Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

Welcome to the computing section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

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

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

   

How can I get my question answered?

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

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

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

See also:

• Teahouse
• Help desk
• Village pump
• Help manual

October 29

Google customising searches based on cookies/preferences/previous searches?

I'm noticing what appears to be a curious correlation between what I've been searching for and what I've previously been searching for. It's as though it's playing mind games with me and trying to outsmart me. For example, you could search for specific things and it will target your search results in a specific area of interest or using certain keywords. This has just been occurring recently as in within the past month or two.--Lul Luii! (talk) 00:04, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I would suspect this is just in your head—in the sense you are seeing patterns where there aren't any (which is something we are all prone to, as our brains are evolved to be pattern-matching machines that err on the side of inclusiveness). I don't think Google is playing games with you, trying to outsmart you, or even customizing your searches based on prior searches.

But hey! You can find out. Download Tor, get it set up in Firefox, and the next time you get a "playing with you" search result, log on through a proxy (at which point Google thinks you live on the other side of the world and have no cookies), and see if you get the same result. It's an easy enough thing to do once you get Tor set up. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:19, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I remember seeing disclaimers on some of my Google search results pages that said "Results customized based on recent activity". You could click a link for more information, and another page would come up showing recent searches you did that were used to influence the current search. If I remember correctly, that information page also had a link to turn off the customizations. Here's Google's description of this feature: Google Web Search Help - Search customization details. --Bavi H (talk) 01:47, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Background music in JAVA

I'm programming a video game in JAVA, and I want it to have background music that loops in the background. I know how to do this, but the problem is that I also want a short introduction to play at the beginning of the music the first time but for it to be skipped once it repeats (similarly to most of the background music in Pokémon). How do I do this? --75.28.53.240 (talk) 01:25, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Put it outside the loop!The Successor of Physics 14:10, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem is, how do I have the program detect when the intro is done playing in order to start the loop? --75.25.103.119 (talk) 21:32, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

The Clip interface has a setLoopPoints(int, int) method that will do that, if your loading the audio data into Clips. I think it would be easier to split the sound file into two (the intro and part to loop) and have the program handle them separately. You can do that easily with FOSS like Audacity.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 22:25, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Windows 7 upgrades (Dell)

Does anyone know if there will be a deadline when Dell would no longer recognize the upgrade to Windows 7 in recently Vista-purchased setups? I bought my laptop in August, and it came with a free upgrade to Win7. I could get the upgrade kit right now, but I don't want to just because I want to give them time to work the first bugs out and stabilize it from the initial release. Will there come a time when I have waited too long and it will be too late to order the upgrade? —Akrabbim^talk 02:50, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

From ther FAQ page: Registration deadline is January 31, 2010. There isn't any reason to wait for this though. The DVD will be exactly the same whether you order it now or on 31st Jan, and you do not have to install it right away once you receive the kit. If you are afraid of bugs (I've been using it since Beta and I haven't experienced many), let it sit for a while or until SP1 comes out or whatever, but delaying your order certainly doesn't help. --antilived^{T | C | G} 03:58, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't delay. Win 7 is way better than the rubbish masquerading as an operating system called Vista. As Antilived mentioned, the DVD would be exactly the same. F (talk) 05:23, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, OK. Thanks for the advice. —Akrabbim^talk 12:07, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Letting computer A use computer B's hard drives?

Hello all, and thanks in advance for answering my question. While I'm sure there's an answer somewhere on the internet (and probably a very simple one, at that), it's difficult to find the exact magical search terms to hit paydirt - and, so, what better way to go than to ask Wikipedia? =)

I'll try to make this simple. I recently bought a new computer. It works very well and I have no complaints, save for one: there is a severe lack of case space. I'm a hard drive maniac, and collect hard drives like kids in the 50s collected baseball cards. External enclosures are not an option - not enough desk space, not enough power outlets, and quite frankly it'd be a low-fi solution to a high-fi problem!

However, I have a second computer, inadequate for my hardware demands, but chock full of drive bays and SATA connections! Both computers are networked through a typical home LAN.

What I want to do, in a nutshell, is use computer B as basically nothing more than a zombified filestore. But (there's always a but =)) - I live in a shared house, and would rather my housemates not discover my love for Britney Spears and As the World Turns episodes. So I would like computer A to see the hard drives located on computer B as, well, hard drives - able to be accessed and written to from and by any program that should wish to. But other computers on the network? I would rather they not see any extra hard drives! Hence, Windows Network Sharing (or whatever it's called) doesn't seem to be an option - mere password protection is simply not enough. One does not need to listen to Britney Spears - Oops I Did It Again.mp3 to know that the possessor of said file demands maximum ridicule. Not to mention that I would rather not clutter up the other computers with superfluous hard drives in their file explorers. So a typical "network share" or "media storage center" would seem to be an inadequate solution - I don't just want to transfer files back and forth, I want to be able to "Save As" directly to computer B's hard drives.

Both computer A and computer B run Windows XP Professional. I could run a Linux LiveCD on computer B, but computer A must remain tethered to the nourishing teat of XP Pro. I would prefer free software if software is needed - open source being a plus.

So, just to restate, as succinctly as my logorrhea will permit: Is there a simple, preferably free way for computer A to recognize the various hard drives physically contained within computer B, and read, write, and generally molest them as it would its own (quite puny) local hard drive - while computers C, D, E, and even F all remain merrily humming along, completely oblivious to aforementioned disk drives?

I don't need too detailed an answer - just a mere point in the right direction should be enough, once I'm on the right track I'll be as good as gold! Badger Drink (talk) 06:30, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Windows file sharing with mounted drives + TrueCrypt for hiding your Britney collection? If you can put B next to A, you can run some extra long SATA cables from B to A. Or you can just store everything on a few 2TB hard drives instead of spreading them over a couple of hard drives (more power efficient too). --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:24, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't TrueCrypt still show that something's there? (for an analogy: parking a car on the street, in full view, without the keys - people can still see that there's a car there, even if they can't hop in and take it for a test drive. What I'm looking for is more like keeping the car in the garage where only I even know it's there) As far as the extra-long SATA cables - I actually considered that option, but Computer B is one of those Dell Optiplexes with the surrealistic hinge-like opening that consumes a lot more real estate opened than it does when closed. Badger Drink (talk) 19:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Nope, without a password an encrypted volume is just an ordinary file (or partition, or a whole drive). TrueCrypt even allows you to create an encrypted volume inside another encrypted volume for deniable encryption so that even if you're held at gun point to unlock it you can unlock the outer volume showing some harmless files with the existence of the inner volume unable to be proven. --antilived^{T | C | G} 02:19, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Why would the content of a shared SMB/CIFS drive even be visible without mounting it (which is password-protected)? Sure, if you name your shares "My pinky girl Britney collection", you will give some hints, but then you deserve the ridicule. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:24, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

It looks like, OP is trying to hide these files from users of machine containing disk which holds these files. This does not involves any network activity. -Yyy (talk) 16:06, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion - no, it's okay if computer B can see the files. Computers A and B are both mine, and years of therapy have taught me that I cannot hide my Britney addiction from myself. =) It's computers C, D, and occasionally E and F (none of which are mine) that I don't want seeing the drives. Badger Drink (talk) 19:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

If you really want the drives to look like local drives, you could probably use FreeNAS on Computer B as an iSCSI target, and run Microsoft iSCSI Initiator on Computer A. I don't have any experience doing this, though. -- Coneslayer (talk) 13:35, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Gotcha! And if I'm okay with having the drives appear on Computer A as folders, would that change anything? Badger Drink (talk) 19:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

This seems the right way, only this will require that computer to run linux (or other unix), which might render that machine unuseable for other purposes. There is no iSCSI target functionality in winxp (but there is in some windows server versions), that probably is not a viable solution either. -Yyy (talk) 16:06, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Computer B can run Linux just fine. Computer A is the one that must remain tethered to XP Pro. Badger Drink (talk) 19:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Unstoppable Loop!

Help! The loop in the code below is unable to stop! How can I fix it?The Successor of Physics 14:14, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

    Public Sub GSim_KeyDown(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.KeyEventArgs) Handles Me.KeyDown
        If e.KeyData = Keys.F3 Then
            Dim credits As Form = New Credits()
            credits.Show()
        End If
        If e.KeyData = Keys.F2 Then
            ObjVoice.Speak("Simulation Stops")
            sim = False
        End If
        If e.KeyData = Keys.F1 Then
            ObjVoice.Speak("Simulation Starts")
            sim = True
            Do
            gravact()
            Loop Until sim = False
        End If
    End Sub

In the short term, I believe you can Ctrl-Break to stop loops as they are running in VB.

It looks to me like your loop is in the Do/Loop column. Have you declared sim correctly so it is accessible by "gravact"? (Otherwise, how is sim going to ever be false?). Or, if you are trying to make it so that F1 starts and F2 stops, you will need to set it up differently. If it were me, I would make the simulation a separate thread (not a function), and have that thread started or stopped based on the pressing of the button. That way you will be able to interrupt the program as it runs. In any case, using Do/Loop with a function in between like that is probably not what you want. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

And just to add... if your gravact() function runs continuously, it will not ever let the keyboard buffer be processed, which means you can never make sim=false. In VB6 we used to have a nice function—DoEvents—that let you process the keyboard buffer (in exchange for some performance). In VB.NET, I believe you have to do it as threads (which is better to know how to do anyway—DoEvents is kind of cheating and does not teach good programming). --Mr.98 (talk) 01:20, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Exporting contacts from Outlook Web Access

Here's the situation: due to the wonderful little economy we're having, my mother has been been given notice and will be let go very soon. Luckily, she was able to find a new position in another company, and she would like to bring her Outlook adress-book with her as it contains many dear friends who's contact information she would like to keep (specifically, she would like to export it to gmail). Not being the worlds most computer-literate person, she asked me to help her. Ordinarily this wouldn't be so hard, you'd just export it directly from Outlook, but the thing is that in her workplace, they use Outlook Web Access for email, not the Outlook software, and as far as I've been able to find out, you can't export the entire adress-book from the web interface.

Is there any way this can be done? I figure that if I can connect her Exchange-account to an Exchange-client, it wouldn't be so hard, but I don't know what information you need to connect an Exchange-account to a client, and I don't know if I can find out that information from the web interface. Any ideas on how to do this would be very welcome. 83.250.228.169 (talk) 14:25, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

The only real client that connects to Exchange proper is Microsoft Outlook (not, I stress, Outlook Express). The connection info for that is really rather convoluted, and is more than can easily be determined from the webmail address alone. But Evolution (software) connects to Exchange using OWA as a wire protocol (rather than the full Exchange protocol) so you don't need any more info than the OWA web address and the account's login details. I've not used Evolution for this, but its article does say it supports contacts, so it's worth a shot. I'd caution, however, that it'd be very wise indeed to make sure that your mother's boss is okay with y'all doing this, as many companies are sensitive about departing employees taking information with them when they leave, or connecting up unauthorised programs to the company's systems. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:52, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Device file in windows

There must be something analog to linux /dev/sda1 (sda2, sdb1, etc) device files in windows. There were one partially related topic here (months ago, cannot find now)(that was about transfering large files from mac to windows using external hdd; one of proposed methods involved using raw disk device).

I remember only that the path to device file began with something like \\?\ or //?/. Article device file system, has no information on these files. (this is quite obscure topic, probably). -Yyy (talk) 16:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Take a look at the instructions for a popular Windows version of dd here for some basic examples; I don't know of a general specification for the format of these things, but I'll look. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:28, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

For the double backslash notation, see Path_(computing)#Uniform_Naming_Convention. As for windows device files, they don't really exist in the unix sense. In DOS, however, the old device names CON: (and I believe also PRN:) are still supported. If you from the command line type

     copy con: t.txt

then whatever you type will go into the text file t.txt, which will be closed when you type ctrl-Z. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 17:02, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

NT actually has a single-rooted pathname hierarchy much like Unix, but the root exists only in memory. Concepts like "drive letters" and "DOS devices" are specific to the user-mode Win32 subsystem. It translates c:\path\file to \??\c:\path\file before sending it to the kernel. (Yes, that's a folder whose name is two question marks.) \??\c: is a symlink to the actual disk device, which handles the parsing of the rest of the path. (Well, the attached filesystem handles it—I'm not sure how that works.) If you pass a path beginning \\?\ to Win32, it changes the second backslash to a question mark and passes it to NT otherwise unchanged. You can use this to open raw disk devices, create files named con, and generally wreak havoc. You can view the whole NT object hierarchy with the utility WinObj. I'm not sure how \\.\ path parsing works, but they seem to be interchangeable with \\?\ paths in many cases. -- BenRG (talk) 17:50, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers! NT single root pathname hierarchy was the thing i was looking for (and the raw disk copy method was by dd). -Yyy (talk) 19:04, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Word-to-PDF mangled

As part of a transcription project, I typed a manuscript document into Microsoft Word format, converted it into PDF with Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional, and proceeded to begin proofreading by having Acrobat read back the transcription while I looked at the original. To my surprise, it only read a little bit of each line: perhaps half of the words per line, perhaps less, and the first word/letter of each line was missing. Sometimes, it would read the second half of a word — thus producing very unusual sounds! — but not the first, and proceed to read the rest of the line and part of the next, etc. Any idea what would be causing this? I did nothing unusual with the formatting of the Word document; while I changed fonts and page margins occasionally, the same effect happened when I converted just parts of the document that are all written in the same font and format. I've done this exact process with many similar documents in the past — type, convert, use the Read function — with the same computer, and never had this problem before. Restarting didn't help, and I observed that a previously-created document that had once Read Aloud fine continued to read aloud fine, so it's apparently an error with this document. Any idea what possible errors I could have made? I've been reduced to copying it into Notepad and converting that into PDF; it reads aloud without problems (thus making me think that I made some odd formatting error), but I've obviously lost some formatting details in the Notepad version. Nyttend (talk) 17:08, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea how to solve your original problem, but here are a few suggestions for workarounds: Try saving it into rich text format (.rtf) or open document format (.docx) or even into a previous MS Word format. Heck, try opening it in OpenOffice or even WordPad and saving it from inside these programs. Then export the resulting file into PDF. Another option, instead of converting to PDF in Acrobat, try installing one of the free PDF writer software (CutePDF, pdf995 or PDF Creator etc.) which appears as a PDF "printer". Print to PDF from inside your program and check if that helps? It sounds like a strange formatting issue, do you have any columns, text boxes, graphics, headers & footers or any non-text data in your doc? Also try checking your template (usually normal.dot) although I wouldn't be able to tell you what to look for. By the way, your solution of using notepad should suffice if all you're interested in is proofreading the text. Zunaid 17:29, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I was wondering, too: Why do you need formatting for a reader? Anyways, I suggest you get OpenOffice, which comes with its own "export to PDF" functionality, and give it a try. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:48, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for not explaining; my wording does sound a bit odd, now that I read it again :-) The reason that I want the formatting is that I'm transcribing this for an archive: as much as I can, I'm producing a diplomatic transcription, complete with strikethrough for text stricken in the original, a cursive font for official signatures, etc., and I use the Comments feature for situations that need explanation. When I finish the transcription, I send the archive the PDF and also the original Word document, so that any errors that I make in the PDF can be corrected without having to modify the PDF directly; I'm not too excited about perhaps sending them a defective Word document. By the way, I bought Acrobat Professional for another purpose, so I'm not using it simply to convert text to PDF. I'll try your proposed OpenOffice idea on a family member's computer that already has OpenOffice; hopefully that will work better, so that I need not use the Notepad version more. Please check back for an update :-) Nyttend (talk) 20:00, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried just copying and pasting the text from one Word document into a new, blank one, and exporting that? Just a thought. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:46, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

No updates yet, but...yes, I did try this, and the result was identical. Nyttend (talk) 03:24, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, that's very odd. I would try converting it to PDF by other means. OpenOffice is one solution; CutePDF is another. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:23, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I've tried converting it with OpenOffice; it reads fine, but OpenOffice didn't carry over my (frequent) use of the Comment feature. It's more important to have the comments than to have it read aloud properly, so I'm not going to go with that. Thanks for the suggestions! Nyttend (talk) 00:57, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

By the way, I discovered why it reads as it does: when I tell it to read a specific paragraph, it always shows a small and thin (all sides are a single pixel wide) box around the paragraph, and in this document, the box is too far right and too low. Consequently, it chops off the top line or two and the letters at the beginning of each line, and it reads the first line or two of the paragraph below this one. It's somewhat like if you imagine a stamp with a production error: the holes around the edges are misplaced so much that they cut into the design, so when you tear the stamp out of the sheet, you don't get all of your stamp, but you get part of the next one. I don't know why it's misplaced like this, let alone how to place it properly. It seems to be an issue simply with this documenbt, as other similar documents (which I've created since this one) have all turned out well. Nyttend (talk) 01:01, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

WinTv7

WinTV7 records stuff as large .ts files, with only 20 mins of video reaching 1GB, even when supposedly at "fair" quality (the lowest setting). How can I make it less space hungry? I can't find anything on either the website or the program itself. Many thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.2 (talk) 17:49, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

WinVista -> Win7

I have a modern-ish computer which currently runs Windows Vista. Are the benefits in system stability worth the inevitable loss of speed from running Windows 7 on a Vista machine? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.2 (talk) 17:52, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I thought Windows 7 is supposed to run faster than Vista. --164.67.235.128 (talk) 18:08, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

164 is correct; your computer will supposedly run faster; but I expect games won't be affected. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:10, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you'd see either an increase in stability or a decrease in speed going from Vista to Win7. There was a huge improvement in stability in the switch from Win9x to NT, but not much change since then. You might see an increase in speed. Unless you have a specific problem with Vista that's solved in Win7, there's probably no reason to switch. (Unless, perhaps, if you can get Win7 for free.) Features new to Windows 7 and List of features removed in Windows 7 may be helpful. -- BenRG (talk) 18:22, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. My main problem with Vista is Windows Explorer seems very unstable; copying large files freezes the entire machine until it's finished copying, browsing folders will often lockup for up to 1 min before unlocking etc, basically Vistas explorer seems extremely crap. I never had these problems with XP explorer and it's using the same files and hard drives etc. I just wondered if Win7 had any noticeable improvements in the system stability area. Thanks for all the advice —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.2 (talk) 19:16, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Have you installed SP1? There were some infamous problems with file copying in Explorer in the original Vista. I don't know if there were any further changes between Vista SP1 and Win7. It might also be a driver issue; you could try looking for updated drivers from your computer vendor. I've heard people say that Windows 7 has better hardware support than Vista, but I assume that's simply because it bundles newer drivers, and those can also be found online. If you don't mind spending the time and money then there's probably no reason not to upgrade to Windows 7, but I wouldn't trust it to solve your problem. Win7 is not very different from Vista. -- BenRG (talk) 20:50, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I've been using Windows 7 for about six months, and I find it much more responsive and stable than Vista. Indeterminate (talk) 07:11, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again. I haven't got SP1, I'll install that and hope it fixes the problems. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.201 (talk) 15:38, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Data recovery!!

Which is the best software in the internet to download for data recovery after the hard disk has been formatted twice..virtual library takes lot of time and not able to recover the past data. is there a way out to recover data reliably with some other softwares from my laptop's harddisk?..anyone please help —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.122.36.6 (talk) 19:32, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I've never used SpinRite but that's an option. Note that recovery from a disk formatting is unlikely, in my experience. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:47, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

If the disk has been quick-formatted, there may be large amounts of the data left, but with the meta-information that describes it removed. A professional data-recovery company may be able to make something of it, but it's not fast and not reliable and assuredly not cheap (essentially they pull all the blocks that are still readable and use heuristics to try to reassemble chains of them, hoping to get decent files or file-fragments out of that). If the format was thorough (i.e. it wrote to every byte on the disk surface), the data is essentially gone - people will make vague claims about the capabilities of the CIA and STEMs and SQUIDs and so forth, but there's no evidence that anyone can get back data that's genuinely been overwritten. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

And even the wildest claims for being able to recover data under such circumstances would be much less likely to be successful after formatting the disk twice. So you don't stand a chance unless these were "quick format" operations. SteveBaker (talk) 23:59, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

"Guinness" Internet records?

A two-part question: 1) is there any semi-significant webpage/organization that keeps internet-related world records (most visited webpage, biggest webpage, most pageviews in 1 day, whatever?) and 2) if there is such a list, then what is the longest blog comment ever posted? 165.91.174.108 (talk) 19:57, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

There is Alexa Internet which tracks traffic, and Google Trends, among other statistics sites. I doubt anyone has tried to keep track of the "longest blog comment ever posted"—which would be easy to beat, anyway. ("Did you read this <paste entire contents>"—record beaten.) --Mr.98 (talk) 01:44, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Windows question

Inspired by the question "Device file in Windows" above, is it true that modern Windows versions are not really inherently backward-compatible with old pre-Windows MS-DOS, and only maintain the illusion of backward-compatibility (for example, drive letters when the file system really is single-root-based) out of hysterical raisins? On a related note, I find it stupid modern GUI-based Unix command line windows still only offer CLI-based text editing, when full GUI-based text editing has been around for over a decade. But Windows goes further - it still desperately tries to perfectly emulate a 1980s text-only display as the only option for a command line. JIP | Talk 21:16, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, a 32 bit (or 64 bit) protected mode OS can't perfectly emulate a 16-bit real mode OS like DOS, but Windows generally does a pretty good job (and through dint of a heck of a lot of work; there's certainly nothing inherent about what compatibility there is). DOS (and 16 bit windows) programs are run in Virtual 8086 mode containers, with varying degrees of emulation of legacy hardware (e.g. your old video game expects a soundblaster audio card and a VGA graphics card, so Windows has to emulate these in software and reflect this back to the real audio and video technologies in your real machine). This afforts a great deal of compatibility, but it's not perfect - in particular it falters when the application tries to do special things like install TSRs, VxDs, or muck around too much either with the hardware it imagines there or the OS internals that it was written to run on. For that reason later versions of Windows feature full virtualization, allowing a copy of the old OS (warts and all) to run within the new one - that's what Windows 7 Professional's "XP mode" does. Even this isn't perfect, but really it's pretty incredible that Windows 7 will still run CP/M .COM programs, for which the source has long been lost and the original authors long dead, on a system with radically different hardware. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:32, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

It's not clear, really what major improvements to the command line are possible, although the cmd.exe window (at least as far as XP, which is where my real experience ends) is lagging a bit. The only thing recent terminal windows on (say) Linux offer that Windows' one doesn't is (mostly) decent cut-and-paste and the ability to click on URLs that appear in the window. As for cmd.exe itself, some people use monad instead. Beyond that I don't know what you'd really add. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:37, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, Raymond Chen (a senior engineer in the MS Shell (that's Explorer, not cmd.exe) team) writes an interesting windows compatibility blog The Old New Thing. It's clear that MS is struggling somewhat under the burden of compatibility layers, and probably wish they'd had virtualisation a major release or two ago, leaving them free to purge and regularise their APIs more aggressively. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:08, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

NT was designed from scratch (by some of the original architects of VMS) without any thought to backward compatibility, except inasmuch as it should be possible to write compatibility layers on top of it. The NT kernel has POSIX-like fork() with shared copy-on-write, which is not exposed through the Win32 API. NTFS supports case-sensitive file names, also not available through Win32, and allows attaching essentially arbitrary attributes to files. NT originally shipped with Win32, POSIX, and OS/2 "subsystems", i.e. API layers running in user mode. That's why Wine Is Not an Emulator: it's an implementation of Win32 on top of POSIX, on approximately the same footing as Microsoft's implementation on top of NT.

The POSIX and OS/2 subsystems were basically DOA, though. I think they were too anemic to be useful (the whole Windows GUI was specific to the Win32 subsystem, for example). They were last shipped with Windows 2000. The NT kernel has also accumulated some Win32-specific hacks, and large portions of the GUI have been moved into kernel mode for speed (though that doesn't really make them part of the kernel; NT kernel space looks a lot like user space except without memory protection and other security restrictions). And, of course, desktop users typically ran with full administrative privileges, rendering NT's complicated security model largely moot.

The story of Win32 console windows is interesting. In Unix, command-line apps have their standard input and output attached to OS pipes, and at the other end of the pipe is a terminal emulator (or, of course, an actual terminal in the old days). Input of special keys like the arrow keys and output of cursor-positioning commands and color and the like are handled through special byte sequences usually beginning with ESC. In Win32, though, when an application runs in a console window the input and output handles are not real handles, but magical values that only have a meaning to the Win32 subsystem. Uses of these handles in functions like WriteFile are intercepted at the Win32 level and sent to csrss.exe via a private interface (using LPC). It's csrss that actually draws the console window. Arrow keys and colors are such are handled with dedicated functions like ReadConsoleInput, which go through the same private interface and have no encoding in bytes. Microsoft hasn't documented the interface or provided any way to hook it, and that's why there are no third-party console replacements. Many console apps will still work with their standard handles attached to pipes, but they're limited to a dumb-terminal interface because the console-specific functions will fail. Of course, nothing prevents you from inventing a set of escape sequences and doing things the Unix way, as Cygwin does, but it will only work with apps that were designed to work with it. And nothing forces you to use CRLF as a line terminator in Windows except the continued existence of programs that don't recognize LF alone (like notepad.exe). It's all about tradition. -- BenRG (talk) 01:37, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

"hysterical raisins"?? --LarryMac | Talk 18:26, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

It's a pun on "historical reasons". JIP | Talk 08:08, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

October 30

Request for example Java program

I'm looking for a "Hello world" type example in Java that I can modify and play with. The example code should accept a string argument, display it on a pop-up window. The pop-up window needs to have a button for closing the window. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.49.11.61 (talk) 00:03, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

You want a JFrame example. This is Sun's JFrame tutorial. Once you can make the window open/shut, you want a JLabel tutorial. The JLabel will be placed inside the JFrame and contain the text. This is Sun's JLabel tutorial. -- kainaw™ 02:28, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Bitdefender uninstalled, but Windows is reporting that its turned off

I've uninstalled Bitdefender, but Windows XP is telling me that its reporting its turned off, even though I've restarted my computer. Do I have to edit some registries or something? The application is gone; I uninstalled it from the Control Panel, so I don't get why Security Center is reporting that it is turned off.--Lucky9109 (talk) 02:07, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

This is an off-the-cuff idea only, but how about if you were to install some other (perhaps free) antivirus software, and then take a look at what Security Center states? Maybe the uninstaller doesn't deal with Security Center at all (unsurprising) and maybe Security Center isn't smart enough to distinguish between "off" and "no longer present" (slightly more surprising; I would have thought they would have tested this with all antivirus products that it bothers to recognize). Tempshill (talk) 02:57, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Someone else's media files on my iTunes: wtf?

Something very strange is occurring on my PC at the moment. I'm staying in a hotel, using a PC that is wireless-enabled, but this particular room is not wi-fi enabled and I'm connected to the net via a cable. I do not have any kind of Bluetooth enabled. I have no idea if any of that's relevant, but I thought I'd mention it just in case. Anyway, on my iTunes there's a whole bunch of media files that don't belong to me, which are certainly not on my hard drive, but which I can watch and listen to through iTunes just fine. On the left hand side of iTunes, under "Shared", it says "[name of person I've never heard of]'s Library". Normally, right-clicking a song title leads me to where the file is saved, but that option is not available to me with these files. A regular search of the hard drive for the song titles brings up nothing. This is freaking me out a little: how on earth can I have access to someone else's media files? And how can I stop someone else having access to mine? --Richardrj ^{talk email} 06:36, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

iTunes automatically discovers other iTunes instances on the local network (typically every computer behind the same router) and allows every iTunes to stream (but not download) music from any other instance on the local net. See ITunes#Library_sharing. You can disable this sharing via preferences. There also used to be add-ons that would allow you to download the shared files (one of them is myTunes), but I don't know if those still work. By default, nothing is stored on your drive, the music is delivered over the network on demand. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:35, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Cool, I never knew any of that stuff. Thanks for the explanation. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 12:35, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Windows 7 classic start menu

How can I get the windows classic start menu in Windows 7. I hate this new look.

There are several third-party apps that will do this. Classic Start Menu Windows 7 ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:14, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Beginners programming

I'd like to learn a programming language for my own amusement. Could anybody point me in the direction of a good, free online tutorial & compiler to download, if necessary? The fun to be had is in understanding and applying the logic of a language. I've googled a little, but got lost in the options. I've pretty much no experience. Thanks Stanstaple (talk) 18:35, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Good for you. This is becoming a Computing desk FAQ; it was asked twice on October 27 (search for "language" on this page). I'll repeat myself that the article Educational programming language may be of interest to you; and I'll go ahead and recommend you learn some variety of BASIC even though SteveBaker hates it. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:42, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

If you're interested in learning Java (one of the more difficult first languages, but still suitable for dedicated beginners), you'll find a complete tutorial brought to you by Sun. It's very well organized, and outlines exactly what you need to download to get started.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 20:49, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not a heavy Python (programming language) user, but I think it's a fine first language. Here is a whole page of first-timer tutorials. The Wikibooks one here looks pretty good. Please come on back to this desk with the inevitable questions you'll have as you get going. --Sean 14:05, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks all- Stanstaple (talk) 19:00, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Stable Motherboard on high temperature

Hello there, Currently I am looking for a motherboard which will be stable on high temperature (36* C or more) and also no freezing or lock up. I have come up with several motherboards in choice.

• XFX 750i SLI
• Asus P5 Q P45
• Asus P5 Q3 P45
• Gigabyte EP45T UD3R
• Gigabyte EP43 UD3L

So far I have found the above boards within my budget. Which one I should go for? I am using C2Q 9400 CPU.Thank you--119.30.36.41 (talk) 22:28, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I would recommend a P45 motherboard over a P43. Also it appears you've got some DDR3 and some DDR2 motherboards in there. The DDR3/DDR2 issue was discussed about 2 weeks ago, I suggest you search the archives. Specifically since you apparently live in Bangladesh I would recommend you start comparing 2x2GB DDR2 and DDR3 RAM prices where you live since I'm doubtful anyone here has any idea what the price situation is like there Nil Einne (talk) 08:26, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

IE Tab

Does the IE Tab extension for Firefox render pages using the current version you have installed on your PC, or does it have an internal version of IE which could be different from the version I have installed. I ask because some sites throw errors when viewed with IE Tab, but not with IE natively, and I'm wondering if it has to do with versions of IE. anonymous6494 23:22, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

It uses your current version for the rendering. If you have IE Tab installed, go to the Tools menu in Firefox, then select the IE Tab Options item. Note the "External Application" where you can specify which application to use. But the default is Internet Explorer. Also on the IE Tab page on mozdev.org, they list as a requirement that you have "Internet Explorer > 4.0".

I don't know why some pages throw errors under IE Tab. Could it have something to do with IE's "compatibility view"? –RHolton≡– 13:08, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I have IE 7, so it isn't compatibility view. Thanks! anonymous6494 15:24, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

October 31

Incremental backup and deleted files

How does an incremental backup handle deleted files? --Halcatalyst (talk) 00:03, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I assume you're talking about a situation where files X, Y, and Z exist, then you back up your hard disk, then you delete the files, and then a new increment is made. The new increment just records the fact that files X, Y, and Z have been deleted. It doesn't go back into previous incremental backup files to erase the data or anything. If and when you recover your hard disk with the backup, then those files are simply never restored onto the hard disk. (Or, I suppose, some backup programs might write them out to the hard disk and then delete them, but that would seem silly.) Tempshill (talk) 02:51, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

That's not the way I understand that incremental backups work. I think that if you create the file A and do a backup, then file A will be written to the backup store. If you then delete it, nothing new will be written to the store. So if you do a full restore, it will restore the deleted file A. --Phil Holmes (talk) 11:09, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

With incremental backup, a "full restore" requires a date. If the date is after the file was deleted, it will not be included in the full restore. -- kainaw™ 13:35, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

At best, that depends. Not all incremental backup utilities will track deleted files. Indeed, it could be argued that they shouldn't, since you may want to recover a file a while after it has been deleted. See [1] for example. --Phil Holmes (talk) 15:00, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

For example, subversion (software) requires you to commit a delete. Then, the file is marked as deleted in all subsequent revisions. In older revisions, the file is still backed up. Nimur (talk) 01:03, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Find out IP addresses

Hi, in the Wikipedia article about Cyberstalking there is a point about tracing an IP address in an attempt to verify their home or place of employment. How would someone be able to find out someonelse's IP address? Is it possible, if so how, through the use of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Photobucket, etc.? And also, more importantly to some extent, how would someone block their IP address being visible on such sites and the internet in general? Thanks very much for reading this and any help and information would be much appreciated. 86.138.158.223 (talk) 00:09, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, the easiest way to find someone's IP address is to have them visit a site that you have access to the server logs for. That can be as easy as sending them an e-mail with an in-line image linked to from your site -- when they open the e-mail and view the image, pow!, it connects to your server, gives you the IP address.

The only real way to block your IP is to route it through an anonymity network, like Tor. In such a situation, only the in-coming Tor node would see your IP address, and your traffic to the Tor node is encrypted.

The problem with blocking your IP address in this way is that it is very slow, on the whole (you are routing all your internet traffic through another computer, often on the other side of the globe). It also doesn't give total anonymity (see the "weaknesses" section of the article—but for many practical purposes, it would work).

Another approach would be to have as your ISP a service that was large and used dynamic IP addresses. AOL, for example, does things this way, I believe. Visits from AOL users all look basically the same—they don't give you much (if any?) information about where the user is visiting from, and they change the individual IP addresses often enough that tracking behavior by one of them is pretty hard. (Or, at least, that's the way it used to be—I don't know if it has changed in recent years.) --Mr.98 (talk) 00:53, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much for that. I shall use that to research further... :) 86.138.158.223 (talk) 16:51, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

BTW in case you haven't noticed, editing wikipedia without being logged in to an account also gives away your IP address. (Our privacy policy means the IP address can almost never be revealed publicly and is only viewable by a small number of people for any edit made while logged in to an account.) Nil Einne (talk) 16:58, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Thermal paste of processor on new motherbaord

I have been using my system for three months. Now I am planning to replace my system to newly purchased motherboard. So If I attach my processor on new motherboard should I add thermal paste again on it? Bit confused. Thanks--119.30.36.53 (talk) 09:10, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

The best way of doing this is to clean the heatsink and processor of all the old thermal paste and add a small amount of new paste before attaching the heat sink. --Phil Holmes (talk) 11:06, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Emphasis on small. See thermal grease. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:11, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Laptop Powering Down (Ubuntu 9.10)

I have a Two-year old Acer Aspire 5315 on which I have replaced Vista with Ubuntu 9.10. I'm using it more as a storage facility than anything else (even though I'm loving the new OS!) as my other Vista is down to 30GB. Anyway, as such, I need to leave it on most of the time so I can read and write data to/from it. However, I have noticed that after about 5 minutes of idling, the screen tends to dim-down over the course of around 30 seconds or so, until I am left with a blank screen. Pressing a button restores the screen, leading me to believe that this is some sort of power-saving feature. It is annoying, though, because I prefer to see the screen when I am writing to the disk from the other PC so I 'know' that files are arriving. Therefore, I want to turn off this feature (if it is a feature and not just that my laptop is buggered) but nothing changes when I open Power Management in System>Preferences and set suspend to 'never'. Is there anything else I should do? --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 10:01, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Have a look at System -> Preferences -> Screensaver. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 10:20, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Cheers! I did that just before I came back here to say 'no worries - found the solution!'. But, thanks anyway! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 11:27, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Control of Sound Card

I have a full-screen program (with accompanying sounds) that locks out Spotify when loaded ("cannot access your sound card"). Is there anyway I can forcibly remove control of the aforementioned sound card from the program - I am prepared to lose any sound from the program itself? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 10:37, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Windows Vista Service pAck

Will installing service pack 1 on vista delete my files and programs or will they be safe and unaffected?

There is no reason why installing anything should delete anything without you being asked beforehand, but, in any case, service packs are supposed to be installed. Nothing should be affected. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 11:30, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

No, it will definitely not. I fact, every Windows user should install service packs as soon as they are released, for they contain important security and stability updates. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 12:59, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers! I'm installing service pack 1 and 2 so hopefully I'll have no more problems with windows freezing and stuff.

It is a little late, but you should always backup important files before applying MS Service Packs (or any similar "big overhaul" OS updates, whatever the OS). They can result in trouble, like the OS getting corrupted, things of that nature. They will not likely delete anything purposefully but can "break" an OS and require its reinstallation (which can "break" programs, at times). --Mr.98 (talk) 16:11, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

immedately give me answer this question.

what is the diffrence between window 98 and window xp? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Navjotkaurparihar (talk • contribs) 13:41, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Depends what you want to know, but XP (2001) is newer than 98 (1998). XP is widely regarded as superior, if only because it offers a service which many more people will find familiar, and is compatible with a much larger percentage of (new) software. 98 is no longer supported by Microsoft and maybe therefore less secure. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 13:53, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

From a technical point of view, the big difference is that Win98 is in the MS-DOS lineage of operating systems (i.e., a highly-polished turd), while WinXP is based on Windows NT, which is significantly less bad. --Sean 14:09, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

XP is very stable (if one application crashes, the entire OS will not) and secure. In XP it is possible to create different user accounts, so that person A cannot access the files of person B. Such security is not available at all in Windows 9x (Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME), where person B can access the files of person A simply by opening the "C:\WINDOWS\Profiles\Person A\" folder. Furthermore, Windows 9x is antique is many other ways as well, whereas XP is a fairly usable system still, despite of its age (nine years). The most visible difference between Windows 9x and XP is the GUI - Windows XP is themed (the default theme is called Luna) by default. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:33, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

As an aside, saying "Answer this immediately!!!" is impolite, especially on a completely volunteer-based community such as Wikipedia. JIP | Talk 01:57, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Vista Service Pack 1 trouble

I just spent an hour installing service pack 1 on vista. it reached completion, then said "Service pack did not install. Reverting changes". What went wrong??

If you Google the error message, you can find a number of pages that attempt to help. [2] [3] It sounds like it could be a whole variety of different, difficult-to-diagnose things, unfortunately. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:09, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

There will be a log somewhere on your computer with more detailed information. Check the Event Viewer and c:\windows\windowsupdate.log (which is a text file). To start the Event Viewer press Win+R to open the Run dialog and type "eventvwr.msc". -- BenRG (talk) 16:29, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

And this is one of the many reasons nobody uses Vista. HalfShadow (talk) 00:32, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Except for the several million who do. OP, I would just try again. Tempshill (talk) 04:42, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

As one of the several million (I tried to buy XP with my laptop in 2007, but was told it was Vista or nothing, so I just configured it to look as much like XP as possible), I've had only occasional problems with upgrades, and only occasional crashes when I've had many applications open. Are you sure you had full admin rights when you started the upgrade? (Is Windows 7 stable yet?) Dbfirs 08:18, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Windows 7 is very stable. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 12:46, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Does it allow me to configure my own desktop layout yet? (as I've been doing for twenty years). Dbfirs 09:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Good anti-aliasing in Photoshop

I often find in Photoshop that I have shapes that I wish were better anti-aliased—e.g., a mask that has a very hard pixel edge. Blurring said hard edges doesn't really make them look better—they look like a blurred hard edge, not an anti-aliased one. Is there a better technique here that I am missing for taking something that has a very hard pixel edge and getting that nice, anti-aliased look? The best I have come up with is producing the mask at, say, triple the resolution, and then down-sampling (which anti-aliases pretty well), but this is not always an option. Surely there is a better way? --Mr.98 (talk) 16:58, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

What was used to create the masks in the first place? I know GIMP, not PS, but in that case if you use a soft-edged tool to make the mask, it will stay that way. --Sean 21:12, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Presumably he's creating the masks in photoshop.

I meant "what tool?". --Sean 14:05, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

When you say you're blurring the edges, are you using the "feather" tool? By, perhaps, less than a pixel? APL (talk) 21:43, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Work in higher resolution - double or triple the size of the image before you start. When you're done, save the high res version for the future - but drop the resolution back down again for the version you actually want to use. I'm not a big photoshop user (I prefer GIMP) - but when you drop the resolution back down - make sure you're using whatever Photoshops' best quality option is for doing that. SteveBaker (talk) 23:51, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

How are you creating the masks? The Marquee tool doesn't have antialiasing, so you should use the Path (the "pen" tool, haven't used Photoshop in a while) tool to create your mask using bézier curves instead. That gives you much nicer results and you can edit your path later. --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:10, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

So what I've found works very well in the meantime for single-color masks (e.g. black/white), is to put a 2 pixel Gaussian blur and then go to Image > Adjustments > Levels and push the white/black balance towards the center. It gives me a very nice anti-aliased edge for such images. Just passing that on. It appears that there is no sure-fire way to get the results I want (other than, as stated, working at a higher resolution and down-sampling). As for tool, I was using masks created with the magic wand tool (which claims to have anti-aliasing, but it is not very good). --Mr.98 (talk) 20:58, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

There's your problem. Use Path and you'll get a much nicer result. --antilived^{T | C | G} 22:28, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

There's an option to turn on anti-aliasing. Look on the top toolbar where you have the options for your tools; there's a check box that toggles anti-aliasing. <- this may/may not apply to masking, but the way I do making in photoshop is to add a vector mask. If you provide me with a screen shot of what you want to do, I will help you more. -- penubag  (talk) 06:12, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Blender 3D Rendering

What factors determine how fast a scene is rendered in Blender 3D? --81.227.65.168 (talk) 17:08, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Render/Performances -194.197.235.240 (talk) 17:28, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Sound quality

Could playing sounds from two different sources simultaneously (say, running two YouTube music videos at the same time, or a video and an online game with music) permanently degrade the sound quality on my computer? 90.193.232.242 (talk) 19:15, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

No. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:30, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I also say no. A computer's speakers (stereologic) are made to handle different audio tracks. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that the only way to cause permanent damage to speakers are to over modulate them by turning the volume up beyond the threshold of the voice coil and/or diaphragm (acoustics). Also, see loudspeaker for more info. Letter ⁷ _{it's the best letter :)} 00:30, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

(OP here) The speakers are fine, I can plug any speakers or headphones in and the sound will always be the same. Playing music while having a game on in the background is the only thing I do that other people don't, so far as I can tell. Vimescarrot (talk) 00:48, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

November 1

bad impacts of information system to an organisation

can anyone tell me what is the bad impacts of information system to an organisation?? i need more information about this.. waiting for your reply soon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.48.253.97 (talk) 05:24, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. Tempshill (talk) 05:46, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

... meanwhile, have you read our articles on Information system and Information systems discipline? An appropriate and well-designed information system can be an enormous benefit to an organisation. The opposite can be a disaster! Dbfirs 08:04, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I have to add my two bits - an appropriate and well-designed information system will bring zilch benefits if the people don't use it or don't use it properly. I experienced this myself - installing something isn't enough, it should be run often and be used, too. --Ouro (blah blah) 11:57, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

to Tempshill: i not just want the answer... i just dunno what is the bad or disadvantages of information system to an organisation... so i post here to get some information... so that i can concentrate on the information i get here and try to understand it.. and this is not my homework... just for my self study... if u can please give me some information about it.. or you can tell me about your experience or any cases about this happened to you... i will very appreciate for your information... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.111.87 (talk) 14:12, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

i found that one of the disadvantages of IS is>> Everything has to be kept private at all times. This could be hard to do. anyone can tell me why it is hard? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.111.87 (talk) 16:27, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, computer privacy and security are big issues here if the information is at all sensitive. The organisation needs to employ technicians who are totally trustworthy, and to use a database system that prevents unauthorised users copying the data. And Ouro makes a good point: the system will be a disaster if the users are not willing and well-trained. Dbfirs 09:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Unknown website

Hello there, I am having trouble with an unknown website. Whenever I tried to connect to internet this webpage automatically opened up. I cleaned browser and ran spyware search and destroy software but nothing happened. How can I get rid of this nasty webpage? Thanks--119.30.36.35 (talk) 11:25, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Autostart? Home page settings of browser? Settings of dial-up application (or whatever you use to connect) to automatically open a specific page was effected? What was the usual case before this site started harassing you?

Try installing a different browser (i. e. Opera if you are normally a Firefoxer) and see what happens. Come back then and tell us what happened. --Ouro (blah blah) 11:54, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

If you use Internet Explorer then run HijackThis to see if it picks anything up. Rjwilmsi 13:58, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Check your hosts file.–RHolton≡– 23:48, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Vista Sidebar RSS Gadet Text-Rendering Anomaly

Since the day I upgraded to Windows Vista (= the day it was made available in Sweden), I have wondered why the exactly (seemingly, at least) same string is rendered in different ways sometimes in the RSS sidebar gadget. See this image for an example. Normally, computers are highly predictable and deterministic, so it is rather surprising that the same string is rendered differently on different occasions. Exactly when does this happen? Why? Can you give me an example from Win32 API when this happens? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:15, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Could it be there is some HTML code in the original source feed that is causing one entry to display in a Narrow font? Sussexonian (talk) 22:15, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I did not believe that this simple gadget respected HTML tags. But you might be right - it sounds fairly reasonable. Unfortunately, however, I do not have access to the code that generated the image any more. But there might be more examples in the future. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 08:45, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

pixel intensity??

every image is saved by a computer in form of a intensity matrix,defining a value for each pixel.can any one tell me in which units the values are so that i can apply some radiation formulae like weins law,stfans law on it. yours sci-hunter SCI-hunter (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:37, 1 November 2009 (UTC).

There are many ways to store images. See image file. The Graphics Interchange Format article has some good technical details. --Sean 16:05, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Image file formats store intensity data in an abstract, dimensionless quantity. Computer display technologies take this information and use it to emit light of the appropriate intensity; often there is a bounded linear relationship between the value in the image file and the intensity, in other cases a gamma nonlinearity is applied. This gamma is partially a function of the characteristics of the display device (and it settings), of the graphics hardware and it settings, and sometimes (as is the case with formats like PNG) gamma information is encoded in the original image. So if you're looking for a concrete physical value, you need to know a lot about the capabilities and calibrations of the particular display devices involved - in practice they vary quite a lot in terms of their intensity curve, frequency response, and colour gamut. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:20, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

(EC) This entirely depends on the image file format. It is possibly GIF, but it might also be PNG, BMP, JPG, TIFF, XPM, TGA, etc. See bitmap (BMP) for a far more simple image format than GIF. In a BMP file, after all headers and the optional palette, the image data might be RLE compressed. If it is not compressed, and if the bitmap is 24-bit (the simplest case), each pixel is represented by three bytes (i.e. 24 bits), each byte (a number between 0 and 255) being the B (blue), G (green), and R (red) RGB coordinate of the pixel. Normally (depends on the sign of the height value in the header, if I remember correctly) the scanlines (lines of pixels) are stored bottom-up (rather than the more intuitive top-down order). Also, one must take care of padding bytes in the end of each scanline... --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:22, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Also, some images embed a ICC profile which attempts to regularise the relationship between colour values in the image and actual colour values in the output; this still doesn't get you to absolute physical intensity levels, as there's still plenty of scope for variety of intensity between different physical display devices. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:30, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

explorer.exe

explorer.exe from windows 95 was able to run in Windows 95, 98 and ME. Why doesn't it work in XP or Vista, when even the much older progman.exe from Windows 3.1 still works? Also, why doesn't explorer.exe from XP work on Vista? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.201 (talk) 16:45, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Why do you want to run a different browser on a different OS? The usual reason is checking out web development efforts with various browsers, but maybe that is not your reason. --DThomsen8 (talk) 18:21, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

The OP is asking about explorer.exe, which is the program for Windows Explorer the file browser, not Internet Explorer the web browser. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 20:51, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Internet Explorer is named iexplore.exe. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 08:59, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The first answer does not address the question. The person asking didn't say they wanted to do this; they asked why it wouldn't work.

Computer programs are sets of instructions that run in a certain environment; by that, I mean that the instructions can call on their environment to do certain things for them. When a program wants to connect to the internet, or read a file, or get the current user's name, a program often has to do different things on different operating systems, and even on different versions of the same operating system.

Microsoft made some things compatible among different versions of Windows, and some things not. For some period of time (evidently), the instructions used on W95, 98, and ME were compatible with all three versions. So the version of the XP browser that runs in Vista must have to do some things that are not available in Windows 95. This is common; as an environment such as Windows ages, changes and additions are made, and it is difficult (and arguably unnecessary) to maintain compatibility for very long. Keep in mind that Microsoft makes its money selling software, not keeping things compatible for years and years. Besides that, often new features require instructions that were not thought of and therefore not available in the older system. ralphcook —Preceding undated comment added 18:55, 1 November 2009 (UTC).

Though, on the last point, it's worth noting that the #1 selling point that people use when discussing why they stay with Windows (despite its many flaws) is that it is compatible with the most number of people, and etc. So some compatibility is built into their business model—it's part of the reason people use their software in the first place. If they neglect that, it will definitely impact the business model. That being said, expecting a core system program from 14 years ago to still work on every operating system is a little bit extreme. Your time would be better spent figuring out what it was about that program that you liked and finding a modern equivalent (which probably exists). --Mr.98 (talk) 01:58, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the interesting answers. I am still confused though; why would explorer.exe be too old to work yet ever older programs from Windows 3.1 like File manager and Program Manager still work on XP and Vista? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.201 (talk) 09:22, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The age of the program does not, by itself, make a difference. What matters is what instructions it has in it. Programs have instructions in them that ask the operating system to do things for them, and for it to work, the operating system must be able to satisfy those requests. As Windows has aged, clearly some requests have kept their same "format", i.e., the way a program makes its request in Win98 is the same way it makes that request in XP. But some requests have been removed, or their format has changed, so when a program makes that request the "old" way, the "newer" operating system does not understand what it is asking and the request does not work.

A program can be written to make requests either way, depending on the operating system on which it is running, but an older program cannot usually be programmed to run on an operating system that is not in existence when the program is written.

So I expect that programs that still do work only make requests that are still there and still in the same format, and programs that do not make requests that are not still there or now in a different format. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ralphcook (talk • contribs) 16:51, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

External hard drive blocked

I just moved all my files from my Noteship external hard drive to another which worked great but it's now not allowing me to put anything new on it anymore... Every time I try to add something to it it tells me I don't have permission and that it's "read only". It was never like this before and if anyone could shed some light on this issue that would be greatly appreciated. Pineapplegirls (talk) 18:18, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

What is the external drive formatted as (e.g., NTFS, FAT32?), and what is the OS you are using to access it with (XP, Vista, Windows 7, Mac OSX?)? --Mr.98 (talk) 20:43, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Not sure what has caused the problem, but, I would suggest (if you are using Windows) right-clicking on the drive, selecting properties, then making sure that 'read only' is not checked - if it is, then uncheck it. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 20:47, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm using Mac OX and i'm not sure how it's formatted... How should I check that? thanks for your help

In Finder, click on the drive (should be on your desktop when connected), then go to File > Get Info (Apple+I). Look for the line that says "Format". My bet is that it is formatted for NTFS, which OS X can read, but cannot write.

If you are only going to use the drive with Macs, you should reformat the drive as "Mac OS Extended" format (using Disk Utility—but be aware it will clear the drive when you do this!). If you are going to use it on both PCs and Macs, you can format it as FAT32 (also with Disk Utility), though there are downsides to that format (it cannot handle files over 4GB in size, which depending on what you do, could be an issue). You can also, I believe, download software that lets OS X write to NTFS drives, though I've never used any myself (but if you Google it, it is out there). --Mr.98 (talk) 22:44, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Ok, excellent. So if I format it to Mac and try to open or copy the files to a Windows drive will it work? Or will I just not be able to add anything to it from a windows OS?.. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.39.184.228 (talk) 12:44, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe you'd have to install special drivers for a Windows (NTFS) drive to be able to read the Mac-formatted drive. I know, what a pain—Macs can't use Windows correctly, Windows can't use Macs correctly. It's like we're still in 1991 or something. FAT32 is the only format that can be read by both (and, as stated, it has issues, in particular with very large files), so if you need something that can work easily/instantly on both (not installing any special software), use FAT32 (which you can do in Disk Utility). (Remember, as I said, that reformatting in Disk Utility will necessarily wipe the drive clean the first time you do it...!) --Mr.98 (talk) 14:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually Windows Vista and Windows 7 support writing and reading to UDF as does Mac OS X for a while (not sure but think 10.4.6 at least but I don't use Macs) and also of course most *nix variants (FreeBSD not sure, Linux since 2.6.2 possibly, Solaris not sure). However formatting drives as UDF is I believe often not that easy. (May be possible from the CLI, usually not from the GUI.) While UDF was originally invented for optical media, AFAIK there's no reason why it can't be used (or wouldn't work well) on different media. In fact because rewritable optical media suffers from the same limited write cycle as most flash memory but to a greater extent, UDF from 1.5 have added features to give something similar to wear levelling. While this isn't particularly relevant to extern al hard disks, it does have several advantages over FAT32 (notably including no 2GB file size limit). I've believed since perhaps 2004/5? that given the absence of a clear cut cross platform available by default option other then FAT* (excluding FATex64 or whatever it's called since that's problematic), moving to UDF would be a good idea but only a few people seem to have considered the same thing [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]. The difficulty formating drives as UDF, it's association with optical media and the slow demise of XP likely haven't helped. Nil Einne (talk) 16:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

How to protect a picture?

Is it possible to protect a picture that you uploaded in a a social networking site? Beyond water-marking it, is there something that can be done?--81.47.159.223 (talk) 18:26, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

No, it's really not. The very property that makes digital media so useful and flexible is how innately easy it is to copy, move, and change it. Whenever someone cooks up some half-brained digital rights management scheme to limit unauthorised copies of things, they make things much more difficult for people they still want to view the media, but not very much more difficult for anyone wanting to misappropriate it. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:29, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

(EC) Everything you can see on the screen, you can copy. In almost all cases, Print Screen is sufficient, and a 100 % identical copy is obtained on the clipboard. In some rare cases, e.g. in some games and other full-screen applications, this is not possible. But, of course, you can always replace the computer monitor with some recording device (connect the DVI/VGA cable, from the computer, to this device instead of a monitor). If not even this is possible, you can place a camera in front of the screen. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 18:35, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

(Also, you can usually just turn off hardware acceleration, and this usually makes it possible to take a screenshot.) --Mr.98 (talk) 20:52, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I once ran in a race where organisers hired an events photography company to photograph each runner. They noted (whether by fancy image recognition or manual labour) everyone's bib number and you could go to their website, enter a bib number, and it showed you a photo of that person. But they made you install a special IE-only plugin to see the image, once that made a special directX surface on which to display the image (so to avoid the printscreen/screengrab), and that refused to work if you disabled directX. So they lost a huge number of people straight off, who wouldn't install the plugin, and more who couldn't, and more still who couldn't get it to work. Even if you did get it to work all you got was a small and heavily watermarked image. I later heard from a friend of mine who was involved with the race organisation that, out of about 25,000 runners, they'd sold about a dozen copies. Given that they had several (I think five) photographers on duty, they clearly didn't make money. I appreciate that it's difficult to make money when what you're selling is so easy to copy, but surely they'd have made some money had they just put the watermarked images on the web plain. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:11, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

If you don't want something circulated at all, don't upload it anywhere. If you don't want people using it for high-resolution purposes (e.g. in a magazine, or whatever), don't upload a high-res version. If you don't want someone using something without your permission, your only real recourse is copyright law (threaten to sue), not a technical fix, and even that does not give you 100% control over the image (there are fair use exceptions). --Mr.98 (talk) 20:54, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Google search

I know the answer to this and when someone tells me I will kick myself, but how do you search google if you want to exclude results from wikipedia. BigDunc 18:38, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know how to specifically exclude a site, but simply adding "-wikipedia" to the query has the same effect (rather more so, but if you're looking for sources in a universe uncontaminated by wikipedia, it's not a bad thing to also omit every page that even admits wikipedia exists from the search). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:41, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Google: -site:wikipedia.org whatYouWantToLookFor. Be sure to include the hyphen before "site:" or you will only get results from Wikipedia.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 20:35, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. BigDunc 19:37, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

November 2

blog-style website

I'd like to start a blog-style website, but I'm not sure which host would be right for what I have in mind. Specifically, I'd like a site that allows for very detailed categorizations of each post (sub-categories, easily make new categories, handle large quantities of categories, that kind of stuff). A setup that would allow me to automatically queue up multiple days of uploads would be nice. Adding pictures would be a bonus, but not a deal-breaker; this could be a completely text-only kind of thing. There seem to be dozens of different sites and it's hard to tell which one would be a good fit for me. Any suggestions? Matt Deres (talk) 02:23, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

WordPress can give you queued uploads, easy categories, large quantities of them, but is not so much about hierarchical sub-categories (and I might suggest that you probably don't need them—most sites don't). Can add pictures, etc. All for free on http://wordpress.com/ (you can migrate it to a private domain later if you want) and with loads of community-developed add-ons. Easy to set up. Give it a whirl! Let me suggest that 90% of a blog is just sitting down and writing it. Don't worry about the bells and whistles until you have actually proven to yourself you can stick with it for more than a week. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:47, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Content will not be a problem, I think :). Wordpress was the one I'd been thinking of, though the security problems (as raised on the article space) are a (minor) concern. I could do what I want to do without sub-categories, but it seemed an easy way of of dealing with what I'm planning. If it's not available, somehow I'll struggle on. Matt Deres (talk) 03:11, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

If you run it off of the Wordpress servers (e.g. wordpress.com hosting), the software will always be up to date, and the security will not be an active issue. For everything else, the update process is really easy. As for sub-categories... I would search around for a WordPress plug-in that did it. There probably is one. It is a very flexible, adaptable platform. (And on content... no one thinks it will be a problem, but it is usually the limiting factor. It takes a lot of time to write a good blog post, and people go through them pretty quickly... just speaking from experience! It is harder than it looks...) --Mr.98 (talk) 04:02, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, Wordpress it is unless someone pops by with something better in the next few hours. I don't doubt that most blogs fail from lack of content, but I'm not planning an opinion or diary style thing, but something more like the "Strange Maps" and "What Were They Thinking" blog-style sites (both of which run on Wordpress). I've got the first 200+ posts basically done except for some tweaking and organizing, so that will buy me a bit of time before I have to start scratching my head again. ;) Matt Deres (talk) 20:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Xbox 360 backwards compatability

Well, I downloaded the disc that makes my Xbox 360 able to play original Xbox games. However, when I put in my copy of True Crime: Streets of LA (subpar game but the only original Xbox game I have), a message appears (in six languages, mind you) telling me "This is an Xbox game disc. Please put it in your Xbox to start playing." Well, shouldn't have the disc I just installed to my Xbox 360 fixed that problem? 71.213.70.217 (talk) 03:18, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Note: This was moved from WP:VPM#Xbox 360 backwards compatability. Killiondude (talk) 03:25, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Not all games are backwards compatible. Check out the site Microsoft lists the backwards compatible games. Your game appears to be on there, but you should check a few things.

1. Do you have the latest backwards compatibility software?
2. Is the game an American copy? Is the Xbox an American Xbox? If the regions don't match, it causes issues.

The other option is to go [9] to the 360 compatibility FAQ or go here, [10] where your specific issue is addressed. I'd start with the bold link.

Nezzadar ^[SPEAK] 05:28, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Wait a minute, there's a disc? I thought it was just like a patch or something you automatically download with every system update. I was under the impression it was sort of an invisible DLC thing. Anakinjmt (talk) 06:30, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

If your 360 is on X-Box Live, then it should happen automatically. But a surprisingly large percentage of 360 owners (The Majority!) don't use Live. APL (talk) 16:58, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Er, you probably don't want to hear this, but confusing game discs with film DVDs was one of the last things my first 360 did before it threw up E74/1 red light. Try swapping round other discs and seeing if the same thing happens. It may just be that disc, but even if it seems that way, it may be the console anyway; my old one only ever got confused by Mass Effect. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 14:19, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Simple C question

I've been at this for over 4 hours and can't figure out why this isn't working. I'm trying to write a simple + - * / ^ calculator that starts at 0 and increments based on user input. When the user presses the character Q or q the calculator quits but it doesn't work (among other things). The while ( (operator != 'Q' ) || (operator != 'q') ) doesn't work, but if I remove the || it works fine, and another interesting thing is that if I make this condition an if statement rather than a while, it works. I can't figure out why this isn't working. Any suggestions? -- penubag  (talk) 06:02, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

For your while loop, go back and think it through again (or use Boolean algebra): what would happen if the user inputs "q"? What would this code (operator != 'Q' ) || (operator != 'q') return if operator == 'q'? (answer: 1) Is that correct? What if operator == 'Q'? (answer: still 1) --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:24, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, computer code. How I remember the days when I was a computer major trying to learn Java. How you frustrated me so and made me realize that I needed to be a Vulcan to understand your logic. Anakinjmt (talk) 06:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems correct to me. If the user inputs either a capital or lowercase Q, that program should output the total and quit. -- penubag  (talk) 06:33, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Does it? That code checks if the user input isn't a lowercase q OR if the user input isn't an uppercase Q. Let's try a truth table:

Input	A: !='Q'	B: !='q'	A OR B	A AND B
'a'	1	1	1	1
'q'	1	0	1	0
'Q'	0	1	1	0

Right now no matter what the user inputs your while loop condition will always be true because you have it as A || B, when it should be A && B (ie. loop while input isn't 'q' AND input isn't 'Q'). --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:50, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Aghhhh...I see it now. Negative logic hurts my brain. What I was originally thinking was "is operator Q or q". Thanks for the help; I've updated my code above and just have one more bug to fix. -- penubag  (talk) 07:12, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

This is exactly what De Morgan's laws stipulate. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:37, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

It's good for you to be getting practice with logic now, but in production code you might just say "while (tolower(operator) != 'q') ..." or similar. Also, you should indent each block so you can see the logical structure more easily. --Sean 12:49, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Separately, and opinions vary, but I find the following structure to be clearer:

int main()
{
    char operator;
    double valuetotal, aftervalue, initialvalue;

    initialvalue = 0;
    aftervalue   = 0;

    for (;;)
    {
        scanf("%c", &operator);

        if (tolower(operator) == 'q')
        {
            break; // exits the for loop
        }

        else if (operator == '+')
        {
            valuetotal= add_function( valuetotal);
            printf("The value so far is %f\n", valuetotal);
        }

        // other options ...

    }

    printf("The total is %f\n", valuetotal);

    return 0;
}

This changes the structure from your:

input
test
loop:
  test
  input
output

to:

loop:
  input
  test
output

and since you don't repeat yourself on the input operation, you only have to change it in one place if it changes. --Sean 13:02, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Sean, your code doesn't work properly. (but mine doesn't either). Your code works until I enter an operator it doesn't understand. It says "invalid operator", which it should, but then when inputting 'Q' or 'q' for quitting, it no longer works. -- penubag  (talk)

I'm not on a system where I can test it, but my first reaction is that the scanf() is probably reading in your newline(s). If so you'll need a case for ignoring spaces, newlines, etc. Changing your error message to "printf("bad operator: '%c'\n", operator)" will help you figure out what's going on. Also read about debuggers for your platform (MSVC or gdb, probably). --Sean 17:41, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

ffshrine (2)

ffshrine is finally back up (why did they even take it down just for donations?), but it still has a problem. The download links on that site do not work. I click to download a song, but it does not start up; I right-click to download a song, but it does not download. What is causing this? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 08:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Not familiar with that site. My first thought is that, if they shut down to encourage (or for lack of) donantions, then maybe it's a bandwidth issue? Downloads would logically be a big part of a site's bandwidth, I would think, and that can get pricey. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 19:56, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

wavelength???

can any one guide me how can i find wavelength of the colour by its image. 220.225.98.251 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 09:44, 2 November 2009 (UTC).

From a photo in a JPEG file? Short answer: you can't. Even if you take into consideration all the colour space stuff, all the JPEG artifacts and the inaccuracies of cameras, a camera is only designed to capture light as we see them. A pixel records brightness of 3 colours, it doesn't record the wavelength (colour) of the scene. How do you know if orange is really orange or if it's just a mixture of red and green light? That's the long version of "you can't". --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:36, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Conceivably, a multi-spectral image or a hyperspectral image could have sufficiently dense channel packing that it could useful for estimating particular wavelengths. However, conventional images (made on consumer cameras) produce only "red", "blue", and "green" channels - which are very vague, very broad ranges of wavelength sensitivities in each channel. You could give a very wide range of wavelengths which would activate each channel, by checking the technical specifications of your camera's filters or CCD sensor response; but at best this will narrow down to a few hundreds of nanometers wavelength. If you are attempting to do spectroscopy, a conventional 3-channel "color" image will not have the required information. Nimur (talk) 19:53, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

This Kodak CCD technology review goes over the color response and shows the wavelength-vs.-amplitude response in the sensor for a particular model of camera (the Kodak DCS 620x model). In the strict sense, when you have an image, what you know is the channel amplitude (not the wavelength). So you're trying to invert from RGB to amplitude-vs.-wavelength - in other words, "go backwards" from the data recorded in RGB form back to the physical wavelengths which triggered that response. You would need to set up an inversion problem to solve for the most-likely wavelength(s) that gave you a particular RGB or CMYK value in your final image. Whether this process will work depends on many factors - how much do you know about the image source; how orthogonal are the R/G/B channels; how underdetermined is your problem; but it could be done, and it might work for certain well-controlled image processing problems. Nimur (talk) 19:59, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

If you're not aware of it already, note that although light of a particular wavelength has a particular color, it is definitely not the case that everything of a particular color is emitting a particular wavelength. In fact for most colored objects the object is emitting a range of wavelengths. Indeed, two objects can be emitting two completely different wavelength profiles yet appear to be exactly the same color. Color vision is a complex topic, due in part to the fact that eyes aren't true spectrophotometers, but are much simpler Red/Green/Blue detectors (even that's not quite correct, as it's more yellowish-green/green/blueish-violet detector, where the yellowish-green and green detectors have some activity in the violet end, and the blueish-violet detector picks up some red), which the RGB in the JPEG/GIF/etc. is trying to approximate. Unless you know that the source is monochromatic (i.e. it's from a scientific instrument - in which case see the answers above), the easiest option is to just compare the color visually with a similar photograph of the visible spectrum - the whole thing will be inaccurate anyway. Something like File:NASA_Hydrogen_spectrum.jpg is probably what you're looking for as a comparator. Keep in mind, though, that some colors (purple, brown, pink, etc.) can't be represented by a single wavelength, and need a mixture of wavelengths to produce. -- 128.104.112.149 (talk) 22:45, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

As others have correctly said - you can't do this properly. Just about the nearest you could get would be to convert the image into HSV color space (Hue, Saturation, Value) - and to observe the hue of the HSV value. If you mapped 0 (red) to 620nm and a hue of maybe around 0.9 (violet-ish) to 400nm - then I suppose you'd be getting somewhere close to something kinda-sorta right. That might get you a pure color that would look to the human eye somewhat like the color in the image source...but that's incredibly error-prone and I couldn't recommend it for most purposes. SteveBaker (talk) 02:31, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Viceo converter

Are there any open-source video converter programs that require neither codecs nor registration? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 11:51, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

ffmpeg, also gstreamer via gst-launch, but ffmpeg is more straightforward to use. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 13:08, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

handbrake, avidemux —Preceding unsigned comment added by .isika (talk • contribs) 13:25, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

diode snap-off

j'aimerai savoir ce que c'est une diode snap-off? ses structures, utilisations, caractéristiques et fonctionnement —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.204.124.12 (talk) 13:57, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Translation: I would like to know what diode snap-off is? Its structures, uses, characteristics, and function. -- Nimur (talk) 20:11, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

See Step recovery diode -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:19, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Translation: Voir Step recovery diode, en anglais. Il n'y a pas une traduction en français. Merci, gENIUS101 15:43, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

bots

what scripting language are they made from?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 14:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Assuming you mean web bots or Wikipedia bots. They can be made from just about any of them (and are aided by there usually being standard libraries that let you do routine tasks pretty easily, like parse web content). Python, perl, and PHP are pretty common for web bots. If you are interested in Wikipedia-specific bots, see Wikipedia:Bots, especially this section for description of the many different languages that can be easily used. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:15, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

rss

I need a program that'll ding or do something to let me know when an rss feed updates. Any suggestions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.201 (talk) 16:03, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I presume many of the things listed as supporting RSS at Comparison of feed aggregators can do this particularly if they are decidicated as opposed to being a web browser or some such. Having said that it appears Safari does have some notification plugin and Firefox [11] may also do notifications. Email clients with RSS support like Thunderbird would likely also support some sort of notification as they would for e-mail. The comparison page does include a column for 'tray notification' albeit most readers are listed as unknown Nil Einne (talk) 16:26, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I use Alertbear. F (talk) 04:10, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

twitter

is there a way to view/download all the tweets for a particular user? either through twitter.com or 3rd party app? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.201 (talk) 20:14, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

No. Twitter only lets you view about the last 50 tweets by a user. After that, they get archived on the Twitter server but can't be viewed by any user.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 03:46, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

DOS printing

Question moved from Talk:How to print from dos to usb printer prefix:Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives. Astronaut (talk) 22:07, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I have some DOS applications that insist on printing to a parallel printer port. However, my new printer only has USB. Where can I find a cable that can do this? (There are lots of cables that connect the computer's USB port to a parallel printer port but I need the reverse.) Alternately, are there any drivers that can fool the DOS applications into thinking that they are printing to a parallel port when they are actually printing to the computer's USB port. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.196.224.106 (talk) 12:19, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

You don't need a cable; DOS does not recognize USB. Assuming you have Windows XP or above, let it do the work:

• Install the printer under Windows
• In the printer properties, share the printer with a logical name
• Capture LPT1 by opening a command prompt:
  • NET USE LPT1: \\<computer name>\<printer name> /PERSISTENT:YES

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:18, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Lossy compression

I'm practically terrified by it. Well, not terror...more of a creeping paranoia. I noticed a certain song of mine had a strange buzz in the background when I listened to it through the car speakers, and thus began the paranoia.

I'm starting to become concerned about my ~600 songs. They're either bought from the iTunes music store, ripped from CDs, or occasionally one downloaded (Touché! They were songs that could not possibly be bought!). I tend to be a perfectionist, and I can't stand the thought of my beloved music becoming crappier and crappier through the years. I've read through the article about lossless data compression, but I'm still not sure I fully understand. What exactly should I go about doing to ensure that my music doesn't degrade further?--The Ninth Bright Shiner 22:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

See Lossy compression. It's a nice thought, but lossy is not lossy over time, but lossy at the point of encoding and thereafter stable. However pretty much any audiophile will prefer CD or vinyl to MP3. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Playing the music will not result in further loss. No need to worry. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:30, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

O RLY? That's quite the relief. I could have sworn reading something to this extent, though...somewhere. I'm not quite an audiophile yet, but I do prefer quality. Would the truest-to-the-original copy of a file have to be from the file itself; i.e., actually play the original CD in the car as opposed to ripping it and burning a CD? And upon ripping a CD, what would be the action to take to save it losslessly? (Tounge-twister.)

And while we're on the subject, what of images and videos? Any advice there, such as regarding scanning or taking a video?

I sure am asking a lot, aren't I? The finer details of files mystify me, like quarks mystify someone who's just taken high school chemistry. Thanks!--The Ninth Bright Shiner 00:46, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

You only get loss when you compress and make a new file (basically). So when you make MP3s from CDs, you get some loss. You don't get any additional or cumulative loss just by listening to MP3s—the loss is a one-time affair (CD to MP3 = lossy compression). If you take the MP3s and make, say, AACs from them, you get loss (this is known as transcoding—converting from one format to another—and if you go to a lossy format, you get some loss). Every time you convert to a lossy format, you get loss. And indeed, transcoding can create a lot of loss, more than just making one file with a given number of loss, because the different algorithms are taking different chunks of the data out (they aren't taking advantage of previous algorithms' "savings").

Anyway, in most cases, there's a question of how much loss you can detect. If you have not-too-great speakers, a little loss will probably not be detectable. If you are a dedicated audiophile/hi fi dude, then maybe you care. Even in that instance, there are levels of compression and corresponding levels of loss. Personally I don't really have the ear or the equipment to distinguish between CD audio and 256kbps mp3s. But some people do, or claim to.

If you really don't want loss, you have use a lossless format, like FLAC. You can get programs that convert CDs to FLAC files and let you play FLAC files. They are HUGE files though—like, half a gigabyte for one CD. Still, some people go for them. Knock yourself out...! --Mr.98 (talk) 00:57, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

And there's probably too much to discuss about images and video, though Image file formats might be a place to start (also the not so great Container format (digital) - at the very least, there are the same lossy conundrums attaching to both topics. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:04, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Hey, with terabyte hard drives being churned out along with iPod Classics that could eat my own computer's hard drive, anything is possible! Although, is there any easy way to convert to lossless files that an iPod could play (i.e., Apple Lossless), or will it be needlessly complicated and riddled with caveats, like every other nitty-gritty file operation has been for me?

I'll poke around the articles for image and video compression, but they aren't that much concern. Thanks again everyone!--The Ninth Bright Shiner 01:26, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

In theory you should be able to convert lossless to lossless and have it still be lossless. Apparently Max can do this. Never used it myself, though. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:57, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure FLAC is more efficient than that, after all a CD is only 700MB max. My CDs compressed to FLAC are usually 200-300MB per CD. --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:00, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, maybe. I've looked at FLAC files on downloading sites and was amazed that it was basically half a gig per album. In general though I think we can just say that FLAC is about 10X more than high-quality MP3s. Which, again, is fine, if that's what you go for! --Mr.98 (talk) 13:20, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

As a rule of thumb, raw CD audio is 10 MB/minute, lossy-compressed CD audio is 1–2 MB/minute, and lossless-compressed CD audio is 4–5 MB/minute. FLAC's compression is a bit worse than most rival lossless codecs, but it has the advantages of being computationally cheaper and completely open (patent-free with a BSD-licensed implementation). -- BenRG (talk) 15:33, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Windows 7 64 bit and Alienware integrated webcam driver

Hi there. Does anyone know whether there is a driver which will enable the integrated webcam in my Alienware m9750 (which came with XP) to work with my new 64 bit Windows 7? I can't navigate Alienware's awful customer support services. Cheers, SGGH ^ping! 23:57, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Its a "USB2.0 Camera" "Bison NB Pro" camera, whatever that means. Windows 7 knows that its there, and knows what it is. It lists it there under devices and printers, however it just shows a white box when I try to use it. SGGH ^ping! 00:05, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

November 3

Windows 7 32-bit & 64-bit DVDs the same?

Hi. I can download the images for Windows 7 for 32-bit and 64-bit. I was wondering if I need to download both images and burn them to two DVDs, or if one of them will be sufficient.

Also, I was wondering if the keys are interchangeable between 32-bit and 64-bit; i.e. if I have a key for 64-bit can I use it to install on a 32-bit computer, or vice versa? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.97.244.36 (talk) 01:28, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not our job on the Refdesk to encourage software piracy, so you're unlikely to get a great response here. By the way, you should know that any software you get from a torrent could have a Trojan horse like a keylogger installed and you'd never know. Comet Tuttle (talk) 01:34, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

No, but it is the job of the reference desk to answer questions, not throw about speculation on what the op might do with the information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.201 (talk) 16:09, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Why assume the OP is engaged in software piracy? For all you know s/he could be a MSDN or MSDNAA user. Getting infected by trojans and keyloggers is a risk all Windows users face, no matter where they get their software from. No, the 32 and 64 bit discs are different. F (talk) 04:05, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but the vast majority of pirated copies of windows available on the usual torrent sites (well, minus the pirate bay now) have these integrated into the install image. Its not as simple as running a virus scan like it is with a later, not as tightly integrated, infection. --69.110.14.74 (talk) 05:11, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a fair assumption to make because I've personally got access to Windows 7 through Volume Licensing, MSDN and TechNet Plus (basically all the legal ways you can download it) and they give you the serial codes for each version/architecture and it's all very clear for which version it will work with (for MSDN and TechNet the "Keys" link is literally right next to the "Download link") However, to answer the actual question, unlike Vista, Windows 7 uses the same codes for both 32-bit and 64-bit discs. ZX81 ^talk 05:01, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Bit Torrent automatic quitting

In BitTorrent there’s an option to quit when downloads have completed. I want to know whether there is any way in which I can make BitTorrent quit automatically when the downloads haven’t completed, but the downloading has stopped because of the scheduler. Thanks in advance! 117.194.231.6 (talk) 10:15, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

How to become a good (PHP) programmer?

As of now, I can write web applications with PHP skript and mysql database that are only a tiny bit complex, say only 5 tables and 10 pages. The way it is written is probably amateurish, with more number of functions than needed etc. It would be nice if I could write complex applications. Could you please say what theoretical and practical stuff I need to learn / do in order to become a good programmer?.

The only way to improve as a programmer, like all other things in life, is to do more of it. Jump into a larger project, something you don't quite understand. There are also books that talk about coding in general and aim to sharpen your abilities. I have not read any of them, personally. I have heard that Code Complete is considered quite good. But others will have their own opinions on that. In terms of theoretical things, understanding how to use arrays and classes helps a lot; understanding how to use PHP in conjunction with Javascript is rather important to many pages these days. Again, it is better to have a project in mind than to just read the manual page, of course. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:18, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

It's a much commoner mistake to have too few functions than too many, so you're off to a good start! Sr. 98 is correct, though: practice is the way to go. Read a little, code a little, repeat. --Sean 17:45, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Football Manager 2010

What specs would I need on a laptop/desktop to run the new Football Manager game with all leagues and maximum database and with high performance? How much would such a computer cost? 81.134.2.136 (talk) 11:43, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

The specs are:

Intel CPU - Pentium 4 3.0GHz
AMD CPU - Athlon 64 4000+
Nvidia Graphics Card - Geforce 7600 GT 256MB
ATI & Intel Graphics Card - Radeon X1800 Series 256MB
RAM - 1.5 GB
Hard Disk Space - 2.5 GB
Direct X - 9

Apparently... more than I suspected for a management game. The 3 gig pentium 4 is a bit more demanding that I expected, but the graphics card isn't particularly cutting edge. You could purchase the parts from reputable online stores and build yourself a desktop computer that knock that game out of the park for about (excluding monitor and/or mouse etc.) £450. I would have suggested a ballpark laptop figure if you are buying one of £400-600. Use google to convert that to dollars if you live across the pond. SGGH ^ping! 12:21, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Are these not the minimum requirements? I'm talking about using the maximum capacity of the game and I suspect it would require a lot more than 256Mb RAM. Where did you get this information? 81.134.2.136 (talk) 15:29, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the IP's right. Based on personal experience, FM manager games "work"at lower memory, but few people will put up with 10mins loading each 30 mins game-time for long. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 17:50, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the RAM mentioned refers to the vidoe adapter. --Phil Holmes (talk) 21:58, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Reformatted for clarity. 1.5GB of RAM is recommended. 218.25.32.210 (talk) 03:55, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

How to protect a picture II

Follow-up question to: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing#How_to_protect_a_picture. OK, it is clear that you cannot protect a picture against being copied. However, what about embedding something in the picture, so that you'll know if someone copied it and uploaded it somewhere else? That wouldn't work against "print screen", but it would work against the casual user. I am asking not for commercial purposes, but for privacy purposes. My intention is not to protect my multi-media, but to avoid that someone take my picture from a social networking site and mess with it. 80.58.205.37 (talk) 11:50, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

You mean a watermark? SGGH ^ping! 12:22, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

No, I think they mean some kind of tracking device, so you could see who was using it. There is no such thing, sorry. There are invisible digital watermarks (like Digimarc), which are like regular watermarks but are invisible—that's about as close as it comes. Such a file will not report back to you though if it is being used and abused. Again, if you care about the privacy... don't upload it. You have no real control once it is out there in the world—it is easily copyable, editable, and so forth. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:59, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Also, you can use services like Tineye to find where your pictures are being used 212.140.174.46 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:47, 3 November 2009 (UTC).

Will Tineye work if the photo is modified? That seems to be part of the assumption in the query. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:37, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

In my experience, Tineye will find pictures even when they are substantially different. The limiting factor seems to be the size of the Tineye index.212.140.174.46 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:27, 4 November 2009 (UTC).

The DRM article is littered with the corpses of failed attempts at exactly the kind of thing you're trying to do, worked on by billion-dollar corporations for decades. It can't be done. Your best bet is to have anyone you wish to view the media but not share it sign a non-disclosure agreement, come into a room carrying no electronic devices, view the media, and then leave. Even that method has holes. Your worst bet is to put the image on social media sharing sites. --Sean 17:53, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Why the Sandy Berger reference? Not familiar with this, and skimming the article I didn't find anything... --Ouro (blah blah) 07:31, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

The scenario I described would be vulnerable to a Sandy Berger-style stuff-the-documents-down-the-pants maneuver. --Sean 14:30, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

How to download emails to HD from Windows Live Hotmail free account

I've searched on the web for this information and I've only found webpages that say this is possible even for the free account - they do not give step by step details, possibly because this has only become available recently. I use Windows Live Hotmail online - I might have dowbloaded and installed something relating to this but if so it does not make itself known. I am using WinXP Sp3 and IE8. So how do I actually do it please? I found something that said you should click on "Account", but I cannot find "Account" anywhere. Thanks. 78.151.90.163 (talk) 13:00, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

You can setup Outlook Express or any other e-mail program to download e-mail from your Hotmail inbox. If you want the e-mail to remain on the website, you must check the "Leave a copy of messages on server" option, otherwise the e-mails will be removed from the website during the download. --Bavi H (talk) 02:07, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Do HP printers refuse to print when the HP ink cartridges are past a pre-set date?

I know this happens with Epson cartridges, but does something similar happen with HP? I refill my cartridges myself. The printer is from a few years ago. I'm very experienced in overcoming various error messages (blinking lights to be more accurate). But I wonder if there is something beyond this. I do not think the older HP cartridges have chips in them, but maybe a date could be coded into the pattern of electrical contacts for example. 78.151.90.163 (talk) 13:38, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure about this? Printers generally have no knowledge of the date. My understanding of the Epson cartridges was that some of them counted squirts of ink and when the cartridge ought to be empty then they stopped firing regardless. (This is all unsubstanciated rumour). -- SGBailey (talk) 16:45, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

How do I transfer my computer's data when I get a new one?

This is a really basic question I'm sure for you guys but it's not for me. I have a somewhat older computer (c. 2004ish? can't remember). I'm running window XP, have 6 gigs (I think), and 520 megs on a Dell Dimension 2400. If I get a new computer, how do I get all my programs and data onto that new computer which will probably run Windows 7? Do I need an external device to transfer it? How do I actually do it? Spoonfeeding required. Thanks in advance.--162.84.163.33 (talk) 13:50, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

If you're asking how to move such stuff as already installed Windows software, the simple answer is that you can't. You can give it a go, and some bits might work, but finding out which they are and deleting the rest will take you longer than it would just to reinstall. If you have kept all your "data" (word processing files, mail, etc) on a separate logical drive, then you could use Clonezilla or similar to copy it all onto something external and capacious and then to copy from that into the new computer. -- Hoary (talk) 14:34, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

As said above, most "native" Windows apps cannot be simply copied, they must be re-installed on the new computer. For the rest (data, documents, media files etc):

• If you have a DVD burner, the simplest solution is to burn two DVDs and copy the data from them into the new computer
• You could buy or borrow and USB stick or external hard drive
• If you have a home network, you could "share" the hard disk on the old computer and access it from the new computer
• Assuming the computers are not laptops, you could physically put the hard drive from the old computer into the new one. This is not very complicated, and someone else can probably give you a link on how to do it, though it might be compatibility issues (but I would not expect there to be). In this case you wouldn't have to copy the data (though you might want to for security or practical reasons), the old disk would simply show up as D: or E: or something on the new computer.

As for the specific copying, you open Windows Explorer and drag-and-drop all the contents you want to keep from the old drive into the new one (for DVDs it may be slightly different to write to the DVD, but exactly the same to copy from it). This can be very slow for many files but is much easier than the more complicated methods of moving the entire partition. Jørgen (talk) 17:37, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

As for what to copy; unless you have stuck stuff in unusual places, copy everything in "My Documents". If you are someone who saves photos, documents, etc. to the desktop, don't forget those too. You might also want to consider copying your internet favorites, emails, email contacts. Also track down stuff you have downloaded (especially things you paid for). Astronaut (talk) 00:41, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

If you only have 6ish GB of data, its probably easiest is to get a USB stick (8GB or 16GB) and use that as the transfer medium. More elegant would be to set both computers up on the network and simply copy data across - with Linux and scp or rsync, that would be trivial. There are scp clients for Windows (see puTTY), but I don't know if there is easy way of getting the server (remote) site to work under Windows. Or switch to Apple - apparently Apple offers file transfer from a PC to a new Apple as a free service (but you need to take it to a shop). One of the less visible, but more impressive features of Apple's line is the ability to automatically move all user data from an old to a new Mac - when I got my last Mac, it told me to plug a Firewire cable into both machines, and some x minutes later, all the stuff MacOS-X could know about was copied over - including payware (Wolfenstein and Warcraft-III). I only had to reinstall the Linuxy Fink that lived outside the normal MacOS-X world in its own top level directory hierarchy. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:21, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

server adminstration under linux for beginners

Basically a windows user and i'm largely a web designer. I will most likely have to co-administer a web server running linux soon. Out of curiousity I tried linux as desktop on a few occasions over the years only to go back to windows. I am being given a windows machine and im thinking of installing cygwin to learn linux commands since I forgot them. I have never administered a web server under any OS. Please say how I go about it?.

I wouldn't install cygwin for this task, as cygwin runs daemons (apache et al) as windows services, and the interface there is rather Windows specific (and a bit annoying), and I don't think it'd really help you prepare for maintaining a linux machine - and it's poor preparation for installing and removing software, managing logs, or manipulating startup/shutdown etc. Rather than Cygwin I'd install linux on the machine properly (ubuntu linux is popular and user friendly, but you should check which distribution is run by the machine you'll be managing, as redhat/fedora type machines do some things differently from debian/ubuntu type ones). You could (if you're really pushed for machines) put Linux into a virtual machine (VM ware etc.), but again you'd have some issues with bridging the network between the windows host and the linux VM, and so again you're doing work that doesn't simulate the task you want. It's likely that the server will run Apache (or maybe Websphere), so you really need to know the ins-and-outs of its config (particularly if you're used to IIS). Beyond that you'll find any number of online tutorials (but search for "red hat system administrators guide" or "ubuntu..." rather than just linux). The book "Unix System Administration Handbook" by Nemeth, Snyder, Seebass, and Hein is a decent introduction (but it's a bit shallow). I'd strongly recommend maintaining a machine running the same OS version and variant as the production machine, so you can mess around on that without fear of breaking the live site - if you only have the live machine, you'll be (rightly) scared of doing anything on it. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:19, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

You could install some flavor of GNU/Linux as an alternative to Windows, selectable via grub on boot-up. (I assume that your new computer, like most, has a ridiculously large hard drive. If your hard drive, like mine, seems to have been designed for storing pirated movies, a second OS won't cause any strain.) -- Hoary (talk) 14:39, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Frozen computer screens

I have a couple of pages on my computer that are frozen to the point of not responding to any commands. I can't close them at all. I can minimize them but they won't go away. I have tried turning the computer on an off, unplugging it and plugging it back in, doing everything I know how to do but I can't close the screens no matter what. They have been on for two days. What do I do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.166.96.156 (talk) 15:55, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean by pages? Do you mean windows? What do the windows (or whatever) look like? Do they have text or images in them? When you say you turned the computer on and off, do you mean that you shut down the operating system? When you turned it on again, when did the windows/pages reappear? -- BenRG (talk) 16:18, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure that you really shut down the OS and restarted it? Perhaps you only went into hibernation mode (where the computer actually is off, but the contents of the RAM are saved to the hard drive, and restored afterwards)? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:56, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Could these "pages" be generated by the monitor itself? Try turning your monitor/screen off and back on again.–RHolton≡– 05:24, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

CD/DVD Tray not opening.

I have a Dell C521 desktop about 3 years old and just out of warranty (Boo-hoo) which has suddenly developed the above problem - but not all the time. It plays and records fine but as before, it sometimes won't open. I have read on other pages how to stick a straightened paper clip through the tiny hole and push gently - but that doesn't work for me. So, given I use the CD/DVD facility quite a lot, do I have to replace it, and if so, will my PC recognise the new one or do I need software to make it so? And if I take the faulty one to my local PC Spares Shop (say Maplins UK) will they be able to supply a like for like player, or must I go back to Dell? Thanks. 92.8.6.118 (talk) 18:54, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Essentially all desktop optical drives are the same size and shape, and fit into the same size hole, so a cheap replacement (which should cost about £20) should fit fine. If your Dell desktop is anything like mine, actually getting the old one out might be more of a challenge than on a generic PC (I had to pull all kinds of funny little levers and remove the plastic fascia plate to get the darn thing out). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:03, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

The drive will come with its own software drivers. Your regular software will recognize it. It is probably not worth trying to repair the old one. You can get internal CD-R/DVD-R drives for very cheap these days. Installation is not very hard, as far as hardware goes—it is all standardized. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:24, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

File folder read as a file

Hi, my USB stick has many folders on it, one of which computers now think are a file and ask what program to open it with. I think this occured when pulling my USB out of a computer without using the Safely Remove Hardware thing. Is there anyway of making computers realise it is a folder or should I just delete it? I can't remember how important the contents are as I don't really know whats in there. Thanks. 86.138.158.223 (talk) 21:31, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

It almost certainly really is a file. You can get this kind of thing if you execute a command like copy foo u:\bar where bar is a folder, and you expect to end up with a file called u:\bar\foo. But if there isn't a folder called u:\bar (it's called something else, or it's been deleted) then you'll end up making a file called u:\bar that contains the same thing as foo. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:36, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Try opening it in 7zip —Preceding unsigned comment added by .isika (talk • contribs) 21:39, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

mod_wsgi not loading in Apache

So I downloaded mod_wsgi for Apache (an odd .so file), renamed it to mod_wsgi.so, and placed it in the modules folder (the proper place, on Windows (which I'm running)). To activate it (it's apparently not activated by just being in the folder), I'm supposed to go into the httpd configuration file in the conf folder, where I should put the command LoadModule wsgi_module modules/mod_wsgi.so which loads it. Note that this is exactly how the others were loaded in the same httpd conf file. Now save, and restart the server to see the changes... and I get this error: "The requested operation has failed!". Now I comment out the LoadModule wsgi_module modules/mod_wsgi.so line that I added... and it works like a charm (but with the obvious side effect that the module isn't loaded).

What am I doing wrong? What should I be doing to make it work? Thanks, [flaminglawyer] 22:22, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Make sure you have exactly the version of mod_wsgi for your particular version of Apache; Apache is all too willing to barf chunks when it encounters a plugin that was built for a different version. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:29, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I downloaded something mod_wsgi's list of downloads saying it was for "(Win32/Apache 2.2/Python 3.1)". I'm running 32-bit Win, Apache 2.2, and Python 3.0. Installing Python 3.1 right now, seeing if it helps. [flaminglawyer] 22:58, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

3.1.1 installed, now it produces no errors on loading! Now to figure out the virtualhost things... *sigh* [flaminglawyer] 23:24, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Logout/logoff folder or script or equiv?

On Windows, is there a mechanism to force a local script or folder of commands to be executed during logoff, comparable to what happens in StartMenu/Programs/Startup?

I think that what's needed for my office could be accomplished with a .bat file, but one of the requirements is to run one of the MSOffice modules, which in turn requires interacting with the user, waiting for him to finish, save the file, exit the program, etc. So, such a file or script has to be in the right place in the logoff/shutdown sequence where such interaction is still permitted.

(In fact, what would be ideal is to prompt the user for whether he still needs to run the exit program (it only has to be run once a day), and skip it if not, but that kind of scripting is likely beyond what I can do. I know I can prompt the user with echo, but don't have a clue how to get a response and test it in a .bat file...)

This is WinXpPro, if it makes a difference.

Any advice? Thanks! --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 23:27, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I have not tried this, and so am not sure it will work, but this problem is described here with a solution. There seem to be other options via a Google search on windows "shut down" script. --Phil Holmes (talk) 14:55, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

November 4

Valid hexadecimal HTML web colors invalidated by trademark

Someone told me there are certain web colors which can't be used for making an HTML webpage by entering hexadecimal web colors because they have been color trademarked by Microsoft. Is this true? The article web colors appears to not state this, or if it does, I clearly missed it.--128.54.238.26 (talk) 06:02, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Not sure about that, but colors have been involved in trademark lawsuits. [12] bibliomaniac15 06:21, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I was well aware of that, but anyway to find out if a) Microsoft specifically trademarked colors and b) are those trademarked colors invalid as web colors (for example, if you enter them you wouldn't be sued for trademark infringement because they would not even show in the browser as the hex color you entered)?--128.54.238.26 (talk) 06:25, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

The claim that once a colour (or anything, really) has been patented it can't be used elsewhere is completely bogus. A trademark protects the mark of the trade - every trademark has a relevant scope, it maybe the Cadbury purple for confectioneries or yellow for school buses, but none of this matters if you merely want to paint your house with that colour. Unless you are building a website with the intent of passing off (a real tort) as another company or being too similar to another company's trademark (definition of "too similar" isn't always clear) there isn't any reason why the law would stop you from using any colour. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:44, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

If you had a web site selling 'Microcomputers' and put it in the same font and colours as Microsoft, or otherwise made you site otherwise look very like a Microsoft site then they would have a valid case against you Dmcq (talk) 11:03, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like total B.S. to me. It would be legally unenforceable to have certain colors off limits for web browsers at a technical level, and practically pointless if not counterproductive. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:38, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

You cannot trademark, copyright, or patent a color. You can trademark the use of color. For example, I worked on a project that wanted to use a lower case sans-serif T in the logo. Blue Cross/Blue Shield stepped in and said they wouldn't complain if and only if we didn't make the lower case T blue, which would be too similar to their use of a blue +. -- kainaw™ 14:02, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you all. I thought this was BS when I first heard it hence why I went to the Ref Desk here. It is sad that someone who claims to know so much about computers passes this off as true.128.54.238.26 (talk) 17:51, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Cheapest ethernet device?

What's the cheapest thing you can buy that has an ethernet port, a few I/O lines and is programmable?

New device? Maybe an Arduino with Ethernet shield (or make your own from AVRs). As for old devices, you could find a junker PC with onboard Ethernet port and use the parallel port as I/O lines... --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:38, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Arduinos are a little pricey. A Pic based solution would probably be cheaper. This one is the cheapest ready/made solution I can find. APL (talk) 17:16, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

(Or if you want a little less do-it-yourself, and a little more finished-solution, you might look at Plug computers. The SheevaPlug looks interesting.) APL (talk) 17:18, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Menu with back arrows, etc. disappeared on AOL

I was using AOL when suddenly that little menu below the main menu - the one with back arrows and the search window - disappeared, and the window for website got bigger. How do I keep this from happening again? Sorry if you can't understand this, I can't, either. :-(209.244.187.155 (talk) 14:29, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Wayback machine for TV programs

Is there any wayback machine for TV programs? 80.58.205.37 (talk) 16:14, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Sadly no. There are various groups on the Internet that specialize in the illegal trade of old, mildly obscure television shows,(Find them on BitTorrent, Usenet, and IRC fserves.) but if you want to stay on the up-and-up, you're stuck renting DVDs. Try Netflix. APL (talk) 17:22, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

usb is out of order

My usb is out of order .Its font portion (that is inserted into cpu )is loose,that is it frealy moves up and down .How can i get my data from it. --True path finder (talk) 18:32, 4 November 2009 (UTC) mks