset sits in the charging socket, this hard-wired transformer lowers the AC voltage for recharging (you need additional circuits in the handset). Since PHS is mainly used in Japan, they may afford to build hard-wired circuits for 100 VAC. Most GSM phones may need extra circuits to handle international variable voltages for their roaming users.

To me, this design trick seems to have a business sense. They are for the high-end markets. A rich user may just buy several charging stands for the home study, living room, office, and elsewhere. The charging stands cost very little to build (possibly nothing but a coil). They shall be very profitable. -- Toytoy (talk) 01:14, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I must be missing something here. If you have to sit the laptop on the charging stand to charge it, and you have to plug in the charging stand - how is this any more convenient than a conventional charger ? I can't see how it makes the laptop smaller or lighter, because you still have the same laptop battery ? Is the charging stand supposed to lighter than a conventional charger ? Gandalf61 (talk) 11:22, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

It does eliminate the power connector as a point of failure. I have seen a number of laptops with mangled power connectors on the laptop or charger end. Throw in the wireless docking station and you eliminate the need to plug in any cables. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:29, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

There is any program that randomize a song??

There is any program that randomize a song?? An example: The program get the sound, split in many parts with 0,001 second and then put those parts together in a random order. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.0.212.236 (talk) 01:31, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Such a program would be trivial to write (e.g. about five or ten lines of code) in GNU Octave. (Have a look at audio processing tools). Because it's not a very commonly-needed utility, I doubt it has been written and widely distributed. Nimur (talk) 05:45, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

If you split a song in 0,001 second chunks, and then join them in a random order, I'm certain that the result would bear no resemblance whatsoever to the original. I'm also pretty sure that what you would hear is a a 1000 Hz tone with some background noise. If you want to get a result that would be even remotely pleasing to the ear, your chunks would have to be a lot longer, and your program would have to choose the splice points carefully. At the very least, the signal at the end of the first chunk needs to have about the same amplitude as the signal at the beginning of the chunk you are joining it to. Otherwise there will be a very audible "pop". (And it is the playing of 1000 pops per second that would create the 1000 Hz tone that I referred to). Writing such a program is not trivial. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 10:01, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

It would be an example of Granular synthesis applied to a soundfile. With the grain size around a millisecond you would no longer be dealing with the original song so much as synthesizes wholly new sounds out of semi-random waveform bits and pieces. There are lots of granular synthesis tools, as listed on the page about it. Also, taking care of the "pops" is integral to granular synthesis. Pfly (talk) 07:37, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

gdb, C++ classes, and "incomplete type"

Consider a user-defined type class Quantity and a variable of that type declared as

Quantity q;

Under certain circumstances (I know not what) gdb can not print this variable. If I say

print q

gdb says

$1 = <incomplete type>

And if I type

whatis q

gdb says

type = struct Quantity

(By comparison, under the circumstance where gdb can properly print the value of a Quantity, the whatis command prints "type = class Quantity".)

I know what "incomplete type" means in C (a struct whose name is known but whose internal details are not, and which is being used to declare a pointer such that those internal details don't matter), but that's not the case here; the definition of the internal details of class Quantity is amply in scope.

I've learned that templated types cannot always have their type info reliably stored by gcc and read by gdb (there's this bizarre situation called "vague linkage"). I have eliminated templates from the inheritance hierarchy of class Quantity, and this has helped somewhat, but not entirely.

Does anyone know of any other reasons why gdb would be unable to print the value of a (reasonably) ordinarily user-defined type, or to misprint its type as struct rather than class? There might be some perturbations going on due to namespaces, but I've tried to rule those out, too. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:41, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

This seems to be a common problem in gdb. You wuld not happen to have a complete compilable example, would you? decltype (talk) 08:11, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree it seems common, which is why it's odd that solution(s) aren't better known.

No, I don't have a complete example (or at least, not one small enough for this margin to contain :-) ). (That's why I asked "does anyone know of?", not, "Can someone look at this code for me?".) —Steve Summit (talk) 15:54, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Here's an example:

$ cat foo.cpp
#include <iostream>
int main() {
    std::cout << "hi\n";
} 

$ g++ -g foo.cpp

$ gdb a.out
(gdb) b main
Breakpoint 1 at 0x8048615: file foo.cpp, line 3.
(gdb) r
Breakpoint 1, main () at foo.cpp:3
3           std::cout << "hi\n";
(gdb) p std::cout
$1 = <incomplete type>
(gdb) quit

$ g++ -v
g++-4.3_proper (Ubuntu 4.3.3-5ubuntu4) 4.3.3

$ gdb -v
GNU gdb 6.8-debian

--Sean 20:44, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Have you instantiated the class variable q? - e.g. q = new Quantity(); --Phil Holmes (talk) 14:19, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:54, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

The declaration of q above requires a complete type (since it needs to know how big it is on the stack), so it's likely a GDB bug. This thread discusses such a thing, so you might try upgrading your GDB. On a side note, near-future versions of GDB are going to be very much nicer for C++ debuggery (printing types as you wrote them, not with template argument hell; default STL pretty-printing; embedded Python scripting; proper exception handling support; etc.). --Sean 17:13, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

cout has external linkage, so it's not on the stack. Anyway ostream typedef's to basic_ostream< char,char_traits<char> >, and Quantity is not templated.—eric 00:25, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand the relevance of any of your three statements, but the timings of the above posts make this thread somewhat hard to read if you're just coming in. "p std::cout" should work no matter where it is; I know what cout is, the point of my code example was that gdb doesn't know; and I don't get the relevance of Quantity being templated or not. Elaborate? --Sean 14:43, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Mac Computers

Is it true that the Mac computers are not infected by any virus and other worms and trojans etc.? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.199.142.244 (talk) 03:07, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

[4], [5], [6], [7], etc.--Drknkn (talk) 03:24, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Were you trying to answer the question "yes" or "no"?

* A virus that you'll only catch if you run a pirated version of some software (iWork, in this case) -- which is always a ridiculously risky thing to do, because it'll always be coming from some dark, sleazy underbelly of the net that you can't trust.

* This doesn't appear to be a virus per se; it appears to describe a technique by which a malicious program (once running on your computer) can infect another program on your computer. The report is from three years ago. Symantec gives it its lowest-possible threat rating.

* A report claiming that Mac vulnerabilities are "on the rise". The report mentions "37 high-vulnerabilities", but without any details. The report is four and a half years old.

* Another report about the same pirated iWork virus.

I'm not shakin' in my boots, here. —Steve Summit (talk) 04:02, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it is currently true that Macs are vastly less vulnerable to viruses than Windows machines. There are no circulating Mac viruses that will infect your computer unless you are already doing something terribly unsafe and inadvisable (such as installing pirated software that you found on the net). You can run an unprotected Mac connected to the open Internet with virtual impunity. The contrast with Windows (where putting an unprotected machine on the 'net is sheer folly, where the mean time to infection if you do so has been measured in minutes, and where even if you do install decent antivirus protection, you are still advised to be careful in what you do while online) is stunning. —Steve Summit (talk) 04:08, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

"There are no circulating Mac viruses that will infect your computer unless you are already doing something terribly unsafe and inadvisable (such as installing pirated software that you found on the net)." And that's how most Windows users get viruses, too. I've been seeing a lot of users infected with a fake anti-virus program called "Personal Anti-Virus." The user visits a page with a fake virus scan that says that they're infected. Even though the "scan" is just an animation on a web page, they assume that they are infected and click through several windows, download the program, and execute it. How can you protect against a virus a user downloads and runs on purpose? Did Apple program their OS to prevent that? Another common vector are keygens coming with pirated software. It's my opinion that mac users are actually more vulnerable because they're so cocky (like you, frankly). Apple markets their products as being easy to use, so computer newbies tend to gravitate to them and then they take no precautions. I tried to cite articles above from a wide range of time periods to illustrate that Macs have always had viruses. In fact, the first computer virus was written for the Macintosh in the 1980s. Apple spends much less money on developing protection against viruses than Microsoft. Users complained that Windows Vista was too secure, with its myriad of confirmation dialogs. Try to be honest with other users, because Mac users need to make their computers more secure for the upcoming deluge of Mac viruses. They are already appearing, as a quick Google search will show you.--Drknkn (talk) 05:14, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

What you're doing is called fearmongering. It's not that I'm cocky; it's that I prefer a computer that tries to be secure from the get-go, as opposed to one that has to be propped up by third-party antivirus software. You said, "Mac users need to make their computers more secure", but my attitude is, why should *I* have to make my computer more secure? That's like saying I have to make my car more crashworthy. It's not my job, and I'm not in a position to do it properly anyway. I'd very much prefer the original manufacturer did it in a proper, integrated way. There's nothing I can do to make my Mac more secure that Apple can't do for me, beforehand, and better.

I said "...unless you are already doing something terribly unsafe and inadvisable", and you said, "And that's how most Windows users get viruses, too." But most Windows users get viruses by clocking "OK" between one and three times. Is clicking "OK" an action that's terribly unsafe and inadvisable? There's a huge difference, I think, between clicking "OK" a few times after visiting a random web page, versus deliberately seeking out, downloading, and installing a pirated copy of a major application suite.

You said, "How can you protect against a virus a user downloads and runs on purpose?" Well, part of a computer's security depends on its ecosystem, and as far as I know Mac users simply do not download and run programs (on purpose or otherwise) nearly as often as Windows users do. Mac users tend to rely more (as they should) on the software that was originally installed by the manufacturer. Installing new programs on a Mac is a relatively rare and deliberate act, and typically requires typing a password. Windows users, on the other hand, evidently download and run new programs all the time, and doing so is typically one-click easy, because Microsoft has gone out of its way to make the process easy (and, thus, greatly enabled the malware distributors). The proliferating "Are you sure?" screens don't tend to help, because on Windows, users are conditioned to click "OK" dozens of times per hour, without thinking. On the Mac, on the other hand, the OS doesn't even let you try to do dangerous things, so it doesn't have to pop up dialogs nearly as often, so when it does pop one up, it's a significant event, and users are inclined to pay more attention, and not just click "OK" by reflex.

I am being honest when I say Macs are more secure. What's dishonest (or, at least, misguided) is to assert that computers are inherently woefully insecure, and that malware is omnipresent and inexorably invasive, and that end users have to worry about this and be careful all the time. By so generously enabling the malware authors for so many years, Microsoft has unfortunately bred an ecosystem in which such paranoia is all too necessary, but it needn't have been, and there are other ecosystems where the realities are quite different. —Steve Summit (talk) 05:56, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Sigh, let me try to nip this in the bud before a flame war gets started. OP - no, it's not true that "the Mac computers are not infected by any virus". There are plenty of viruses which could potentially infect a Mac. If you don't want to get a virus, it doesn't matter what platform you use - install some antivirus, and make sure to update your OS and antivirus frequently. Also don't install random internet trash. If you did nothing to protect yourself, you'd probably be somewhat safer with a Mac than a PC. But you'd be asking for trouble either way. Indeterminate (talk) 05:26, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

As a Mac user with a sense of history, allow me to introduce you to the late 1980s: nVIR (computer virus) (spread all over the place around 1988-89) and Scores (computer virus) (I never saw it, but it was supposed to be maliciouser). Disinfectant, which was free, was the antivirus software of choice at the time. Tempshill (talk) 05:41, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Indeterminate: If you're worried about merely potential threats, there are plenty of objects in your kitchen which could potentially kill you. There are thousands of worms and viruses which will infect an unprotected Windows machine. Can anyone name one currently-circulating actual Mac virus or worm?

Things are finally changing as Vista and Windows 7 gain some significant elements of inherent security, but today I think the average Mac user is still a lot safer, not just somewhat safer. —Steve Summit (talk) 06:17, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I like to think different OSes like different neighbourhoods - some might be safer than others, but you can never be perfectly safe; and if you're gonna be stupid you will get into trouble no matter what. With some sensible precautions though, it's quite unlikely to get infected either way. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:30, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

You can be pretty stupid and not get a virus on a Mac. You can have other security problems, but you're not going to pick up a virus, or spyware. You can be pretty smart and still get a virus and malware on a Windows machine. It's sort of disingenuous to imply that they're all the same odds—they're not. To stay "clean" on a PC requires a constant effort. On a Mac, you don't have to do a thing. Literally. Nothing.

I agree with Steve Summit's take on the problem with Windows and the "patch as you go" model. I have encouraged all of my relatives to buy Macs—it's just not worth their time to try and learn all of what goes into good security. Their machines should be basically secure from the beginning, because they are just unable to learn how to flush out their HOSTS file or repair their registry. As Bruce Schneier puts it, to those who say "educate the users," have you actually met the users? Most of them definitely don't care enough to patch their own machines on a daily basis, and that's bad for all of us.

I'm aware that much of the Mac's "inherent" security comes through the fact that nobody bothers to write viruses for it. But it's been that way for years and I haven't seen any evidence of that changing soon. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:05, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

It helps to try to imagine yourself as a malware writer. Are you after fun, or money? Whichever, there are hugely more Windows computers connected to the web than there are Mac OS X (or other) computers. You're likely to want to go after the greatest number of patsies, and as long as malware has to be OS specific, that means you'll want to go after Windows computers. So quite aside from the alleged relative strengths of the OSes (or their users), Windows has a certain disadvantage here. Note that this does not mean that OS X (or GNU/Linux) malware doesn't exist; and even if it doesn't exist now this doesn't mean that it couldn't exist next week. -- Hoary (talk) 07:33, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

From our Microsoft Windows page: "As of July 2009, Windows had approximately 93% of the market share of the client operating systems for usage on the Internet." Just to echo the sentiments above, why would anyone want to write a virus to infect the vast minority of users? Livewireo (talk) 13:44, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

If I had the motivation, skill, or desire to write this kind of malicious software, I'd try to write something for a Mac just to be the first to write a self-propegating worm. Everything I've seen (For OS X at least) is user installed and requires an admin password. None of the malicious software I've seen reported is self-propegating and none of it installs automatically. I can see people writing this kind of software just as a proof of concept, and it still hasn't come that far. Macs are more secure from self-propegating malware for two main reasons: obscurity and a system of handling files that is more secure than on windows. While you can account for the very small amount of existing malware by obscurity, it's hard to account for the complete lack of self-propegating malware using that particular arguement. That said, don't be stupid no matter what system you're on. P2P file sharing is risky, and visiting shady sites and downloading "gimmicks" is what will be the most likely cause of getting infected. Caltsar (talk) 15:03, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Why write a Mac virus? Well, for the bragging rights, and to wipe the smug, cocky grins off the faces of all those vainglorious, self-satisfied Macheads. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:59, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Caltsar: See Safari_(web_browser)#Browser exploits. There are vulnerabilities in Safari that take control of a Mac without user input. And Apple took quite a while to fix those vulnerabilities. They took long not because of corporate culture, but because Apple spends only 3.5% of their revenue on R&D (c.f. 15% for MS!). As for the password dialog, you can also make Windows ask users for a password to perform administrative tasks. This does little to prevent malware from infecting those machines, as I can attest from experience. The user may have limited privileges, but the malware will simply take control of system memory via a buffer overflow. Or, the program will make itself run at startup with administrative privileges. Macs are not immune to either of these techniques. But Windows Vista introduced a feature to combat buffer overflows called Address space layout randomization.--Drknkn (talk) 21:41, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I never claimed that OS X had no vulerabilities. I claimed that no self-propegating malware has been documented on OS X. Additionally, OS X Leopard has a feature similar to address space randomization. No OS is completely secure, but OS X seems to protect against auto-execution and self-propegation better than windows. While every OS has security vulnerabilities, and while Apple didn't patch Safari fast enough, there are far fewer vulnerabilities reported and "open" on OS X. On the other hand, with Windows Vista and Windows 7, the OS is becomming increasingly more secure, and in my use I have yet to have a virus detected this year on vista/7, but even on a patched XP system, I still occasionally get hits on the anti-virus software. The relatively low adoption rate of Windows Vista may account partly for the amount of malware out there as (in my experience), the newer versions of windows are significantly better at detecting these threats. It is still easier to make malware self propegating on a Windows system as UAC and other security features are often turned off by users (this isn't an option in OS X for most things). Once again, this doesn't mean Windows is completely insecure, and for the massive userbase of the OS, I'm impressed at how well Malware can be kept off the machine. Caltsar (talk) 14:51, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

This is a general followup to several posts in this thread. This article mentions that there's now an OS X botnet. Botnet software normally spreads using vulnerabilities that have already been patched by the vendors; it targets uneducated users who don't update their machines and never notice the malware is running. Therefore, please don't advise people to buy a Mac and then do nothing to keep it secure. For everyone's sake it's important that they at least install security updates (which mainly just means keeping auto-update enabled and rebooting when it tells you to). I've been using Windows machines for nearly two decades and in that time I've never had a malware infection. I don't mean antivirus software stopped the malware, I mean the antivirus software never had to do anything. I attribute my longevity to two things: installing security patches as they become available, and not running software supplied by someone I wouldn't buy a used car from. It's not intrinsically safe to run untrusted software on OS X either, but in practice right now it may be safe. But even if that's so you still should install those security patches. Patch-as-you-go is the approach taken by all the major vendors, it has nothing to do with Microsoft especially. Even OpenBSD has had a few major vulnerabilities slip by. The security model on all of the major OSes sucks. Any program I run, even as an unprivileged user, has permission to read, write or delete all of that user's personal files. That's crazy. Software should have no filesystem access unless I grant it. The security of Java applets has nothing to do with bytecode or bytecode verification or type safety; those are needed to enforce security boundaries in-process, but OSes can accomplish the same thing with separate address spaces. No, Java applets are safe because Java has a security model that fits what people actually need in this age of networked PCs. NT, OS X and Linux don't. So I don't want to hear people claiming that Linux and OS X are secure by design. If they were, ActiveX-style native code applets would be as safe as Java. Finally, I would like to ask people here not to exaggerate the malware problem by saying things like "thousands of viruses will infect an unprotected Windows machine". Fear of malware is itself a big problem; in fact, I think it's a bigger problem than the actual malware. Politicians exploit fear of "cyberterrorism" to justify infringing our civil liberties, and so does Microsoft. -- BenRG (talk) 20:18, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Many linux distributions come with selinux or apparmor preinstalled, which brings "Java-like" security to any app. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 12:04, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I would like to note that the article linked above specifically mentions the pirated versions of iLife and iWork were responsible for the creation of the botnet using an existing trojan from incredibly unsafe computing practices that rely on the user bypassing security, not through any software exploits. Nothing is stronger than the weakest link, and in this case that link is the user and not a vulnerability in the operating system. Caltsar (talk) 17:56, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Database type

Hi :) What is known as a "multiple-entry fixed-format database"? I came across this in a website (which doesn't really explain what it is, so I'm asking here). I'm trying to learn programming and databases, but as you can see, I'm still learning the basics. 122.255.2.163 (talk) 03:29, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I have never heard it described in that way, but I assume the person is referring to a database that has multiple entries, each entry in the same format. That, basically, is just about any popular database that exists. -- kainaw™ 03:54, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I've also not heard it described so. I can only imagine it refers to the character fields which are fixed sizes and don't grow or shrink as needed, such as varchars in oracle. For example, if you define a character field as size 10, it will always use 10 bytes of fixed storage even if you're inserting 1 byte at a time. I would imagine the database being referred to stores numbers and dates etc. in the same way? What database is that? Sandman30s (talk) 09:39, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I Want to Convert my Tiff Images to Text files,Is it possible?

i want to convert my Tiff Image file to text file for editing and make some correction on it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.125.175.163 (talk) 07:34, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

You could possibly do this with an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program, if the text is relatively clear. --Phil Holmes (talk) 09:57, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Windows Movie Maker

I have created a movie with Windows Movie Maker, but when I save it as a video file, it becomes miscoloured. How can I fix this? Jc iindyysgvxc (talk) 08:04, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

This website lists some ways to deal with this problem. Window Movies Maker Advice Hmrox (talk) 14:29, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

You might have the compression settings too high, which means the video loses a lot of quality when being encoded (saved). Try increasing the settings or allowing a larger file size —Preceding unsigned comment added by Avrillyria (talk • contribs) 17:26, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Wireless speeds

My home wireless has been very wonky lately. It cuts out, it goes verrrry slow sometimes, things of that nature. It was never very fast to begin with.

Just for fun, I tried plugging into it with an ethernet cable. Without the cable, over Airport, I get at max 5-6 Mb/s. Plugged in with the ethernet cable (to the wireless router), suddenly I'm scoring 30 Mb/s at speedtest.net.

Is this common, or is it a sign that a) my wireless router sucks, or b) my wireless card sucks? What's the weak link in this system? Any way to improve it (other than being wired all the time)?

The router is a Netgear MR814v3 (11 Mbps, 2.4 GHz 802.11, b). The wireless card is an AirPort Extreme. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:09, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

If your router is 802.11b, then you'll never exceed 11Mbps. Of course that 11Mbps is a theoretical maximum, and is subject to some overhead. Signal strength will also affect the speed. --LarryMac | Talk 13:32, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

OK. That's what I thought. Guess this old router has got to go! --Mr.98 (talk) 13:55, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Just be thankful that you have an internet link that makes wireless speeds possible! Here in rural UK we measure internet speeds in Kb/s. Sometimes we think we would do better in a third-world country! Dbfirs 16:00, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Trouble with while.....wend

What is the best and most correct way to deal with a situation here- XLEN=LEN(X$):IF ENDPOS<XLEN THEN WHILE MID$(X$,ENDPOS,1)<>" ":ENDPOS=ENDPOS+1:WEND In this snatch of GWBasic code the value of endpos can exceed the length of x$, which causes an error. Is there a better way of arranging things other than just using a goto to break out of the loop when endpos become too high? Thanks 78.146.235.74 (talk) 15:01, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

What's the point of this code, really? What are you trying to accomplish? --Mr.98 (talk) 15:32, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I want to capture each word in a string of words and spaces. The above code finds out where the word stops and spaces begin. Once the start and end position of each word is found, then the word can be isolated using MID$(). I'd be interested to hear of any better ways to do it. 78.144.204.139 (talk) 20:08, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

You can use 2 conditions in your WHILE statement. I'm not very familiar with GW Basic, but testing for WHILE MID$(X$,ENDPOS,1)<>" " AND ENDPOS<XLEN should do what you want - although you may need to check whether I've written it exactly as GW Basic will need it. --Phil Holmes (talk) 16:19, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that does seem to work. 78.144.204.139 (talk) 20:08, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

An easier way to do it would involve using INSTR to find the spaces, and then just using MID. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:53, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Progress report on the Commodore 64 games restoration project

The XM1541 cable arrived today. I downloaded OpenCBM, compiled, and installed it. Everything went without problems. I then powered the system down, attached my old 1541 through the XM1541 cable to the PCI parallel port replicator, and powered the 1541 up first and the system up later. The result: The system boots up perfectly OK. I haven't blown it physically up or messed up the Linux kernel. It's a fully usable Fedora 9 system. Accessing the 1541 doesn't work at all. The red light stays lit the entire time the system is powered up, and cbmctrl status 8 reports: 99,driver error,00,00. Now I think the reason is either that the PCI parallel port replicator doesn't work, and I really do need a real parallel port on the motherboard, or that the 1541 itself is broken. But I don't know which is the case. Could someone suggest how I should proceed here? JIP | Talk 17:03, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd be suspicious that either the port replicator isn't working, or that the driver isn't talking to it properly. So I'd try the operation with the port replicator removed (from the USB connection). Only if you get a different error message to the one you have now can you begin to suspect the driver/cable/1541. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:43, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

The port replicator connects to PCI, not USB. I found out early enough that OpenCBM doesn't support USB parallel port replicators at all, so I went for a PCI one instead. I think cbmctrl status 8 gives the same error message whenever it can't find the drive, for any reason. It gave the same error message when I hadn't attached the drive in the first place. I very much suspect that the case is simply that even a PCI parallel port replicator isn't supported, it simply has to be a real parallel port. I have two options to test it: a real Commodore 64 or an old PC with a real parallel port. Unfortunately I have neither - my team mate did mention he had an old Commodore 64 for sale, so I could ask him about it, and I could ask the IT support at work if they have any old laptops for sale. JIP | Talk 18:54, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

A reply from the OpenCBM mailing list suggested that the 1541 is broken. No wonder, as it's over twenty years old. I should get a new one ASAP, but from where? I might try asking my team mate, but failing that, I could try Finnish small ads and auction sites first, and something like eBay second. The only issue with foreign hardware is the power sources. British power sources are incompatible with continental European ones, and American power sources are even more so. Will this be a problem with a 1541? JIP | Talk 19:51, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Looking at photos of the back (uk, us) it looks like there isn't a voltage selector (unlike modern PCs, for example); unless some models do have a voltage selector, then you can't use a US one. Really the 240v supply the UK used when 1541s were made should be compatible with the 230v Finland uses. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:33, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Someone has recompiled Commodore Basic for Windows, if that is of any interest. http://www.pagetable.com/?p=48 78.144.204.139 (talk) 20:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

That is completely unrelated to my problem, and won't help me at all. Thanks for the good faith reply, though. JIP | Talk 20:18, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

To confirm your PC's new parallel port is working, you might try connecting it to a printer with a parallel port interface, then seeing if the PC can control the printer.

Did you purchase the Commodore 64 your teammate offered to sell? If so, are you able to test the 1541 with the Commodore 64? Even with no TV or monitor connected, you might still be able to blindly enter LOAD"$",8 and see if the drive responds normally. --Bavi H (talk) 02:09, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I didn't purchase the Commodore 64 yet. And using a parallel printer wouldn't help, because printers make less use of the interface than the XM1541 does, so they are more compatible, while the XM1541 requires better implementation from the interface. And I don't even have a printer. JIP | Talk 04:26, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Limitation of Maximum RAM based on CPU / CORE

I want to know is there any relation between the number of CPU's or CORE's and maximum RAM limitation? Is ther any capacity of the CORE is defined based on how much RAM can be addressed by each CORE / CPU? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.75.192.25 (talk) 18:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm assuming you mean CPUs and cores in a conventional PC-intel architecture (a normal PC, in other words)? In that case, all the CPUs and their cores operate in a shared memory space and with a common pool of RAM. So there's no relationship between the number of CPUs and the amount of memory (strictly all those CPUs have some onboard cache, but for the purposes of your question that's transparent). Now this isn't the only memory architecture there is; NUMA architectures have separate memory for each CPU, and then (often, but not always) a shared memory space too. This is how the Cell processor (that you'll most commonly find in a Playstation 3) works, and how IBM's NUMA-Q servers work. Strictly, in a rather weird way, even your PC does work that way - the GPU on your graphics card is increasingly like a CPU (in capabilities, and the tasks it's given), and it has its own memory. Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:40, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Riva tuner (fan speed)

Hello there, I have increased my XFX 9800 GT's fan speed from 35 (stock) to 60 percent. After finishing any game or 3D application the fan speed soon goes back to its stock speed (35%). I have to manually set it again to 60%. Is it normal? Is there any way to keep the speed 60% in both idle or 3D load? Thank you--119.30.36.41 (talk) 20:25, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

October 2

Digital Scale

Fellow Wikipedians: I am looking into buying a small scale for weighing out various amounts (anywhere from ~1 to 10 grams) of marijuana. I want something sorta cheap (under $30 ideally) yet accurate, with a precision of at least a tenth of a gram...better if possible. Can any of you recommend any scales online? I searched amazon.com but I'm not sure if I found anything worth buying. Thanks for the suggestions! --98.108.37.202 (talk) 00:06, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

My Python Integer Class

I'm trying to make a class that only contains a number that can only be an integer. It's a pet project that I'm working trying to simulate how the .NET Framework's structs limit the aspects of the variable. Can someone tell me if this code is syntactically correct and how to properly instantiate it:

class Int(object):
	def __new__(self):
		self.var=0
	def __init__(self, var):
		test=test(var)
		if test==True:
			self.int=var
		else:
			print("The variable entered isn't an integer.")
	def ret(self):
		print(self.int)
	def add(self, a):
		test=test(a)
		if test==True:
			self.int=self.int+a
		else:
			print("The variable entered isn't an integer.")
	def min1(self, a):
		test=test(a)
		if test==True:
			self.int=self.int-a
		else:
			print("The variable entered isn't an integer.")
	def mul(self, a):
		test=test(a)
		if test==True:
			self.int=self.int*a
		else:
			print("The variable entered isn't an integer.")
	def div1(self, a):
		test=test(a)
		if test==True:
			self.int=self.int/a
		else:
			print("The variable entered isn't an integer.")
	def min2(self, a):
		test=test(a)
		if test==True:
			self.int=a-self.int
		else:
			print("The variable entered isn't an integer.")
	def div2(self, a):
		test=test(a)
		if test==True:
			self.int=a/self.int
		else:
			print("The variable entered isn't an integer.")

-- --Melab±1 ☎ 00:27, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing something here, but Python already has a built-in integer type called int. What behaviour do you want from your class that is different from int ? Gandalf61 (talk) 10:25, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

World Wide Web

Back in the early 90's, how did one use the World Wide Web. Furthermore, how did people use Usenet? 67.180.161.183 (talk) 04:18, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Almost everyone used dial-up modems. I remember we sometimes connected to a service called Prodigy. You'd dial into that and browse their home page. But, there was so little to do on that (as a kid, that is), that we mostly used BBSs. We downloaded stuff from those (pictures, etc.), talked in chat rooms, and played text-only games. Although HTML had already been invented, web browsers like Netscape and Internet Explorer did not come into use until around 1995. So, in the early 1990s, we didn't really use the WWW. It was mostly text without HTML. Piracy was all done by hand, since modems were so slow. You'd borrow a game on a floppy disk from a friend and install it on your computer. I remember it took 10 minutes to download a single picture, and the computers were so slow that it would slowly appear on the screen. Of course, it was all really fast compared to the way it was in the 1980s. Later came America Online. In the early- and mid-1990s, most people used their ISP's home page (Prodigy, AOL, etc.) to check their e-mail, check the weather, etc. Yahoo! and Alta-Vista came along in the mid-1990s, but they were worthless at first. You just used them as portals and browsed lists of pages on them. They couldn't find anything that you wanted if you tried to use the search box. It wasn't until Google came around in the late 1990s that you could actually find something by searching. As for Usenet, I didn't use it very much, although I know you can read newsgroups like Usenet using Outlook Express. You can share files and of course talk on newsgroups.--Drknkn (talk) 04:37, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Drknkn's description is broadly true for a certain set of home users. However, it misses some important points. The Web was created at a research institution (CERN) for the purpose of disseminating scientific papers and information; most of its early users would have been faculty, students, and employees at universities and companies with permanent Internet connections, not dial-up ISPs. But even then, the systems were quite slow by modern standards!

"Online services" such as AOL and Prodigy did not have Internet access until the mid-'90s; if you wanted that, you went to a dial-up ISP such as Netcom. The idea that ordinary people (outside of universities, the technology trades, or hobbyists) would want open and unrestricted Internet access took a long time to seep in.

As for Usenet -- In the early '90s, I would dial into a local hobbyist Unix system and use the "trn" software to read news. Downloading pictures from Usenet meant saving several messages to a file, running uudecode on them, and downloading with ZMODEM. Getting software would involve floppy disks or downloading from a BBS more often than Usenet. --FOo (talk) 07:18, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Before world wide web there was Gopher ftp usenet and telnet. We would use a terminal in the computer lab, or dial into a serial port on a unix box using a terminal program on the PC. Then run commands on the unix machine. I think I may have used tin to read usenet. There were on line indexes around like Archie search engine and Veronica. When Mosaic first came out we wondered why would any one want to embed pictures in text? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:10, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

To sum it up: it was pretty slow, not very interesting. In the bad old early days, I had a lot more fun just basically posting to bulletin boards, occasionally playing text-only browser games. Where I was, it was a lot easier to connect to local machines than it was to connect to the internet, so our "online communities" consisted primarily of people who lived in the area code. 'Twas a simpler time, to be sure. ;-) Met my first girlfriend that way, if you can believe it! --Mr.98 (talk) 13:45, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I would disagree with the assertion that it wasn't very interesting; the limitations provided a challenge that was solved in various clever ways (see ASCII art for example. I recall seeing a ASCII movie back in 1994-1995 or thereabouts that exploited the way text-based unix email programs would page down if you held down the space bar, essentially creating frames out of each page. I was part of the Eternal September, though technically I was a university student at the time. I used a text-based unix system at the school. Email was through Pine, usenet was done with tin (earlier it had been vi, which was horrible) and word-processing was done with a program called Pico. In many ways, I miss those old days - and I missed out on the great heydays when virtually everyone you met online was in some kind of post-secondary institution. Matt Deres (talk) 16:38, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Wow, that was overwhelming. How did you "dial in" back then? Were there modems in the computer 67.180.161.183 (talk) 01:07, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Most people who used the Internet in the early nineties were not connecting from home. Typically they would go to their university's computer lab. This is an important point.

Otherwise, yes. To connect to either the Internet or (more likely) a local BBS, they would use a telephone modem. Probably an extremely slow modem. If you were very lucky, you might have a 28,000bit/s modem. Those came out in 1994. Computers didn't typically come with built-in modems, though. You usually had to add your own. You had a choice of getting an add-on board for your computer, or a stand alone box that plugged into your serial port.

By the way, AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve existed in the early 90's, but they weren't connected to the Internet yet! For example, AOL didn't offer any meaningful internet access until 1993 when it first started offering USENET. APL (talk) 02:46, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Back in deep dark Africa where I am, we were lucky to have 28800 baud modems; 2400 baud was a lot more commonplace in the early 90's. And we used those to connect to BBS's, even back in the 80's when BBS's were very rare locally and we couldn't afford the telephone connect rates to overseas BBS's. In the early 90's I used the university connection but usenet was about the only service fast enough to be able to use to download (there was one local usenet host that everyone used). I remember we once tried to download a game walkthough via ftp connecting to the USA (I think it was 100K large) and it took the whole night to download!! WWW I think we only saw in 1994 and had no idea it was going to be that popular. Sandman30s (talk) 12:55, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Photoshop

Is there a particular website that you can post them a trick image (like two headed people) and wait for their answer for how to make it in Photoshop?--Mikespedia (talk) 07:05, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

There's not a simple "one-click" way to digitally alter a photo. The fun stuff you see on, say, Photoshop Phriday, are manually edited. You might want a general purpose photoshop tutorial site to learn the tools available; but there's a good amount of "art" and technique to making a reasonable-looking image. Nimur (talk) 07:37, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

The answer to 90% of questions about "how to make it in Photoshop" is 1. clone tool, 2. masking, 3. patience. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:33, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

And layers. It's vitally important to keep things on different layers and mask them, instead of just plopping stuff down on the background layer. It's surprising how many people forget this. APL (talk) 14:37, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

If you have a specific picture in mind - we might be able to help you right here...but it's hard to imagine a site like that existing specifically. SteveBaker (talk) 03:28, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

How do I make portable apps?

How can I make portable apps? I know some websites offer them, but I want to have the power to make my own... Are there any special tools for that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.241.114.62 (talk) 10:58, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Take a look at Portable application creators (In my personal experience, VMware ThinApp and Xenocode are the best). --SF007 (talk) 11:12, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

The above software is really good but can cause problems sometimes, especially with updating or adding plug-ins and stuff like that, because all files are stored in an executable file which can't be modified. For an alternative approach, have a look here where there are some tools and guides for making portable apps which retain the original file structure. It also depends of what type of program you wish to make portable (not all work well in portable form, some not at all) and the environment you're going to run them in (some portable apps might require java to be installed on the host system for example, and won't run without it)

Stablemotherboard

Is there any motherboard which will be stable in hot temperature (no freezing or lock up)? Is Asus P5Q EM is appropriate for that job? Any thoughts? --119.30.36.51 (talk) 11:43, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Obvious Question : How hot?

The probably is that the motherboard itself is not your point of failure here, it's the CPU. Without a special cooling system, the hotter the surrounding air, the less effective the CPU's heat-sink will be, and the faster it will overheat.

You'll also want to keep close watch on your video card's temperature as well.

What's your application? Are you married to the x86 (PC) architecture, or are you willing to use something else. It's my understanding that ARM CPUs are not nearly as heat sensitive as Pentiums and whatnot. If a rather low powered Linux machine would suit your needs, you might be able to put something together around the BeagleBoard, but I can't seem to easily find specs on what temperature range it's happy with. APL (talk) 12:57, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

(after EC) Does "hot" refer to the ambient room temperature, the computer's internal case temperature, or the CPU core temperature? This is an important consideration. ARMs and other low-power devices may be able to operate at higher ambient room temperature because they don't need as much thermal dissipation (they are typically lower power than, say, a Pentium Core 2). But I'd be willing to bet that their thermal shutdown core temperature is not that different from a higher-power CPU: Thermal Design Guidelines for 423-pin Pentium 4 and for 80331 (Celeron); meanwhile, even a high-end ARM runs at 300 mW. But if your case temperature were very high from something else, the ARM will probably fail. It looks like ARM does not publish thermal tolerances for operation (only storage) - so I suspect they have not been tested or certified to pass certain thermal benchmarks. (Surprisingly, even their automotive- processors do not have thermal tolerances listed - this is usually a major component of automotive electronics design!) So in general, while they are cooler processors under normal conditions due to their low power dissipation, if you have a special need (e.g. running the device inside a hot car, or even long-term exposure to an un-airconditioned server room), you might actually find a hotter P4 more robust and reliable. Nimur (talk) 13:38, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

• Too hot that causes a system to freeze and it forced user to press reset button. As far as I know Overheating of CPU causes system to shut down or restart repeatedly, but not freezing or locking up the system. My video card is not overheating as it is idle in 43 degree and 60 in load. Processor temp is 27 degree to 34 degree Celsius. Ram is not problem. I have conducted numerous test on system.

Yes I am planning to load Vista 64 bit soon. But need an stable gaming motherboard. Should I go for that Asus model?--119.30.36.51 (talk) 13:33, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

For normal gaming usage, I think what you really want is good fans, and a good heat-sink. And good airflow. (Keep your case closed, And don't go adding vents or fans in random locations without thinking about what this does to your overall airflow.) In my experience choosing the right case is just as important as the CPU in these sorts of issues.

If this computer is more than a few months old, be sure that dust is not accumulating on your heat-sinks. That can severely limit their effectiveness. Clear that out with compressed air. APL (talk) 14:36, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

• I have all the necessary instruments for a gaming system. For example, I have full tower thermaltake Xaser VI case. I have XFX 750i SLI mobo which runs too hot that causes system to freeze. That mobo is proven to be unstable. Does Asus P5Q EM have good heat-sink?--119.30.36.34 (talk) 16:21, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Back button won't go back in Yahoo email

This [8] is where the discussion began. Actually, a link there goes to where my computer information is. In summary, when I finished looking at an email and tried to go back to what I was doing, I couldn't. I ended up in an endless loop. This may also be related to this [9], a problem I also have on other sites.

The advice I was given by someone from Yahoo was that it might be a Java problem. As it happens, I kept getting messages that Java needed to be updated, so I did. This has not solved the problem. I also keep getting Error Code 21. So far they haven't responded back. I was wondering if anyone might have anything to say.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:40, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

You could use an email client. Evolution is a good one, and Opera comes with built-in email reader that isn't bad either. The plus side would be that you are not dependent on some yahoo provided interface that will be changed and gone when they feel like it. Otherwise the best you can do is to clear all caches, make sure you are running latest versions and, if all else fails, reinstall everything. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 18:48, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

It's simpler just to remember not to go to Yahoo except when I first sign on. Which kind of defeats the purpose of the simple link to email at the top of the page. As for getting anywhere within Yahoo, I can always click on "Inbox" or whatever folder. At least that always works now. And no problems with losing my drafts lately either.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:26, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I've been reading Vchimpanzee's postings here over the past few months with mild concern/amusement. You seem to have so many problems with your browser/PC that I'm starting to think you should just format and re-install everything. Honestly, I've never come across anyone having this much trouble on so many different websites and with such a disparate variety of issues that one can't even begin to get to the root of the problem. You sir/madam have a very sick PC which either has some serious corruption/improperly installed software, or bad bad BAD case of malware/spyware. Seriously, format and re-install. It's just not funny any more. Zunaid 20:14, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

The back button worked just now.

Nothing's wrong with my computer. Norton scans it every Friday and never finds anything but cookies. I keep away from unfamiliar sites.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:36, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

A clean Norton scan does not mean "nothing's wrong with my computer". PCs tend to accumulate problems over the months and years as the user downloads, installs, and uninstalls software.

I am not sure that Vchimpanzee's computer is as awful as Zunaid seems to believe. I think most of his/her complaints are about small, common problems that most of us would not think twice about, and Vchimpanzee is complaining here because of the ease of doing so.

Vchimpanzee, I, for one, am tired of answering your daily questions and comments about problems with Yahoo Mail on your particular PC. I, and several others, have told you the fix for the problem many times. Switch to a different mail provider. You don't have to put up with this crap. Just switch to a different mail provider. Or, format your PC's hard disk and reinstall everything from scratch if you are for some reason hellbent on staying with Yahoo Mail. That is as far as I can go. We have told you how to fix all of this. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:55, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't see what's so wrong with being curious to learn what causes things. I think the problem may be with Internet Explorer 8, as I said in a question with a link above. I never got a clear answer on whether Internet Explorer 8 has any problems, or how to find out. In any case, there are no obvious problems with the computer. I saw an AT&T ad when the "Not Responding" message was there. An earlier question of mine was about an AT&T ad with Firefox at a library. I despise Firefox. Nevertheless, going to unfamiliar or troublesome sites there is less risky. The latest Firefox update seems to have solved the AT&T problem, or maybe AT&T did.

NO more questions for at least a week because I think I'll be at the beach. Something could change but that's my plan.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:42, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Chimp, ignore them. It's not your computer, it's Yahoo's. Recent software updates took a long time to flow through to every server, and caused problems which took a while for them to fix. The way Internet Explorer interprets Javascript may be one factor in your case; the way it does not handle mouse-hover instructions well is another. Your using Norton is a third...there have been numerous problems caused by minor updates to Norton, and one major one that nearly halted the whole Yahoo mail system a few months back. At least set your Norton to never update automatically, that way you will know when it did so, and be able to make the connection between that and any new mail problems.

Once you have the mail page open, DO open mails into a separate tab, so you don't have to use the back button to get back to the inbox. If a page goes blank or freezes, forget about trying to refresh it. It is dead. Close it, and open a new copy of Mail.

Yahoo has a help section for mail, which won't tell you anything useful. It also has a mail problems suggestion board, which is fairly deserted. The best place to take a problem like this is the general Answers suggestion board, which is well serviced by regulars who also use mail, therefore can give you the best currently known work-arounds. You don't need an Answers account to use that board,just a Yahoo email address. - KoolerStill (talk) 20:51, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Keeping files on a hard disk without registering in file system (FAT32 or NTFS)

Is there a program for writing files directly to hard disk without registering it in File Allocation Table or whatever it is called under NTFS (just writing it into empty space hoping it won't be overwritten later on) and keeping record of it on some portable disk together with checksum?? and restoring it in case no part of it was overwritten? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.8.52.97 (talk) 20:19, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

TrueCrypt doesn't do exactly what you ask for, but appears to be able to create hidden volumes in ntfs and probably is what you really want. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 20:49, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

You can write directly to a device in Linux. For example, I have a drive at /dev/sda1. I can manipulate it with any file handler, but I'm sure to screw up the data on the drive by doing so. The only time I've treated a drive like that (going straight to the device) is to read it and find deleted files that I wanted to restore. Now, I'm remembering back on the Commodore 64. It was trivial to open the floppy disk in a binary editor and change the data byte by byte. I thought it would be kind of cool to type out a letter to someone that way - which could only be read by reading the disk in another binary editor. Of course, I was a young idiot at the time. -- kainaw™ 01:57, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I guess that would be kinda like creating the file - then deleting it again. Then it's on the hard drive - but you've deleted it from the FAT, etc. I'm not quite sure what the advantage is though...if you're thinking it's some kind of security - I rather doubt it. This is a case of Security through obscurity - and it's not a good technique. SteveBaker (talk) 03:25, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

October 3

Per row / per column table border properties and CSS.

Resolved

I am editing an article on my MediaWiki server and I have been unsuccessfuly trying for days now to have my table show the way I want. I would be grateful for some advice.

With the following table definition:

{| class="BridgeExampleTable" width="100%" 
! width=7% align="center" | E 
! width=7% align="center" | S
! width=7% align="center" | O 
! width=7% align="center" | N
! width=72% align="left" | Description
|- 
| align="center" | 1SA
| align="center" | P
| align="center" | 2{{C}} 
| align="center" | P 
| align="left" rowspan=2 | 5-5, couleurs non-déterminées autres que {{P}}.
|- 
| align="center" | 2{{P}}
| align="center" | P
| align="center" | P
| align="center" | 2SA 
|- 
| align="center" | 1SA
| align="center" | P
| align="center" | P 
| align="center" | 2SA 
| align="left" | 5-5, couleurs non-déterminées.
|}

and the following css (in MediaWiki:Common.css):

table.BridgeExampleTable {
  border-style: solid;
  border-width: thin;
  border-color: black;
  border-collapse: collapse;
}

table.BridgeExampleTable th {
  border-style: solid;
  border-width: thin;
  border-collapse: collapse;
  padding-left: 5px;
  padding-right: 5px;
  background-color:#E6E6E6;
}
table.BridgeExampleTable td {
  padding-left: 5px;
  padding-right: 5px;
  background-color:#F6F6F6;
}

I get the following look (sorry, I just created an account here, I cannot upload images):

 +-------+-------+-------+--------+---------------------------------------------+
 |   E   |   S   |   O   |   N    | Description:                                |
 |-------+-------+-------+--------+---------------------------------------------|
 |   1SA     P       2♥      P                                                  |
 |                                   5-5, couleurs non-déterminées autres que ♠.|
 |   2♠      P       P      2SA                                                 |
 |   1SA     P       P      2SA      5-5, couleurs non-déterminées              |
 +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

I would like the borders to be like this:

 +-------+-------+-------+--------+---------------------------------------------+
 |   E   |   S   |   O   |   N    | Description:                                |
 |-------+-------+-------+--------+---------------------------------------------|
 |   1SA     P       2♥      P    |                                             |
 |                                | 5-5, couleurs non-déterminées autres que ♠. |
 |   2♠      P       P       2SA  |                                             |
 |--------------------------------+---------------------------------------------|
 |   1SA     P      P       2SA   | 5-5, couleurs non-déterminées               |
 +--------------------------------+---------------------------------------------+

• Is there a way to specify borders on the Description column in the style sheet?
• How can I force a border on the bottom of the rows, respecting the fact that the Description column can span several rows while the E, S, O, N columns always span one row? Jacerator (talk) 02:44, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Those BridgeExampleTable classes do not exist, and you can't define classes in a page. Are you copying this from another wiki? Anyway, you will have to specify the CSS for each cell:

E	S	O	N	Description
1SA	P	2♥	P	5-5, couleurs non-déterminées autres que ♠.
2♠	P	P	2SA
1SA	P	P	2SA	5-5, couleurs non-déterminées.

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 04:00, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

If all your table.BridgeExampleTable have the same amount of rows and columns (or –at least– you want make special formatting at the same position) you can use css rules like these:

table.BridgeExampleTable tr:first-child {
<!-- code for 1-st row format -->
}

table.BridgeExampleTable tr:first-child + tr {
<!-- code for 2-nd row format -->
}

table.BridgeExampleTable tr:first-child + tr + tr {
<!-- code for 3-rd row format -->
}

<!-- and so on for 4-th, 5-th, ... -->

table.BridgeExampleTable tr td:first-child {
<!-- code for cells in 1-st column format -->
}

table.BridgeExampleTable tr td:first-child + td {
<!-- code for cells in 2-nd column format -->
}

<!-- and so on for 3-rd, 4-th, ... -->

-- Codicorumus  « msg 12:45, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Brilliant! I am halfway there now... My Description column now gets a border like I wanted it to. The situation with the rows is a bit more complicated though. My tables can have an arbitrary number of rows, where my E,S,O,N columns always have rowspan=1 and the description column can have any rowspan, normally 1, 2 or 3. I would like to put a horizontal line in E,S,O,N to match the horizontal line in the description column:

Now I have for instance:

 +-------+-------+-------+--------+---------------------------------------------+
 |   E   |   S   |   O   |   N    | Description:                                |
 |-------+-------+-------+--------+---------------------------------------------|
 |   1SA     P       2♥      P    |                                             |
 |                                | 5-5, couleurs non-déterminées autres que ♠. |
 |   2♠      P       P       2SA  |                                             |
 |                                +---------------------------------------------|
 |   1SA     P      P       2SA   | 5-5, couleurs non-déterminées               |
 |                                +---------------------------------------------|
 |   1SA     P       2♥      P    |                                             |
 |                                | 5-5, couleurs non-déterminées autres que ♠. |
 |   2♠      P       P       2SA  |                                             |
 |                                +---------------------------------------------|
 |   1SA     P      P       2SA   | 5-5, couleurs non-déterminées               |
 +--------------------------------+---------------------------------------------+

And would like to get:

 +-------+-------+-------+--------+---------------------------------------------+
 |   E   |   S   |   O   |   N    | Description:                                |
 |-------+-------+-------+--------+---------------------------------------------|
 |   1SA     P       2♥      P    |                                             |
 |                                | 5-5, couleurs non-déterminées autres que ♠. |
 |   2♠      P       P       2SA  |                                             |
 |--------------------------------+---------------------------------------------|
 |   1SA     P      P       2SA   | 5-5, couleurs non-déterminées               |
 |--------------------------------+---------------------------------------------|
 |   1SA     P       2♥      P    |                                             |
 |                                | 5-5, couleurs non-déterminées autres que ♠. |
 |   2♠      P       P       2SA  |                                             |
 |--------------------------------+---------------------------------------------|
 |   1SA     P      P       2SA   | 5-5, couleurs non-déterminées               |
 +--------------------------------+---------------------------------------------+

By the way, the BridgeExampleTable class is defined on my MediaWiki server. Jacek (talk) 15:46, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

If the horizontal borders that span all the row are in fixed positions (even if tables don't have the same number of rows), You can use the code I wrote before, otherwise You must put the format in the wiki table (or with style="..." or with class="..." in the line beginning with the wikicode |-, wich can hold the formatting code for the HTML <tr> element). You can get rid even of all those align="center" (putting the code in per column css rules) and of rowspan=2 (setting it in a per row & column position css rule or via new classes – something like rowspanning-1, rowspanning-2, rowspanning-3). -- Codicorumus  « msg 16:59, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Following your advice, I moved all the alignment rules to the .css. Then, realizing that I can tell a row which needs a horizontal border on top by the fact that it has a value in the description column, I made the following template, which did the trick:

<noinclude>BETR stands for Bridge Example Table Row</noinclude>
|- {{#if: {{{D|}}} | style="border-top-style:solid; border-top-width:thin" }}
| {{{E}}}
| {{{S}}}
| {{{O}}} 
| {{{N}}} {{#if: {{{D|}}} | <nowiki />
{{!}} rowspan={{{rspn|1}}} {{!}}{{{D}}} }}

Thank you very much for your help! Jacek (talk) 21:51, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

It was an interesting issue, thanks to you too. -- Codicorumus  « msg 11:27, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Usage - Representational Map for most popular/most frequently accessed pages

Hello there,

Help!

I'm quite lost, and am not even sure if this is the right place to ask this question. The rationale for asking this question here might be apparent in a moment though:

About a year ago, something appeared either in New Scientist or the general-science mag Discover regarding a very neat map which showed icons for Wikipedia for subject matter that was frequently accessed. What made this conceptual map interesting is that the icons were represented in varying sizes, on a combined map all at once, according to the frequency of 'hits'. It was a colorful and interesting thing and apparently linked to a new concept in usage estimations/reporting/collecting.

Would anyone possibly know what this was, where it could be, and if anything new has been done with that sort of thing lately? I apologize for my garbled question; I'm not quite sure what this map-thing is *called*, other than how I've described it.

My sincere thanks, Ariel —Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.233.167.15 (talk) 04:07, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Such a map seems unlikely; the Wikimedia Foundation has a policy of not officially tracking read-only page accesses. I recall somewhere the justification was because, unlike a commercial site that tries to market stuff to its users, "they don't care who reads the pages." (I'm unable to find a link to attribute this to anywhere, but I think it was a speech by Jimmy Wales). IP-based read-access logs are stored temporarily for technical and network-traffic monitoring purposes but are deleted "after a set period." Nimur (talk) 22:36, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Hmm? I'm not really sure if I understand your or the IP but the WMF definitely allows info on page accesses to be collected e.g. [10] "Wikipedia:Reference_Desk/Computing has been viewed 14100 times in 200908". There is also a bunch of other statistics collected see Wikipedia:Statistics for more info. There's no user tracking, for example we don't know if someone visiting Penis is likely to later visited Lame or Child. I believe there's also no current collation stats on other user details, e.g. are people using Safari more likely to visit penis then people using IE nor on geolocation details, e.g. are IPs from the US more likely to visit penis then IPs from Ireland. And definitely it's not possible for an external party to view logs revealing what individual IPs visit. Nil Einne (talk) 01:33, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Graphics card / Display problem

I have a two-year old Jetway motherboard with an AMD690G chipset (integrated graphics), and AMD Athlon 4000+ at 2100 Mhz and a LCD monitor. Recently, the graphics system has been giving problems, and searching Google leads me to believe that the probem is with the graphics chip in the moterboard. My budget is equivalent to USD 100 to USD 150.

1. Will buying a graphics card (I am looking at the GeForce GTX 260 series currently) solve the problem?
2. The alternative is to change the motherboard itself. If I change the motherboard to something with integrated graphics, in this price range, is there some model that supports my outdated processor, without itself being outdated?

I am trying to maximize value-for-money, and which of the above options is better in that regard?

--Masatran (talk) 04:10, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

GTX260 is an overkill for your setup. If you are absolutely sure it only affects the integrated graphics of your motherboard, get a ATI 4670/4770 - good performance, lower price and low power draw since you probably don't have a beefy PSU. --11:08, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the GTX260 is overkill - if you were perfectly happy with your motherboard graphics - then you'll be more than happy with a much cheaper graphics board than that! I would certainly advise going with a cheaper option because there is a chance (not a huge chance - but a chance) that your problem wasn't the graphics chip after all so you should hold some cash in reserve in case you're going to have to replace comething else. And it's quite likely that you'll need a bigger power supply if you buy a top-of-the-line graphics board. What size is the power supply in your machine right now? SteveBaker (talk) 15:24, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I bought my computer piece-by-piece and got it assembled, the SMPS came with the cabinet, and the cabinet was a standard-size, mid-price one (as of 2007). I'll open it up and look up the power rating soon.

I'm planning to buy a 1920x1200 or such monitor soon, so a graphics card will improve the DVD-watching experience, right?

Most of the GeForce stuff on Amazon appears to be sold by EVGA, doesn't NVidia sell these things itself? What about ATI in this regard? The 4770 appears to be availabe on Amazon from Sapphire, etc. but not from ATI.

I heard sometime back that NVidia graphics works better with Intel processors, and ATI with AMD, is this actually true?

I use Linux (64-bit), is ATI or NVidia better supported on this? I prefer free drivers but I don't insist on it.

Any idea how to determine without doubt whether the problem is with the motherboard or the monitor? I don't have any other monitors but my monitor works fine when connected to the output from a laptop. The problem is that the monitor flickers every five seconds or so, with the display showing up only for a fraction of a second in this five seconds. It is a Viewsonic X series LCD. Since the problem starts with the BIOS output, it cannot be a software issue.

--Masatran (talk) 16:04, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

No it doesn't matter whether you have an Intel or AMD processor unless you are considering something like SLI/Crossfire. ATI do sell graphics cards themselves. However these will often be more expensive with little advantage. Note that the graphics cards ATI sells will be made by an OEM usually Sapphire the only difference is that you can get official support from ATI. Also, while I don't live in the US, I don't believe Amazon is generally a good place to shop for computer components for. I suggest you look at something like Newegg. Also it is probably somewhat unlikely you will see much difference between your current graphics card and a new one if all you are doing is watching DVDs. The Windows drivers do provide some post processing options like vector adaptive deinterlacing which are useful in some circumstances for SD content but not so much for most DVDs and you achieve a similar result in software. Also I'm somewhat doubtful you'd see much of a difference in what I presume is a smallish monitor anyway (21 inch?). Technically the shader or GPGPU power could be used for some fancy upscaling but my own experience and reading with this is most of the current options aren't that great and are Windows and proprietary. There is some work on this in the open source community but a lot of it is on CPU not GPU. And again, I should repeat I'm not sure how much you will notice the difference. In fact I don't think I would recommend upgrading except that you say you are certain your current graphics cards is causing problems. Finally while I don't use Linux, I don't believe either ATI or NVIDIA cards have good open source drivers. If all you are doing is general stuff and watching DVDs then they are probably sufficient however although you may want to use the proprietary drivers anyway. Nil Einne (talk) 01:15, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Google Groups: Split thread

Ah, it's been a while since I've need the expedient and authoritative help of the Computing Reference Desk.

I've recently set up a private Google group for a small (not WP-related) organisation of which I am a member. All's been going well, but recently someone replied to one post, trying to start a new thread. All members get sent posts by email, and since the subject was changed, it worked fine from an email-inbox POV, but Google's online interface has understandably interpreted it as a discussion title change, and kept it all in the same thread, so it now goes "Topic 1 - Topic 1 - Topic 2 - Topic 2 - Topic 2" on the same webpage.

Try as I might, I can't seem to split the discussion for archive purpose (I have owner privileges), but perhaps that's because I'm looking at it from the wrong angle. Any help appreciated, - Jarry1250 ^{[ In the UK? Sign the petition! ]} 10:17, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and if the option to move posts between threads is available somewhere, that also would suffice. - Jarry1250 ^{[ In the UK? Sign the petition! ]} 10:49, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's possible. They don't suggest that it might be possible on the help pages, either. My best suggestion is that you could create a new discussion/thread with the "Topic 2" as the title. Hopefully people could then reply to that message. But I don't think it's possible to move messages between threads once they've been posted. If you really don't want them in "Topic 1", you could delete them and quote them all in a new topic, but that's the best I can suggest. Indeterminate (talk) 11:11, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Combining greasemonkey scripts

I have several greasemonkey scripts which all do basically the same thing but run on different sites. Is there a way that I can combine them into one script while still retaining the individual site functions (for example, only one part of the script will work on website x, while the other part won't unless it's on website y). I want to do this so that I don't have 20 different things listed in my greasemonkey window, and so I can back it up easier. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.133 (talk) 11:57, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

You must check the value of document.location, so the script could vary its behavior based on the site you are viewing. -- Codicorumus  « msg 13:29, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Just have multiple @include directives so it will run on all the sites you want, and in the script look at your location as Cod suggested. --Sean 14:56, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I thought of that, but each script does something different. Just including every site like that would create a horrible mess —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.133 (talk) 15:41, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Um, I thought the root of the problem was that the scripts all do the same thing? --Sean 21:07, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

They do basically, they all modify the page title, but for each site they have a different word. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.133 (talk) 21:32, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

You can do that via an associative array (google search) indexed on domains and then setting document.title = titleOf[document.location.host]; -- Codicorumus  « msg 11:20, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Search engines

Is there a way of excluding specified domains from a search engine's results list? When I say "is there a way", I really mean is there a way that won't cost me any money. SpinningSpark 12:03, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean, for your own searches? You can do that with Google by putting "-site:url" in your search (e.g. CNN -site:cnn.com).

Do you mean, for others? Only if it is a domain you control. You can put a Meta Robots tag on the page that tells search engines not to put your domain in it.

You can't make Google not carry someone else's domain, of course. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:46, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. It's the "-site:foo" thing I want, but I want to make a list, for instance in a text file, so I don't have to type it in the search box every time. It will be a very long list, basically I want to exclude Wikipedia, mirrors, forks, search compilations, etc. SpinningSpark 00:51, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the easiest way to do this would be to create a custom search engine for Firefox's search bar. It's pretty easy, here's two different ways: 1 2. Just do your google search without any arguments except the "-site:foo" ones, and then use that to make a search engine. Indeterminate (talk) 02:35, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

That's great, it took a few attempts but I've got it working - even with its own icon. Do you know where I can find a list of all the valid input parameter names? The example on the linked page shows two but I would guess there are more. SpinningSpark 12:26, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Overheated laptops

I have a Windows Vista XS laptop. When it gets overheated it shuts down. How often should I turn it off to prevent its overheating?--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 12:50, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

You should not have to turn it off. Either your fan(s) died or you need to take your laptop apart and clean it. You can download and run SpeedFan http://www.techspot.com/downloads/547-speedfan.html to monitor your laptop's temperature. If your laptop happens to be a Toshiba, for directions about how to take it apart see http://www.irisvista.com]. Jacek (talk) 15:16, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, obviously, you shouldn't have to. Something is wrong. Generally, you need to be sure that the various ventilation slots are not blocked - and try not to operate it on a soft surface - the little gap underneath the laptop formed by the little rubber feet holding it up is important to ventilation. If all else fails - you can get a stand to place the laptop on that has small fans in it to keep the thing cool. SteveBaker (talk) 15:12, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. It only started to overheat recently, and at steadily increasing time intervals. I keep it on a wooden desk, but I'll check out the shops to see if I can locate the stand with the small fans. Thanks again for your advice.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 15:18, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

The cooling vanes in the cpu heatsink in laptops can get clogged up with fluff. A blast through the fan of a can of compressed air might clear it or otherwise you're probably stuck with opening up the case. Dmcq (talk) 18:51, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree - if you're sitting the machine on a hard surface and given that the problem has been getting worse gradually - then probably one or more of the ventilation slots (or something like a heatsink behind that slot) is getting gradually bunged up with fluff. Most electronics stores will sell you an aerosol can of "compressed air" - they come with a thin tube you clip into the nozzle that lets you get right in to where the problem is and blast the fluff out of the way. You should try that before you resort to buying a cooling stand - if the vents are blocked, a cooling stand might not help much. FYI, these cooling stands should cost you about $25 and are generally powered via a USB port on the laptop itself. But running a laptop "hot" isn't good for it - so you really should take action. SteveBaker (talk) 00:49, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Large backup storage

I would like to backup a total of 8Tb of data from various networked machines, and then another 200Gb per month. Obviously this won't come cheap, but cheap would be good. Fit-in-a-bag portability would also be good. What type of hardware setup would the panel recommend? Sr Paul (talk) 13:14, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

What sort of quality do you want? Domestic type - just copy it to removable 1TB removable drives, or commercial - where money could be lost if you get it wrong, or enterprise, where you would expect it to be guaranteed to work, even if a major component was destroyed? Make sure you have enough network capacity to connect you backup making machine! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:23, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

i have a question on telecommunication

what is an IP based backhaul in telecommunication? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Felixcater (talk • contribs) 13:17, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Backhaul is the name for the transmission carrying data (and voice) from local exchanges and wireless cell sites to the core network. IP means it uses Internet Protocol as the addressing and packetising mechanism. --Phil Holmes (talk) 15:51, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

How to add an image to an existing pdf

Hi all,

I have a contract that was sent to me as a pdf, which I'm supposed to print, sign, scan, and email.

I already have a scan of my signature, saved as several file types. If I could just add that image in the right place, I could save three of those steps and a trip to kinkos. Does anyone know how I could add an image to an existing pdf?

I'm on a Mac OS X, have Word and Open Office, if either of those two things help.

Thanks! &mdash Sam 76.24.222.22 (talk) 16:18, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Inkscape should do it nicely. -- 87.115.106.169 (talk) 16:47, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Just because you can do this, doesn't mean you should. If you can add such an image to this document, somebody else can remove and save it -- are you sure you want a digital copy of your signature floating around the Internet?

--DaHorsesMouth (talk) 22:20, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

The OP is required to scan and email the signed document - it's just as easy to extract the signature from that as it is from a digital one overlaid onto the PDF with (for example) Inkscape - and for sure email isn't a secure transmission medium. Besides, signatures are trivially easy to fake in the digital age - I wouldn't worry about it. SteveBaker (talk) 00:33, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Agreed... if you're sending a signature at all (whether printed or not!) it is trivially easy to make a copy of it. This is why it takes more than a signature to open up a bank account, etc. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:36, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I just want to confirm that Inkscape does this quite easily and readily. I was initially suspicious, but it's ability to import a single PDF page, import a signature image, put the two together, and export the whole thing as a new PDF page, is pretty seamless and pretty straightforward. Hurray. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:35, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

No sound after installation of new graphics card

When I installed my new graphics card, I lost all capabilities of playing sound in Windows. Apparently, now Windows only regocnizes the Digital Output Device, not the Analogue Output Device that I am supposed to use. Preveously, I had a red speaker in the system tray, for the Asus Realtek Driver application, but now it is gone. I have a HP computer m7796. The sound worked well with my old nVidia GeForce 8500 GT, but not with my new ATI Radeon HD4870. --81.227.64.69 (talk) 16:55, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Downloading copyrighted content law

Whenever downloading is discussed on the news its described as illegal downloading, presumably because it relates to copyrighted content, but I want to know what specific laws are being broken by the downloader. Is there specific legislation (in UK especially) prohibiting downloading certain content? as I would have thought the only breach of copyright law would be by the uploader making copyrighted content available. I'm thinking of it as similar to someone exhibiting copies of an artists work without permission or payment - the people who go to see it wouldn't be breaking the law only the person exhibiting. Just for the record I'm not looking for legal advice in relation to any actual court case or planned act, I just want to find out what the laws are on this, specifically in the UK if possible. Thanks AllanHainey (talk) 17:33, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Copyright law, generally, applies to making a copy, not "making available" -- that's why libraries aren't copyright violators, because no copy is made when you borrow a book from a library. When you download a file from a server, both the server and your computer are involved in making a copy. --FOo (talk) 19:26, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

That's right. The visitors to the exhibit in your example are not making an unauthorized copy, which is the illegal act. As far as types of content, I'm more familiar with US law, sorry; as far as I know, here, there isn't any law specifically outlawing the downloading of particular types of content — the law being broken is a generic violation of copyright law, specifically, "making a copy". Tempshill (talk) 05:24, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Note, of course, that just because it is "unauthorized" does not make it "illegal." Fair use, for example, covers a lot of "unauthorized" reproduction, making it actually "legal". (And yes, this comes into play quite a lot in trying to sort out what the "illegal" types of downloading of copyrighted content are versus the "legal" types). --98.217.71.237 (talk) 13:29, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

That's not correct. Copyright covers many kinds of uses of a work, including public exhibition, performance (of a play, for example), and "to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending" (quoted from the US copyright code—which, before you ask, is not copyrighted). Libraries are legal only because they are specifically exempted (§ 108 of the US code). It's not clear whether downloading a file from a server ought to count as reproduction (for legal purposes). The problem is that people have limited control over what their computers download. You shouldn't be liable for infringement if you view a website that happens to use a copyrighted image without permission (and that's probably the majority of all noncommercial websites). In the case of P2P software I imagine it's made easier by the fact that everyone who downloads also uploads, so everyone is clearly engaged in distribution. -- BenRG (talk) 13:52, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

It's also the case that with P2P software, you are using specialized programs devoted to distributing files, not just incidental web browsing. But I agree that legally the concepts are not terribly clear here, as they apply to what's actually happening with the data, and I'm not sure the courts have fully worked this out, yet. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:04, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I avoid using terms like illegal or legal for what may be simply civil law issues but if you knowingly read/view content you know to be hosted in violation of copyright I suspect you could be sued by the copyright holder (although I think this is very unlikely in practice) in numerous jurisdictions. For example reading Harry Potter book 7 or viewing some movie or TV shown on Youtube. Nil Einne (talk) 01:44, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Vista SP1 64 bit on Asus P5Q-EM G45

Hello there, is it possible to run Vista SP1 64 bit on Asus P5Q-EM G45?? I heard that this board conflicts with Vista.--119.30.36.41 (talk) 18:19, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

no video signal

I've been having intermittent trouble with the video connection made by an HP Pavilion s3000 running NVIDIA display driver GeForce 6150 LE on Vista (Service Pack 2).

Two different monitors can't see the video output signal. I've tried two different cables and have just updated to the latest version of the driver software. Afterward I was unable to restart, though I tried several times. I left it for half an hour and succeeding in rebooting.

What could be causing the communication failure? What can I do about it? Thanks! --Halcatalyst (talk) 20:08, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I had a similar issue messing around with video drivers on an HP. Just before I hung up on HP Tech Support, I was asked "Is the computer turned on." Problem was fixed with a Dell box. 72.58.145.169 (talk) 22:12, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Genealogy mapping software

Hey there. Does anyone know of any (preferably free) software that will allow me to create a simple family tree? All I need is something graphical, like a pedigree. The only things I really need to be shown in each box of the tree is a name and a birthdate. I've tried PAF but it isn't what I'm looking for.

Ideally, the software will generate a family tree that will display not only my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc, but also my grandparent's children, my cousins, their cousins, etc, in one view. Everything I've found so far only list one person as the "base" and displays their parents, but not mine. I'm looking for something that will display everyone in one giant tree. Am I making sense?

So anyone have anything in mind? Thank you all so much! 141.153.215.27 (talk) 21:31, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

GraphViz? --194.197.235.240 (talk) 06:14, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

October 4

remote control codes plethora

is there any reason, technical, usability, or business, that every manufacturer has to choose a different set of remote codes for their device? (thinking home entertainment stuff here). can it possibly be that they want the diddly money that comes in from forcing you to buy another of their remotes when you lose the original, because you don't feel like programming a universal? or is it just that the industry is too diddly to assume standards? i note that some vcrs have the capability to designate identical units as vcr1, vcr2, etc. and the remotes have the ability to address each independently, so it can't be just some halfbaked claim that it's so you can run your sony tv separate from your sanyo. grr, i'm steamed. Gzuckier (talk) 03:05, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

This is a cool question. Implied in several of our articles is that there are two basic standards: one based on the RC-5 standard (and a descendant, I think) from Philips, and one from NEC that Japanese companies have basically adopted. The best Wikipedia article on this I've found in the last few minutes of searching is the "Protocol limitations" section of our article Consumer IR (whereas Remote control, Universal remote, and RC-5 are silent on this). That particular paragraph is an uncited heap of OR, but it is very valuable (so don't anybody go and fact-tag it); it notes that there may be "semantic differences between different similar operations" — one VCR may have separate stop and eject functions and another may have a combined stop/eject only, for example. Or separate play and pause versus play/pause — what will the user's expectation be vs. what happens? Possibly another reason is the fear that if you had two VCRs in the same room you'd be inadvertently controlling them both simultaneously, without the user having taken this into consideration when he sat and programmed his universal remote. Or if you had one DVD recorder and one Blu-Ray recorder in the same room. I think another reason is probably that once a big electronics company has created and debugged a working remote control standard, they will be loath to spend a lot of money to write and debug an implementation of some universal standard. It's a good idea, though, I think. Tempshill (talk) 05:42, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Do Hard Resets Harm my Computer?

Hello. Sometimes while playing a full-screen video game like Grand Theft Auto IV or Far Cry 2, my computer completely stops responding. I can't open the Task Manager and my caps-lock and number-lock keys do not turn the lights on the keyboard on or off. So, I press the reset button on my computer's case. I understand that this may cause file fragmentation, but will it physically harm any of the parts inside my computer? I just replaced the motherboard and the video card. The video card is an ASUS EAH4670. The CPU is almost new. It's an AMD Athlon X2 Black 7750. I have 4 GB of memory. So, I know my hardware can handle the games. I'm using Windows XP Professional, SP3, with dual monitors. I'd also like to know why it's locking up. I checked the event log and I couldn't find anything suspicious. I haven't had a chance to test them out on my new hardware, but before the upgrade, VMWare VMs would also make it lock up occasionally. Does anyone have any suggestions?--Drknkn (talk) 11:34, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not fully up to speed on this (if anyone knows better, feel free to mock me if I'm wrong), but I think older hard drives could suffer head crashes when powered off unexpectedly. Probably not an issue these days. Might cause errors in Windows, but no worse than your lockup issue anyway.

Speaking of which, I recently had the same issue with my PC. I'd upgraded the graphics cards from a GeForce 8600GTS to a 9800GT, but I didn't upgrade the run-of-the-mill 375W Dell PSU (mainly because Dell use nonstandard wiring in their PCs, and getting a PSU to fit is a pain in the arse). After I started locking up, I imported a Dell-wired 500W PSU from the US and reformatted/reinstalled Windows. It seemed to work; I can't get it to lock up now even if I try. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 17:07, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

ok. Thanks. I think you may be right. My PSU is a 340 W Thermaltake unit from 2006. I can buy a 500 W one. It doesn't happen right away -- after maybe a half an hour or so of playtime.--Drknkn (talk) 01:09, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

A wiki-style publicly-edited database or spreadsheet?

I would like to know if a wiki-type database or spreadsheet exists, where:

(a) Anyone can add/modify (and of course, view) (b) Once inputed, the information can be sorted/filtered according to whatever categories are of interest

I'm a musicology student. Using itunes, I've taken the time to input song name, album name, artists involved, year of recording, instruments played, country of origin, languages sung/spoken, instrument tunings, and repertoire information for thousands of recording of West African music. Now, if I want to find a version of the piece "Lamban" for solo balafon from Mali, or all the recordings by someone from the Coulibaly family made before 1973, or all the kora pieces played in the hardino tuning, I can.

Well, if an online version of such a database could be made (so that the information can be shared with anyone on the web and so that others could add to it), it would be a much more powerful research tool. But the key is sort/filterability (much as with MSExcel or iTunes.) Does anyone know if such an application exist? I've poked around on Google, but might not be using the right search terms.

Thanks very much for your time.99.254.137.242 (talk) 12:12, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

From someone else who meticulously regulates their iTunes library (of course it's not nearly as detailed as yours, probably because it's more mild OCD than actual musicology), that sounds kind of neat. What first popped into my head was Google Docs, which does spreadsheets and other document types, and is free. I haven't used it personally, but I'm pretty sure you can set up viewing and editing permissions and all that. You will have to take a look at it yourself to make sure it has all the functionality you need for your project. Also, check out the article Online spreadsheet, which has other alternatives (both commercial and free) which may have different features or something. —Akrabbim^talk 12:47, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Gmail Notifier preferences

How can I access it so it'll know what account to check?? I installed the program but cannot find the prefs panel. The links to viewing my inbox works but it doesn't know of any new messages because I've never told it my account info. Please help. I'm running WinXP. Thanks. 66.65.140.116 (talk) 12:27, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

If you haven't logged in to your account through it yet, right click on it and select "Check Mail Now", and a dialog box should pop up with space for your username and password. It might not pop up over your other windows, so you might have to minimize everything else to find it at the bottom. —Akrabbim^talk 12:50, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

When I do that, nothing happens, and I have minimized all windows. 66.65.140.116 (talk) 12:59, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Is there any easy way to search all of the the Wikipedia Reference Desk archives?

Rather than having to do it month-by month for each subject area? All these answers have a lot of valuable info in them that it would be a pity to lose. 89.242.93.56 (talk) 13:27, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

There's a search bar at the top of the page that searches them... --Mr.98 (talk) 15:19, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

it's called google —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.133 (talk) 16:09, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Google "site:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives" followed by what you want to search for will do it —Preceding unsigned comment added by Avrillyria (talk • contribs) 17:23, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Font installation problem (Windows XP)

I'm trying to install the font Boton. I have the following .ttf files (they're none of them corrupted, I've opened them all in Font Viewer or whatever):

• Boton Bold
• Boton Bold Italic
• Boton Italic
• Boton Light
• Boton Light Italic
• Boton Medium
• Boton Medium Italic
• Boton Regular

When I copy-and-paste these files into the Fonts folder of Control Panel, they all install fine. But only Boton Regular shows up in any program (Word, Inkscape, OpenOffice etc.) – any advice? Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►constablewick─╢ 16:51, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

What happens when you press bold on those programs? Don't you get Boton Bold? Platonides (talk) 16:59, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

No. The only font that shows up in the list is "Boton". What actually comes out is (I think) "Boton Light". Bold does work; Italic only brings up "Boton Bold Italic" - they're all out of kilter. What normally happens is, the Light and Medium show up in their own right, as separate fonts. ╟─TreasuryTag►secretariat─╢ 17:05, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is that many applications have very poor font support in this regard. The ones you've listed don't surprise me—Word has horrible font support, and while one would hope to expect a bit more from Inkscape and OpenOffice, my general experience is that the open source people don't treat it very seriously either (viz, the font formatting panel in Inkscape, which lacks even many basic features one might expect out of a graphic design program). Programs like InDesign and Photoshop know how to deal with font families correctly. Most don't. I'm not sure if there is an easy fix. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:55, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

You want to make sure you installed them as microsoft instructs and maybe try to remove and reinstall. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 18:21, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Memory snapshot

Hello! Is there any way or program I can download that lets me select a process running in my computer's RAM and view the hex dump for that instant of the memory being used? I'm running Vista (64bit), so I doubt there's some native program that'll let me do it. Thanks!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 18:46, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

See http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/DevTools/Debugging/default.mspx --194.197.235.240 (talk) 19:10, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

HxD can open (and even edit) process memory, but it's a 32-bit program. Still may be useful. --grawity 19:38, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Memory voltage

My ram's (transcend ddr2 800 mhz) voltage is 1.8v. But in BIOS the voltage set to 1.9v which is fixed.

Is it ok to run 1.8v memory in 1.9v? Will it cause any problem?

I am using xfx 750i SLI mobo.--119.30.36.51 (talk) 19:04, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes probably. This link [11] says supply is 1.8+/-0.1 V. So 1.9 is too high —Preceding unsigned comment added by SpiceJar (talk • contribs) 22:41, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Hmm 1.9V is within a 1.8 +/- 0.1V range. The real issue is that it's unlikely the motherboard keeps the voltage 1.9V or lower. Having said that, even if it's marginally outside the spec range I don't think it's likely to cause problems except the RAM will be a little hotter and you've also likely technically voided your warranty. Nil Einne (talk) 01:37, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

autorun actions based on system config?

Scenario: At work my laptop is docked and connected to the corporate LAN (and dual screens). I would therefore like the Novell login dialog and Novell groupwise to autorun at startup. When I get home I use a 3G card for internet access (and no dual screens, only the laptop screen) so I'd like for these two apps not to startup. In addition I'd like the system to auto-detect my monitors and correct the aspect ratios and en/disable dual monitor support. Is there any software for Windows XP that can automate this? It should basically sit in the background monitoring the system configuration and autorun things based on what's plugged in. Zunaid 21:11, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Facebook login

I use MSIE v7 on XP. I recently cleared my cache and cookies etc. Now every time I try to login to Facebook, MSIE decides it has to terminate and brings up the "I give up" message pane. Any suggestions as to what to do about this? AFAIK, all other websites are working fine. -- SGBailey (talk) 22:23, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried it with a different browser? That would tell you if it's MSIE that's giving you the problem or if it is something else. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:46, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

No. I uninstalled chrome when I realised that I never used it. I'll ponder reiinstalling it. -- SGBailey (talk) 22:48, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Try using Internet Explorer with add-ons disabled: Click Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Internet Explorer (No Add-ons). If you can log into Facebook with add-ons disabled, then there might be an add-on causing the problem. To test further, you could disable individual add-ons: Open Internet Explorer normally, then go to Tools, Manage Add-ons, Enable or Disable Add-ons. --Bavi H (talk) 22:50, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

October 5

Windows power options "Turn off monitor"

Does it actually save any more power than just turning off your monitor? Does it just send you monitor into standby mode (which still uses power) or will it put the graphics card into powersaving mode or anything like that? 24.6.46.106 (talk) 01:53, 5 October 2009 (UTC)