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January 2

Facebook and private friends lists, how?

I've noticed some people on Facebook have their friend list only available to people they know. How is this done? In the profile and privacy settings there's many things you can make public or private, but the friends list isn't listed as one of them. There must be some way to do this. Squidfryerchef (talk) 00:22, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Go to your facebook public page by clicking your name at the top of the facebook website, click on the pencil icon on your friend box and use the options there to restrict its display. Nanonic (talk) 02:59, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. That pencil icon's the sort of thing one might look at a thousand times without wondering what it does. Squidfryerchef (talk) 03:44, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

web hosting?

I'm afraid I don't understand what Web hosting is from the article, and it isn't referenced, so whatever that says might not even be accurate. I'm wondering if someone can please explain what its qualifications are, or perhaps direct me to a better source? Thank you.--Neptunerover (talk) 00:25, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure what you mean. A "web hosting service" is a service that runs a web server that is connected to the internet. Every site you visit on the internet is "hosted" somewhere. Is there a more specific piece that maybe you're referring to? Shadowjams (talk) 00:29, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Whenever you load a web site in your browser, your computer sends a signal that says, "hey, send me this web page." In amazing quickness, it makes its way across the country or globe or whatever to another computer that says, "okay, here it is," and sends the data along. That computer that sends you the page is the server, and it hosts the page. Now, you can host a website from your own computer—your computer can be the one that other computers talk to when they want websites—but it requires you to have the computer running 24/7, and can use up a lot of bandwidth, and can be a pain to manage. But you can do it—you can be your own "web host". But more often people rent space on dedicated computers that are set up to do nothing other than host websites. This is a web hosting service. You pay them money (though some are free), and they make sure that when someone says, "hey, I want your web page," they get it. Does that make sense? If not, please specify what is confusing for you. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:48, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually, it just occurred to me why you're asking this—you've been told that Wikipedia is not your web host and are trying to come up with a way to argue against that. All the rule means is that you don't have any claim to using Wikipedia is an arbitrary way—it isn't a place for you to just post whatever you want. Your user page is not really "yours"—you don't own it, and you don't have unlimited freedom in what goes on it. (If you want something like that, get your own web host.) --Mr.98 (talk) 20:28, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

That's right. If you want to publish your theories about the universe, then the best place for this will be your own web-pages that need to be hosted somewhere. You can do this without cost (but with some disadvantages such as advertising) on various servers (just google "free web hosting"), or you can pay for a better service. Dbfirs 09:08, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

You could even just set up a blog. It wouldn't allow the versatility of a fairly full featured web host but may be enough if you just want to publish your theories. There are plenty of people with, er, similar ideas, who may even comment on your theories and tell you how right you are Nil Einne (talk) 16:32, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Working with JLabels

Hello! In Java, I want to display a vertical list of JLabels in a JScrollPane. All the JLabels contain different amounts of text (from a few characters to several sentences). I want to set all the JLabels to have the same width, but variable height, so that they are just tall enough to fit in their rows of text. Could someone please give me some tips or some example code for how to do this? I've been trying BoxLayout, but what's problematic is for the JLabel's setPreferredSize() method, I can't just specify a width, and I can't be sure of the height. Thank you!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 02:04, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't really know that toolkit, but couldn't you do something like this?

Dimension d = widget.getPreferredSize();
d.width = whatever;
widget.setPreferredSize(d);

--Sean 15:04, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that the label's preferred height should depend on its width (because it changes how many lines into which it must break its text). But the [gs]et{Minimum,Maximum,Preferred}Size() interface provides no mechanism for communicating such a complication. The calculation in getPreferredSize() can't even usefully take its current width into account, because having a component's desired size(s) depend on its current sizes would turn layout into a clumsy iteration scheme that might never converge.

It's a problem with the Java layout system that I've thought about before (I even went so far as to design an interface for conveying such contingent sizing information), but that doesn't help you with your present problem. If you're lucky, some sort of finagling with the various size settings will cause your labels to "get it" and return a useful getPreferredSize().height, but I'm not optimistic: how would it be sure that you didn't want it to give a useful getPreferredSize().width value based on your specified height(s) instead? --Tardis (talk) 23:47, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for both of your comments. With some playing around and reading the Swing API, I found that JTextArea and some other text components have line-wrapping methods, so I'll use them instead. I also found out that the Scrollable interface lets you force a desirable width or height, or both, and that was helpful for dealing with multiple JTextArea instances in a single JScrollPane. Still, as Tardis mentions, it would have been a lot more convenient if you could just ask for a preferred width or height, instead of a Dimension.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 20:00, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

World's Sillest CSS question

Hello!

I'm trying to write a simple table in CSS for my girlfriend's blogger page. But its driving me nuts! It keeps randomly "stepping down" certain div elements, especially in the first row.

The code itself seems to work independently if i test it in IE or firefox, but when I put into blogger it goes all nuts. The first row of elements will "step down" as if there's an imaginary line break after each element. Then, after the first row, everything is in perfect alignment.

If I put in a Clear:both command on the second element, it will shift everybox after the first one down a full-sized row and then the table will be perfectly aligned (Except the first box will be alone on the top). Display inline doesnt do anything.

Honestly, I'm going nuts doing this. Please help.

Here is the code:

  <div style="width:495px; " align="center">
    <div style="float:left; width:144px;height:250px;background-color:green;"></div>
    <div style="float:left;width:144px;height:250px;background-color:yellow;"></div>
    <div style="float:left; width:144px;height:250px;background-color:green;"></div>
    <div style="float:left;width:144px;height:250px;background-color:yellow;"></div>
    <div style="float:left; width:144px;height:250px;background-color:green;"></div>
    <div style="float:left;width:144px;height:250px;background-color:yellow;"></div>
    <div style="float:left; width:144px;height:250px;background-color:green;"></div>
    <div style="float:left;width:144px;height:250px;background-color:yellow;"></div>
  </div>

Thanks for your help.... I'm desperate!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cacofonie (talk) 04:12, 2 January 2010 (UTC)) 03:43, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I've actually uploaded a picture of what it renders as here.

--Cacofonie (talk) 04:12, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

It's difficult to see what you're trying to achieve - are you trying to get a table with two columns, or four, or what? Anyway, you're putting eight objects that are each 144 pixels wide into a container that's 495 pixels wide. So it's reflowing them, and I guess the different you're seeing when on blogger is that it's applying an additional style that adds padding, which changes how things reflow. Relying on flowing like this makes for markup thats harder to read, change, and debug. Instead, have a DIV for each row, with the cells within it, and clear the floats for each of those row DIVs. 217.43.149.157 (talk) 12:57, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your help... I wanted a simple, three column table. So, if i understand your advice, I should make an encapsulating "row" div, appropriately sized to hold three of the divs in my code, and then each row should have the clear:both property?? Is that right?

Thanks again, --Cacofonie (talk) 13:33, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Three column layouts are actually really hard to do with CSS. (It's one of the reasons I continue to use HTML tables for things of this nature... they are a million times easier to set up and "just work", unlike CSS tables). If you Google "three column CSS" you'll find about a million different ways to do it... none of which are straightforward, all of which are a pain to implement, none of which work on all browsers, at least not the last time I checked. It can be done, more or less.. but be aware that it is a non-trivial problem for CSS, and all "solutions" have their disadvantages (and this is not the sort of thing that you'll probably want to try and re-invent on your own, on the fly). Personally... as I said, I still just use the HTML table for this. It takes five seconds to set up a decent three-column HTML layout and you know it'll work on any browsers that look at it. The CSS purists will recoil but such is their job, and real-life web design requires more than (not-necessarily-great-anyway) ideals. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:48, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I still don't follow the line of reasoning against HTML tables. If your data is tabular, it should be presented in a table and described in metadata as a table. The browser will render it as a table. You can use CSS to configure the way that the table appears, such as its colors, borders, and so forth. But I'm unconvinced that CSS can beat the simplicity of an HTML table. WikiBooks has a chapter HTML Tables in the HTML Programming book. Numerous criticisms of HTML tables, e.g. [1] [2], leave me unconvinced. Clean design and proper appearance is far more important than today's faddish, pedantic preferences for CSS or HTML. Nimur (talk) 22:15, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

The CSS purists would hold that in theory, you should be able to totally separate the design from the content. Tables do inhibit that when used purely for organizing data visually. But I do agree with you—in real-life web design, jettisoning the simplicity of tables seems really quite silly, especially when done for purist reasons. I'm also somewhat dubious of the whole data/design separation anyway. In some circumstances it seems desirable to have data extractable from the design, obviously. But on most web sites, it doesn't matter (because no one is going to try and extract the data independent of the design), and in practice, you have to assign every element on the page an ID and a class and etc. to be able to "totally" separate the data from the design in a real sense (as anyone who has had to re-skin a whole website knows, even if you DO try to separate data and design, there is a lot less separation than you think). And even then, I am very dubious that one should necessarily strive to make a data/design separation to the degree the purists want it. Is our design really meant to be divorced from the content? What graphic designer would defend such a proposal? It's the kind of philosophy a computer programmer would come up with—the idea that meaning and form could be and should be so swiftly detached. (smallified because this is fairly tangential to the question) --Mr.98 (talk) 22:57, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

To Break LAN Connection

Hello To all of you.

If you know How to Break a LAN connection than tell me.

i want to knw if LAN connection is there in Computer Lab And User want to transfer a File To one computer to another COmputer.

Than thing is how is Possible ? Tell me if u are know. . .

I m waiting for answer. . .

thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dj Keval (talk • contribs) 09:43, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Um... Your question makes no sense. If you want to break a lan connection then you can cut the cord with a pair of scissors. that usually works. But that could be a problem if you don't own the network, so don't do that.

Do you want to transfer files? Then you probably don't want to break any connections. Why do you ask about that. That's weird.

What kind of computers are you and your file-transferring friend using? That could help. How big is the data you're trying to transfer? Tell us what operating system you're dealing with. Shadowjams (talk) 10:00, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

The question does not have enough information about the computer setup and what is desired. I think the question is, "If another machine in the computer lab is downloading a large file, is there a way for a second computer to stop that download?" If that's indeed the question, the answer is: Not if the network is properly configured. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:34, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

You could send RST packets too. That would break a connection. Shadowjams (talk) 22:51, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

APNG in GIMP

How to add APNG support to GIMP? --84.62.205.233 (talk) 19:16, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

There isn't support for it currently, but this link may be of use to you. I hope this helps. JW..[ T..C ] 07:11, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

remote start up

Is it possible to make a computer that's turned off, start up via ethernet cable? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.145 (talk) 20:01, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

If the computer supports Wake-on-LAN, you can configure this setting in the BIOS. Nimur (talk) 20:16, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Ok, so I have one computer that's turned off connected via ethernet cable to the computer that I'm using. What exactly do I do to turn the other computer on? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.145 (talk) 21:17, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

This is a fairly technical procedure. From your description, it sounds like you have directly connected the two computers with an ethernet cable. That is technically possible, but it will require additional, "nonstandard" configuration on the part of your active computer. I would recommend you use a router or a switch, instead of a direct ethernet connection between the machines.

I'll refer to the "off" computer as the "server" - this is the one you want to remotely wake up. The "on" computer will be the "client".

Now, you need to make sure your server BIOS supports and has been properly configured for Wake-on-LAN. You need to check your motherboard or machine type to verify that this is possible; if you have a separate Network Interface Card (NIC), you need to check that manual for the configuration as well. (Most modern computers have the NIC built in to the motherboard). The motherboard manual is your best resource to check for Wake-on-LAN setup instructions. If you don't know how to boot to BIOS configuration, you may want to stop here and read about BIOS.

Once that is set up, you need to know the server MAC address and IP address. Your client computer now needs to send a magic packet to that IP. There are several wake-on-LAN programs that generate these packets for you (like etherwake for Ubuntu; if you are running Windows on the client, see Overview of Wake On LAN from Microsoft TechNet). Or you can write your own program following the instructions in the Wikipedia article. This is a simple program that simply sends a UDP or other packet to the server that is loaded with the appropriate data (the format is described in magic packet).

As you can see, the procedure is fairly technical, but you can do it if you follow the instructions step-by-step. If you don't have a router, you will need to configure your client to send packets out the ethernet interface in raw mode to the MAC address of the server; or set up the client to act as a router. Nimur (talk) 21:35, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

As Nimur says, but the PC has to be in a 'soft-off' state. If it's turned off at a switch on the power supply, then it won't turn on as the mains power is off. I am speaking 'Wintel' here, not Apple Mac. --220.101.28.25 (talk) 21:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Hm, we don't have an article on soft shutdown or soft power-off state? Nimur (talk) 21:49, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Booting#Soft reboot, but technically WoL is a notch farther towards total system power-down than that description. As 220 mentions, if there is absolutely no power to the system, then nothing is alive to monitor for WoL wakeup packets and nothing could be done to boot if one were received. Nimur (talk) 21:56, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Not that I could find under those terms. This is a passing reference Here--220.101.28.25 (talk) 22:00, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I use wake on lan all the time. I execute it from Linux using ether-wake -b -D 00:00:00:00:00:00 where you replace the 00:00... with the ethernet address of the device you want to start up. As said above, the device has to support that, but most modern machines will. I'm pretty certain this won't work on wireless though; you'll need a wired ethernet machine. I assume ether-wake is available for mac. The actual wake on lan packet it sends out is pretty simple. You could quickly write a script to send it out so long as you can send out your own tcp packet. Shadowjams (talk) 07:56, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

There is a variant called "Wake on Wireless LAN" (WoWLAN) which is less commonly supported. It is described in our Wake-on-LAN article. Nimur (talk) 12:06, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

January 3

How does su work?

How does su work? I assume it's simply a program file that is itself owned by root, and when run, asks the user for the root password. If the password is correct, it spawns a shell (which inherits the root privileges that su itself has), if it is incorrect, it exits. (For the sake of simplicity, I'm assuming the user only wants to su to root.) Is this really as simple as it works? If so, then if I have access to root privileges in the first place (and in the case of my own Linux system, I have them by default), there's nothing stopping me from writing my own su which always spawns a shell with root privileges, without the user having to do anything at all. The problem with that, of course, is security - if someone other than me came across this new version of su, it would compromise the entire system. Am I on the right track here? JIP | Talk 00:01, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, though I'm not sure why you mentioned "owned by root'. See setuid. Also http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/play.html is remotely related. --91.145.72.253 (talk) 00:15, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

see: 'man sudo', and no need to write your own version to not require a password: 'man sudoers'.—eric 00:27, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Certain computers with hardware protection, e.g. a Trusted Platform Module, will refuse to execute programs such as su (and in fact, the entire boot sequence and kernel), unless the programs are cryptographically verified as a trusted version. On such secure systems (which are very expensive and are usually sold to banks and governments), it will be impossible to "replace" key system utilities like su with any modified version - let alone one designed to circumvent security. On other standard PC-like servers and computers, (depending on the operating system), it is trivial to replace "su" with some other feature. During my reckless youth, I recall messing with a guy's /usr/bin/ or /usr/sbin/ on Gentoo, I think we moved su to actually run ls or something. He deserved it, though. In this case, it was obvious that the correct program was not running (though it was the source of great confusion to the guy). If we had compiled some "phony" sudo or su program that intentionally appeared to be the correct utility, we probably could have obtained his password in plaintext, stored it, etc.; and done just about anything to the entire networked system. As always, physical access to the machine trumps every software security setting; only those very specialized super-secure computers with unique hardware and guarded system access are truly "secure". Nimur (talk) 14:23, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I may rescind my claim that "physical access to the machine trumps every software security setting" and replace it with a more reserved claim, "...trumps most software security settings." If the hard disk drive were encrypted, it would be hard to do much damage "covertly" (though you could still wipe the data); but, as I recall, the poor sap had left a root logged in, so by the time I got there, any encrypted hard disk protection, if present, was already moot. Nimur (talk) 14:39, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Windows Live Messenger 2009

Hi, my question is, If I have Windows Live Messenger 2009 and my accounty is somebody@hotmail.com can I add somebody@gmail.com to chat? Will this person receive the invitation? --190.50.71.52 (talk) 02:33, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Better than asking here and hoping that someone will come along with the answer, would be trying it to see. However, I can tell you that on my MSN I do have some people who are logged in using Gmail, so, yes, it is possible. --KageTora - (影虎) (Talk?) 04:10, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

If they registered the Live account with their Gmail address then yes, you can. Hotmail account and Live account are separate (registering Hotmail will give you a Live account under that email address too, but Live account doesn't require a Hotmail address). --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:29, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

This is in answer to the question below, but Wikipedia is playing silly buggers, so I have to put it here. Thanks for the links, however they don't solve the problem. There is one thing that *may* fix the problem there, but I don't see why I should have to turn UAC off - then reboot (something I do very often with Vista) - delete the file - turn UAC on again - reboot again..... Forget Vista, it's a waste of space. Is there nothing I can do from Ubuntu? --KageTora - (影虎) (Talk?) 11:00, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Permissions (Ubuntu + Vista)

I have a folder of pictures I made on GIMP, that I have transferred from my Vista machine to my Ubuntu machine. The problem I have now is that I can't move the folder from the Ubuntu desktop to anywhere else. I have copied it to my 'documents' folder, but now I can't get rid of the original, being told I don't have permission to do so. I have tried deleting the folder from my Vista computer, but get told the same thing. I am one who likes to have a totally clear desktop, and this folder doing nothing and having no reason to be there is doing my head in. Is there anything I can do about this? TIA! --KageTora - (影虎) (Talk?) 04:08, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

This link and this link may be of use to you. I hope this helps. JW..[ T..C ] 06:58, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Learning Windows 7

Hi! I've had an XP laptop for a while now, but it's bust and needs upgrading. I've ordered one which runs Windows 7 - how easy is it going to be for me to pick up the new operating system? I was very proficient at XP... Also, I use programs such as Sibelius, PhotoshopElements, AVG9-Free, Inkscape etc.: are these compatible? Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►Speaker─╢ 10:46, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

If your old PC just needs upgrading, like you said, why buy a new PC with a new operating system which just looks different but doesn't do anything special? That'd be like having a Ford with a puncture and deciding to buy a new one *because it's pink* or something. In any case, if you were able to become proficient at XP, then I don't see anything stopping you becoming proficient at 7. Not a huge difference, really. There was a bit of a jump from XP to Vista (mainly in folders losing the 'My' in 'Documents' etc., and the Start button not actually having 'Start' written on it, plus being asked every few seconds if you are sure you want to do something, as if every action was part of an SAS mission deep in enemy territory. Being administrator and still having to 'run [individual program] as administrator' defies logic and being told you have no permission to modify a folder you put on the computer in the first place is infuriating beyond belief.). If you can handle that, you're sorted. Besides that, 7 is just eye-candy - no better, no worse than MS's previous attempts to make the world a better place. Oh, and there is no 'blue screen of death' in 7. MS have done away with that and given you a black one instead. For compatibility of individual programs, I'd suggest visiting their websites to see - you'd have to do that anyway just to download the software. While you are there, take a look to see if it says 'Windows 7 compatible', and if it does, then there is a good chance it is. Anyway, congratulations on your investment. --KageTora - (影虎) (Talk?) 11:11, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all that as far as it went... what I mean is, my laptop's screwed, I need to buy a new one, nobody much sells XP any more (certainly not to the specs I need), Vista's supposedly crap, so I chose to get one which runs Windows 7. Am I right in supposing that any program which is/was Vista-compatible would also be 7-compatbile? ╟─TreasuryTag►belonger─╢ 15:08, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

You can pretty much be assured of that, yes. And XP compatibility mode can usually handle the rest; at least, it does for me. I never had anything much against Vista, excpet it was too slow, and 7 is much better in that regard. The biggest difference, yes, is probably UAC. It's been toned down so it stays out of your way a bit more in 7 than it did in Vista, but if you haven't really used Vista, then it still might bother you for a while. KageTora's comment about being an administrator and still having to run things as an administrator being illogical is actually the whole point, and how it's supposed to work - the whole idea is to prevent people from just using admin accounts, thus granting permission to everything - read User Account Control.

Either way, if you're good with XP, it will take virtually no time to 'learn' 7 - don't worry about it. Ale_Jrb^2010! 15:19, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that! One or two other concerns: what is the difference between 64/32 bit, and which type is my laptop likely to have (brand new Fujitsu with Home Premium installed)? And am I right in thinking that Home Premium doesn't include XP Compatibility Mode? :) ╟─TreasuryTag►Lord Speaker─╢ 15:22, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

That is correct. You need at least Windows 7 Professional. But this does only cost marginally more than Home Premium, and all feature of Home Premium are included in Professional. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:29, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There are lots of differences between 32 and 64 bit arcitecture, but you'd be better off reading the article 64-bit for information about that. For most people, it's nothing more than 64 bit systems can support more RAM and higher-end hardware more effectively. This comes at the expense of running most home software, though, so it's almost guaranteed that you will have 32 bit unless you are specifically buying otherwise. Home Premium doesn't come with the XP virtual machine, but it can still run programs in compatibility mode, although you'll probably barely need it. Ale_Jrb^2010! 15:31, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I would strongly disagree with the statement "This comes at the expense of running most home software". I run 64 bit Vista and there are few progams that will not run. --Phil Holmes (talk) 19:06, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Read my reply below Comet's on how to run stuff Vista/7 doesn't. It's called dual booting XP and 7. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 19:09, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

As Ale_jrb said, you should read the 64-bit article. For Windows, some important changes are (a) 32-bit is limited to using only around 3GB of your RAM; (b) 64-bit Windows features both a "Program Files" folder (for 64-bit apps) and a "Program Filex (x86)" folder (for 32-bit apps), which itself causes some problems with configuring certain apps. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:43, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

XP compatibility mode is a marketing scam. It's been there forever. It's called Microsoft Virtual PC. Runs on XP, Vista, and 7 (or rather it used to before Windows pulled support, but you can still download completely functional older versions). I even have it on my Vista computer. It's also free, and Microsoft offers a download (or it did) on it's website of a working disk image of XP (virtual PC's uses disk images), or you can use the recovery disk that came with your old computer. Don't expect "XP" mode to run anything more powerful than MS Word with an average computer cause virtual PC's are very inefficient. Personally, I'd get a XP-Linux (Debian)-7 computer, as windows 7 supports DirectX11 and XP supports a ton of software (ex. AppLocale, which Windows 7 does not support) as well as being a less resource intensive OS. You can always install XP on a computer with windows 7 and then install windows 7 on a separate partition with the recovery disk. But enough of what I'd do. In answer to your question on Windows Xp, it is still being sold by independent computer stores (local), and here with customization. Yes Microexpress computers don't have eye candy, but their computers have the least markup of major brands(ex. i7 laptop same specs costs $2000 vs $3000 alienware). Also, always get the 64-bit OS (there is a 64-bit professional version of XP.) ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 18:58, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

The above angry rant should be disregarded. XP compatibility mode is useful. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:27, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I never said it wasn't useful. Just saying there are better options, especially when Virtual PC is free and that XP Compatibility mode is using Virtual PC. It also is not an angry rant. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 20:53, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

You are misleading readers. Virtual PC is free, but does not include a copy of Windows XP, which is not a problem with the XP compatibility mode of Windows 7. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:57, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

The reader had XP. He/she has a install disk for it which can be used for Virtual PC. It was just one option I listed. I also stated that I personally would dual boot (or triple boot) as virtual PC's aren't an efficient way of running things. It was just a suggestion. If the user wanted to do resource intensive things, dual booting is better than using a virtual PC. In addition, Microsoft offers a free Disk Image of XP pre-activated on their site somewhere. Here's a link to a 2007 statement about it [3]. It's not insanely hard to remove the expiration date (ex. change system time). Disclaimer:I'm not using my virtual PC on Vista because the performance was terrible. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 21:01, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Removing a reparse point

Backups in Win7 always fail for me with error code 0x81000037. The Microsoft website says the solution is to a remove a reparse point, but it doesn't say which point to remove and how to remove it! How do I fix this? --Glaesisvellir (talk) 17:31, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Documentation, and particularly tool support, for NTFS reparse point is disappointingly patchy. This KB article describes how to create and destroy them (but not, I think, how to search a tree for one). This article links to some freeware that works with them (I don't know if they'll help). This API document describes how one can examine a file to see if it's a reparse point; one would hope that find.exe would have an option to use this API to find reparse points (in much the way Unix' find can search for symlinks) but I don't think it does. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:50, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

For the record, 'dir /s /al', run from the root of the drive, should list all reparse points on the drive (/s makes it recursive, /al looks for reparse points in Vista and later OSes). You might need to run it more than once, adding additional /a options for 'h' and 's' (hidden and system files), but deleting system reparse points is very risky. Reparse points in Vista and later are effectively normal files; you use mklink to create them, but you can use normal deletion mechanisms to get rid of them. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 17:50, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

How to open .pcx files?

I've got some .pcx image files in my computer, but I can't find any software that can open it. Is it possible to open it using windows? Because I know it is format for DOS. --142.161.75.164 (talk) 18:15, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

(I don't have a .PCX at hand to try this, but...) try converting it to something modern (like PNG) with Imagemagick's convert utility (e.g. convert foo.pcx foo.png). PCX is listed as one of the many file formats that Imagemagick understands. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:22, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

IrfanView can open .pcx files, download available here —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kv7sW9bIr8 (talk • contribs) 19:03, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

On the Mac side, GraphicConverter can open just about anything. I also remember older versions of Photoshop had a PCX optional plug-in in the Goodies folder. --68.103.143.23 (talk) 05:08, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Were can I find information about solving this problem

In early Oct. 2009 I purchased on eBay a brand new copy of Windows XP. The user had a 100% record for almost 700 transactions. I was on abusiness trip when it arrived and did not return until just before Christmas. I gave it and a new hard drive to my daughter who set about installing both on her computer. When it came time for activation she got a pop-up saying to enter a different product key which she did not have or to call an 888 number to activate the software online. Instead of activating Microsoft popped up another window saying the software was counterfeit and to send it to them instead of returning it to the seller along with the receipt. She therefore sent a message to eBay asking if she could return the CD for a refund but eBay woud not provide a means to file a dispute even though Microsoft would not activate it, eBay claims that it does not allow couterfeit operating systems to be sold through eBay unless the discovery is within 45 days of the sale (not the first activation date of the software). Is eBay a party to fraud here? Has Microsoft gone piracy crazy? Where can I find a list of options for dealing with this problem? 71.100.1.76 (talk) 19:18, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Windows Genuine Advantage has been known to mess people up. I'm not sure if Microsoft ended activation for XP yet (as I remember reading somewhere that Microsoft was planning to end support). There's a number of ways to bypass activation (google), or you can try and get access to an Enterprise version (if you work at a white collar job, your company might have it), which doesn't require activation. Not really legal per se (as Microsoft licensed it to the company), but not many companies care if you do take a copy. As for consumer complaints, you would have to read Ebay's return policy (which I'm not familiar with), or if you purchased it through your credit card, you might have some protection there. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 19:38, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Support will cease on April 8, 2014. They stopped selling XP and stopped creating new updates that aren't related to security in 2009. That's all.--Drknkn (talk) 03:34, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Did you get in touch with the seller? They, not eBay, are usually who you want to contact first about bad products. It could easily be that Microsoft has done something wrong here, but if the seller claimed it was new and that the product key was new, then they are the ones who are in error here. Get in touch with them ASAP and ask about exchanging or refund. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:43, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Did that already but no response. 71.100.1.76 (talk) 08:47, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Now even the link to the seller (geoffrey_morris (636) 100% Positive feedback) is not working... 71.100.1.76 (talk) 13:55, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

To clarify, did you call the phone number Windows gave you for activatiion? The serial number has probably been used on another computer, so it's definitely not new. The only time I've seen screens like that was when in fact the serial number had been used on different machines (or the same machine with new hardware). In any case, calling that number has worked for me many times. Just tell the IVR system that the key has only been used on one computer and it should activate it.--Drknkn (talk) 03:22, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I went through the process and when it asked how many times it had been activated I said zero. When I called Microsoft and finally got through to an operator she hung up when I told her I had opened the package brand new and this was the first time it was out of the wrapper. If someone can activate by just looking through the clear plastic wrapper isn't this Microsoft's fault and Microsoft's responsibility and obligation to replace the software on the grounds of defective product or defective packaging resulting in a defective product? 71.100.1.76 (talk) 08:54, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

You can't see the code through the wrapper on a genuine MS product. It's on a card that's inside the opaque box, and sometimes inside an envelope too. Even the small-builder-OEM licences (which are distributed in a minimalist shrinkwrap with or without an install disk) keep the licence hidden until you open the shrinkwrap. If you could see the licence then it's not a genuine MS package; he's repackaged an old licence as new. 87.113.46.161 (talk) 19:08, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

This is an OEM package, not retail. You missed the eBay photo and description link above... 71.100.1.76 (talk) 21:32, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Besides, Microsoft does not state anywhere that the way to differentiate pirated from genuine is if the product code can be seen through the wrapper leaving everyone to assume that the disk is required in addition to the code to be valid, prohibiting use of just the code for activation. 71.100.1.76 (talk) 22:13, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

No. Windows doesn't pay attention to the disk. It only cares about the serial number. When you activate Windows, it records the Windows serial number along with the serial number of your motherboard and the MAC address of your network card and then stores them in a remote database. If someone then tries to activate another copy of Windows XP using the same serial number but their computer has a different motherboard or network card, then you get the messages you saw. Try this:

1. Click on Start
2. Find and click on “Run”
3. Type regedit
4. Click the plus next to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE”
5. Click the plus next to “SOFTWARE”
6. Click the plus next to “Microsoft”
7. Click the plus next to “Windows NT”
8. Click the plus next to “CurrentVersion”
9. Click “WPAEvents”
10. On the right panel, find “OOBETimer” then double-click it.
11. Now, delete all the values
12. Then type in this value without the quotation mark “FF D5 71 D6 8B 6A 8D 6F D5 33 93 FD”
13. Then click OK,
14. Then on the left panel right click WPAEvents, then click on Permissions
15. Then click System or SYSTEM, then Deny Full Control, then click OK.
16. Then exit the registry editor.
17. To verify that it works, go to Start, then “Activate Windows”, or go to Start, then All Programs, then “Activate Windows”. Or go to the Start menu, and click Run.
18. Then type oobe/msoobe /a
19. Then click OK.

It may sting psychologically, but perhaps the best way to resolve this is just to crack your copy of Windows using the above technique.--Drknkn (talk) 01:50, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

In my youth it would have been a no-no but since I did pay for the copy and the guy on eBay who sold it has a 100% rating with nearly 700 transactions and since Microsoft is not and has never been beyond reproach (for all I know they may have counted on extra sales by this method) and many of Microsoft's applications like Windows Media Player are a pain and none of the applications I use will run under Linux, etc. I personally have no qualm about handling it this way especially in absence of Microsoft's official assistance and cooperation and killing XP in four years so I'll have to buy rent Windows 7. Thanks. 71.100.1.76 (talk) 12:34, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Buying a new motherboard and CPU and memory

I have nearly enough old computer parts including empty cases to put a complete desktop computer together. Can anyone give me a ball-park figure of how much it would cost to buy a modern motherboard, CPU and memory to get a reasonably future-proof system running Ubuntu? Thanks 78.147.11.181 (talk) 22:03, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

It depends on what specifications and requirements you want. If you want i7 cores, expect to spend anywhere from $600-1200 (retail, probably can find cheaper). Relatively low figure prices are $200 motherboard, $300 for the budget 2nd generation core (budget first generation is $200), and $200 of ram. The most expensive core (not worth it) is $1000, although the 2nd most expensive (2nd generation) is ~$650. If you want Core2 or AMD, it's much cheaper (and running Ubuntu should work fine with Core2). Don't forget the Gfx Card. If your looking for light use, you can get a complete 1GB Ram laptop for ~$550, so I'm assuming a light desktop would cost around $300.

ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 22:18, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Note that if you were building the above power-hungry computer, your "old computer parts" may not have an adequate power supply. As for my personal opinion, get an AMD Phenom II X4 set, for the best Bang-for-the-buck. (Hope I don't start an AMD-Intel war here.) Mxvxnyxvxn (talk) 03:40, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

You may also find it cheaper to look at the motherboard barebone bundles that some retailers offer, Novatech and others are quite good in this regarding price and some of them will also guarantee that the memory will be matched and working before shipment. Nanonic (talk) 23:34, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Even corn, soybeans and flax are not future proof due to genetic engineering. Computer engineering is far, far worse because of bug correction and adding new hardware and software features/capability. The only protection is not to update. This works. Our church still uses an old computer with Windows 3.1 for writing letters and keeping records. The advantage is that there is no cause for worry about viruses or hacking but this comes in exchange for the loss of new features. 71.100.1.76 (talk) 09:12, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, 71... but every part of the above post contradicts best-practices. First of all, I have no idea what you mean by "corn, soybeans, ..." how would these be future-proof, with or without genetic engineering? What does that even mean? As far as refusing to update, this is also a seriously flawed mindset. Most security vulnerabilities affect old, unpatched software. Windows 3.1 is now famous for introducing the Windows Metafile vulnerability - and since Windows 3.1 runs on a DOS stack with essentially no memory protection, but provides a "user-interface" with multi-tasking and invisible background-job capabilities, it is probably the single most vulnerable system to malicious software that can possibly run on any computer. And, since it has been around for more than twenty years, there has been plenty of time for malicious coders to play around with various exploits. Best-practice security is to update to the latest and most bug-free version. On extremely rare occassions, a "bug-fix" may introduce new problems, but the overwhelming majority of the time, bug fixes and upgrades actually fix bugs. Furthermore, if you are really using a Windows 3.1 system, you are no doubt running a serious risk of incompatability. If your hardware ever breaks and you seek to recover any of your data, you will have to go to much more effort to find a system which can still read 20-year-old formats, or can connect to antiquated hardware. Modern, high-performing computers can cost as low as $100 or 200; I bought a complete i920 system (i7 core) for under $1000; if the OP really wants to salvage old hardware, the most useful parts will probably be the hard-disk drives and the peripherals. Nimur (talk) 12:36, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

To play devil's advocate, I really disagree with you, Nimur, if 71's church PC is not connected to the Internet. If you have a working system, don't mess with it. Surely you've seen a firmware update that actually bricks a piece of hardware (happened to me last week). The large exception is, of course, that you need to patch security vulnerabilities if you're connected to the Internet. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:00, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, it's a matter of user preference not to upgrade. But you can't call that "secure". 71 said there was "no cause for worry about viruses...." which is an invalid claim. Nimur (talk) 23:50, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

That might be true if the pastor or his secretary allowed our kids or anyone to run program on it which they do not. If a system is dedicated and not connected then there is not cause for concern, especially when a backup is made of the hard drive after each time the computer is used. 71.100.3.13 (talk) 13:21, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

BTW... reference to genetic engineering is to all of the potential changes to crops that can be made through GM and not to the herbicide gene in combination with the terminator gene. If herbicides like Round-Up will kill all but the GM plants with protection against it plus be GM'd not to reproduce then the future of crops is guaranteed for the companies allowed to do this and in the negative sense for all the rest of us. 71.100.3.13 (talk) 13:26, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Looking for old software that combined decision trees with NPV

A few years ago I had a copy of some shareware software than ran on MS-DOS, in text mode only. It combined decision trees with net present values. Does anyone know what the name of this software was, as I would like to look at it again. I've spent a lot of time searching on the internet for this, but have not been found it. I have found one instance of similar Windows software, but this does not use NPV. Failing that, I might try writing something similar myself. The two hurdles would be the doing things with nodes such as joining and inserting, and getting a visual display of the tree - would these be achievable by an amateur programmer? Thanks 78.147.11.181 (talk) 22:16, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

January 4

Vista Sidebar Gadgets in WIndows 7

I used to have some note gadgets in my Vista Sidebar with, what else, notes. Now that I can't run the sidebar in Windows 7, is there a way to import the gadgets or at the very least, run sidebar so I can copy the info? --142.151.182.176 (talk) 05:50, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

There is no sidebar as such anymore, but the widgets that went in the sidebar are now part of Gadgets, which are similar except can be placed anywhere instead of just to the side of the screen. If you right click your desktop and click Gadgets you should get a screen that lists gadgets, and any sidebar gadgets you have SHOULD appear there if you did an upgrade install, and if not they will work if you download and install them again. Gunrun (talk) 09:35, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

USB headphone

Are there any reliable USB Headphones ?--yousaf465' 09:29, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Why not try Googling around to see if you can find some suitable products. I'm sure there's at least one site somewhere on the web that sells them, or a site with reviews of them. It dosen't really take that much work on Google to find answers. Chevymontecarlo (talk) 14:08, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

You can also get a small USB audio adapter[4][5][6][7] and plug headphones into it. These might be a better solution, as you can choose the headphones you want to use. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.172.19.20 (talk) 17:59, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

HDTV resolutions

It boggles my mind: why do flat panel TVs come in 1366x768 and worse yet 1024x768. The first one is probably no better than native 720p displays even if the video source has more resolution than 720p due to the quality/sharpness lost in interpolating. The second one is even worse because it has to also interpolate for the non-square pixels. Are there any real advantages to these resolutions over the two native HD resolutions (720p and 1080p)? And also, is the interpolation done hardware or software based? Is it simple nearest neighbour (which produces poor results) or something more advanced, like bicubic or Lanczos3 (which is very computationaly intensive for HD video in real time)? Roberto75780 (talk) 09:59, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

my understanding is that most TVs the same size as common computer monitors use the same LCD panels as computer monitors. These panels do not have 720 vertical pixels or 1080 vertical pixels but usually have 768 and 1050 pixels along the vertical edge. When you move to larger TV display sizes, you will find native HD resolutions with 720 and 1080 pixels. The non-native resolution isn't ideal for the picture, but those panels are cheaper as they are produced in larger numbers and allow for less expensive smaller TVs. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 18:19, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Ghost images

Hello. I've heard of a phenomenon where prolonged still images (paused videos or games) can cause the image to leave a "ghost" image on the television or monitor. I'd like to know what causes this, what types of monitors may be affected and whether there is a way to remove the ghost. Thanks in advance! 88.112.62.154 (talk) 11:40, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

This effect is known as Screen burn-in - that article should answer your question. :) Ale_Jrb^2010! 12:05, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! 88.112.62.154 (talk) 13:48, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Makefile

Suppose I have images files in a directory called fullsize and want to put thumbnail versions of them in the directory thumbs. I could use a makefile like this:

thumbs/image1.jpg : fullsize/image1.jpg
    createthumb fullsize/image1.jpg thumbs/image1.jpg

thumbs/image2.png : fullsize/image2.png
    createthumb fullsize/image2.png thumbs/image2.png

However, this requires that I know in advance what images will be in fullsize and even if I do, such a makefile is cumbersome to write if there are many images. What would a makefile look like that would take every image in fullsize and create a thumbnail of it in thumbs if it's not already there and up-to-date? I'm using GNU Make. Thanks! —Bromskloss (talk) 12:00, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

You probably want a make pattern rule. Here is the appropriate section in the manual. An example make file may look like:

 thumbs/%.jpg: fullsize/%.jpg
    createthumb $< $@

 thumbs/%.png: fullsize/%.png
    createthumb $< $@

Note that you need to appropriately replace regular spaces with tabs for whitespace in order to be a properly formatted Makefile. Also note that the $< symbol refers to the first prerequisite file, and $@ refers to the output. These are called Automatic Variables, and are documented here: GNU make Automatic Variables. Nimur (talk) 12:16, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for answering. Unfortunately, it (GNU Make 3.81) only tells me "make: *** No targets. Stop." when I run your example. Is there anything else I need to specify in the makefile? —(I'm the original poster. Just unable to log in.) 130.237.3.196 (talk) 13:17, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Try make thumbs/image1.png. At first I had hoped that make thumbs/*.png would make everything, but unfortunately this will probably not work. There's a work-around, (I have done this sort of thing before, but I can't remember how). I'll check my Gnu Make cheat-sheet when I get into my office later today and see if I can find out what is needed to process everything in your source directory and output everything. In the meantime, you can manually create a make rule that depends on all the expected outputs (thumbnails), e.g. adding this rule to the above makefile:

buildthumbs: thumbs/image1.png thumbs/image2.png thumbs/image3.jpg

Now when you make buildthumbs, you will auto-build all those resources according to the patterned rule. This is only slightly better than a separate rule for every single image - as I said, there's a workaround to auto-detect the prerequisites. Nimur (talk) 14:52, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

This will build a thumb for everything in fullsize/ automagically:

buildthumbs: $(shell ls fullsize/*.{jpg,png} | sed s/fullsize/thumbs/)

--Sean 15:14, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

That works as well as anything I've got. Nimur (talk) 19:25, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

You can avoid using the shell, although it doesn't improve the handling of file names with spaces: $(patsubst fullsize/%,thumbs/%,$(wildcard fullsize/*.jpg) $(wildcard fullsize/*.png)). --Tardis (talk) 23:08, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

The best answer to the spaces-in-filenames issue is almost always "don't do that". --Sean 16:51, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. I ended up generating targets by a call to ls as suggested here. I was hoping that Make could be driven by the existence of source files rather than targets, but that doesn't seem to be the case. —Bromskloss (talk) 12:06, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Animals chewing through ethernet cable

I installed quite a long stretch (25m) of cat5e cable outside the house to get to my dad's office in a separate building. Unfortunately, some animals (probably foxes) have recently decided to complement their diet with my STP wires. Is it worth trying to repair the wires somehow? If I have to re-lay the whole thing, are there certain types of wire that will stand up to this damage better? How can I stop this happening again? I hate animals... Anand^(talk) 12:05, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

• Yes. If you have a pair of wire strippers (plier or scissor may do) you can match the conductors inside with the coresponding ones on the other broken end and connecth them together. You should sandpaper the wire tips and make sure you get a solid connection for every conductor or else the speed may suffer. The foxes may like your cable but I don't think they would dig it out from underground, or even under a carpet. If you want to replace the cable and the pests are still getting to it, try threading it through a garden hose. Roberto75780 (talk) 12:17, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Or you can buy commercial electrical conduit, which may be cheaper than a garden hose. Nimur (talk) 12:19, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

We used a goopy gunk we called "Gorilla Snot" to coat outside wires when I was in the Marines. It was designed to keep animals from chewing the wires. -- kainaw™ 14:40, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I've been advised to wash my hands before laying wires and cables outside, in order to keep them from smelling edible. I'm not sure how effective that is. --Allen (talk) 18:26, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Such a join will probably fail the cat5e criteria, but I doubt that you would care since it will probably work. You may also get UV deterioration in the longer term if you don't bury it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:23, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

If your joint is in damp conditions, you will get corrosion at the joins, but this post is being made via a cut and joined ethernet cable with the joint outside in a very damp place, and it has been no problem for the last 12 months, though I did solder it and tape round well. As Graeme Bartlett mentioned, I'm probably losing speed, but my connection is not very fast anyway. Dbfirs 09:00, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

When we built my brother-in-law's office at the end of his garden, we laid 50 m of ethernet and phone cable in a plastic water pipe and buried it about 25 - 50 cm underground. At each end, we made sure the cables were not exposed by ensuring the pipe came inside the building. There has been no damage in 3 or more years; but if there ever was damage, it would be a nightmare to replace. Astronaut (talk) 14:09, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

If your repair efforts are futile, there is a newfangled technique to running a network connection that is 100% impervious to animals, UV, and water. See this for more information. It's also cost effective compared to just about every construction technique (aside from, perhaps, the 'shove it under the carpet' method). --Jmeden2000 (talk) 19:52, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Software to overlap two images?

I have four or five jpg images of parts of a plan that I want to partialy overlap to create a bigger image, preferably while preserving the scale of the originals. Is there any software than can do this easily please? I have searched for quite a while but not been able to find any myself. 84.13.28.161 (talk) 16:36, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

• Pretty much any half-decent image editing program should be fine for this. The process in GIMP is: create a new blank image (big enough to contain your final image), then drag each constituent image onto the master image, and move it to where you want with the move tool. If you need to change the stacking (z order) use the layers dialog; once you're done, just save the final image (as a flat image like a PNG or JPG, as appropriate). The process is much the same in Photoshop, and isn't very different in vector programs like Inkscape and Illustrator too. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:43, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
• What you are looking for is Image stitching. Our article is not the greatest, but you should be able to find something by googling the term. Autostitch may be a useful ink and product. However, I suspect most of these programs assume typical photos with a lot of details - I don't know how well they will cope with line drawings. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:48, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Software to give x.y coordinates of points within an image?

I'd like to be able to do something like this: I position the cursor at a particular point in an image. I press something, and the xy coordinate gets appended to a text file. I move the cursor to another point and repeat. Is there any software that can do this easily please? I have looked for some but have not been able to find any. Thanks. 84.13.28.161 (talk) 16:42, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I wrote one for you:

#!/usr/bin/python

import pygame, sys
pygame.init()

if len(sys.argv) != 2:
    print 'usage: clicker.py foo.jpg'
    sys.exit(1)

img = pygame.image.load(sys.argv[1])
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((img.get_width(), img.get_height()))

screen.blit(img,(0,0))
pygame.display.update()

while True:
    event = pygame.event.wait()
    if event.type == pygame.QUIT: break
    if event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN and event.button==1:
        print event.pos

You'll need to install Python (programming language) and Pygame. Run it with python clicker.py foo.jpg where clicker.py is the above script, and foo.jpg is whatever image you want. It prints (x,y) coordinates to the standard output (which you can redirect to a file if you want). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:30, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

MATLAB can do this with the ginput command. It can also read and display images in many formats. Nimur (talk) 18:21, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, especially thanks for the code. I've also found some freeware that does this: Plot Digitizer 2.4.1, Enguage Digitizer, and Digitize 2004. There may be more. 92.24.115.153 (talk) 22:37, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Segfault in C relating to null string

In a C program, I have a string "line", read from the user with a simple readLine function that I got out of a textbook. So if the user just hits RETURN, then I figure line[0] should be '\n'. And usually that's true. But sometimes, if I fail to initialize certain integers stored in the addresses just before line, AND depending on whether certain other functions in the program have run, something happens that I don't understand:

printf("%d\n",line[0]);

prints "0", as expected. But

printf("%d",line[0]);

(without the newline) results in a segmentation fault. So does

sscanf(line,"%d",&i);

which is my actual goal.

I can fix the problem by initializing my variables, but I want to understand: how could uninitialized variables cause this problem? And what could possibly be stored at line[0] such that it looks like a 0 when printed before a newline, and causes a segfault otherwise?

Thanks! --Allen (talk) 21:18, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

It's really difficult to understand problems with fragments of C code when we can't see the whole program, and in particular how variables have been declared. If you can show minimum C programs that illustrate the problem (which, for the stuff you're talking about, shouldn't need to be more than half a dozen lines) then we can help. But right now you're asking us to diagnose memory corruption issues but not showing us how the variables that name that memory are defined. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:24, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll take a guess, anyway. line is a pointer (it looks like an array, but really it's a pointer). If line (and I mean line, not line[0]) hasn't been initialised then dereferencing it (which is what line[0] does) will mean examining some unknown (and very often illegal) chunk of memory. Remember that by changing your printf you're reorganising your .text (and perhaps .data) segments, moving things around such that you get a different result. But the underlying problem is that line itself is bad. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:33, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed with everything above. It segfaults because line is an invalid pointer and by bad (good) luck it might point to an invalid address, but it's quite impossible to fix a problem with your code without seeing it. Enabling and fixing compiler warnings could help if you haven't already. --91.145.72.65 (talk) 21:49, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

[edit conflict] Thank you. I understand what you're saying, and if I'm able to duplicate the problem with a minimal C program, I'll post it. But right now, the segfault conditions seem to depend on so many other parts of the program I doubt I'll be able to. But that's okay; after all, I know how to fix the problem (by initializing those integers)... I'm just wishing I could understand what's going on. Thanks for the tip about how changing printf reorganizes things. (FWIW, initializing line itself doesn't help; only initializing those integers stored before it.) --Allen (talk) 21:55, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I would expect that the reason initialising the integers "fixes" the problem is that C compilers typically store variables one after the other in memory - so if you initialise one, then the next is probably the next memory space. Your string pointer (line) is probably writing over the integers and if they're not initialised then it's hitting uninitialised memory and barfing. You really need to initialise where line is pointing, rather than worrying why it occasionally works by chance. --Phil Holmes (talk) 10:31, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Then 91.145.72.65's advice is the thing to do - turn on all compiler warnings, and don't proceed with debugging until all the warnings you're getting are resolved. This won't fix all memory corruption and bad pointer issues, but given C's laissez-faire willingness to compile programs that are objectively bonkers, debugging a program with warnings is wasting your time. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:01, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

And if line is okay at one point, but bad later, then you may have stack corruption. line is (probably) stored on the call stack, adjacent(ish) to other automatic variables in the same block (function). If code addressing one of them mangles the stack, it can overrun into the storage of line, corrupting it. When you later dereference line, you get a bad result. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:04, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

One possible problem is that "%d" in printf (and scanf) expects and int (which will be at least two bytes, probably four), whereas a string is an array of, or pointer to, char (normally one byte). It is possible that the compiler pushes only one byte onto the stack (line[0]) but the printf function tries to read sizeof(int) bytes from the stack and there just aren't that many there to read, so it tries to read beyond the stack, creating a segmentation fault. (Some compilers will issue warnings if printf format and arguments don't match.) This would probably fix the problem:

printf("%d",(int)line[0]);

I don't generally like using type casts - they are the programmer's way of telling the compiler "I'm doing something wrong but I don't want to be warned about it." So this would be better:

int i = line[0]; /* implicit promotion from char to int, no cast required */
printf("%d", i);

I would expect your sscanf to return EOF if line is an empty string. According to K&R2 appendix B1.3, "fscanf returns EOF if end of file or an error occurs before any conversion; otherwise it returns the number of input items converted and assigned", and sscanf is equivalent except that the input characters are taken from the string. The only reason that I can see why sscanf might fail is if i is not an integer, and line actually contains (a text representation of) a number, not an empty string. Eg if i is a char (1 byte), sscanf will try to write an int (eg 4 bytes) to it, which may corrupt your stack. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:22, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

All arguments to variadic functions beyond the declared parameters (as well as all those to functions with no prototype) are promoted at least to int or double ("at least" because of unsigned int, long int, pointer types, and so on). There is no trouble using %d to format a char argument.

sscanf() will of course return EOF if !*line, but if !line (or it is otherwise invalid) there will be trouble! That case can't happen if line is an automatic or static array, since its address is not data and can't be damaged by stack corruption or so. It's possible, in theory, that an sscanf(...,"%d",...) would read so far off the end of a valid array that it got a segfault, but it seems unlikely that it would encounter neither a 0 nor something it could (or couldn't!) convert to an int along the way. It'd have to be all whitespace, basically, to the end of the page at least. --Tardis (talk) 03:48, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Can you provide a reference for your statement that "all arguments to variadic functions ... are promoted at least to int or double"? I know that most (but not necessarily all) compilers will push at least sizeof(int) bytes onto the stack, but that's because it typically generates more efficient/faster code. (This is similar to alignment of an int after a single char in a struct for example.) However:
1) I don't believe the language actually requires it, so one shouldn't depend on it. Eg an compiler for an 8-bit processor, with a 16-bit int to meet minimum ANSI requirements, probably would not. (Don't laugh, I have recently worked with such a compiler.)
2) The extra bytes pushed are not necessarily initialised, ie there isn't any promotion, so if a char is pushed by the caller and an int is read by the function, the value will be undefined.
Mitch Ames (talk) 05:20, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

This can be inferred from 6.5.2.2p6 "If the expression that denotes the called function has a type that does not include a prototype, the integer promotions are performed on each argument, and arguments that have type float are promoted to double. These are called the default argument promotions." and 6.5.2.2p7 "The ellipsis notation in a function prototype declarator causes argument type conversion to stop after the last declared parameter. The default argument promotions are performed on trailing arguments." The integer promotion applies to types whose range of values can be represented in an int or unsigned int, and so does not apply to e.g unsigned long, as mentioned by Tardis. decltype (talk) 06:43, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks - I learn something new every day! Incidentally, what book/standard/website etc are you citing here? And is it freely available? I did find the equivalent wording in K&R2 Appendix A7.3.2 Function Calls, but it never hurts to have an extra reference source when I can get them. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:09, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

The ISO/IEC C language standard. It is not freely available, but the standard drafts are. The most recent draft of the revised C99 standard can be downloaded from http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1336.pdf. I expect it to contain only very minor editorial differences from the actual standard (and its Technical Corrigendums), at least this is the case for C++. decltype (talk) 09:28, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:29, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Of course, I misspoke slightly: it is only the arguments that actually correspond to the ellipsis (the "variadic arguments" if you will) that undergo such promotion. I knew that, but so often variadic functions just take a pointer or two before their ellipsis that I didn't think about it at all. Thanks for making it precise; I've amended my statement to be completely accurate. --Tardis (talk) 16:05, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

If this is for a real program, I don't think you'll be doing yourself any favors by papering over the symptoms without understanding the bug. It's generally worth the effort to understand it fully so you know it's really fixed, so you can scan the rest of your code for the same bug, and so that you can grow as a programmer. --Sean 16:23, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly, Sean; I knew that initializing my variables fixed the bug; I just didn't understand why. And thanks everyone for the suggestions. Here's what I think my problem has been: I've been assuming that the program would be stepping through the code line by line, so if it's giving me a segfault before a given line is executed (i.e., a debugging printf), then nothing after that line could possibly be my problem. But I suppose with a compiled program, I have no such assurances. I found a conditional later in my function that would very understandably cause a segfault, and my segfault goes away when I fix it. So somehow the program must be compiled such that this conditional is checked before some perfectly legal printfs above it are executed. Is this plausible? I hope so, even though it will mean I'll have to re-learn how to debug programs. --Allen (talk) 17:52, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

printf debugging for cases like this can be problematic. printf writes to the stout, which is buffered; at the least you need to fflush() stdout after each printf (otherwise a printf has occurred, but you've not seen it yet). It's much more productive to debug under a source debugger like gdb or the visual c++ debugger. This will halt the program right at the segfault, and will retain the program state so you can go back and inspect variables to see how you got into this mess. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:57, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Note that stdout is usually not buffered if it's the terminal. --Sean 15:16, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

and (it may seem like nitpicking but it really isn't) initialising the adjacent variables didn't fix the bug, it hid the bug. The bug isn't the segfault - that's a welcome symptom of it. You'll come to (reluctantly) like segfaults, because many memory corruption bugs leave the program running but with the data scrambled. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:03, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Excellent; thank you again. The fflush(stdout) did indeed reveal that the printfs were being executed and I just hadn't seen them yet. The buffering hadn't occurred to me. I'll work on learning gdb. --Allen (talk) 18:13, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Valgrind is also excellent for finding invalid memory accesses. --Sean 15:16, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Restricted characters in Wiki URLs

Is there a list of restricted characters that cannot be used in a wikipedia URL. For example, going to United States takes you to .../United_States and going to 100% takes you to .../100%25

The %25 is the ascii code for %. So the replace for space is an underscore, but for some characters is a hex, and for others is the literal. I would like to find a comprehensive listing of these. Anyone know where that is? PvsKllKsVp (talk) 23:09, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Mediawiki changes ascii 0x20 spaces to underscores (as spaces are so common in article names). Non ascii characters are encoded in UTF (UTF-8, I think). Apart from that it just does the standard URI encoding per the relevant RFC. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:27, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. That's perfect. MediaWiki respects the RFC, but doesn't implement it fully. For instance, commas, colons, semicolons, parenthesis and other punctuation is permitted in MediaWiki but not in the RFC. PvsKllKsVp (talk) 00:25, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

January 5

The buttons above the Wikipedia edit window

I'm curious how the buttons above the edit window (for inserting bold, brackets, and yada yada) work. Looking at the page source, I see they're generated by

<script type="text/javascript">
addButton("/skins-1.5/common/images/button_bold.png","Bold text","\'\'\'","\'\'\'","Bold text","mw-editbutton-bold");
addButton("/skins-1.5/common/images/button_italic.png","Italic text","\'\'","\'\'","Italic text","mw-editbutton-italic");
addButton("/skins-1.5/common/images/button_link.png","Internal link","[[","]]","Link title","mw-editbutton-link");
addButton("/skins-1.5/common/images/button_extlink.png","External link (remember http:// prefix)","[","]","http://www.example.com link title","mw-editbutton-extlink");
addButton("/skins-1.5/common/images/button_headline.png","Level 2 headline","\n== "," ==\n","Headline text","mw-editbutton-headline");
addButton("/skins-1.5/common/images/button_image.png","Embedded file","[[File:","]]","Example.jpg","mw-editbutton-image");
addButton("/skins-1.5/common/images/button_media.png","File link","[[Media:","]]","Example.ogg","mw-editbutton-media");
addButton("/skins-1.5/common/images/button_math.png","Mathematical formula (LaTeX)","\x3cmath\x3e","\x3c/math\x3e","Insert formula here","mw-editbutton-math");
addButton("/skins-1.5/common/images/button_nowiki.png","Ignore wiki formatting","\x3cnowiki\x3e","\x3c/nowiki\x3e","Insert non-formatted text here","mw-editbutton-nowiki");
addButton("/skins-1.5/common/images/button_sig.png","Your signature with timestamp","--~~~~","","","mw-editbutton-signature");
addButton("/skins-1.5/common/images/button_hr.png","Horizontal line (use sparingly)","\n----\n","","","mw-editbutton-hr");

</script>

I can tell what all the parameters in those function calls are for, except the last one ("mw-editbutton-bold", etc.). Can anyone tell me what those parameters do?

Also, is this bit of code the only thing that is needed to make buttons like this, or does it rely on something else (I noticed that higher up in the source code, several javascripts are imported). Pardon my ignorance; the only thing I really know anything about is Tk, so this is pretty unfamiliar to me. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:15, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I do not know what the last parameter is (some ID?), but I do know that you cannot create buttons of this kind simply by entering the code above in an otherwise empty HTML document. The function addButton must be defined somewhere. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 01:22, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

There is a lot of other code you aren't seeing. It relies on the function addButton, which is in edit.js, which itself calls mwEditButtons, which is in some other file, and etc. In a big project like MediaWiki, it is not uncommon that it is built up on many such script files, each one making it so that the final code to add a button is really short, but eventually devolving down to the Javascript necessary to position the button in the right place, make it do the right think when you click on it, etc. These parameters are custom (not standard Javascript) so you'd have to look up the actual code. You can't just copy and paste this code on your own site and have it work—it will require having things set up the same way they are in MediaWiki. If you look at the page source, you can see that there are maybe seven external scripts called each time the editing page is loaded (look for the script src= tag for external scripts).--Mr.98 (talk) 01:25, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

That explains it...I was wondering why I didn't see any reference to a function listed explicitly in the parameters, and figured it would be something like that. Thanks, rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:29, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

The final parameter is just the element ID, for reference. :) Ale_Jrb^talk 15:24, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

RHCSS

HOW MANY RHCSS IN INDIA —Preceding unsigned comment added by Subho46 (talk • contribs) 07:39, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

What's RHCSS? --Sean 16:46, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Possibly a Red Hat Certified Security Specialist, but I have no idea how many Indians qualify. If so, then you could try http://www.redhat.com/search or your favourite general search engine. Certes (talk) 00:31, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

CRYSTAL REPORT USING JAVA

HOW TO CREATE CRYSTAL REPORT IN JAVA? I AM WORKING ON PROJECT USING CORE JAVA. I SEARCHED ON INTERNET BUT I DID NOT GET THE COMPLETE INFORMATION.IF YOU KNOW, YOU SHOULD ANSWER ME PLZ. OR GIVE ME WEB NAME SO I FINISH MY PROJECT ON RIGHT TIME. I KNOW HOW TO CREATE CRYSTAL REPORT IN C# BUT I WANT TO WORK IN JAVA ONLY. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ashish.kalyana (talk • contribs) 08:57, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Crystal Reports for Eclipse is a plugin for Eclipse's Java IDE. Nimur (talk) 11:51, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Plus we're case sensitive like Java. Please try and use lower case except for the first letter of sentences mainly as in other discussions you see here. Some people call ALL UPPERCASE shouting. Dmcq (talk) 12:05, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

actually, javaProgrammers prefer camelCase, in myExperience... though the language doesn't mandate these stylistic conventions. Nimur (talk) 12:39, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Microsoft Office Word 2007 PDF Problem

I have written a rather nice *.docx file in Microsoft Office Word 2007. If you'd like, you can see it here. Of course, I want to save it as a PDF file. But the "Save as PDF/XPS" function in Word 2007, that works for most of my documents, does not work for this one. Instead, winword.exe crashes after it has exported the last page in the document (according to the status bar), and no *.pdf file is generated. (I have also tried to save it as a XPS document, but that crashes winword.exe as well, surprisingly.)

So, I tried to print the document using PDFCreator instead. PDFCreator does indeed not crash, but the output looks dreadful. First of all, all example code in the document is written in DejaVu Sans Mono (one of very few good-looking free monospaced Unicode fonts), and all such text is missing from the output PDF! In addition, my nice PNG Windows Vista screenshots, that look great in the *.docx file, look terrible in the PDF.

What can I do? Is there any modification I can do to the *.docx file, so that the Microsoft exporter will work? Is there any settings I can make in PDFCreator to eliminate the two issues? I suppose one additional solution would be to buy Adobe Acrobat. Will this software be able to create PDFs from *.docx files, without any problems? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 14:10, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

If you're considering alternative software, I recommend CutePDF Writer. CutePDF is an alternative, free (zero-cost, but not freely-licensed) PDF generator that works on Windows. It sets itself up as a virtual printer, so any program which has a "print" capability can simply print to the CutePDF writer, which allows you to save a PDF. I've found it to be the most useful tool for generating PDFs in general; it is very stable and doesn't muck up the documents. Nimur (talk) 14:50, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I actually have tried that one, but the result is exactly the same as PDFCreator gave me, i.e. missing text and ugly screenshots. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:06, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Then there's probably some issue in the docx file - are you using thumbnailed image previews, including any .eps files in the document, or doing any unusual text box formatting (transparency, etc.)? Also note that PDFs can optionally render text as a raster or as a text area to be rendered later with a system font. Since you're using a font which is not default for Windows, you may have an issue related to this. If you can force the PDF to rasterize all text (I think this is an option in CutePDF), you might not have as much trouble with the missing monospace fonts. This will unfortunately increase your PDF size (as you're basically bitmapping the text, instead of storing it in ASCII and re-rendering it). Nimur (talk) 15:27, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

No, there are no particularly esoteric formatting in the document. (Well, I make heavy use of page layout settings, such as different headers/footers on different pages etc., but that works just fine.)

Yes, rasterising the monospaced text would solve that problem, but I think it is a very ugly solution. Not only because the file size increases, but also because the rasterised text will not be scalable (perhaps not even searchable).

But how to adress the second problem, the deterioration of the screenshot PNGs? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:41, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the first problem is caused by whatever PDF writer you are using failing to embed the necessary fonts into the document. I don't know which font model PDF uses, but possibly you do not have them in a suitable format, or the software is plain broken (insert rant about writing anything complex in Word here). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:12, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Are you using ClearType or anti-aliasing somewhere? The problems with the images seem to be similar to what happens if you take a screen dump and then try to scale it. 87.112.68.96 (talk) 17:08, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Windows Vista uses ClearType everywhere, and ClearType is a sort of anti-aliasing of fonts. I have never observed any problems rescaling screensots... --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:13, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

To clarify, the problem with the screenshots is the distorted title bars of the windows. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:46, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I took a look. I have a guess to venture: The problem is related to the way Word handles embedded image files that are scaled down. If you don't feel like dickering with the options and scaling of the embedded pictures, try using Irfanview to scale the picture down ahead of time so its width is smaller than the width of your document at the expected print / reading size, and then import the picture so that Word is displaying it at its native size. I realize this won't look good when the user magnifies the page, but you may judge it to look better. (BTW, my first recommendation would also have been to use CutePDF Writer, which I use a lot.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:24, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I opened this .docx file in Word 2007 (in WinXP), saved it as pdf, and experienced neither a crash nor (as far as I can see) any missing text problems. Looks fairly nice, too. I would suggest trying saving this file as pdf on a different computer.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:43, January 5, 2010 (UTC)

I actually have two other computers with Word 2007, so I'll try that right away. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:55, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Hey, Ezhiki is smarter than me, I could have tried that. I just 'printed' it with CutePDF and the screenshots still look blocky and scaled. I maintain my pre-scaling recommendation. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:57, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I just tried to use Microsoft Word's Save as PDF function on all my computers, but they all crash with this particular document. Ezhiki has a different OS. That might be it, but I wonder if Ezhiki has DejaVu Sans Mono installed? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:03, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

No, I don't (all I have is the standard fonts that come with WinXP, plus whatever new fonts are added by Office 2007 by default).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:09, January 5, 2010 (UTC)

I also tried (the trial version) of pdf995, and got (what I suspect are) similar results to CuteFTP and PDFCreator—the images are choppy and scaled. If you can't try saving this document on a WinXP machine, the pre-scaling recommendation is probably your only viable choice.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:19, January 5, 2010 (UTC)

I think I have found the problem. Microsoft Word 2007 appears always to crash when you export a document contaning the DejaVu Sans font to PDF or XPS. Can anyone confirm this (or give an counterexample)? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:17, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

(multiple ECs) I was able to save it as PDF using the built in Word 2007 PDF creator without the DejaVu Sans Mono font. The screenshots look okay I think but not surprisingly whatever font it replaced the monospaced/code font with causes major problems e.g. with matrices. I then installed Deja Sans Vu but it starts to crash so it seems that's the problem. Also saving page 1-7 is fine, when you include page 8 it starts to have problems and that's where DejaVu Sans Mono starts I think. Whether it's a problem with the Microsoft PDF engine or the font or both I don't know obviously. Office save to PDF provides limited options I think so I'm not sure if/how you can fix it but I may have a look later when I get better access. I also tried printing to XPS but that crashes as well. However saving to PDF using the Office-Acrobat CS4/9 PDF exporter seems to work fine. The file seems to look okay, at least I didn't notice any specific problems. I have a sample file I could send to you via e-mail if you want, e-mail me so I have your address and perhaps leave a message on my talk page or alternatively provide a place to upload them (I probably have places I could upload but lazy to find them). I've simply used the default Acrobat settings, have limited access at this time but should be able to do more later. Obviously given the price, this is unlikely to be an option for you personally but if you only want this and/or a few files I could make them for you. Alternatively, you could try doing something like making a PostScript file and using GhostScript. Nil Einne (talk) 20:24, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I installed this font, created a quick one-line document using it, and tried to save it as pdf. Word crashed. I think that's indeed your culprit.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:27, January 5, 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think so. That's bad, for the font is crutial for the document. Thanks to all who helped me confirm this.

When it comes to the PDFCreator/CutePDF/... option, downscaling the PNGs does not work - I tried that. See example. I will try to convert the files to BMP without transparancy. But even if I got the screenshots to look OK, I really cannot accept that all instances of program code vanish! --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:33, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, converting the PNGs to 24-bit BMPs works! But the missing text? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:38, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I also want to thank Nil Einne for his vert kind offer, but I am afraid that there will be many versions of this document, so I really need to be able to produce PDFs myself. My e-mail adress is of the form FirstName@LastName.Country (I live in Sweden : .se). It would be interesting to see how good Acrobat is. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:38, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm sending it now. Also I was trying to convert it via GhostScript but found that printing doesn't work either. On further testing, even printing to my real, non postscript printer doesn't work. Even further testing shows using DejaVu Sans causes a printing crash with WordPad in both Vista and Windows 7 and NotePad in 7 (not tested Vista) so it seems the Microsoft printing subsystem (which I'm guessing is used for the internal Office PDF and XPS exporter) really doesn't like the font. I also tested it on FireFox with a simple HTML like this

<html> <body> <font face="DejaVu Sans"> Meow </font> </body> </html>

and tried to print and yes it crashes although fortunately I didn't lose this message as FireFox saved it ;-)

I also found that it's only DejaVu Sans and DejaVu Sans Condensed that don't work (well didn't try with the italics and bold), DejaVu Sans Light and DejaVu Sans Mono work fine (and this is in NotePad, WordPad and Office). DejaVu LGC also seems to have the same problem but didn't test it much.

But anyway, given that this appears to be a Windows wide printing problem with the font, it seems unlikely no one has noticed it so perhaps you can find some more info/help now you know that. Whether it's a MS bug or a problem with the font, I don't know but either way since it's open source you could modify the font if you work out what's causing the MS printing subsystem to crash and perhaps someone already has. And if it is a Microsoft problem in the long term perhaps you can convince them to fix it somehow... Of course the other option is to see if you can rework your documents to only use Mono and Light in which case it should be fine with the MS PDF export hopefully.

P.S. Yes I know <font> is depreciated in HTML.

Nil Einne (talk) 21:39, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the important font is DejaVu Sans Mono, which by itself appears to be working. I tried to replace all instances of DejaVu Sans to DejaVu Sans Mono in Word, but strangely enough it did not work. Probably there is some or a few characters in the document that were not replaced. I think I will try to uninstall DejaVu Sans. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 21:53, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Since I uninstalled the DejaVu Sans font, the Save as PDF option in Microsoft Word works! --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 22:53, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Bit late but I finally managed to send the file (had some problems unrelated to the font issues). I'm not sure what font Word will use to replace the missing fonts but if it causes problems or you want to remove the use of the font in the document; in case you don't know, Word does have a Search (& Replace) option for fonts albeit it doesn't seem to find all instances of DejaVu Sans for me (in particular it didn't seem to find the brackets () at least). I didn't spend much time so you may be able to work out why it doesn't seem to be finding some instances. If still having problems locating the usage, a good thing to do is to print the document because then it crashes on the page causing problems. (I also found that changing the font in the entire document to DejaVu Sans Mono works as a simple proof of concept that Mono definitely doesn't cause problems.) Anyway glad we could help! Nil Einne (talk) 23:39, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I used the search and replace dialog to change all DejaVu Sans to DejaVu Sans Mono, but apparently Word did miss at least one character, somewhere (perhaps the "font" of a CRLF or something else subtle). But after I uninstalled the font, it could no longer cause any problems. Thanks again for all help! --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 23:49, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

Problems with Format Factory (v 2.20)

I looked all over the internet for help with this and found none, so i decided to come here.

I am trying to convert some files i recorded off my tuning card using windows media center. (It uses the format ".DVR-MS" which i assume is some arbitrary microsoft format. By the way i am using Windows Vista Premium x64)

I convert this using the program "Format Factory" (v 2.20) and it seems to work fine except that no matter what settings i have, i convert to .avi or .mpg and it will give the top of the video this little area where the data is scrambled. This area of the video is supposed to be black anyway so it doesnt matter, but it looks like little random black and white lines ripping all over the area, and its really annoying!

Does anyone know a setting i could use or any other thing i could do to fix this? I also have sony vegas, but since that cant open Microsoft's bizzare format (and format factory can!) I think using Vegas (at least in a first step) is out of the question. :(

Any ideas please?

97.64.173.66 (talk) 14:14, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

PS: Here is an idea of what the scrambled stuff looks like at the top... I hope this helps.

Broken Video Screenshot

97.64.173.66 (talk) 14:23, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

ffmpeg can crop (and pad if you want to) video. --91.145.89.207 (talk) 15:01, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Duff laptop reality check

It's a long time since I last had cause to try to set up machines from scratch - my experience is from the dos 2.x to windows 3.x period - so ... I've been given a laptop to look at. It has XP on it, but it's obviously borked; it boots, gets to the desktop, then kinda dies very slowly - applications either do not run or take an age to do little or nothing.

Obvious solution, I thought, was to drop the current operating system and reinstall XP from scratch. However, on booting from an XP install CD, I get an error that XP cannot find a hard drive on the machine. Do I conclude from that that there may be a disk controller problem and that the fundamental problem is a hardware issue? Put another way, all things being equal, when booting from an XP installation CD on a basic laptop, the operating system should be able to see the hard drive? Any good suggestions for next steps given this situation (other than to give the machine back to its owner with a "sorry, but this is an ex-laptop, it has ceased to be". thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:32, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Can you boot to the BIOS to see if the hard disk is protected in any way (or if you can see it from in there?) All other things being equal, you should be able to the the disk. Have you tried booting a Linux LiveCD to check the hard disk without modifying it? Nimur (talk) 14:53, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

It sounds like you need to get the device driver for the hard disk on a floppy disk and whilst XP is first loading up you need to press F6 so it can read the driver from the floppy. After this it should detect the hard drive okay. There's more information available on the microsoft site here. As for where to get the driver from, if the owner didn't get a disk with the computer and/or they've lost it then possibly the computer manufacturer will offer it for download. ZX81 ^talk 15:06, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm a couple of days away from seeing the machine again. I'll take up the various suggestions and see where I get to. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:14, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

OpenSuse

Hi I am trying to install OpenSuse 11.2 in my laptop. It gives me error message can not connect to the site to update. No Internet. I installed Fedora on the same laptop, and NO problem at all. I can update through the internet.But I like OpenSuse. Sorry I can not get to the Internet. My laptop is new and has:

• Intel Core2 Duo Processor T6400
• 2.0 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2 cashe
• 4 GB DDR2
• 802.11a/b/g/Draft N WLAN

Kingpin¹³ (talk) on behalf of Wikialimo (talk · contribs) copied from Open Suse 11.2 login in the internet problem with my laptop prefix:Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives 17:17, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Your opensuse doesn't have some module/driver fedora has. Running for i in /sys/class/net/*; do echo "$(basename $i): $(basename $(readlink $i/device/driver/module) 2> /dev/null)"; done on the fedora machine will reveal what module is associated with each network interface. If you post that here we can help with installing the module. --91.145.89.207 (talk) 17:57, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

By what method are you attempting to install opensuse 11.2? Are you attempting a full installation, or an upgrade of an existing earlier version? If you wish to perform a full installation then you can simply download and burn the full DVD, which, during the installation does not require any Internet access. Rjwilmsi 19:02, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Windows explorer crashes every time

I'm hoping someone can help me with this problem. Everytime I try to open a folder or My Computer Windows Explorer crashes. When it crashes, it doesn't generate the usual error report but it prompts me to update windows.

I've peformed a system restore to a point in time where I didn't have the problem, no luck.

I've disabled Data execution prevention for explorer.exe, still no luck.

Someone suggested the problem may be a fualty shell extension and I've downloaded a shell viewer but after a quick scan I didn't see anything that might have been causing the problem.

I checked the event viewer logs and the error information is as follows: Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.6000.16771, time stamp 0x4907deda, faulting module SHLWAPI.dll, version 6.0.6000.16386, time stamp 0x4549bdb9, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x0001e0e5, process id 0xe4c, application start time 0x01ca8e5117ecd44d.

Does anyone have any advice? Thanks in advance.

I'm running Windows Vista Home edition, 32 bit —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.250.7.109 (talk) 22:40, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

P.S. I would really rather not reformat my computer as I have some important files. Normally I would just put those files on an external drive...but I need Windows Explorer for that.

99.250.7.109 (talk) 22:28, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

As far as evacuating your data: you can just use the command line or any number of specialized backup packages to move your files — or even transfer the disk to a functional computer that can archive them. --Tardis (talk) 22:38, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

My condolences; this sounds very frustrating. Could you clarify your statement, "I've peformed a system restore to a point in time where I didn't have the problem, no luck"? Does that mean you've rewound as far as you can, and Explorer still crashes? If so, I would give up, buy a new hard disk to be the primary C: hard disk, install Windows and all your apps on the new hard disk, and copy stuff over from the D: hard disk as needed. Sorry about this (and about the draconian advice). Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:07, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Am I correct you don't get any crashes if you don't open explorer? Also what is the message it gives when it crashes and ask you to update? Does it give the same error every time? If this is a desktop in particular (with laptops it may be harder to get access to and connect the disk to another computer), my recommendation would be to take the disk to a working computer and backup the important files then try formating it. It's not really clear to me what the problem is from the information provided. It could be a disk problem but I don't see enough information to convince me it is. It could be a problem with other hardware. Either way, this does put your data at risk. If it's a problem with some other hardware, installing a new disk is not likely to help, and if you keep your main disk connected there's a chance you could lose data while setting up the new disk. However it could also simply be a software issue, in which case buying new hardware would be a waste (although you may need a new disk to backup your data if you don't have access to any and you can't back it up to a friends computer). I would recommend once you get this fixed you consider good backup practices if you have important data. Mechanical disks can die at any time and have a relatively high failure rate compared to a number of other computer components. Solid state disks are less likely to die but you are still at risk from corruption (particularly file system corruption), hardware failure (particularly a power supply failure) causing corruption or damage, malware, accidential deletion, theft or loss of your computer (including natural disasters and things like fire although if your store your backups at home you may not be much better off) etc Nil Einne (talk) 00:16, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

From further research, it appears SHLWAPI.dll is part of the Windows update API which explains why it tells you to update your computer.Edit somehow got confused, ignore that. It's possible this was simply corrupted or somehow has gone missing (which could be a sign of malware). Have you tried running in safe mode (particularly safe mode with the command line)? Alternatively you could try the Windows Vista Recovery Environment. BTW, you wouldn't happen to have Mass Downloader would you? Nil Einne (talk) 00:16, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Not sure if this is what you have but I'd try some virus scanners. I had the same problem with my computer, of explorer crashing whenever opened, (I used a replacement for explorer for a while) then tried a bunch of spyware scanners (Avira, Superantispyware, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, A-2 Squared or something like that) and it found about 5 viruses and after they were removed my computer worked fine. 66.133.196.152 (talk) 10:44, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Btw the explorer replacement I used was xplorer lite free (available at http://zabkat.com/x2lite.htm). Ironically one of those many virus scans I used said it too was spyware but I think it gave me a warning and I figured it was just a false positive. It didn't matter though - I deleted the program because I did not need it anymore. I doubt it is spyware though. Somehow it made sense to me that a virus scanner would see something that is supposed to be a explorer replacement as something bad. 66.133.196.152 (talk) 10:52, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice so far. Allow me to clarify a few points. I've rewound my computer using system restore to a point two weeks ago where I knew there was no problem. I have not gone to the earliest possible restore point. Do you think that's relevant?

Yes, Windows Explorer crashes every time I open a folder. Yes, it is the same error every time. When I open My Computer for example, I can see all my drives and icons for about two seconds. Then, it crashes. A window pops up "Windows Explorer has stopped working" followed immediately by "Windows Explorer is restarting", WE re-starts and a message pops up saying that Windows update can fix some stability and security issues.

I've just finished sfc/scannow and it says some files are corrupted. I can't open the CBS log for some reason because permissions is denied even though I am the admin. Someone has suggested that the issue is some out of whack folder permissions. I'm not sure I buy that and I have no idea how to fix that without Windows Explorer, anyways.

I have downloaded explorexp and while it's functioning, I can't seem to right click anything. Whenever I do, the menu items are all blanked out. Some blank menu items have an arrow indicating a sub menu, which are also blank. I'm wondering if this is somehow related to my Windows Explorer/ shell extension issues.

Thanks. 99.250.7.109 (talk) 16:43, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I bit the bullet and re-installed windows. Thanks to everyone for the advice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.250.7.109 (talk) 22:31, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

January 6

What program can be used to combine multiple PNG images into an animated GIF?

I am looking for a program that can combine multiple PNG images into an animated GIF. Is there any free software on Windows or Mac I can use?--219.74.153.124 (talk) 01:31, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

The GIMP --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 01:32, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Tutorial --Mr.98 (talk) 02:51, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

ImageMagick can do it from the command line. Instructions. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:53, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Bill Gates's code

When's the last time Bill Gates himself wrote code for a Microsoft product?20.137.18.50 (talk) 13:24, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Our article suggests that he was actively writing code for Microsoft products until around 1989. Ale_Jrb^talk 13:55, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Of note, that claim is not backed in any way by the reference. The reference doesn't mention that Bill Gates ever wrote a single bit of code. In my opinion, we've had about 30 years of revisionist history to turn Bill into a great programmer when it all started as Bill being a great businessman with a mediocre product that other programmers wrote. -- kainaw™ 15:24, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

In fact it does; consider reading the reference more carefully? Check out (use 'Find') "Question about Bill’s programming." on the reference, where he states that his code last went live 8 years from when the speech was made, which was in 1997. Either way, if you have an issue with a reference, you should take it up on the relevant talk page rather than posting about it on the reference desk. Cheers, Ale_Jrb^talk 18:49, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Linux based operating system emulator

Back in the early '80's in the days of the Atari ST-1024 a Company out of Jacksonville, Florida (or Jacksonville Beach) developed an emulator for the Atari to allow it to run MSDOS programs on top of its TOS operating system. Is there a similar emulator existing today that will allow Windows applications such as Excel and Word and other windows based programs to run on top of the Linux operating system? 71.100.3.13 (talk) 14:29, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, see Wine (software). Another approach is using full virtualization software such as VMware Workstation to boot a copy of Windows inside Linux. -- Coneslayer (talk) 14:42, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Computer's Clock Reset

A couple of days ago, I noticed my computer's clock was wrong (fast by 5 or 6 hours), then when I came to reset it, I found the date was Friday, 22nd December 2006. It was making it difficult to visit websites because I had to authenticate certificates for them. Does anyone know what has happened here? I've reset the clock and restarted the machine and done a virus check with AVG and nothing has been found. Any information at all would be appreciated. --KageTora - (影虎) (Talk?) 18:27, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Maybe the little coin-sized battery in your computer is almost dead. 20.137.18.50 (talk) 18:33, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Seriously? I've been using laptops for over 10 years, and I've never heard of that before. --KageTora - (影虎) (Talk?) 18:41, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

It's very possible that I'm completely wrong, but the factory yields of the CMOS battery makers probably aren't exactly 100%.20.137.18.50 (talk) 18:50, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

The voltage of the CMOS battery of my Dell dropped below acceptable levels already after two or three years, making the clock loose the track of time if I disconnected the PC from the power grid. So it appears not to be very uncommon. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:09, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I concur, it's most likely the little battery on the motherboard. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:30, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Funnily enough, it did actually happen after unplugging the computer and leaving it unplugged for a number of hours. Maybe this is something to do with my warranty running out last month and not being renewed...... :) Cheers! --KageTora - (影虎) (Talk?) 21:13, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually, we have an article on this: Nonvolatile BIOS memory. That little motherboard clock battery is totally unrelated to your laptop's normal battery. If you unplug a PC (and yank the laptop battery, if it's a laptop) and leave it unplugged for a year and then plug it in and boot up, the clock will be correct, and it's because of that little motherboard battery. So, whether you let the laptop unplugged or not is irrelevant. The battery just decided to wear out, of its own accord. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:48, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Uncompromised computer

If I had the resources to create and build an uncompromised computer to replicate the higher functions of the human brain what would those uncompromises be? 71.100.3.13 (talk) 20:59, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Since we don't know how the brain actually works, how can we possibly hope to build a machine to replicate it? It's not a question of compromise, having better resources will not help until we have much better understanding. Theresa Knott | token threats 21:07, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

True, though there are at least a few things that would help it operate in a manner more closely resembling the human brain. Most of these are done in "hardware" in the human brain, but a computer could simulate most of them with software.

1. Dynamic rewiring: The brain forms new connections and prunes old ones as part of the learning process. Any attempt to fully simulate a human brain would need to do the same
2. "Voting" for signal transmission: In cases where more than one neuron connect to another neuron, the signal is transmitted based on a kind of vote; if only one neuron is "on" and several are "off", then the signal is often dropped (this is a drastic oversimplification)
3. Massively multi-threaded: While the thread of consciousness is a single thread (or close to it), a lot of stuff is going on in the background. For example, when you overhear your name in a crowded room, multiple unconscious processes are involved in buffering the input, parsing it into words, identifying the key word, etc. And that's ignoring the fact that you could be engaged in dancing, having a conversation, etc., all of which involved numerous unconscious processes beyond the mere conscious decision to engage in the activity.

Now, it's entirely possible to limit your definition: Humans develop mental shortcuts as they learn something new, which is part of why the rewiring is necessary. A computer might recompute the result from scratch every time, so rewiring is unnecessary. In any event, Theresa is right; we don't know enough about the details of human brain function to replicate it exactly. It's not purely a technological problem; no matter how much hardware you throw at it, you still need more advanced neuroscience to figure out what exactly you are trying to emulate. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 21:35, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

webcam as security

i've had a quick search on the internet and i'm none-the-wiser, i'm pretty confused by IT at the best of times. so if anybody can help me pls do! my car has been vandalised a few times over the past 2 months so i thought a webcam would help me get some evidence. however i've only seen high end webcams advertising that they have software 'designed' for home security. can i buy a low end webcam such as this [8] and use some freeware software to save say 1 image every second to my HD? ty in advance 87.113.113.221 (talk) 21:16, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

There is a lot of webcam software available for any cam you can plug into your computer. You will want one that archives old photos (instead of just replacing the current photo). The quality of the webcam will decide how useful it is. For example, a low quality webcam that doesn't see anything when it is dark will be rather useless for catching people vandalizing a car outside at night. -- kainaw™ 22:01, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Also you have to be aware of the zoom the fixed lens of an inexpensive web cam has. While outdoor web cams may have a lens that allows for a 150 deg viewing angle an indoor web cam may limit you to only 70 deg. On top of that you can not depend on a one frame per second rate to show the vandal actually vandalizing which defers the evidence you could have to circumstantial. Most security cameras rely on motion detection to assure that a single frame will show the vandal vandalizing. Another issue is whether your inexpensive camera has an infrared filter. If it does so you can remove it to see at night in dim light then you will have to sacrifice color. 71.100.3.13 (talk) 22:15, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

motion is one program, but linux only. --91.145.88.2 (talk) 22:08, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

The homecamera.com service, which is free at the moment, supports saving video clips and images to your account page on their website. (The fact that it's on their website seems useful in the home or office situation, so if an intruder walks in and steals the computer that has the webcam, he hasn't also stolen the video clips or images that the webcam just took of him.) I have not found what I want personally, which is a free piece of software that just saves 1 image per second, or whatever, to a remote computer. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:30, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Timelapse is very easy to do using a large variety of programs. Windows XP SP2 for instance included Movie Maker and while the worst possible software Mirosoft has ever included still can be used for time lapse. Movie maker also has the capability of pseudo motion detection processing of the pictures taken of which it will make an avi file. It, however, uses a lot of hard drive space but may work for an hour or so while you are out shopping. 71.100.3.13 (talk) 22:47, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

That's a fairly trivial script, at least on Linux - fswebcam to grab the image, ncftpput or scp to push to the web server, running under a cron schedule. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:14, 6 January 2010 (UTC

that's a lot of helpful info ty all. i have a security light which means i should be ok without IR, and i do have a partition set aside with linux installed so maybe it's time i worked out how to use it :-) really struggling for money atm so it seems a budget cam (other than it's field of view) should be okish i appreciate your advice

ty all

not sure why my 'ty all' is in a separate box but it was heartfelt :-) 87.113.113.221 (talk) 00:46, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I tried to ask Yahoo Answers, but

it was too long and was way over the character limit. And besides, the people on sites like that are stupid. Wikipedians are much smarter and more helpful.

Here's my question:

What software (preferably free and quick) would be able to convert a .avi video file with a DIVX3 codec to a file that could be read by an Xbox 360? 96.255.178.76 (talk) 22:40, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

FFMPEG, which can run on your Windows or Linux PC, can convert video to and from many formats. An XBox360 should be able to play MP4 formats. Alternatively, you can follow the specific instructions in Xbox 360 conversion guide. Nimur (talk) 23:07, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Another option may be IRFAN but I'm not sure about xbox conversion. 71.100.3.13 (talk) 03:09, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

FORTRAN-90 Array Syntax

I came across some unusual array syntax in some 11-year old Fortran 90 code. It's causing a segfault, presumably because the array index is accessing out-of-bounds. Unfortunately, the code is accessing the array elements in vector syntax that I am not familiar with.

  write_subroutine( cmplx(x(::N0,:), y(::N0,:)),  N1*N2*8 );

N0, N1, and N2 are constants. write_subroutine works properly if the input is valid. Clearly, something with the double-colon syntax is accessing invalid parts of vectors x and y. What is this double-colon vector syntax? I'm inclined to believe that it is accessing the vector in strides of N0 (that is, every N0'th element of the entire vector), but if that is the case, how am I getting a segfault? I can't find documentation for this weird vector syntax. Any Fortran90 vector gurus know what the :: syntax actually means? Nimur (talk) 23:14, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

windows vista problem, application wont launch, side-by-side configuration incorrect

hey i need help guys please. when i try to launch the application i get this error: the application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log for more detail. so i check the event log and it says: Activation context generation failed for "(file)". Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC90.MFC,processorArchitecture="x86",publicKeyToken="1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b",type="win32",version="9.0.21022.8" could not be found. Please use sxstrace.exe for detailed diagnosis. what is going on?? ive never had this happen before.--Longhorns666 (talk) 23:16, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

and i use sxstrace.exe, but the command prompt appears for 1 second and then disappears, so i cant even use it!--Longhorns666 (talk) 23:17, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

(1) What application? (2) Googling "sxstrace.exe" yields, among other things, this link, which is a forum in which the "side-by-side" error is mentioned — any help there? (3) When the command prompt appears in Windows and disappears immediately, the fix is to instead run cmd.exe and from the command prompt, run your app (in this case, just type sxstrace.exe). When the executable is done you'll remain at the command prompt so you can look at the output of your app. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:44, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

January 7

Xinhua's website unsafe?

I just went to a page on xinhuanet.com, and my Norton virus protection said the page is extremely infested with viruses. It reported the site as being infected with adware.lebar and Bloodhound.Exploit.281. Is my virus protection too strict? Woogee (talk) 02:16, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Probably accurate. This place is crawling with viruses (virii?). You're not going to find any news worth reading there anyway. 218.25.32.210 (talk) 03:09, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Follow-up question out of curiosity: in general, should I, browsing from Linux, we worried in this case? I hadn't entered the site yet, nor do I really wish to. --Ouro (blah blah) 05:07, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

SQL woes

Hi All,

With some previous help from you (nearly six months ago), I have been using this query quite satisfactorily:

select BillingFirstName,BillingLastName,CustomerID, count(*) as 'NumberOfOrders' from Orders 
where (OrderStatus = 'shipped' or OrderStatus = 'processing' ) 
Group by CustomerID,BillingFirstName,BillingLastName Order by  'NumberOfOrders' desc

which yields a table looking like this:

billingfirstname	billinglastname	customerid	numberoforders
John	Doe	6	5
Jane	Doe	20	4

Now, there is a field which contains the order amount: OrderAmount, I was wondering how I could use the SUM() function in such a way that I get a table similar to this:

billingfirstname	billinglastname	customerid	numberoforders	ordertotal
John	Doe	6	5	1,234.56
Jane	Doe	20	4	567.89

the ordertotal is meant to represent the sum of all the orders placed by the customer (as distinguished by the customer id). I tried:

select BillingFirstName,BillingLastName,CustomerID, count(*) as 'NumberOfOrders', SUM(OrderAmount) as 'orderTotal' from Orders 
where (OrderStatus = 'shipped' or OrderStatus = 'processing' ) 
Group by CustomerID,BillingFirstName,BillingLastName Order by  'NumberOfOrders' desc

but the computer slapped me with a trout :( PrinzPH (talk) 02:34, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Try removing the single quotes from around "NumberOfOrders" (both occurances) and "orderTotal". If you need further assistance, please identify the database you are using (MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, etc.) plus the actual error message. I can't establish a telepathic link with your trout from this far away. -- Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 07:47, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Gaming experience on different platforms: comparable?

For FPS games that are published on multiple platforms (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC), is the gaming experience largely comparable on the different platforms, or is it very different because of the differences in CPU & graphics capabilities? --98.114.98.169 (talk) 04:58, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

It can be very different. I play games both on PS3 and PC and I have a very powerful PC so I can get the graphics up much higher then the ps3. But the main difference is that mouse and keyboard controls are MUCH more precise then a console controller and for that reason, FPS games are "dumbed down" on consoles. If you played the console version on a PC it would be VERY easy and if you played the PC version on a console, it would be very hard. I think PS3 and XBOX have small differences but not very noticeable. Eeven tho PS3 is supposedly "more powerful" hardware, a lot of games like GTA4 are actually developed on the XBOX, partly I think because it's much easier to port to PC from there, so the PS3 version is usually the "port" rather then the other way around which makes it not as smooth as a game developed on the ps3 to begin with. But it doesn't make much of a difference unless you study both version very closely side by side. Wii is not in the same league, I don't think there is a FPS that has been released on the Wii which is also on another platform. Most games that ALSO come out on the wii have a special "wii version" which is actually different to the others.. Vespine (talk) 05:54, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Qnective

I was browsing for information regarding the telecommunication industry in Switzerland and found out that the company Qnective is not listed in your database. Can somebody create a description for it? Thanks a lot! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Telecomander (talk • contribs) 08:03, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I was unable to find much coverage of the company in reliable sources, which may be an indication that it is not notable, and therefore not eligible for inclusion in Wikipedia. I only did a cursory search, though. decltype (talk) 08:54, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Zip file properties

Is there a way to determine what compression method was used on an encrypted zip file? I have a known file that is in the encrypted file, and I'm trying to do a plaintext attack, but I can't get the archive to match. 70.162.3.214 (talk) 10:00, 7 January 2010 (UTC)