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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)

For one thing, try some other languages besides PHP, not because PHP is so bad, but because having experience in lots of languages will deepen your understanding. Thedailywtf.com is a fun place to see crazy errors that inexperienced programmers (a lot of them PHP programmers) make. It's possible that reading that site for a while will give you ideas of how things go wrong and what kinds of stuff to avoid. Finally, spend some time studying good code and getting a sense of what holds it together. I don't know whether MediaWiki is an example of good code, but it's a large PHP application that is pretty significant. Maybe someone else can suggest alternatives. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 01:50, 5 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).

Of course the database is also only ever going to be limited to the publicly accessible internet too. Even if it archives all that (which is obviously impossible), if someone is using copies of your picture in a nationwide advertising campaign in Nepal, printing it on T-shirts in China or it's in a TV show in Argentina you'll never know unless someone uploads something displaying your image on the internet Nil Einne (talk) 17:13, 5 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)

If the printer is connected to your computer by USB (or even parallel port), and you have drivers and bidirectional communication working there's no reason it can't know the date. However more likely the computer knows the date and refuses to print if the catridge has expired (so the printer itself doesn't really 'know the date' per se). The expiration date is contained in the chip which many catridges now have. Either way you can I presume hack the drivers to report a false date or in the second case to ignore the expiration date. However I saw something in the references which suggests some printers mark the catridge as bad (or whatever) so it can no longer be used without a chip resetter so you have to realise this before you first use it or your SOL. From a quick glance at these sources, it appears something like this does happen. [1] [2] [3]. It appears some printers even with the chipped catridges with expiration date do allow you to print, they just warn you. Also as you mentioned, chipped catridges also stop working when they are supposed to be 'empty'. I believe some also do other things to try and prevent refiling. What precisely your printer does will depend on the specific model and ink catridge I presume. Personally I prefer the mid range (e.g. IP4x00 line) Canon printers because of the individual ink tanks and they don't tend to be as bad (IMHO) as HP and Epson (for example they were unchipped for quite a while although my IP4300 is and they have been chipped for a while now) Edit: Looking more closely at the refs, it appears I was partially wrong. Some printers do evidentally have a battery to keep the date internally so you can't just fool it with the driver. I didn't look in detail but I presume this date is set by the drivers, but only forwards. (Although I wonder what happens if someone sets their date to bet 2020 or something and then finds their printer can't print again...) Interesting enough it appears the battery is essential in some in other words they aren't (or weren't since it's from 2005) capable of getting the date from the computer and using internal power for this. Maybe the date in the printer is set from factory, who knows, I'm not really that interested it just reenforces my believe on the evils of HP. From what I can tell from a quick Google, Canon doesn't yet do this shit, in fact I'm not even sure if Epson does [4] (and one of the earlier links) although they have other issues). P.P.S. If your printer accepts standard PS files and doesn't need special drivers then obviously getting the date from the computer is not a plausible solution Nil Einne (talk) 16:40, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

After buying some new printer cartridges my printer still did not work. But after I had cleaned the electrical contacts to the cartridge inside the printer it did work. (Note - never scrub the ink jets on the cartridge - they are very delicate). So my suspicion is probably wrong. Thanks. 78.147.8.170 (talk) 13:08, 8 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)

Personally I would recommend the entire Documents and Settings folder of Windows XP. In other words all users and all data in them. This should ensure you get program data you might want like bookmarks. Some savegames too. However if you do have games (with only 6gb I would guess no), you'll need to take more care since some old games unfortunately still store data in the program directory. There are a few programs too but it's not that common they have anything important (some P2P programs are an exception) unless you saved stuff in odd places. With only 6gb I recommend you just copy everything just in case. If you're using Explorer I recommend you turn off the Hide options in Tools, folder options, view and in particular make sure you display hidden files etc. Perhaps leave out the page file, and if it exists the hibernation file. Unless you're planning to get a netbook or laptop with solid state drive, the 6gb is only likely to be a small percentage of your new HDD so your unlikely to have to worry about disc space. Nil Einne (talk) 16:10, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

You may be interested in the Windows Easy Transfer for transferring from Windows XP (32 bit) to Windows 7. 12.165.250.13 (talk) 18:18, 6 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)

The Linux system adminstrator's guide used to be considered pretty good, though it's incredibly old by now. Might still be ok to help get started. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 22:43, 4 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)

Got it -- thanks! Once again it's the case that knowing what something is properly called makes it much easier to search for! --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 23:30, 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. [5] 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)

There is a lot of confusion when it comes to trademark laws (not encouraged by many popular press articles that happily report that company X has trademarked the color orange, and don't really make clear that this is only in the context of the telecom industry, for example), patent laws, and other intellectual property issues. The underlying concepts that govern them are not really that hard to understand, but you have to make a little effort of it to really "get" them. (For those who would like to "get" them, I recommend the work of Lawrence Lessig, which is very readable, interesting, and clear.) --Mr.98 (talk) 00:47, 5 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)

I've got a SheevaPlug - it works fine and is a very useful small server (with a large USB disk). But there must be things that are way cheaper than US$ 100... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:23, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know why APL thinks Arduino's are pricey. A very quick Google search turned up the Pic with an ethernet at $51 in one-off quantities. An Arduino in one-off quantities costs $26 + $15 for the Adafruit Ethernet Shield and $12 for the XPort module...$53. I'd say that that was pretty close to a dead heat! The Arduino is a much more modern system with vastly nicer tools than the ageing Pic - and I'm much happier since I decided to switch over from Pic to Arduino for all of my little embedded system projects. What I like most about the Arduino is that the Atmel processor it's based around can be purchased for $5 even in on-off numbers - you can use an Arduino board to program & debug the thing in a friendly manner - then take the programmed chip and solder it into your own circuit board for the actual device. It only takes a resistor and a couple of AAA batteries - no other external circuitry is needed. Hence, I can have a computerized doorbell and front-door lock for about $8. However, our OP needs to be aware that neither the Pic nor the standard low-cost Arduino has very much RAM on-board - although there is some flash memory you can also use if you're very careful about how. That means that you're unlikely to be running your web site off an Arduino! It's highly suitable for things like having it measure the conductivity of the soil in the pots of your favorite plants and emailing you when they need watering...or using it to turn lights on and off in your home via email. Of course all of these applications assume that you're moderately "handy" with soldering iron and cutters - as well as knowing your way around a C++ compiler. SteveBaker (talk) 22:52, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Where did you find the XPort for $12?

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)

You can find most stuff by typing the name of what you want followed by "rapidshare.com" with the quotes.

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

USB is a universal standard for the interface between digital components. For instance, USB cables connect printers, cameras, keyboards, music players, web cameras, etc. to computers and even to each other. I guess you mean a "USB memory stick" when you say "USB", i.e. a small memory storage device with a USB connector. Also, the CPU is the part of a computer that actually executes programs. I guess that you mean "that is inserted into the computer" rather than "that is inserted into the CPU". The CPU has no USB connector. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 18:57, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure that being pedantic about the terminology really helps anyone. It's pretty easy to see what the OP is meaning, and I doubt they appreciate the lesson in proper use of jargon. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:06, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Andreas Rejbrand is not being pedantic, just clarifying what the questioner was asking, though I agree that it is unlikely that they were asking about the bus connection to the CPU. Dbfirs 22:31, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I think pointing out the CPU unit has no USB connector is pedantic. Nobody thought it did. The meaning of that part in the original message was obvious. The entire response is just an explanation of why the terms were wrongly used and what the right terms are. That's what I would consider to be pedantic. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:19, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Mr.98, let's try to be helpful and answer the questions that users like this are really trying to ask, please. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:19, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, point taken. He didn't go on to suggest any helpful solution, did he? I hope the OP managed to recover his data. Dbfirs 20:19, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I recommend bringing it in somewhere where computers are repaired. They will be able to take a look at it and tell if you if it salvageable or not. It is hard to tell on here without a picture. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:06, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

If it really is the flash drive that is coming apart, then, yes, take it to a computer repair shop where they might be able to transfer your data onto another drive. You could try plugging it into a hub, and plugging the hub into your computer. You might be able to hold it straight long enough to copy your lost data to your computer, but if the connections inside have broken, then it is expensive (but not impossible to repair) to repair. The cost of repair might be more than the cost of a new "pen drive" but how much is your data worth? This technology is far from 100% reliable, so it is always worth keeping a backup. Don't try to write anything else to the flash drive if the connection is faulty because you might make the data harder to recover. Dbfirs 22:31, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

My bet is that if it is just the USB part of it, a place with the right tools could swap out the old one and put in a new one, at least temporarily, to get the data off the drive. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:19, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Firstly - if you get the data off this thing - then you toss it and buy a new one - OK? No trying to resurrect it later! Have you tried plugging it into a different USB port - maybe it's the connector on the computer that's broken? If the connector itself is loose when plugged into the computer - then you'd have to gently bend it back into shape - but that's exceedingly hard to do with USB connectors. If the connector is loose on the 'handle' part of the memory stick then you'll have to carefully dismantle it - look carefully where the pins on the connector join up with the tiny circuit board inside. You'll need a steady hand and a soldering iron to carefully join it back together to make a good electrical connection. If those things are not possible for you (or not working) - then perhaps you have a still-usable intermittent connection. I suggest you try to beg, borrow or buy a USB extension cable. Plug one end into the PC and the other into your USB memory stick. Now you can rest it on something soft (maybe use a piece of modelling clay or something) and you should be able to carefully jiggle it around until the connections meet up and computer recognises it without gravity interfering. The moment it works, get all the files you can off of it - because you may never have another chance! SteveBaker (talk) 02:24, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I had a USB drive which worked if you pulled it up/held it in a certain way. You may want to try wiggling it around while plugged in and see if this works before anything else although it depends on what precisely the problem is which isn't clear Nil Einne (talk) 17:31, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

BT Home Hub

hi,

i recently got a new BT Home Hub when i switched to BT's broadband but have been having a few problems with it. This has been in the form of very slow speeds, compared to my previous Belkin wireless router, and often an inability to 'find' the router let alone connect to it, even when the laptop is directly next to the router. Is this anything to do with the 'channels' or interference from other stuff (the neigbours have home hubs too) and will changing to a different 'channel' help at all?

thanks, --217.44.29.136 (talk) 20:01, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, your problems could be due to using the same frequency channel as a neighbor, and switching to a different channel could help. See 802.11#Channels_and_international_compatibility. While there are about a dozen channels (depending on country), adjacent channels overlap, so you want to be 5 or so channels apart from your neighbors. You could start by trying 1, 6, and 11 and seeing if any of those works better. Those three channels do not overlap with each other, so people tend to pick one of those three. -- Coneslayer (talk) 20:31, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks this has solved the problem :) --217.44.29.136 (talk) 20:58, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Netgear WGT624v3 wireless router keeps disconnecting

Hey guys I have a wireless Netgear WGT624v3 and it keeps disconnecting. Would changing the router's channels fix it? The only other wireless thing in my house is my phones, which is on the main floor and the router in the basement.--Loans979 (talk) 21:10, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I refer you to the previous question. In short, yes, try it. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:17, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Is it possible to release/cancel OpenMP barrier?

Hi! Is it possible to end the OpenMP barrier? I have bunch of threads waiting on the barrier, meanwhile other threads are doing computation. If some runnig thread find the solution, i want to send some signal to waiting threads to cancel the barrier, resume and/or exit ... Is it possible at all? After exhausting search on internet and books I'm still unable to answer this question ... Thanks for help! Lukipuk (talk) 22:53, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

RAM prices

RAM seems to be getting more expensive every day, and this has been going on for months. Any idea what's going on? Artificial shortage? Correction after a glut? Will we return to the days of cheap ram anytime soon? About a year ago I bought a pair of 2gb ddr2 desktop dimms for $20 each shipped, and now they're at least 2x that much. But what I really want is 4gb or 8gb modules, which are much more expensive than 2gb modules on a per-gb basis as well as per module. Now that 8gb has replaced 4gb as the bleeding edge, will the $/gb of 4gb modules approach equality with 2gb modules anytime soon? 69.228.171.150 (talk) 22:37, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

From my experience, RAM prices are one of those things which fluctate quite a lot over the medium term (and even over the short term to some extent). In terms of the current situation, I believe that because of the recession and other factors, there was quite a big glut at the end of last year. This was met, as you would expect and as they do all the time, by a cut in production by most of the major manufacturers which eventually brings the price back up. See this ref [6] for example.

You should also bear in mind DDR2 is being replaced by DDR3. Depending on where you live, the prices may be close to equality or 25-50% more at most. Eventually DDR3 will be cheaper then DDR2 basically everywhere. I don't personally expect DDR2 to become very expensive, history with DDR and SDRAM suggests to me this is unlikely. It's going up now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it comes down again close to the previous lows (although also wouldn't be surprised if it takes a year or more for this to happen). However the gap between DDR3 and DDR2 will widen so you'd start to wonder whether the upgrade is worth it (although at 2xUS$20 and since I presuming you are living and earning money in the US it may not seem like enough to worry about).

For comparison I bought my 2x1GB of DDR in around mid 2006 (unfortunately just after prices had started to rise here in NZ). DDR2 prices had already started to overtake DDR but I already had my motherboard etc. In mid 2008 prices were significantly lower (but DDR2 was way cheaper particularly considering the 2gb sticks). However the prices were quite a bit higher then US$20 so this isn't a great comparison (since at that level it's likely difficult for them to get that much cheaper due to various fixed costs, increased capacity sticks takes over from that but as I mention later this is unlikely for DDR2).

As hinted at earlier I doubt 4gb DDR2 modules will ever be available at a decent price. For starters, AFAIK these are all ECC sticks. Producing non ECC sticks may be possible (I'm not sure, I presume at least it will need higher density DDR2 chips which one is going to bother to make) but you can bet no one is going to bother. I don't believe 8gb DDR2 sticks even exist but if they do they're likely to remain very expensive (does your motherboard really support 16gb? I doubt it if it's a typical desktop motherboard). It's similar with DDR and 2gb modules and SDRAM and 1gb modules (actually I'm not sure if the later exist but I believe so). However I'm confident in saying DDR3 will definitely have cheap 4gb modules, in fact they're likely to become the cheapest/gb as happened with 2gb vs 1gb for DDR2 etc. (Whether there will be 8gb non ECC modules, I don't know, my guess is no based again on history.)

If you really need 8gb RAM, your best bet is to use 4x2gb presuming your motherboard supports it. Else move to a DDR3 platform at some stage. Given such extreme requirements (is it for professional usage?), you may also want to consider whether a workstation with ECC RAM and motherboard may be a better bet in the future as well.

Nil Einne (talk) 15:30, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, my question was about the pricing situation in general, but the initial situation that led to the question was about upgrading a rack full of servers at work, so the cost change is substantial. 4gb ddr2 modules exist (including for desktops and laptops), though they are a bit uncommon and there is a moderate cost premium. 8gb ddr2 ecc registered server modules exist but are ultra expensive (something like: 2gb=$50, 4gb=$120, 8gb=$500 for servers; 2gb=$40 and 4gb=$150+ for laptops). An eventual migration to ddr3 is inevitable but my hope is that this ddr2 stuff still has some life left in it. Thanks. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 18:44, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

November 5

Mpeg vs .avi

What is better quality when ripping off a dvd. .mpeg or .avi? Also, does changing format from .avi to .mpeg assuming you always pick the highest quality affect the quality from avi to mpeg?

Reason why I am asking is because I am attempting to take clips from avi high quality rips and converting the clips to .FLV. when i convert the .avi to clipped .flv the audio and video are out of sync. But, if i convert the .avi to mpeg then create the .flv clip the audio and video issue goes away but I want the highest quality clips. Thanks 142.176.13.22 (talk) 01:39, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

You have to understand first that .mpeg or .avi is just a container. They do not determine the video quality. What determines the video quality is the video codec used inside the file.F (talk) 03:02, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

^^That was quite informative and clarified a lot of things. Thanks for the links. I'm still curious on why an .avi container to .flv does not sync audio yet a conversion from .mpeg(from the original .avi converted to mpeg) to .flV works fine. I figure it has to do with how the audio and video streams behind the container or the converter I am using sucks. Thanks for your information! 142.176.13.22 (talk) 04:06, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, converting between video formats is, well, still one of those "feels like we are in the 1990s" kinds of technologies. There are a million formats, a million options, and little easy way to distinguish between them other than trial-and-error. In my experience. What are you using to convert to FLV? That might be the first place to start looking when it comes to figuring out what the problem is, and what the options are. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:33, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Help with javascript please? highlighting links in menus.

Hi, i am trying to make a page on my website a little better with some javascript. I am trying to apply highlighting of links (blue) on mouse hover, and when the user clicks on the link i want it to turn a different (green) color and stay that color. As you will see by my code, i have accomplished this, but if you click a link you will notice the other links are no longer blue on hover. Why is this? is it because i used the script to make the style white, and that over-rides any other styles? Any help in fixing this little bug would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

My code is here: http://pastebin.com/m20258cb7

Thanks again!

137.81.112.220 (talk) 04:08, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you need JavaScript for that. You can just use CSS: [7].--Drknkn (talk) 05:37, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Using CSS is so much easier to achieve that than Javascript. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:02, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

They know how to use :hover, as is clear from the code. That is not the issue at hand, read it more carefully. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:46, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it seems to involve the menu1, menu2, menu3 turning it white code (if you comment it out, it works more like you want it to). I recommend, just creating a class called menulink_clicked, and then change the class of the clicked one to that (this.className='menulink_clicked'), and the other ones to regular menulink again. That way you aren't actually mucking across with the classes' stylesheet directly. I am not really sure why it is eliminating the :hover instructions you have already put in there (you don't modify them), but it seems to be ignoring them after those lines of code. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:46, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

What's happening is that initially the elements are being colored by the background-color CSS property cascading down to them from A.menulink:hover, but when you assign to that property explicitly you give the element its own individual style, which will always override the cascaded value. Your best choice is to do the class manipulation suggested by Mr. 98. If you really don't want to do that, you must re-set the style properties for each link that wasn't clicked on and handle the hovering/onMouseOver yourself, which will obviously be a pain. --Sean 17:35, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay so heres the deal. In honesty a friend helped me code most of what was in that page, although i have had programming and do understand mostly how it works. I attempted to make the modification suggested (menulink_clicked class) however its not exactly working as i had thought. can someone have a look and correct my errors please? :)

http://pastebin.com/m5a4111d4

137.81.112.176 (talk) 20:54, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Nevermind! i fixed it! thanks!!

Resolved

137.81.112.176 (talk) 21:13, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

iPhone v AppleMac Address Book

When I try to sync the Address Book with my iPhone, all the contacts are added in duplicate. Why should this happen please? Can I delete the entire contents (only) on my iPhone Contacts, and re-sync, if so how? Any advice would be appreciated please. Thanks in anticipation.--88.110.20.147 (talk) 08:34, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I had this problem whe I was syncing between my Mac, PC, iPod touch, WinMo smartphone, and Google... somewhere along the line, something in the name or other key information was changed and I was left with duplicate (and at one point triplicate) entries for every contact. The only effective way to fix this is to make a backup of your address book in one location, delete ALL contacts from every other location and disable syncing from the "parent" location you choose. Then get your address book sorted out, enable syncing, and wait a while for your "new" address book to propegate across devices. I also make a backup of my address book fairly frequently so if this happens, I can restore it in a few minutes. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 18:04, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for this idea, will give it a go.--88.110.20.147 (talk) 21:06, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

How to get Wikipedia?

I want to use whole of Wikipedia offline. I thought of downloading Wikipedia (as a whole, not as PocketWikipedia). But is is huge. So, is there a way to get it on a DVD Set or CD Set? (I am ready to pay the price, if required). My Thanks in advance. Anirban16chatterjee (talk) 09:19, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

The closest thing I could find is the Wikipedia for schools initiative, which covers about 5000 articles. Given the size of Wikipedia, downloading anything close to the whole encyclopedia would take a large number of DVDs. — QuantumEleven 12:02, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

You might also want to consider how up-to-date the info will be and how many of the articles will be in a vandalised state when the offline copy is made. Unless there is a really compelling reason to buy many DVDs, stick with the online version. Astronaut (talk) 12:32, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Wasn't there an article in the Wikipedia namespace that talked about the longterm possibilities of a print Wikipedia? I think I remember reading something like that, but I can't seem to find it right now. —Akrabbim^talk 12:46, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you mean Wikipedia:1.0? -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:35, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the one I read a few years ago. Still inching forward I guess —Akrabbim^talk 13:40, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

It's actually not the sort of thing that I think collaborative editing is good for. It's the sort of thing that a centralized editorial staff could get together in few months. But for a bunch of volunteers... it's gonna be tough slogging, even if the content wasn't itself changing on a regular basis. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:54, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

3498 volumes 18 stacks

The problem with a print Wikipedia is that it would consume literally an entire wall full of shelves (see image above - and note the scroll-bar! There is more off to the right there!). Similarly, with 4.4Gbytes of article text plus an even greater number of talk pages, WP: pages and photos, it's not going to fit on any kind of dismountable media - there isn't an optical disk format or a tape that could hold it all. So you're down to needing some big hard drives or a heck of a lot of flash memory. There has been at least one successful effort to boil down the essentials to something that'll fit on a CD or DVD - but the vast majority of articles are missing and the think is practically devoid of cross-links because of that - also, all of the pictures are reduced to thumbnails that you can't expand so that many important diagrams and maps are illegible. The pocket Wikipedia is a great little gadget - but again, it's missing the pictures, the Talk pages (no RefDesk!), etc. If you're willing to pay the price - buy a Kindle from Amazon. It's not an offline device - but (at least in the USA) it uses free cellular bandwidth - so you can use it anywhere where Amazon supports the service without paying any connection fees. SteveBaker (talk) 13:52, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

You can buy 3TB portable hard drives these days. One of those would hold it all I think.

Wikipedia m:data dumps are available in a bunch of formats including static html files (those are currently somewhat out of date, and don't include the pictures). The download is a few gb, which isn't that bad (you can transfer it overnight) if you have broadband. That's a compressed archive file so it needs quite a bit more hard drive space, but hard drives are quite large these days. I've been wanting to set up a mediawiki instance and a copy of wikipedia on my home computer for a while, but haven't had the time to figure out the real requirements and install all the different software needed. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 18:51, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

According to the data dump site, the June 2008 HTML data dump of the entire English Wikipedia, minus stuff intentionally left out (user data and deleted content) is 14 gigabytes. That's only about five DVDs or one-seventieth of the LaCIE USB hard drive sitting on top of my computer right now, and while it's not small enough to put in my jeans pocket (as a USB stick containing every Commodore 64 game ever commercially released would be), it's certainly small enough to fit in a bag to carry on my travels. The only downside is that even with my high-speed 2 MB/s Internet connection, downloading the entire dump will take almost two hours. JIP | Talk 21:17, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

But that 14 gigs of HTML doesn't include the pictures - only links to them. SteveBaker (talk) 21:55, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I wonder why that html dump is so big. The XML dumps, even the current ones, are much smaller than that. And enwiki probably has >50% more text now than it did in mid-2008. Still, it's not a download you'd have to do very often, and once you had it, you could share it with your friends by much faster methods (LAN, wifi, hard drives, dvd's). 14gb might barely fit on three 4.7gb dvd's and should easily fit on two 8.5gb dvd's. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 22:16, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

The OP says they want the entire enclopedia, so they probably won't be interested in this, but an alternate solution would be just to get the FA and GA articles. This would drastically shrink the size of the encyclopia and eliminate a lot of the crap. 12.165.250.13 (talk) 16:13, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Would an AM3 Quad Core AMD computer work OK with Ubuntu?

Would it just be a normal instal, or does it start getting complicated please? 92.29.76.195 (talk) 10:06, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any reason why would based solely on the CPU but the other hardware could cause issues Nil Einne (talk) 16:22, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Normal install, no big deal. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 18:51, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

vista ram

So I have windows Vista and 2 gb of ram. Why is 1 gb of ram always used up even when absolutely no programs are in use and after a fresh install? Is vista really that ram hungry that it needs a full 1gb just to run, when windows 7 seems to be working good on 512mb of ram —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.201 (talk) 12:34, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

That's absolutely right. Vista, along with all its accessory processes, normally takes up at least 1 GB of RAM. That is one of the intentions of Win7 - that it would be faster and more efficient than its bloated predecessor. —Akrabbim^talk 13:42, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

See criticism of Windows Vista. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:46, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

So if I installed Windows 7 on the same computer as my current windows vista, it wouldn't no longer use 1gb of ram it'd only use 512mb? So I'd have more free ram for programs and stuff? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.201 (talk) 15:07, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

All other things being equal, approximately yes. — QuantumEleven 16:25, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Free advertising?

My friend has a forum website that really needs members. So what is the best free or cheap way to advertise it?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 14:43, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Go to other relevant forums, put a link to it in your "sig", and post some quality things that will make others think you are someone they might want to hear more from? The problem is that there are probably a thousand other forums that do similar things -- you need to think about how you are going to let the small number (relatively speaking) of people out there who might be interested in it know that it exists and is worth their time. It is a non-trivial task for new sites in general, especially forums, which require an existing user base before they become seen as worth participating in. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:14, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I would be careful with something like that. It could easily come across as spamming. At the very least make sure you read the rules first. Better yet get somewhat established in the forum first before you change your sig. Even better, after getting established but before adding it to your sig, ask whether it will be okay in an appropriate place (don't link to the other forum, that will come across as spamming) unless of course it's clear that you shouldn't ask. Nil Einne (talk) 16:21, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

You can probably tell what is acceptable in a sig by looking at other people's sigs. --Tango (talk) 16:29, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

It depends. What's okay for someone who's been with the site for years may not be okay for someone who just joined yesterday or even a week ago. In particular, altho I neglected to mention this earlier my key point was that if you make a bunch of posts which people find unhelpful, offtopic or otherwise unwanted and it appears to them your sole point is to get more posts and you just joined and are advertising a site in your sig they're unlikely to be happy to say the least even if they don't normally care if newbies advertise sites in the signatures. Nil Einne (talk) 17:20, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I do emphasize that quality is important in such things. A small link with good posts—probably not offensive. Dumb posts, obvious spamming—not going to be effective. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:42, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I second the "reputation-based" distinction between spamming and informing. "Spam" is a tough nut to define - it's "undesirable" advertisement (whatever that means). So, if you have no reputation and you ask people to check out your cool stuff, then it probably is spam. But if Steve Baker links to his cool toys (Sorry to use you as an example), or even his commercial ventures, we might take it seriously because he's a credible, consistent contributor, and most of the time he's not trumping up his own website. When a reliable, consistent contributor does link to some external site, we take it a little more seriously than if a new guy shows up touting his own projects with every post. Then again, most mass-media advertisements are commercial endorsements from random strangers; I don't know why they work (I suspect they don't, and $385 billion worldwide are wasted each year). Nimur (talk) 18:14, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Uncompressed image file formats other than .bmp files

What other file formats are there, apart from BMP files, that are uncompressed and can be processed as a raw bit stream? I require to know the exact file structure of these formats.

The results for searching this includes:
[8], [9] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Csanghamitra (talk • contribs) 15:38, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe that, traditionally, uncompressed TIFF is the easiest uncompressed file format for developers to handle. Note that although there is an uncompressed variant of BMP, most BMP files you'll find are compressed (usually, I think, with RLE.) Similarly, some TIFF files are LZW compressed, as noted in the TIFF article. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:23, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

PS: Template:Compression formats has a whole list of image compression formats that you should go through. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:27, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

The Netpbm formats are incredibly simple. -- Coneslayer (talk) 18:25, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Seconded. I love these formats and their associated tools. —Steve Summit (talk) 23:37, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

TIFF files are commonly used by image processing people. They can store uncompressed data. PNG can store with lossless compression (but compressed), depending on whether your software tool supports this feature. Our Comparison of graphics file formats article allows you to sort by compression technique. If you're looking specifically for no compression, your options are narrowed down pretty significantly; lossless compression preserves information but is a bit more work for you as a programmer. "Anything" can be handled as a bitstream, but it sounds like you want to be able to seek to a specific pixel location without decoding any other values - that is a bitmap by definition; and you probably want a .BMP or TIFF container format. Nimur (talk) 18:02, 5 November 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Comet Tuttle (talk • contribs)

I believe that Truevision TGA(Targa) can also be handled in a uncompressed way. But, can also use RLE, so you can't depend on any given TGA being uncompressed. APL (talk) 18:45, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Linux 64 Assembler Error

I keep getting a (Error: suffix or operands invalid for `pop') for the line (pop %ebx) when I try to compile a script for linux. I looked all over the internet and most hints state that this code is incompatible with linux 64 bit assembler. So what exactly do I have to do to compile it correctly in gcc? 70.171.22.194 (talk) 17:00, 5 November 2009 (UTC)asmProgrammer

You could try pop %rbx, but I doubt that will be sufficient. Porting x86 assembly to 64 bits isn't trivial. The calling conventions are different, structure sizes and offsets are different, and you need to understand how a 32-bit quantity is being used to decide whether it should be extended to 64 bits or not. -- BenRG (talk) 17:56, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

If you post example code demonstrating the problem, we'll have some chance of being able to help you. --Sean 21:19, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Mac/Unix: Open a file from a remote server on command line

Hi all,

There is a server on my network that I have access to. If I want to copy a file to/from there, I can use scp otherserver:/path/to/file.txt file.txt. Is there any way to open up that file for editing on the command line? For instance, on my computer with TextMate installed, I can run mate file.txt. However, I cannot run mate otherserver:/path/to/file.txt. For some reason, the command tries to find a file in /Users/username/otherserver:/path/to/file.txt.

How should refer to a file on a remote server?

Thanks! — Sam 63.138.152.155 (talk) 18:53, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

If the other machine has TextMate installed and TextMate works over X11, then this will suffice:

ssh -X otherserver mate /path/to/file.txt

If not, this might do for you:

ssh otherserver vi /path/to/file.txt

If you're committed to TextMate and not doing this too often, this will work:

scp otherserver:/path/to/file.txt file.txt
mate file.txt
scp file.txt otherserver:/path/to/file.txt

If you are doing this a lot, you probably want to NFS-mount the directory containing the file you're editing:

ssh otherserver
   sudo sh -c 'echo "/path/to your-local-ip-address/255.255.255.0(rw)" >> /etc/exports'
   sudo /etc/init.d/nfsserver reload   # this will vary based on what the other machine is
   exit
sudo mkdir -p /mount/otherserver/path
sudo mount otherserver:/path /mount/otherserver/path
mate /mount/otherserver/path/file.txt

There will probably be some file permissions things that need some fiddling with. Some editors have remote-editing features built in, so maybe that's worth looking at. --Sean 20:48, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

You might find MacFUSE a useful tool. It allows you to open an SSH session and mount the remote server as a "local file" via a file-system over SSH. Then, you can use any tool on your local system to read and write the remote files as if they were local (from command line or otherwise). You can download MacFUSE and its associated tools here. Similar sshfs tools exist if your local system is running Windows or Linux or Unix. All that is required on the server is an SSH service. Nimur (talk) 00:51, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

If you're doing the editing from a Mac, check out TextWrangler and/or BBEdit; both can edit files over an sftp connection (essentially like scp). -- Speaker to Lampposts (talk) 19:17, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Help with java script (Part 2) Folding items?

You may remember my post from earlier today where i had issues with a menu highlight system using JS. Ive fixed this now thankfully, but i still need to impliment one more thing. I need to make it so that when you click each of my links, there is a function which shows the appropriate table for that specific link. I have tried to do this once before by simply googling the effect i needed, but i only managed to do strange things like unfold a table by clicking ANYWHERE on the links table, which i obviously dont want! Therefore i removed all of the extra code and decided to ask you, the pros!

What is the best way to impliment folding (hiding!) of tables until the user requests a specific table? I do want to hide all tables except the relevant one. I am including my fixed menu code for reference, with a table for an example. Thanks in advance for any help you can give!

http://pastebin.com/m1266827b

137.81.112.176 (talk) 21:22, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Easy way:

1. First, design the tables with everything maximally expanded. What would it looked like it EVERYTHING were visible?

2. Once you have that, go through and make each of those tables rows that you want to be hidden a class that has the line display: none; on them, which will make them invisible. Make sure each row has a unique id (e.g. <tr id="table_row_1">[etc.]</tr>, and so on).

3. Get a function that will show or hide elements based on their id and put it in the script tags at the top of the page.. Here is a simple one:

function showRow(id) {
	var ctl = document.getElementById(id);
	if(ctl.style.display=='none') {
		ctl.style.display='block';
	} else {
		ctl.style.display='none';
	}
}

4. Lastly, make any link that you want to expand a given row look something like this: <a href="#" onclick="showRow('table_row_5'); return false;">Click to expand table row #5</a>.

That should give you the framework for what you want; you may find you need to modify it a bit depending on the circumstances. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:50, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

If you're planning on getting more into learning Javascript, you should do yourself a favor and get a toolkit like Prototype or jQuery, which makes life enormously easier. It will allow things like, instead of numbering rows manually and mixing your Javascript with your HTML, just giving them a class like "toggleable", then in your setup code doing:

$$('tr.toggleable').each(function(el) { el.observe('click', Element.toggle) })

which says "give every table row with class 'toggleable' an on-click action that toggles its visibility". --Sean 02:09, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

What's a good definition of a .NET assembly?

I'm trying to come up with a good definition of an .NET assembly. I don't particularly care for the definition given in our article. So far, I've come up with the following (which I've gleaned from a variety of sources):

A .NET assembly is a reusable, versionable, and self-describing building block of a .NET application a collection of types and resources that forms a logical unit of functionality. It contains code in the form of Intermediate Language (IL) along with metadata about the assembly. An assembly can also contain resources used by the assembly. There are two types of assemblies: executables (EXEs) and dynamic link libraries (DLLs). An EXE is a program which can be run by the user. A DLL is a library which is dynamically linked to an executable at run-time. When an application is run, the IL code is compiled into machine language by the CLR (Common Language Runtime)'s just-in-time compiler. Although it's technically possible to create assemblies that span multiple files, in most situations an assembly is a single file.

12.165.250.13 (talk) 21:51, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

For what my opinion is worth, so far, I prefer the definition in the article. Your current first sentence is super nondescriptive. May I recommend you take this discussion to the Talk page of that article rather than the Reference Desk, which is more like a place for people to ask factual questions? Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:47, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

The official definition from the MSDN seems to be the best summary of what a .NET assembly is. You should stick to this definition and cite it as a source. Nimur (talk) 00:56, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I wanted to change our article. I'm actually answering a series of (potential) interview questions and "What is an assembly?" is the first question. I didn't like any of the definitions that I stumbled across, so I tried to write my own.

What I don't like about the article's definition is that it says "an assembly is a partially compiled code library". What does "partially compiled" mean? Does that mean that only every other line is compiled? Does it mean that some classes are compiled and others aren't? Or maybe it has something to do with partial classes? Of course, I know what it means but that's only because I already know what an assembly is. Someone who is unfamiliar with JIT compiling could easily be confused by this. The other thing I don't like is that it says an assembly is a "library". Are EXEs really considered libraries?

Anyway, here's my second stab at creating a definition:

A .NET assembly is a computer file generated by compiling source code written in a .NET programming language such as C# or Visual Basic .NET. An assembly contains both code and metadata, and can also contain resources such as text and graphics that are used by the assembly. The compiled code is in the form of Intermediate Language (IL) and cannot be executed directly. Instead, when an application is run, the IL code is compiled into machine language by the Common Language Runtime (CLR)'s just-in-time compiler. The metadata describes the assembly itself including its name, version number, classes, methods, and properties. There are two types of assemblies: executables (EXEs) and dynamic link libraries (DLLs). An EXE is a program which can be run by the user. A DLL is a library which is dynamically linked to an executable at run-time. Although it's technically possible to create assemblies that span multiple files, in most situations an assembly is a single file.

12.165.250.13 (talk) 14:44, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Upgrading to 7

My laptop is about three years old, but it has a fresh install of Vista (reformatted and reinstalled in September I think). If I upgrade to Win7, what are the downsides to doing an OS upgrade-type install, as opposed to another clean reformatting and fresh install? I'm not looking forward to another big file transfer project. —Akrabbim^talk 22:24, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, an on top upgrade install takes a long time. I have about 20GB of files on my laptop and upgrading took 5 hours. The good point is that I don't have to reinstall all the programs. A clean install is faster and may be more stable, however, you have to backup and restore your files plus reinstall everything. F (talk) 00:27, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Is there any impact on performance? —Akrabbim^talk 00:57, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

7's way better than Vista. Vista would randomly freeze for a few seconds. 7 does not have that problem. It feels smoother. F (talk) 02:08, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I know 7 is supposed to be much more efficient than Vista, I am just wondering if there would be a difference between installing over top without reformatting and a clean reinstall. —Akrabbim^talk 03:17, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't use windows but in general I've found it's preferable to do a clean install than an upgrade. If you've been using a system for a while, you've probably made some customizations, that can break assumptions used by the update procedure. Even if the upgrade doesn't fail outright, it can leave things screwed up in subtle ways. And if one reason you're leaning towards upgrading is to avoid copying your user files off your main drive and restoring them, then your backup practices are deficient and you should work on that too, since that drive will eventually crash. Restoring your files for an OS reinstall is a good opportunity to make sure that your backups actually work, and that is something to be welcomed. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 04:28, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Since the old OS in question is just two months old, it shouldn't matter that much. F (talk) 09:29, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

November 6

what is the difference between router, hub and switch

I am a student studing BE CSE... Please help me with the difference between hub,switch and router... I googled it... But couldnt get the point....

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.165.55.113 (talk) 04:47, 6 November 2009 (UTC) 

To be as simple as possible... A hub connects network connections - it is a very dumb device. A switch connects networks, relaying traffic from one to another - it is a semi-intelligent device. A router directs network traffic to where it needs to go - it is a very intelligent device. In the real world, there is pretty much no difference. Most hubs are switches. Most switches are routers. The definition all depends on what marketing was smoking behind the building that day. -- kainaw™ 04:49, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Kainaw... What is the exact thing you mentioned about semi intelligent and intelligent device... For what specific purposes we use switch and router... Please make it clear about switch and router... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.165.55.113 (talk) 05:04, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Note that what is now called a hub used to be called a repeater. (To my mind at least, "repeater" is a better term because it more accurately describes what the device does. A "hub" was simply a central point where multiple connnections occurred, and could be a repeater, router or switch.) Mitch Ames (talk) 05:33, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Mitch Ames... But could you please let me know about Switches and Routers in a better way.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atchays (talk • contribs) 05:36, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

• Hub: Connect two or more computers to each other. They all share the bandwith of the device, so if two computers are transferring a lot of data between themseleves, a third computer on that hub, talking to a fourth one would not have much bandwith.
• Switch: Connects two or more computers to each other. Does it better than the hub, and makes sure that computer 1 talking to computer 2 doesn't interfere with computer 3 talking to computer 4.
• Router: Connects one network to another network. For example a router connects a business network to the internet. It "routes" information from one network back to the same network or to any other network it is attached to depending on where the information is addressed to.

To use a postal anology, the hub is a pile of letters from which each user can grab theirs; the switch is a set of piles of letters with each user's letters separate from each others; the router is a post office. --203.202.43.54 (talk) 08:28, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Although (as most posters here have said) there's now not much difference between what switches and routers do and how they do it, historically it was always considered that a switch was a Layer 2 device, and a router Layer 3. --Phil Holmes (talk) 09:40, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Nowadays a "switch" is typically a router optimized for high-throughput LAN connections with a lot of subnets. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:18, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Missing math symbols.

When I look at Mathematical alphanumeric symbols all I see is a table of squares. Running Windows Vista and IE8, how can I display the proper symbols? I'm thinking of downloading a symbol pack or something similar. Thanks --The Dark Side (talk) 04:49, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

You'll need to install a font (or multiple fonts) with glyphs for those characters. See here for a good start. Bendono (talk) 05:11, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I downloaded the Symbola font and installed it, but I still can't see the symbols. --The Dark Side (talk) 04:39, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Why do we need to use DNS while connectiong to internet

Myself trying to establish a internet connection need to enter the DNS provided by the Internet Service Provider. Why do we need to use DNS while connectiong to internet..... Whats the real purpose in it... Why are we using alternate DNS address... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atchays (talk • contribs) 05:19, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

See my name, at the end of my post? the numbers? That's an IP address. Every computer connected to the internet is identified by an IP address like that. IP addresses are hard to remember, so there are names (like en.wikipedia.org) attached to some IP addresses. You need a way of matching the name to the address, that's what DNS does. Your computer says to a DNS server "what's the IP address for en.wikipedia.org" the DNS server replies with a number, your computer then finds the site by the number. --203.202.43.54 (talk) 08:31, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

....and if you know the IP address, you can connect to the internet withwithout a DNS server, as in http://131.159.46.188. The problem is that IP addresses keep changing, either because there are actually multiple hosts behind the same name (to spread the load), or because IP addresses are reused when a host goes offline (this happens, in particular, with most users connected via DSL). You often have more than one server, because the function is critical to practical use of the net, so if your primary server is down, you have a fallback. Also see Domain Name System. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:00, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

(I believe you mean "... connect to the internet without a DNS server ...".) Simple analogy - a DNS server is a phonebook. You have a name (Stephan Schulz or en.wikipedia.org), and you look up the number (123-867-5309 or 208.80.152.2) which you can then use to dial the recipient. -- 128.104.112.237 (talk) 21:12, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Very good analogy!Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 21:14, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

W7- Graff Digitiser and sound card

Another W7 question... I upgraded my XP desktop to 7 Ultimate. I was forced to install my Graff Digitizer (tape to digital converter) in XP mode. The problem is, it requires my sound card (M100?) to work, and it can't find the card. The card was installed in 7, and the device manger says it works properly. Is there any way to salvage this in 7, or do I have to return to XP? Specs: Athlon X2 6000, 2X1GB DDR2 800, Asus P5K mb, WD 500GB HDD, ASUS EAH 3450 (512)

(Before you ask, Graff does say it can only work on XP.) Mxvxnyxvxn (talk) 06:49, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I've had a driver issue with my vidcam and have to go back to XP to capture from tape. You can try to download a Graff vista driver if there isn't one for win7 yet. Or, use a downloaded driver for your sound card since Graff might have been looking for something specific in the driver software and win7 uses its own drivers. Dual boot to XP anyway for all those things that don't work; it's a normal step in a migration. Sandman30s (talk) 10:23, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Have you considered a Virtual Machine running XP? --Phil Holmes (talk) 14:43, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Windows 7's XP Mode is a virtual machine. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:35, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

(Sigh) It isn't worth the trouble... I think I'll just go back to XP. Thanks anyway. Mxvxnyxvxn (talk) 21:56, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Vista vs. 7

Resolved

On the exact same hardware, which will have a better performance —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.201 (talk) 10:38, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Windows 7. This very same question has been asked previously. Try Ctrl+F on this page... --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 10:58, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Do you have a source for that? It's not that I don't trust you, I'd just like to see some verification of this, like performance charts or bar graphs of the two operating systems' performance. Thanks

Check out these two articles: [10][11]. It seems that while there is ample anecdotal evidence saying that it is significantly faster/smoother, the people that make bar graphs only get marginal improvements over Vista. —Akrabbim^talk 13:02, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Another example: [12], google is your friend in this case :). 192.234.122.9 (talk) 13:08, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you!

What are the differences between interface and valuetype in CORBA IDL?

I used the idlj compiler to compile two similar idl files ( one with interface X and one with valuetype X) and saw that both created XHolder.java and XHelper.java, only the interface created _XStub.java and XOperations.java and only the valuetype created XVauleFactory.java and its implementation XDefaultFactory.java, which included generated references to XImpl.java, which I had to create myself. I've looked at the generated code but I wonder if someone can crystallize into a simple sentence or two what general use/situation each is really meant for. Thanks! 20.137.18.50 (talk) 14:12, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Where did my CD window go?

I have a Windows Vista XP, Italian laptop, and I am currently unable to view or burn CDs as the window doesn't appear when I insert the CD. What should I do about it? I've got loads of photos I need to download to CDs. Thank you.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 16:17, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

If you have XP, press the Windows key and e at the same time. This will bring up My Computer. You can navigate to your CD drive in the left-hand tree view. 12.165.250.13 (talk) 16:27, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

And once there, you can create a shortcut for your desktop if you so wish. Dbfirs 20:19, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Is there a name for this bug?

I just found this bug in my code at work. I was using a for loop and an iterator, both over the same range, in conjunction, so the for loop would go over sequential values and check if it had reached the iterator. If it had, it got a value from it, and the iterator advanced. Now what had happened is, the for loop had actually been able to move past the iterator, so when it was checking if it had reached it, it never found it had. Is this a common enough bug to have a name for it? JIP | Talk 19:47, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I doubt it -- it is just a control flow problem. This is why with for/next loops, one usually uses >= rather than == as the way to detect when you have hit a given point, though in theory one should not need to do this if it is programmed carefully. In theory, one should be aware at all times of what the possible ranges for a variable value is, though in practice, or with anything that works in parallel, there can be some sloppy slippage. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:01, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Can you show us the relevant parts of your code ? I'd be interested to see it. StuRat (talk) 15:54, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not at all sure about how much I can show without revealing trade secrets, but here is a very basic sketch (C# pseudocode):

DateTime[] allDates = /* ... */;
IEnumerator iterator = /* ... */;
foreach (DateTime date in allDates) {
  DateTime nextDate = iterator.Current./*get next date*/;
  if (date == nextDate) {
    /* get the value */;
    iterator.MoveNext();
  }
}

Now what happened was that it actually became the case that date > nextDate, so date == nextDate was never going to be true, the way I originally wrote it. JIP | Talk 21:28, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I guess that means that Mr.98's advice to change the == to >= was right on the mark, then. StuRat (talk) 00:03, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it wasn't exactly, but the idea was the same. In my real code, "get the value" depended on the date being exactly equal. So I just added a while loop before the if, checking if date was already past nextDate, and if so, then just discarding values until it matched it. JIP | Talk 18:15, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Shutdown Menu

I've been messing around with my computer a lot (Windows XP), and I don't know what I did but the shutdown menu, in which there were three nice looking square buttons (Standby, Shutdown and Restart) have been replaced by a stupid looking drop-down menu with the same options (and Hibernate as an addition) instead. Also, the computer asks me for a password during log-on, and since I don't have one, all I have to do is press enter. But still, I see all this as an unnecessary waste of time, and would be real glad if someone told me how I could revert to my former settings. Your help would be mcuh appreciated. Thanks in advance! 117.194.225.94 (talk) 19:57, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Try this. --LarryMac | Talk 20:50, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch. That worked beautifully!! 117.194.224.97 (talk) 17:37, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Installing Windows on another computer

I have an old WinXp computer, computer A, that has a certificate of authenticity and a Windows installation disc. I have another better faster computer, computer B, then has neither of these and currently has Windows 2000 on it. I would like to instal Linux on computer A, and instal WinXp on computer B using the certificate of authenticity and the install disc from computer A. Is this going to create any problems please? 92.26.20.84 (talk) 20:38, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe that technically, it will work; but your scheme may violate the license agreement for your copy of Windows XP. I believe some OEM copies of Windows are licensed for use only on the computer that the disc was bundled with. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:47, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

It should work, although as said above some Windows are restricted to certain computers, but this usually only applies to the brand name rather than specific model numbers (ie a compaq disk will work on any compaq computer) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.201 (talk) 22:39, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually I've just bought a Dell reinstalation disk for XP as my non-Dell computer did not have one. And it does not have a certificate of authenticity but just a product key. The product key has been verified by Microsoft. In that scenario, would there be any technical problems doing the above? Or simply using the Dell disk if required for repairs, which is why I bought it? And as a hypothetical case, not something I'm going to do, what's to stop me repeating this over a number of computers? Would Microsoft really be able to detect when two different computers with the same product key do their online software updates? 92.29.76.111 (talk) 13:15, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, they would be able to do that. More recent software from MS seems to require that you go online to register your computer/OS combo, so they would know if you had more than one. You might want to call MS, as I think what you are trying to do is actually entirely legal, and they will help you to unregister the first computer and register the new one. If not, then they won't help you, but you don't have to worry about black helicopters either (too much bad PR, apparently :-) ). StuRat (talk) 15:40, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

unLZ-GBA

I tried to add this image to my Pokémon Ruby rom using unLZ-GBA, yet I get this error message:

Error: Image is not Indexed

How do I fix this and add the image to my rom? --75.50.49.24 (talk) 21:11, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Video Either Too Big Or Too Little

I made a video today of a game I was playing. I used Fraps (free version) and took 10 videos of 30 seconds each. Each of these videos was over 100MB big for some reason - meaning that 5 minutes of video was around 1GB. When I used Muvee AutoProducer to put them together and add music (5MB), the finished version ended up as 148MB. Somehow, these numbers don't add up. Can anyone explain to me what has happened? --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 21:31, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

It has to do with the compression and formatting of the video itself. Different video formats give drastically different results. I don't know about the software programs you mentioned, but it is common for screen capture apps to use formats that are uncompressed or very lightly compressed (like Animation codec), which are huge files. When you convert them into another codec, like MP4, you will get huge savings in file size (albeit with some loss in quality if the codec is lossy). --Mr.98 (talk) 21:37, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Right, but Fraps outputted in .avi, and I chose .avi as the output option in MAP, too. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 23:55, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

AVI is just a container format, it doesn't tell you what the codec is. Different AVI files can have different codecs (like MP4, DivX, etc.). The codec and its settings are going to determine the file size, not the container. To find out what the codec is, you should be able to open it in your video-watching program (like Windows Media Player) and find out what the differences between the files are. (I don't know WMP, but in Quicktime, there is a "Movie Inspector" that tells you the info.) --Mr.98 (talk) 00:29, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Need help overlaying an image

Hello. I'm an admin here on teh Wiki, but when it comes to image manipulation, I am strictly bush-league. Farm league. Possibly tee-ball. Anyway, would anyone be willing to help me out with this? I tried downloading Gimp but I think I'm past the sweet spot age for understanding this stuff. I could email you the photos with a description of what I need. Should be really easy for anyone familiar with gimp or photoshop. Tan | 39 22:57, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I can help. Just post what you'd like and I'll get on it. In the future, you can ask the WP:Graphics lab -- penubag  (talk) 00:33, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Cell phone question

Is it possible on Verizon Wireless to block numbers so that they can't call you? If it helps, I have a Samsung Gleam (SCH-u700). Nick4404 yada yada yada What have I done? 23:11, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes! Verizon Wireless offers the ability to block up to five designated numbers from calling you. For more information, please visit link. There are certain limitations to this service. I recommend that you read the page above in its entirety. If it does not solve your problem, please feel free to comment below. Sincerely,

Kushal (talk) 00:14, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Named nested references

I have a problem with nested references/notes to which I would like to assign a name in order to reuse them. Any help appreciated. bamse (talk) 23:59, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

For those who are confused by this Q, like I was, it appears to be about wiki markup. StuRat (talk) 15:32, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Never mind, I found my mistake (forgotten "group=..."). Sorry for the confusion.bamse (talk) 16:14, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

November 7

Collapsing JPGs into a video

Resolved

Hello! I have a lot of JPG files of screenshots that I want to compress into a single video file. The screenshot program saves the screen image about every second to a JPEG (not ideal, I know). I would like to create the video file by specifying about a .2 second delay in-between images to get an animation. Is there any free and open source software out there that will let me do this? And is there a video format that will take up less space by eliminating all the redundant information in the jpegs (since the screen hardly changes every second)? Thank you!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 05:19, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

If you have Linux, you can do something like [13] (or you can get mplayer on Windows, dunno how easy that is though). --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:48, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, antilived. Actually, after I posted this question, I realized Windows movie maker does this fairly well.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 05:58, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

This often seems like so much 'black-art' - but understanding what's going on 'under the hood' is very instructive in this case:

Most video codecs compress data by comparing two consecutive frames and storing only the differences between the two. For still images - there are no differences. Hence, at first sight, it shouldn't make MUCH difference to the final size of the file whether you record at one frame every two seconds or 60 frames a second because the differences will be zero for almost all of the frames.

However, there is a little 'gotcha' which is what's going to dominate the size of your resulting files. Most formats store things called 'i-frames' at some interval. i-frames are simple, complete video frames with no difference coding. By default, they store them perhaps one per second or so - but with decent software, you can control this interval. They do this to allow you to jump in at the middle of the video without having to start at the first frame and add up all of the differences up to that point. So the video file contains a series of i-frames (maybe one per second) - each followed by a bunch of 'difference' frames (called: p-frames and b-frames for reasons too complicated to explain here).

So what you need to do is to make sure that you aren't generating i-frames at greater than the update rate of your images and ideally, you'd want to make the i-frame timing come at precisely the update rate of your images so all of your p- and b-frames are empty. If you get that right, it won't matter much what frame rate you pick because each frame will just say "no changes from the previous frame" - which is a minimal amount of information. You can read more about this in Video compression picture types. Good video compression software gives you control of the rate of i-frames - check out (for example) mplayer and mencoder.

SteveBaker (talk) 16:16, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much, SteveBaker! That really clears up a lot of the doubts I had about how to compress out all the old frame data. I will have a look at the software you mention.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 19:37, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

A theoretically better way, which may or may not work in practice, is to use variable-length frames. That is, instead of encoding 10 identical frames in a row at 5 fps, just encode one frame and tell the player to display it for 2 seconds. AVI doesn't support variable-length frames, but Matroska does. Matroska isn't supported by nearly as many players as AVI, and I don't know how many Matroska-producing tools will let you produce variable-length frames, but if you can get it to work you will get a smaller file and playback will be easier on the CPU. -- BenRG (talk) 23:31, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

BSOD

Does Microsoft refer to the Blue Screen of Death by that name? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 09:17, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

[14][15]F (talk) 09:26, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Looks like it is only the occasional "tech column" and tech support that mentions it as such. Doesn't look like they officially use it in any of their official literature. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:52, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

The official terms are "blue screen", "bug check screen" and "stop screen" according to this page. I doubt you'll find "BSOD" in official Microsoft documentation. "Blue screen" by itself is somewhat ambiguous because NT uses the same blue screen for startup messages, though as of XP it doesn't look much like the bug-check blue screen any more. -- BenRG (talk) 13:28, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Javascript and windows handles?

This is a very strange question, but can javascript be written to retrieve the "Handle" to a users desktop? (mine is currently "65842" in decimal).

Also can it detect the Operating system and only output the result to the web page if the user has Vista Premium or Vista Ultimate? Thanks!

137.81.112.176 (talk) 10:28, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Javascript can't manipulate anything outside of the browser scope. That would include the desktop.

It can, however, detect the OS — here is some code. However I'm not sure it can detect the difference between Premium or Ultimate specifically if you want that... looking at my own server logs, all Vistas look pretty similar, but there are a lot of numbers involved (e.g. here is one Vista machine: MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30618), so maybe one of them indicates Premium v. Ultimate. Hmm. Note that crafting your page to be compatible with only one browser is pretty bad design, and if it is because of incompatibilities, indicates fundamental problems in the coding (reliance on proprietary functions, etc.). Once you've detected Vista (look for that "Windows NT 6.0" string), you could easily have an operator at the top that either redirected the page somewhere else or refused to output the rest of the page. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:49, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay let me fill you in a little. I am doing something that can only be done in Vista premium or MAYBE ultimate, it is simply that what i am getting a user to do CANT be done at all in any other OS, so its not really some mainstream website for all to see. Also, if JS cant detect the desktop handle due to scope, is there anything i can attach to the site to do so besides making the user download something? :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.81.112.176 (talk) 13:12, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

As for Vista, well, OK, I guess, though I do wonder what it is you are trying to do that is apparently dependent on only one or two flavors of a single OS. As for accessing the filesystem, you can't do it with Javascript (with the one exception being that you can have users upload files through form submission, but that's it). There are other options—like Java applets—that can do more than that (with the approval of the user). Javascript is inherently limited to browser scope, though, for security purposes (imagine the mayhem if every page out there could access your hard drive contents). --Mr.98 (talk) 13:37, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I think my anser, then, lies in making an "AutoIt v3" script, which does handles and could be downloaded by a user in exe format. thanks!

137.81.112.176 (talk) 01:12, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

Game For ZX Spectrum

Does anyone remember the name of a game for the ZX Spectrum where the player takes command of a robot shaped like a ball with three legs, walking around a map of a town and shooting bouncing bombs at flies? I think it begins with 'A'. Cheers! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 12:56, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

If you don't mind the robot having four legs, there's Amaurote. 88.112.58.122 (talk) 14:20, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Excellent! That's the one! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 14:45, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Windows 7

Just like to say thanks to all here for the recent help with my Windows 7 questions. I've installed it and it's working great, so much better than Vista (so far anyway... hoping there won't be any big problems >_>) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 14:08, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Glad to hear it. Keep us posted, I'm sure that those of us considering getting Windows 7 would love to hear about any warnings or problems, before we make the plunge. StuRat (talk) 23:58, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Microwave oven that blows my circuit breaker

It works fine most of the time, but every few months it causes the circuit breaker to pop, sometimes only when the door is opened (which turns on the light). I don't want to toss out the microwave oven because of this, but it is rather annoying to go down in the basement with a flashlight searching for the fusebox. Is there any fix for this ? If nothing else, I suppose a surge protector with a low amperage circuit breaker would work here. Then, every time it pops, I could just reset it right there. Do they sell something that looks like an outlet strip, and has a circuit breaker, but lacks surge protection ? If so, maybe that would be cheaper. StuRat (talk) 14:16, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

It certainly sounds like your microwave is faulty. That makes it potentially dangerous. You need to either replace it or get a professional to fix it. --Tango (talk) 20:23, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

What danger is there other than it overloading the house wiring ? That danger can be addressed simply by adding a power strip with a circuit breaker, right ? StuRat (talk) 23:56, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

What exactly is being triggered though? Is it the circuit breaker or the RCD? --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:03, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

It is a circuit breaker, in the fuse box in the basement. StuRat (talk) 00:06, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

This may indicate a fault with the switches that detect if the door is open. These switches are intended to prevent the oven operating with the door open (and thus irradiating the user). One microwave oven that I owned (a National) was wired such that when you pressed the handle to open the door, that handle activated a switch to disconnect the microwave generator, as well as sending a signal to the electronic controller. But the door also had two independent mechanical switches that would close when the door was opened. One of these switches applied a direct short circuit across the microwave generator, so that if the door was open and the handle had failed to stop the microwave generator, the short circuit would prevent the generator from working - and trip the circuit breaker. I have been told that this is not uncommon practice for such applications. The reason being that it is more reliable to short out the "dangerous" item, which will cause any of several fuse or circuit breakers to blow, than to disconnect the circuit. (Personally, I'm not commenting on whether this is a good idea or not, but my oven certainly was wired that way.) Thus if your circuit breaker keeps tripping, it might indicate a fault in the power supply to the microwave generator. Mitch Ames (talk) 00:54, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Here's some links describing this concept, found by a Google search for microwave oven door switch short circuit: Description with circuit diagram, Patent (the first of several found by the search). Mitch Ames (talk) 01:03, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that's quite informative. StuRat (talk) 15:50, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Microwaves can be dangerous, so you should really replace it. Here's a video of a science program where the presenter "builds a microwave death ray to prove the existence of invisible and untapped energy". --h2g2bob (talk) 01:59, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

But my microwave oven is dangerous how, exactly ? Is it going to generate microwaves with the door open ? Is it going to catch fire ? What's the safety concern ? StuRat (talk) 15:45, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

The fire part is what you need to be worried about. Tan | 39 15:48, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

But if the circuit breaker pops whenever there's a short circuit, won't that prevent a fire ? StuRat (talk) 15:50, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

You need to be worried about why the breaker is tripping. You have one of three problems: an overloaded circuit, a short circuit, or a ground fault. If I had to guess, you have a short circuit caused by some loose or miswired circuits with the microwave door. So now, in effect, you are trusting your circuit breaker to kill that short - and possibly prevent a fire. If I were you, I wouldn't trust my kitchen and house to a circuit breaker; I'd have it fixed or replace the entire unit. Tan | 39 16:01, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it seems to be a somewhat intentional short circuit, according to the info Mitch Ames provided above. StuRat (talk) 16:36, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

TCP/IP not enabled

Whenever I try to repair the connection labelled as 1394 connection under "LAN or high speed internet" in Network Connections, I get the error message "Windows could not finish repairing becuase TCP/IP is not enabled" But when I got to that connections properties, I can see that it is enabled. Is there any way to fix this problem? (I use Windows XP.)Thanks in advance. 117.194.224.97 (talk) 17:36, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

IEEE 1394 is more commonly associated with connections to video cameras. It is unusual to use it as an interface for TCP/IP networking (though it can be done). Astronaut (talk) 00:29, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Game for Commodore 64?

Relating to the question about a game for the ZX Spectrum above, I have to ask this question here. I played a Commodore 64 game at my cousin's place in the early 1980s. The only recollection I have of it is that it was made in the early 1980s, it came on a cassette tape, it was a platformer-style arcade game, and at some point it had a merry-go-round or something. It was not a game for infants but instead a standard, full-blown game for schoolchildren and teenagers. I think it may have had something to do with Pac-Man but I don't trust this memory, I might have it confused with some other game. This description isn't of much help, but my memory is very vague, because I only ever played it once, and this was over two decades ago. My cousin wouldn't remember it if I asked him, that's for sure. JIP | Talk 21:41, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

There are websites that are about C64 games, including some that have been re-made to run on Windows, so I suggest Googling for something like "commodore 64 games" and see if any of the sites that come up mention your game. 78.147.8.170 (talk) 13:45, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

How to help a nincompoop?

An acquaintance sent me mail to ask if I could help him with a computer problem, and I said sure, because it was a very simple problem. But it turned into a nightmare; he never does what I tell him, and comes up with the weirdest alternatives instead. He has this half knowledge that is dangerous enough to wreak havoc, but he has problems understanding even what a link is. My dilemma is: I want to get out of this, because even if I help him this time, I'm sure he'll come up with more such requests later. But I do not want to offend him, and I can not just turn my back on him because I see him on other occasions. How to get out of this? I thought of pointing him here, but that probably wouldn't be fair to the rest of you. Compu732 (talk) 22:06, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I have one of these - you may want to get one! --Tango (talk) 22:14, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

That's a good idea - it's certainly a notch more polite than "Go away or I'll replace you with a shell script". But the thing is, I do enjoy helping other people - just not this particular one. Compu732 (talk) 22:22, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

That's a very good idea. Whenever I talk to strangers and mention that I work as a computer programmer, they immediately ask if I can fix their Internet connection or peripherals for them. Internet connections and peripherals aren't even my speciality - my education and work experience is very near to 100% software. I've only ever had to deal with hardware when upgrading my own computer. JIP | Talk 19:10, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Shrug and say "I really don't know, maybe you need to ask someone else". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 22:26, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I hate the idea of him telling everyone else "he didn't even know that". But you may be right, it's usually a good idea to give up one's foolish pride. Compu732 (talk) 22:30, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I second the idea of claiming to be at the end of your own knowledge, or your own abilities, and recommend he take it to, say, BestBuy or whatever. It's not actually any skin off of your back, and it'll save you time. The sooner he decides to start going elsewhere for computer help, the better you'll be. --Mr.98 (talk) 03:39, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Tell him that you have to use VNC to help him in the future for the sake of precision and that diagnosing and fixing problems via a game of Telephone is inefficient and actually dangerous. Tempshill (talk) 07:00, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Why not just politely tell him what you have told us. Do not call him a nincompoop though. 78.147.8.170 (talk) 13:48, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

So what would you call him? Compu732 (talk) 05:58, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

http://www.xkcd.com/627/ SteveBaker (talk) 21:48, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

That's hilarious! Even my gf loved it. Compu732 (talk) 05:58, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

November 8

Show Desktop

On my sister's PC (running Win XP) the "Show Desktop" icon got dragged off the quick start toolbar and onto the desktop. If I try to drag it back onto the quick start menu, I just get a shortcut to something that doesn't work. Is there an easy way to get that icon back on the toolbar so it works as it did at installation? Astronaut (talk) 00:40, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

If you want a quick alternative, pressing Windows+D shows the desktop. If you can open the quick start folder (possibly there's on option if you right-click on quick start menu?) then you should be able to copy-and-paste the actual shown desktop icon back into the folder. Dragging the icon to the quick start menu while holding one of the modifier keys (Shift? Ctrl?) might also copy the actual icon rather than a link. --h2g2bob (talk) 01:50, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

The quick start folder is normally (replace my user name with tour own)

C:\Users\Andreas Rejbrand\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

--Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 02:01, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

• If you still have an icon that you can drag, then hold the Shift key down while dragging it back to the Quick Launch area. Holding the Shift key while dragging forces a move operation.
• If you no longer have a Show Desktop icon, you can recreate it using Notepad: How to re-create the Show desktop icon on the Quick Launch toolbar in Windows XP Note: The steps on that page tell you to simply drag the icon back to the Quick Launch area, but you will probably need to hold the Shift key while dragging. --Bavi H (talk) 02:42, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

About Group Policy Client service...

I can't log on because of an error, and it shows a message: "Group policy client service failed the logon. Access is denied." I'm using Windows Vista. What should I do ??? Thanks for all of your help. 117.4.141.61 (talk) 01:20, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Are you at home or at office?F (talk) 07:30, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm using Windows Vista Ultimate at home.

Algorithm request

Levenshtein distance gives the distance between two strings. Assume you have one string that is a few thousand characters long. Another string is, say, 10 characters long. The Levenshtein distance you calculate between the two strings is rather high, indicating that the short string is, for the most part, contained somewhere in the long string - but not letter-for-letter. What algorithm is the most efficient for getting the smallest substring from the long string with the minimum Levenshtein distance to the short string? Further example: Imagine that this question, up to this point HERE is the long string. Your short string is "maintainer". You, obviously, want to locate "contained" or maybe just "ntaine" or something around that point in the long string that matches up with the short string. -- kainaw™ 02:48, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I would think that you must iterate the Levenshtein algorithm over the original short-string, and then all successive short-er strings. Note that there is a tradeoff between minimum-distance and largest-possible-short-string. So, you must include some kind of weighting in your objective to account for this. Iterating the distance-search would seem to involve a lot of redundand calculation - you're iterating a sequence of nearly-identical Levenshtein applications with "similar" short-strings. (I'm guessing this redundancy exists based on intuitive reasoning - but I'm not any good at proving it). I would focus my literature search on "iterated Levenshtein" or something along that line of thought. Nimur (talk) 04:13, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

No need to check the literature! If we roll up our sleeves and dig in, we can probably find a solution ourselves! There's two approaches that come to my mind instantly: first of all, you can brute force that son-of-a-bitch: test the Levenshtein distance for each 10 character substring in the longer string. If the short string is a characters, the long string is b characters, that would be O(a^2) for each edit distance test, which you perform O(b) times, for a computational complexity of O(a^2*b) (assuming b is quite a bit larger than a). I assume you already thought of this plan and dismissed it, as it is quite obvious. Though, lets face it, modern computers are quite fast, your strings are quite short (1000 characters ain't a whole lot) and it's easy to program, so you might just want to go with it.

The second idea is to do a sort-of binary search divide-and-conquer thing: divide the longer string into two strings 500 characters long and find the Levenshtein distance on each half. By comparing the results, you can now make an educated guess in which half the string is. Now you recurse. Take the correct half of the string, divide it into two 250 character pieces and check those two, and so on. When the string is sufficiently small (<30 or so), brute-force to find the right solution.

This is a tricky algorithm to implement: your code needs to be able to interpret the Levenshtein distance by itself, always picking the right half. It also needs to be able to handle if the string "crosses the gap" between the two halves, i.e. it's located at positions 495-505. This can be solved by cleverly dividing the longer strings up (instead of the first half being characters 0-500 and the second 500-1000, it can be 0-510 and 490-100). But if you use this technique and the string does in fact cross the gap, the string will appear in BOTH substrings, so tailor your algorithm to recognize when this happens.

As I said, this is tricky to implement, but it is very fast. Lets make a quick back-of-the-envelope complexity calculation. First, it makes two O(ab/2) (a is the length of the shorter string, b is the length of the longer string) calculations of the Levenshtein distance of the first two halves. Then it recurses, and makes two O(ab/4) tests, then two O(ab/8) tests, and so on and so forth. That is, it's complexity is:

$O\left({\frac {2ab}{2}}+{\frac {2ab}{4}}+{\frac {2ab}{8}}+{\frac {2ab}{16}}+{\frac {2ab}{32}}+\cdots \right)$

which is equal to

$O\left(2ab\left({\frac {1}{2}}+{\frac {1}{4}}+{\frac {1}{8}}+{\frac {1}{16}}+{\frac {1}{32}}+\cdots \right)\right)=O(2ab)=O(ab)$

(the sum there converges trivially to 1, obviously). So there you go, the same computational complexity as just making a standard Levenshtein distance search! Ain't divide-and-conquer grand :)

(I should say that this was incredibly back of the envelope, it's entirely possible I made some elemental error in underestimating the complexity. Please forgive me if that is the case) Belisarius (talk) 13:13, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Windows 7 standby mode

Resolved

last night something terrible happened, I went to bed and when I came back to my Windows 7 computer it was in some sort of standby mode. It only took a move of the mouse to bring it back, but this MUST NOT happen again. I've looked for the settings but I can't find them. How do I stop it from going into stand by again? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 05:32, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Is there a reason that Standby mode devastated you so? Go to the Power Options control panel, where you can customize how much time elapses before the computer enters Standby mode or Hibernate mode. You can also turn this feature off. By the way, it's also possible that the computer simply turned the monitor off and was still running at full speed; this, too, is configurable from Power Options. Tempshill (talk) 06:56, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

It was supposed to be downloading from web and I lost 10 hours of data which I can never get back, and it was completely off not even a buzzing sound just dead until I moved the mouse and this MUST NOT happen again. Thank you for the advice, I will try it but I am concerned that the computer will still enter some sort of low power mode if left without user input for a long time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 08:47, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

If you set it to never go to sleep or hibernate in the power management options, it never will. Don't worry, it works fine. See here for guide. Belisarius (talk) 13:50, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I must admit I'm surprised, I'd have though a download program would have kept windows alive. It isn't the sort of thing I do but it sounds like this sort of thing would be a fairly common requirement. Disabling standby is the appropriate approach if one is really desperate but I wouldn't want to have a million people all using up a power station unnecessarily doing it. Dmcq (talk) 14:23, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree. May I enquire as to what web browser (or download manager) you use? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 23:13, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks everyone, I did the suggestions and it worked

Booting Linux ISO Inside Virtual Box On Ubuntu

Is it possible to get VirtualBox to boot another OS from USB? The only options I can find are 'Boot from CD/DVD' and 'Floppy', but I have a USB-bootable distro of Slax that I wanted to try out without switching the machine off. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 09:22, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Virtualbox does not support booting from usb. There are several workarounds you could try though, for example creating a .vdh image from your usb drive using WinImage and attaching it to virtualbox as a hard drive. Or you could try attaching the usb drive as a physical disk, see here for how. —Preceding unsigned comment added by .isika (talk • contribs) 12:29, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Portable Apps & USB lifespan...

I know that USB flash memory has a limited lifespan based on the number of writes to the hardware. I also know that I have recently completely fallen in love with portable apps. Compared to my previous usage patterns, running XAMPP & Firefox (among other things) off a 4G USB stick is resulting in several orders of magnitude more read/writes per hour. What kind of impact can I reasonably expect this to have on the lifetime of my device? Are there any hard numbers out there? I backup the entire stick daily, so a hardware failure would cost me some cash but no productivity. Just curious about the impacts of such aggressive usage of flash memory on hardware service life... Thanks! 61.189.63.142 (talk) 09:33, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I've had several flash drives fail on me. I use them to move video from one computer to another. The main problem seems to be that there's an "index area" which is written to every time any write is made anywhere on the USB drive. Therefore, this index area fails first and then the drive is hosed. I hope they find a way to fix this poor architecture to make them last longer. Perhaps they could use some other type of memory for this index area, which won't fail so quickly. Another option might be to have a movable index area so that this wear occurs move evenly.

One hint, buy the smallest size that will work for your case, even if you need multiple USB drives. A single 64 Gb Flash drive won't last as long as eight 8 Gb flash drives will. StuRat (talk) 14:02, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm actually a bit surprised there because I was under the understanding that USB flash drives contained Wear levelling hardware to make sure that even if you write to the same "physical" point on the disk (if it was magnetic media) it would be actually be distributed across the entire flash memory. ZX81 ^talk 16:05, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Buy a pocket external usb hard drive —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 11:10, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Is there really a portable USB hard disk drive that can fit in a pocket ? StuRat (talk) 15:37, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, loads of them. Here's one

Ultimately I guess that depends how big your pockets are, but I can personally easily fit a 2.5" USB disk in my pockets and I've just tried a 3.5" disk and that fits as well (although it's not exactly comfortable and 3.5" disk would need a power supply as well). ZX81 ^talk 16:05, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

How Linux could win in desktop OS war ?

We have to accept that Windows / OSX has very good UI, and more than 90% of people are used to this. Gnome and KDE really sucks when compared to this. So, it is just kernel needs some fix. This fix could be Linux kernel. I have read that windows kernel is closely coupled with it's UI. Still, how difficult it is to replace only windows kernel with linux kernel, or with other kernels like opensolaris, plan9, etc. ? Would this heart / brain transplant operation be worth doing ? Is it legal ? --V4vijayakumar (talk) 12:40, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, for one the Ubuntu Gnome and KDE Desktops, e.g., are certainly good enough - they don't "really suck". They are different from Windows, but most intermediate and inexperienced users have no trouble adapting. Mac OS X already is a slick GUI on top of a UNIX Kernel (well, actually, a FreeBSD personality running on top of a Mach microkernel). It would probably be possible to retrofit Linux, but it also would be somewhat pointless. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:02, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I could well envision that there are people for whom "different from Windows" means "really sucks". JIP | Talk 16:07, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

The reason for Microsoft's dominance is not strictly technical. There is a lot more that goes into why people use Windows and not, say, Linux, than the kernel. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:34, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

The problem I have with Linux has to do with drivers. Windows pretty much automatically works with most printers, speakers, etc., while Linux does not, making me have to search for and install a driver to run those items. StuRat (talk) 13:58, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried a recent version? Support for older stuff often is better than with Windows. Support for very new hardware may or may not be there, but it is a lot better now than it was a few years ago. Printers, drives, network and WiFi usually work straight out of the box - in fact, most things with published specifications work well. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:12, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

No, I use Skinny Puppy 4.00, and don't want to change to a newer Linux, as it now has all the apps I want on it and I don't want to start over from scratch. StuRat (talk) 14:21, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Dare I suggest, StuRat, that if you never update your OS (cough cough Windows 98), you sort of lose the right to complain about whether it has updated features! --Mr.98 (talk) 14:46, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't consider being able to plug in a new pair of speakers and have them work to be an "upgraded feature". I see no good reason why the interface to speakers needs to change such that old computers can no longer use new speakers. The same is true of printers (although there I could understand that very old computers that were only capable of sending ASCII text to a printer wouldn't be able to send fancy graphics to a new printer, but they should still be able to send text to a new printer). I'm of the opinion that the reason new hardware doesn't work with old versions of Windows isn't because it's technically difficult to do, but because of Microsoft using a strategy of planned obsolescence. So, why do we accept this with computers ? Would you buy a TV that was designed to stop working after a few years ? Of course not (analog TVs can still be used with digital signals via a converter box, like the one I'm watching now). So then, why is it acceptable to do so with computers ? I say that it's not, being bad for the environment to consider computers to be disposable. StuRat (talk) 15:39, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Hardware changes, and expecting all manufacturers to be infinitely compatible with decade-old operating systems is kind of silly. Where does it stop? Should they make everything Windows 3.1 compatible? DOS too? How about making sure things are compatible for C64 users? Obviously there is going to be a tradeoff between what is worth time to upgrade and what isn't. You can take your stance, but really, if you don't upgrade periodically, don't be surprised that things stop working, or that manufacturers don't cater to you. Spending time to make things backwards compatible costs money and time—money and time that is either taken away from improvements, or increases the cost to the consumer. Personally, I'm fine with upgrading every couple of years—I usually get more for my dollar each time. Should your preference for slow and out of date things increase my future costs or impact my desire for improved goods over time? --Mr.98 (talk) 16:09, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps they could sell "disposable" computers that are designed to stop working after a stated period of time, and also sell "non-disposable" computers for people like me. I would expect the disposables to each cost less, but for the total price to be higher using disposables in the long run. My problem with the current practice is that they never state that the computers are designed to only work for a few years and then die, even though they are designed to do just that (and/or the operating system on them is). That's false advertising. For the disposables, they could even lease them, and hopefully pass them on to the poor or third world nations when they are returned at the end of the lease period, where they could still be used for many years with old software and hardware, just not for the latest games. StuRat (talk) 16:44, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

(ec) If you can invent a fan-motor with a MTBF of thirty years; or a hard-disk drive with a statistically insignificant failure-rate; or a thermal-failure-proof CPU, motherboard, and chipset, you can build a computer that lasts forever. Your claim that planned obsolence is a conspiracy to make you buy more things is a bit of a slant - a better way to phrase it is that planned obsolence is the best effort engineering control over the inherent mechanical failures that are known to occur. While it is true that some companies use planned obsolence as a business strategy, it is really making the best of a bad situation (that physical hardware does actually wear out). Nimur (talk) 16:50, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Just because the components of a system are disposable doesn't mean the entire system must be. By use of redundancy and easy to replace parts, the system can continue to be usable even after many of the parts have failed. In the case of a computer, every component can be made to be replaceable except the hard drive, since that contains valuable data. For the hard drive, some redundancy is in order, like a 2nd hard drive with a backup of all your data. StuRat (talk) 17:02, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

As for the discussion of planned obsolescence in general, there are some companies that are quite blatant about it. The worst one I've seen is a toothbrush with bristles designed to slowly dissolve. They claim that this is "to remind you when it's time to toss out that old germy toothbrush", but obviously a toothbrush could be sterilized by boiling or dipping in bleach, so it's quite apparent they just want to force you to buy a new one every few weeks to increase their profits. I'd also be concerned about the effect of ingesting all those dissolved bristles. StuRat (talk) 17:09, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, per usual, your analysis of things is formed by a few incorrectly understood facts and a lot of supposition. Where are these "dissolving toothbrushes" you speak of? Can you find a link to any of them? Even the ones that do have indicators as to wear (which dentists support, not so much because they are "germy", but because the bristles become frayed and ineffective) do not require you replace them "every few weeks", but rather every three-to-four months. The ADA supports this; there are apparently even scientific studies on this front. Anyway, I find it odd that you're find with replacing fans, RAM, hard drives, and all of the other things that can go wrong with a computer, but not the operating system, that thing that actually makes all of the other things work correctly, that thing whose security problems mean a compromised system, that thing which, especially in older versions (cough cough, Windows 98) are known to have major, significant flaws in even their basic operations. Hey, it's your computer—I really don't care if you don't replace it. But don't be surprised when things aren't up-to-date when you don't update them. As for your earlier question about the television—yes, in fact, my old TV did die after about 7 years. I thought that was a pretty good run for it, to be specific, and for even less money that I had spent before, I got a new, much improved television (wide screen, flat screen, etc.). Planned obsolescence, or just about what a complicated device of tubes and heat ends up with after half a dozen years? No clue, but frankly, I'm glad that they work on making new ones better and cheaper, because in the long term, I have a better TV for it. Maybe you've saved a bit more money, but you've still got the old clunker television, too. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:41, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Now find me an environmental group that supports disposable toothbrushes, computers, etc. A disposable society is ultimately unsustainable, and we are starting to see some of the results from that, due to global warming from manufacturing all the unnecessary items, to pollution from both their production and disposal, to higher prices for petroleum and raw materials as the readily accessible raw materials begin to be used up (actually ending up in landfills in forms that aren't easy to reclaim).

As for upgrading the O/S, you seem to have bought the MS line that every O/S is somehow an improvement over the last. They are not. There is often very little new functionality, but quite a bit that is just different for no apparent reason. For example, at one point they renamed the File Manager to Windows Explorer. What new functionality did this rename provide ? It just caused confusion for those familiar with the old name. And when they do provide new functionality, it's frequently unnecessary. For example, older versions of Word required that you press a button to do a spell-check, while newer versions will spell-check and even try to correct errors automatically. Unfortunately, the corrections are frequently wrong, so this isn't really an advantage, is it ? There are also large quantities of functionality that are lost with each new version, but you never see that advertised, do you ?

To look at hardware for a moment; a floppy disk could be inserted, read, written to, write-protected, or removed whenever the user wanted, in any floppy drive, while a CD or DVD requires extra software to get it to behave properly, needs to be compatible with the type of drive, and you still often get a "Can't eject, disk is in use" error, even when it's not in use. Now certainly CDs and DVDs have far more capacity than floppy disks, but that doesn't mean I gladly accept all the limitations the "new technology" imposes. USB flash drives restore some of the lost functionality, but not all. The "write-protect switch", for example, is hard to find on USB flash drives. If I were to upgrade my computer's O/S (which would also mean replacing the computer), I know that half of my stuff would no longer work. Therefore I want to only upgrade when the benefits outweigh the costs, which is rare, IMHO. StuRat (talk) 20:36, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Yep agree with those above. The user interface is not the problem as far as I'm concerned, in fact I prefer some linux interfaces. The problem is that there's some programs I want to run for which there are only windows versions whereas windows versions of the ones on Linux are fairly easy to get. I find development much easier on linux for instance. The problem is reducing now so I may switch to using linux as my main platform soon. Dmcq (talk) 14:14, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

In the meantime, I suggest a dual boot system, which is what I use. StuRat (talk) 16:57, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

It could be that linux/gnome replaces symbian. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 21:44, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

How to get a free webpage?

I would like to put some information on a webpage. I do not want to pay for it or have to bother with it. I imagine it would get a fair number of people looking at it, although it could just stay undiscovered for a long time. How can I best get a free webpage that I can put information on, update at intervals of weeks or months, and that otherwise does not require any time from me? 78.147.8.170 (talk) 13:41, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Depending on what you want to use it for, you can possibly just register here and use your free home page for that. Of course, this is not a good idea if you have a huge amount of data or want to use it in ways that are incompatible with Wikipedia. However, if you just want to list your background and maybe a pic of yourself, Wikipedia would be just fine with that. StuRat (talk) 13:54, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

That would be inappropriate as the information would have nothing to do with Wikipedia. I thought there used to be lots of free websites available, but I have an impression that those kinds of websites have been closing down. Unfortunately I cannot remember what any of them were called. Geosomething masy have been one of them. 78.147.8.170 (talk) 14:11, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Geocities, which is now gone. I recommend starting up a free account at Wordpress.com, posting your info there. They host blogs but there's no reason you couldn't just put your data there and leave it there. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:45, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

"Mouse wiggler"

I have a problem with Flash animations on Firefox, that they sometimes get into a state where they won't update the screen unless I move the mouse. Is there some software that could virtually wiggle the mouse, say by moving it 5 pixels to the right, then 5 pixels back to the left, repeatedly ? StuRat (talk) 14:13, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Such a software would be very easy to write. If you want, I can make one for you. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 14:15, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that would be great. I'm on Windows 98, so I hope that's not an issue. Also, I do still want to be able to use the mouse normally. Perhaps it could start to wiggle if I leave it still for 10 seconds and stop when I move it myself. StuRat (talk) 14:27, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like some old Heath Robinson test hardware which just had a photosensor and a magnet pulling down a prodder, and actually used a complete microcomputer to link the two so whenever the output said 'next page' it thumped the send button. You too could make some hardware to wiggle your mouse around. No input or microcomputer necessary. Dmcq (talk) 14:35, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I had considered that. With a ball mouse that would put extra wear and tear on it, but I have a laser mouse, so it might be OK. Still, software seems like the more elegant solution. StuRat (talk) 15:22, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Back around 2000-2002 or so, there used to be sites out there that would pay you to browse (with their ads). The way they would tell if you were really "browsing" (and not just opening their browser and walking away for a few hours) was to detect mouse movement. I recall there being programs that would simulate mouse movement as a way of scamming these sites. I can't remember the names of the sites, or the programs, but they are out there, somewhere, probably. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:04, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

As always, there is an xkcd cartoon for (almost) this situation. Jørgen (talk) 18:18, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

The comic alt-text is spot-on; we have all been there; and some of us have the sourcecode to prove it... the OP may find these codes helpful for UI scripting if they are using Winamp 2.x or 5.x as their flash video player/plugin (I have found the Adobe version to be the single most buggy software component of any of my computers on any the of various operating systems I use, and so I have replaced it as much as possible with alternatives). Nimur (talk) 20:43, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I have now created an extremely light-weight Windows utility that does this. Please see CursorMotion.exe @ privat.rejbrand.se if you trust me. When you start this application, it checks if Scroll Lock is on 10 times per second. If Scroll Lock is on, the cursor moves ±2 pixels up and to the left 10 times per second. To exit the application, use the Windows Task Manager. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:57, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

However, I have to admit that I do not know if it will run on Win 9x... I have not used this platform for many, many years... --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:59, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Windows 9x is a rather instable platform, so you try the app at you own risk! --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 21:01, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

No, it says "... expects a newer version of Windows. Upgrade your Windows version." Thanks for trying. Any other ideas ? (Your idea to use the otherwise useless scroll lock key was truly inspired.)StuRat (talk) 21:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, that was no major surprise. I just recompiled it with the old Borland Delphi 7 I found that I still had installed. It might work now. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 21:15, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, I downloaded it on my XP computer, where it works well. I also downloaded it on my 98 machine, where I actually need it. It no longer gives that error, but doesn't appear to move the mouse, either. If you can add some debug prints to it, I could tell you what it says. StuRat (talk) 21:45, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

You might be interested in the AWT robot - a Java tool that will work with your native platform's mouse interface. Nimur (talk) 21:59, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Wiggler.java - example source code

import java.awt.Robot;
public class Wiggler {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
 Robot r = new java.awt.Robot(); 
 while(true) {
  r.mouseMove(10,10) ;  
  r.delay(100);  
  r.mouseMove(12,12);
  r.delay(100);	
  }
}}

You can add other features, like only enabled when "scroll-lock" is on; or relative mouse-motion; as you need. Nimur (talk) 22:06, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Because I was unable to make my app work on the old Win 9x platform, I post the source code here, so that someone more used to this older platform can try to make a working executable. The code is in the Delphi language, but relies entirely on the Win32 API in all essential parts.

program CursorMotion;

uses
  SysUtils,
  Windows;

var
  pnt: TPoint;
  disp: integer;

{$R *.res}

begin
  disp := 2;
  repeat
    if GetKeyState(VK_SCROLL) and 1 = 1 then
    begin
      if GetCursorPos(pnt) then
      begin
        SetCursorPos(pnt.X + disp, pnt.Y + disp);
        disp := -disp;
      end;
    end;
    sleep(100);
  until 1+1=3;
end.

--Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 22:57, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Now I also tried a minor modification to the code. It might work now (it is really too bad that I do not have a running Win 9x computer at home right now...). If it does not work, we have to hope that some other developer will make a try on this problem. Sorry for my inability! I feel that I really should know what the problem is... --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 23:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Much better ! Only one small bug: It checks the scroll lock key status when it starts, but never again. Looking at your code, I can't see any obvious reason why. Does the VK_SCROLL variable need to be reinitialized before each call to GetKeyState ? Also, why does it need that "and 1=1" part ? Maybe this line:

       if GetKeyState(VK_SCROLL) and 1 = 1 then

Should be split into two lines:

       GetKeyState(VK_SCROLL)
       if VK_SCROLL and 1=1 then

I'm thinking that the value returned in the first case is actually whether the KeyState was read, as opposed to it's current value. StuRat (talk) 00:35, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

No, VK_SCROLL is a so-called "virtual key constant", identifying the Scroll Lock key. GetKeyState returns a cardinal where the LSB is 1 if the key is "on" and 0 if it is "off", as I understand from [16]. At least this code has always worked for me under Windows NT systems. I think there is a lot more subtle problem. If I get time over "tomorrow", I will plug in my old HP Vectra VE and debug the program. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 00:55, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, cool. Some other thoughts:

1) Does the "if" statement look at the LSB only ?

2) Maybe we need to use the GetAsyncKeyState call instead ? StuRat (talk) 01:39, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you need to call GetAsyncKeyState. GetKeyState returns the key state as of the most recent window message, and this application never processes any messages. The "if" statement looks at the value of (GetKeyState(VK_SCROLL) and 1) = 1, which is boolean. -- BenRG (talk) 02:13, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

StuRat: 1) Yes. and 1 returns the LSB. 2) Yes, this is probably the subtle problem I am looking for. Strange that it works under Windows XP and Vista, though. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:29, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

One problem, though: Although GetAsyncKeyState can check if a key is down or not, it cannot give the status of "lock keys" (Num Lock, Scroll Lock, Caps Lock), I think... But now I have my old HP Vectra plugged in, so I will fix the problem within an hour. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:47, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Cool. StuRat (talk) 14:02, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Now it finally works. I gave up the Scroll Lock idea, due to the mentioned problem. Then I tryed to turn the motion on/off when both shift keys are down, but this does not work on Windows 98 (but on XP/Vista). It took a bit longer time than I expected, for I needed to install Windows 98 on the HP Vectra (it had Win95), and also figure out a way to copy files from my Vista computer to the HP Vectra (eventually I found an old USB floppy disk drive). Now the program works perfectly on Windows 98. You enable/disable the motion by simultaneously pressing the "C" and "M" (Cursor Motion) keyboard keys. The disadvantage of this approach is that the current keyboard focus control must, of course, not do something bad when you do this. For instance, it is a bad idea to use the combination when typing a report in Word. Then you simply have to click the desktop, task bar or something else. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:15, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

program CursorMotion;

uses
  Windows;

var
  pnt: TPoint;
  disp: integer;
  dorun: boolean;

{$R *.res}

begin
  disp := 2;
  dorun := true;
  repeat
    if dorun then
    begin
      if GetCursorPos(pnt) then
      begin
        SetCursorPos(pnt.X + disp, pnt.Y + disp);
        disp := -disp;
      end;
    end;
    if (GetASyncKeyState(ord('C')) and $8000 > 0) and (GetASyncKeyState(ord('M')) and $8000 > 0) then
    begin
      dorun := not dorun;
      repeat
        sleep(10);
      until (GetASyncKeyState(ord('C')) and $8000 = 0) or (GetASyncKeyState(ord('M')) and $8000 = 0);
    end;
    sleep(100);
  until 1+1=3;
end.

--Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:16, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks ! It works great. Now I can't wait until the next time my Flash animations lock up to see if it solves that problem. Thanks again. StuRat (talk) 15:28, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

WHAT ARE DIFFRENT TYPES OF AUDIO,VIEDO STREAMING IN JAVA

PLEASE DONT RESPOND SAYING

"GOOGLE IT DUDE U LL FIND IT"

I HAVE DONE THAT BEFORE

ANSWERS ARE WELCOME. . . . —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aashishkotagiri (talk • contribs) 15:26, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

You might start at the Java Media Framework article. That library encapsulates most of the common audio and video needs. There are numerous other libraries available to help. Your question is very vague - you can technically write any type of streaming audio or video in Java; but some of the more common types are already available through official (like JMF) and third-party libraries. Nimur (talk) 16:44, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Please don't write in ALL CAPS. It is perceive as SHOUTING. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:52, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

...-ed... --Ouro (blah blah) 10:10, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

How do I make an NPC for Garry's Mod 10?

I have been playing the game "Spore" for quite a while now, and I have also been playing Garry's Mod 10 for a while. I was just wondering, how would I make a new npc for garry's mod 10, like say, a spore creature npc, or any npc. What would I have to do/download to be able to make one, and Im guessing its pretty complicated, so where can I get help? —Preceding unsigned comment added by DeWandel (talk • contribs) 19:57, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems like you will need to learn LUA scripting, which is the scripting engine used by Garry's Mod and other games. Specifically look at the documentation for server-side NPC LUA scripting. There are numerous introductions and tutorials to LUA scripting on that site. First you need to create an AI script for it, and then you need to load that script and spawn the AI & renderable model in your game script. Here is the list of entities available; you can apparently extend or add to these with your custom scripts. Nimur (talk) 20:29, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion: find existing NPC LUA code, and use it as a template. Re-inventing the wheel is a good way to end up with a bad wheel—improve on someone else's wheel and you'll get farther. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:05, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

How do I make a custom texture in Source SDK apply like a decal?

I pretty much know the basics to making custom textures for source sdk.....but how do you make it apply so its like graffiti..? Like not somthing you would build with, but, you know, a Decal?? I'm usuing VFT Edit to make my textures. and paint.net, also. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.37.226.31 (talk) 22:34, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

November 9

Visual Dictionary for OS X?

I'm looking for a visual guide to what all the parts of OS X are called. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.253.80.241 (talk) 03:10, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

The Apple HIG will tell you what everything is along with examples of each interface element. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 16:03, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Video problems with Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

A friend of mine recently bought this game for the PC. He installed it, created a character, and it worked perfectly fine until he tried to load his character. After that happened it wouldn't load his character. It would minimize the game and keep saying DirectX 9 failed to start, and that it would fix the problem. Then he would click back into the game and try to load the character again and it would try to minimize the screen and then would freeze, requiring us to open the task manager and end the process directly. It did this every time we tried it. We installed the latest DirectX (I believe it was 10). It still was not working. I think it is his graphics card but we are not sure. Here are the system specs. They are all above the recommended speeds for the game.

HP Laptop (Not sure of the model) Windows Vista Home 64-bit 2.00GHz processor 4GB RAM 512MB dedicated video RAM

What do you guys think, would it be the graphics card or what? Thanks guys.

RandomAccessDawg (talk) 04:38, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Try upgrading the drivers for the video card. If that doesn't work, try loading a different character. If that STILL doesn't work, try reinstalling the game. If that STILL doesn't work, then your video card may be incompatible with the game. Since you are using a laptop, you're out of luck. Check the system requirements for the game and see if a list of supported video cards is available. If yours isn't on there, you cannot play the game. Also, the game might not be supported under Vista or 64-bit. (Wow this is a long answer)  Buffered Input Output 13:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I've played that game a few months ago and remember all kinds of gripes about 64-bit issues. I don't think it works very well in Vista either and you'll be lucky to get it stable there. If you can, dual-boot into XP 32-bit; it works very well there. It's not too fussy what video card you have but you will probably lose out on nice effects with the watered-down graphics cards on laptops. Sandman30s (talk) 22:28, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Netbeans or Eclipse

I am learning J2EE....
Which tool will be better for me....
Eclipse or Netbeans....
And why???....
What is the difference between them???? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atchays (talk • contribs) 06:12, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Win7

Why wasn't Windows 7 given an official name? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 09:12, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

What do you think "Windows 7" is? If you want to know why it was not given a different official name, I'd guess that Microsoft's Marketing expects more sales this way, probably because they want to try some understatement after the general disappointment with Vista. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:59, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Alright, yes, that's what I meant. Why wasn't it given a name with an abbreveation or word? Why did it go back to the naming convention of the DOS/9x based operating systems? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 11:26, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

hopefully they continue the trend and call the next one windows 8 or something. much less confusing than random names. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 11:09, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Here is a Microsoft blog post on the topic. It says that Windows 7 was the internal development code name (many products will be developed with a simple codename and then named later once marketing people have done their work), and they decided to release it under that name. Mike Nash of Microsoft explains:

The decision to use the name Windows 7 is about simplicity. Over the years, we have taken different approaches to naming Windows. We've used version numbers like Windows 3.11, or dates like Windows 98, or "aspirational" monikers like Windows XP or Windows Vista. And since we do not ship new versions of Windows every year, using a date did not make sense. Likewise, coming up with an all-new "aspirational" name does not do justice to what we are trying to achieve, which is to stay firmly rooted in our aspirations for Windows Vista, while evolving and refining the substantial investments in platform technology in Windows Vista into the next generation of Windows.

Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore "Windows 7" just makes sense.

So they don't have any aspirations, or rather, their aspirations are to make something just like Vista, except a Vista that actually works. --Lesleyhood (talk) 12:32, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

There are 3 things which a version name/number should do:

1) Allow you to distinguish between versions. All three MS naming schemes did that.

2) Allow you to tell which is newer and which is older. Both numbers and dates allow that, although numbers are somewhat better, in that they can have many levels to them.

3) Tell you how old a version is. Only date names did that.

So, the names like XP and Vista were the absolute worst system, while dates or version numbers are both much better. Personally I'd settle for either of those two options, as long as they remain consistent. Changing the naming scheme with each new version is truly idiotic. StuRat (talk) 13:46, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

The trouble is that Windows 7 is actually version 6.1, as you can see by opening a command prompt for example. That's the version number that's reported to applications. So the marketing name and the internal version are still different, but now they're similar enough to potentially cause confusion. -- BenRG (talk) 21:06, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

MS PowerPoint - startup macros

Hello,

I am trying to create a way of running a macro (the macro prompts the user for some text and puts it onto the slide master) as soon as the user opens a particular PowerPoint template. This makes sure that the user has to complete the text box. I have got the macro working fine but the problem is running it.

From some research online, it is not simply a case of naming the macro 'autoexec' like you can do in Word/Excel/Access. This does not work. There is a way of doing it that involves using 'Add-Ins'; I don't know anything about Add-Ins but I am pretty sure that they have to be loaded on each user's machine for this approach to work - NOT practical and way too much of a fuss, we are trying to make this as painless as possible to the end-users.

Another approach I considered was setting up an object that, when clicked, runs the macro. This works fine if you run it in slideshow mode but it does not work in editing mode so definitely not ideal. Is there some way I can create a button or something that works in editing mode, runs the macro and then deletes the button itself? Or any other suggestions for this would be appreciated. It is too much to ask of our users to have to go into the slide master every time and manually edit the text box! Thanks! GaryReggae (talk) 10:23, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I can only speak from the recent experience of getting a maacro to be invoked in opening an excel file. The solution there was to create a ThisWorkbook object underneath Microsoft Excel Objects in the Visual Basic editor, and then have that object invoke a form which provided the user interface of (in my case) a data collection system. The code in the ThisWorkbook object was nothing more than:

Private Sub Workbook_Open()

frmLayer1.Show

End Sub

PowerPoint seems to offer exactly the same VB editor as Excel, so I guess the technique will be much the same - you'll call your form which collects the information from the user and which provides a button causing the collected data to be written into the slide master. Obviously it is easier if, like me, you have a minion or two handy who has/have a clue what they're doing...but I hope this helps somewhat. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:35, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Vista

What does the Vista part of Windows Vista's name mean? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 11:26, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

See wikt:Vista. Dismas|^(talk) 11:36, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

That page doesn't exist. Vimescarrot (talk) 12:43, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

This one does, though. Vimescarrot (talk) 12:43, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

File, exported from evolution calendar

Can I import this file into other calendars? (like I can import txt, doc or jpg into different applications) Quest09 (talk) 12:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Not the admin of a network

If I am not the admin of a network, can I scan it and discover what users are connecting to it? I suppose the user names are not encrypted, are they?--Quest09 (talk) 12:51, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Users do not use a network. Computers do. What you will see on pretty much any modern network is a bunch of TCP/IP packets racing about. The only thing you can do is reassemble them into a message that will have source/destination IP addresses (computers, not users). However, you can't do much of that because most modern networks use switches/routers. So, you can't see much traffic other than the traffic to/from your own computer.

In the realm of Windows, you can search the Windows network. You can often see the names of computers that have joined the Windows network. Sometimes, those computer names are based on the primary user for that computer. If that is the case, you can assume that the user may or may not be using his or her computer. -- kainaw™ 13:13, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Most networks consist of a router which is connected (possibly indirectly) to the Internet. The router has a load of wires coming out which connect to computers, including yourself. These are the computers in your local network. The router normally assigns each computer an IP address (using DHCP) when they are connected to the router. An IP address is a number (actually 4 numbers) which identifies the computer. The IP address the computer is given is one of the IP addresses in the Private Network address space (see rfc1918).

You can connect to computers in your local network (or the internet) using their IP address, so you can find all the computers by trying to connect to each IP address in the Private Network address space. There are tools like nmap which will do this. --h2g2bob (talk) 18:06, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Python wont work with glade

My code will not let me use the module gtk.glade

The error code is "The specified module could not be found."

I've looked and cannot find the module either. So where is it?

PS I am running Python 2.6 on Windows with PyGTK and all requirements installed.

Thanks.  Buffered Input Output 13:43, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

You should use gtk.Builder instead. It's an official part of gtk and has replaced libglade. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 14:04, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Word (and VBA) in MS Works and MS Office

Is Word the same in Word as in Office? Can they both do grammar checking? And is VBA included in both Works and Office? I only want to use Word and Excel, and possibly VBA, and I am wondering to what extent my wants will be covered by the cheaper package. (Note - please do not mention OpenOffice etc - I am already familiar with that/those and it is not the subject of this question). Thanks 92.27.152.41 (talk) 14:21, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I assume you mean, is MS Word the same as the word processor in MS Works. My understanding is the Works is scaled down in its features—in both its word processing and its spreadsheets. I used to use it, years ago, and I recall it being fairly limited in both. Works is fairly crippled.

The biggest problem is that Works saves its documents in a different format than Word does. It can read Word documents, but it can't save in them. So if you plan to send documents to anyone else, they will have to get a converter so that their version of Word can read the Works file.

My understanding is the MS Works does not support VBA. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:22, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Download the 60-day free trial version to check. (Sorry to sound like an MS marketing bot for supplying the link here and below, but I think it's the proper answer for both questions.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:23, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Writing stock or pro-forma letters to a few addresses - freeware?

I often have to write the same letter to four or five different addresses. The letter itself is a standard letter with a few details changed. Is there any freeware or no-pay software available that will help me do this quickly, rather than doing a lot of cutting and pasting in a word processor. When I worked in an office long ago, rather than people dictating complete letters they would just tell the typist to put stock paragraphs 2, 7, and 19 (for example) in the letter. I'd like to find something that can do something like that. Thanks 92.27.152.41 (talk) 14:27, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like you need a mail merge function - Microsoft Word will do this but that isn't free! You could try OpenOffice.org, it is a freeware suite of software, including a word processor that has similiar functionality to MS Word but I can't comment on whether it will do a mail merge as I haven't used it for that. Basically, you just compile your standard letter and put in 'fields' that contain the variable sections, such as people's names', address, company name, etc...you then get a spreadsheet or database containing the data that you want to put into those fields and a mailmerge combines the two. Hope this helps GaryReggae (talk) 16:44, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I recently used Microsoft Word to do this (the version in Microsoft Office 2007) for 70 letters I had to make. I was surprised to find it was a little more difficult than I had expected — Word has had this function for over 15 years and I would have thought that by now, it would be easier to move back and forth between using the wizard and manually doing it — but in the end it was a good time saver. As GaryReggae points out, it isn't free — though you could download the 60-day free trial version and see whether that works for you. I think the trial lets you print. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:18, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, although I've tried mail merging in the past, and together with your comments above I suspect that it would be quicker to do it the way I've done it in the past. Isnt there a better way to do this? I may have given the wrong impression above - the addresses I have to write to are new addresses, not routine addresses. 92.27.67.136 (talk) 22:32, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Virtual LED vu meter

I want a program that displays the sound on my computer like this. I'm using windows 7 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 15:14, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

executable decompiler

Does anyone know of a decompiler that decompiles executables and shows me the source code and allows me to edit it and export another exe? I've searched the internet but none of the products I've found mention these features. -- penubag  (talk) 16:37, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not an expert by any means but I suspect the answer is no, as EXE files can be created by many different applications, programming languages and formats - Flash animations can be EXEs, Visual Basic and C++ applications use different types of code but can both create EXEs, there are also many propriatery applications that can create EXE files. Hopefully somebody more knowledgable about the subject will be able to shed further light on this for you. GaryReggae (talk) 16:48, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

You can get back to assembly code (or other high-level code) with a disassembler. But it's automatically generated code based on the machine code - it's not the code that was used to create the .exe in the first place. That means it's hard to read. Some .exe files contain symbols, which will help, but most commercial software will not have that. --h2g2bob (talk) 17:43, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

(EC) No such program can work in the general case, since after a program has been stripped parts of the source code (local variable names, for example) are simply not stored. There are many other difficulties that will make it a major project to understand any reasonably large project after decompilation. See decompiler, and the info pages for dcc and Hex Rays. --Sean 17:46, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

To paraphrase what has been said above, many tools will give you a source code, which will be functionally equivalent to the executable program; but it is generally not possible to reconstruct the exact source code which was originally used to build that binary program. The most obvious issue is that the variable-names will probably be machine-generated; but other details like certain flow-control constructs and most data structures and some program flows will be generated via disassembly - functionally equivalent to the original structures, but not at all easily usable or understandable to a human. Nimur (talk) 18:06, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Stupid Server Question

Forgive my ignorance... but suppose I set up a simple server (using Ubuntu Server) on a home LAN, and I use the Samba fileserver program to set up shared folders and whatnot.

What exactly stops random Internet users from discovering and accessing files on my server just as they would on an Internet server?

I'm pretty new to networking, and I'm trying to figure out waaaay too many things at once, so any help would be appreciated. Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 17:51, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Your question is a smart one. If you have a router with firewall and NAT abilities, as most consumer routers now do, then when a bot on the Internet pings you to find out what ports are open at your IP address, the bot will get silence in return, thanks to the router. It won't be able to send any packets to your Ubuntu server. ShieldsUP, at www.grc.com, is a great tool you can use to ping your location and tell you whether you're visible from the outside or not. You don't have to install anything; just find the ShieldsUP web page, and tell it to probe your ports. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:07, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks. Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 18:10, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Adding something to XP's right-click contextual menus

Used to be, on my Windows XP machine, when I right-clicked in a folder and moused over the "New >" item, I could create a new .txt (notepad) document. Now that option is missing. How do I add it? Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:09, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately I have forgotten if these items are stored in the registry or in the file system. However, I do remember that the "Send To" items are stored at

C:\Users\Andreas Rejbrand\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows

(replace my user name with your own), at least in Windows Vista. It is possible that the "New" items are stored somewhere near this directory as well. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:26, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I am actually quite sure that they are stored in the file system. Indeed, when you select a "Create New" item you get a copy of this template in the current directory. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:27, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

It really should be

C:\Users\Andreas Rejbrand\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Templates

I think, but strangely enough, my folder is empty (as is the "All Users" quivalent). --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:32, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

See http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,1838907,00.asp ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

That extremetech article was interesting — TXT was not listed as a "registered file type" on my machine — but it doesn't explain how to modify the right-click context menu to add the ability to make a new text file. It just talks about how to add the ability to run an app (Outlook, in the example given) with the selected file as a parameter. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:36, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Simple Java Counter

I am trying to write a simple program in java that increments or decrements a counter when certain keys are pressed. It is not a graphical program, it is just in the command line. What method can i use to take use the pressing of a key, and how can it be used? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.132.142.60 (talk) 19:48, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

How can I safely view a phishing scam site?

I just got an e-mail purporting to be from a major bank which I don't have an account with. It claims that errors were discovered on my account and that access to my account will be restricted until I've corrected the errors. It's obviously a phishing scam. Clicking the e-mail's link appears to send you to pop zelda dot com. (I Googled and Binged the site, but didn't find anything relevent.) But I'm curious to see how the phishing site works. How can I safely browse the site? As long I don't enter any personal information, am I safe (i.e. can they access my history, bookmarks, autocomplete info, etc.)? I supposed I can create a Virtual PC with a freshly installed version of Windows, download all the security updates and turn off JavaScript, or is that overkill? 12.165.250.13 (talk) 21:19, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

If you don't enter in anynformation, they probably cannot detect anything. They cannot access your history or bookmarks. They probably cannot access your autocomplete, but it would be an interesting trick to try and get the browser to enter it into a form and then submit it (I'm not sure it can be done, but it's the only thing that seems within the realm of possibility). I am not sure you could get much information from looking at the page itself—it will at the most minimal just be a false front, at most be a complicated man-in-the-middle (e.g. they take your information, "log in" as you on the other site, and then send you the information that you would normally see). If it were me, I would view it with a non-Windows machine, first off, and secondly, I would use the "privacy mode" in Firefox that uses no cookies or autocomplete, and I would probably turn off Javascript too, just to be safe. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:25, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

linux's ping -M dont/want options

Google doesn't seem to help much. The man pages neither. I understand that do can help me discover a network's MTU because if I set the packet to be too large I'll receive an error, but I don't get much information with the other two, it just pings normally. Help! --Belchman (talk) 21:43, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Android and Linux

Is it possible to install Android onto a mobile internet device (Archos 5G) that comes with Linux? Android is free, but where does one get it? Thanks if you can enlighten.