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March 10

(Win XP) How to forbid XP from accessing one particular wireless network?

I work in an office with several wireless networks. I only have access privileges to one, but it happens to be the one with the weakest signal. Annoyingly, my XP relentlessly tries to "help" me by connecting to any of the other networks preferentially. Is there a way to tell my Win XP wireless interface to always ignore certain networks? I don't have any third party wireless software, I'm just using the XP default UI. 218.25.32.210 (talk) 00:43, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Generally speaking, XP should not be connecting to any network that you haven't previously told it to connect to. Right click the network icon in the system tray (next to the clock) and hit "Status". In that window, hit "Properties". (Or, go to Start -> Control Panel -> Network Connections, and right click the wireless connection and hit "Properties".) You should get a dialog box titled "[Wireless Connection Name] Properties". This box has 3 or 4 tabs across the top ("General", "Wireless Networks", "Authentication" and maybe "Advanced") and a "Connect using:" box just below the tabs that lists the network device that is currently in use. Click the "Wireless Networks" tab. On this tab, there should be a box labelled "Preferred Networks". XP will connect to these networks in the order they are listed once one or more of the networks are detected. Make sure your network is the only one that is listed, and it should be the only network XP will try to connect to. Xenon54 / talk / 01:41, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! That did the trick! 218.25.32.210 (talk) 02:03, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Can't Install Windows XP from Within Windows 7

I am trying to install Windows XP on a parition of my hard drive from within Windows 7 and it won't let me. In other words, I booted from Windows 7, made a new parition, and I put the Windows XP cd in and it does not give me the option to install when the welcome menu comes up. Its dimmed out. How would I go about doing this? I am trying to quad boot. I tried booting from the Windows XP cd and installing it and it did work, but my computer would only boot from Windows XP and it would not give me a list of operating systems to choose from on startup. Does anyone know a solution? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.169.39.243 (talk) 01:51, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Ideally you should install Windows XP before you install Windows 7, since Windows XP is old and does not know about Windows 7 nor the new bootloader so overwrites it with its own (Windows 7 should recognise any older version of Windows and add it to the bootloader). However you can do it your way. Well not installing from within Windows 7, that will never work (with Windows but I strongly suspect most OSes you can only ever overwrite the existing OS from within an existing OS which obviously means you can only install a newer version i.e. upgrade the existing install) but a simple search will find plenty of links helping you to fix the bootloader [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. Incidentally, since Vista & 7 use the same bootloader and are fairly similar in many ways, searching for help doing Vista followed by XP would be useful if you can't find 7 specific advice (some of these are for Vista). Alternatively if you intend to quad boot and given it's not clear to me what ther other OSes are, using some other bootloader may be a better option Nil Einne (talk) 03:21, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, Windows 7 installs its boot loader on a separate partition, unlike Windows Vista. Also, since I intend to give the OP meaningful advice, I recommend that they boot from a Windows 7 DVD and do a startup repair. If they do not have a Windows 7 DVD, then they can install EasyBCD inside Windows XP and use it to repair the Windows 7 bootloader.--Chmod 777 (talk) 09:44, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

By default yes, you can disable it however (and some people really hate this for various reasons as illustrated in an earlier question). In any case, while your clarification may be useful, and is something I didn't make clear enough, I don't believe it makes much of a difference to the end result. The fact it's on a seperate partition doesn't mean Windows XP won't overwrite the bootloader. I haven't tested it but I would have presumed it does since it would likely just install the bootloader to the active partition which in the Windows 7 case would be the recovery partition if available. Even if it doesn't overwrite the bootloader, it obviously normally would set the Windows XP partition (or whereever it dumps the bootloader) to be the active partition so you still have a similar problem although it would theoretically be easier to fix (since you just have to change the active partition rather then reinstall the bootloader) although as illustrated in your suggestion and in the earlier links, the simplest way to fix it is probably just to allow the Windows 7 DVD to fix it then add Windows XP if necessary to the Windows 7 bootloader. Nil Einne (talk) 15:58, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I have done this exact process myself, and Chmod and Nil's advice is sound. Install XP on a separate partition like you have, and then run the repair installation from your Win7 disk so you can restore the Win7 bootloader. Then you can use EasyBCD to enable booting from both Win7 and XP. Alternatively, you can use VMware Player to create a virtual machine inside of Win7 that you can install XP on. Depending on your hardware and what you plan on using XP for, it may run a little slower this way, but depending on what problems you run into while installing XP (though it sounds like your installation went fine), VMware may be a little easier to implement. —Akrabbim^talk 16:44, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

network upgrade question

I currently have three desktops and a laptop on a wired 10/100 network. The laptop has 208.11g. Two of the desktops have 1Gb ethernet connections and one as 10/100. I'm planning to upgrade to a wireless 802.11n router with 1Gb ethernet ports. The laptop will then be used wireless.

Will the two desktops with 1Gb ethernet connectors be able to communicate at 1Gb/sec, or will the fact that there is a 100Mb machine on the network slow the whole network down to 100Mb/sec?

If all desktops have 1Gb/sec ethernets, will the wireless slow them down, or will they be able to communicate with each other at 1Gb?

Will Cat 5e cables be OK? (The longest run is 25 feet, I think.) Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 04:12, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The desktops with 1Gb connections will be able to access the other desktops at 1Gb speeds. But while accessing either the desktop with 100mb or the wireless laptop the speed will be reduced to the max speed of the computer being accessed.Your whole network should not slow down. Cat 5e cable will be fine for gigabyte networking, but I'd recommend you going with cat 6 if you can. Source – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  08:05, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 16:37, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I got the 1GB network going, but transferring large files is only between 2 and 3 times as fast as the old 100Mb router. I tested files roughly 300MB in size. The router shows that both computers are getting 1Gb connections. Could the Cat 5e cables be the problem? Or what could it be? Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 06:32, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Turns out, one of the cables was only Cat-5. (One was Cat-6.) I'm replacing the Cat-5 with Cat-6.

Resolved

Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 08:03, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Removing Atdmt Cookie

I've just started getting a window pop up asking me if I want to allow acces to an atdmt cookie. I've googled and found some spyware removal stuff but I'm sceptical. Is there a simple way of removing it with my current McAfee protection or maybe Windows Defender?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.111.124.236 (talk) 09:14, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

It depends on what browser you use and on your operating system. If you use Internet Explorer as a browser, the cookie is stored as a text file. To delete it in Windows XP, you'd go to Start --> Run... and type "%USERPROFILE%\cookies" and then press ENTER. Then, you'd select the file and delete it. If you use Firefox as a browser, you go to Tools --> Privacy --> Show Cookies, select it, and click "Remove Cookie."

By the way, cookies are pieces of text. They're not spyware, although they can be used to keep track of the web sites you visit. Anti-virus programs like McAfee and AVG make a big fuss about them to make their programs seem more important. Most cookies aren't used for market research but to allow you to log into web sites, among other things.--Chmod 777 (talk) 09:29, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I've found the cookie folder (Windows) and deleted the atdmt one. That place is FULL!! Can I delete everything or will it have a negative effect on operation? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.111.124.236 (talk) 10:00, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

You can delete them all but anything you've asked your browser to remember (logins, passwords, autofill boxes etc) will be lost and you'll have to re do them all. Another easier way to delete all the cookies is to (1) on firefox go Tools -> Clear recent history, and select the cookies checkbox, or (2) on internet explorer go Tools -> Internet options -> General and select Delete browsing history. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fire2010 (talk • contribs) 11:45, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Laptop Mousepad Mouswheel Not Working In Games

The mousewheel on my HP G60 laptop's mousepad doesn't work in some games I've been playing recently. Usually it's not a problem, but I've found that more and more games these days seem to be using the mousewheel for ever more important tasks, like zooming in/out for example (the reason I say it's getting more important in this case is because the play areas are getting bigger and bigger, c.f. Ubisoft's R.U.S.E.) I am testing the public Beta of RUSE at the moment but can't really see the details of the game (something it is well-known for) as I can't zoom in. I am unable to map other keyboard controls to zoom as the game won't let me change the controls. In any case, it's not just this game (that was just an example). Is there any way I can find out why my mousewheel is not working on this (and other games - Battlefield 2142 being another I can think of off-hand) and find out what I can do about this short of reinstalling drivers? Cheers. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 11:24, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Plugging in an external mouse (to see if it's mouse wheel works in those games) might help to diagnose the problem. StuRat (talk) 15:29, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Cheers. I plugged in an external mouse and found that that works perfectly. I would really prefer not to use an external mouse, though, as my workspace is somewhat prohibitive (enough room for a laptop and a coffee!). Any help would be appreciated. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:34, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Ok, that gets us closer to figuring out the problem. It sounds like the internal wheel is mapping to different "Mouse Wheel Events" than the external wheel. An event monitor (what, no article ?) should help you determine if this is actually the case. Perhaps someone else can describe how to do this. Also, there may be some software on your computer for setting up the internal mouse wheel, so you might want to search the help files for that. And, if nothing else works and you are stuck with an external mouse, they make tiny ones just for laptops. StuRat (talk) 14:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Cheers. I've looked at the help files, and they basically just gave me links to the software that sets the mouse up. The only options I have in the mouse wheel tab are the number of lines to scroll up and down, and the option to waggle the mouse wheel sideways with the same effect (which doesn't apply to my computer anyway, because it's not an actual wheel, just a flat metal strip like most laptops). I would be interested in finding out about this event monitor you mention, so I shall keep an eye on this thread. Thanks again. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:57, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

is there a mobile device that takes a 3G sim and exposes it over local WIFI?

I have a data-only 3G sim card nominally for use in my netbook, but it also goes just as easily into my iPhone. However, then I have to take out my voice-only SIM card from the iPhone. I was wondering if there is a portable device I can carry with me that I can put the sim card into (instead of into my netbook) which will expose the internet connection over Wifi, ie the iPhone can connect to it over WIFI, then I can both receive phone calls on my voice-only sim and use the net from my wifi. thank you. 82.113.106.94 (talk) 12:45, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

This device from Solwise seems to do what you are asking for. There may be others depending on your price range and location. Coreycubed (talk) 14:16, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Does your netbook have a WiFi adapter in addition to the SIM card? You may be able to use the netbook to expose the SIM connection over WiFi: http://tameyourpc.blogspot.com/2009/07/windows-7-as-wireless-access-point.html. -- Coneslayer (talk) 14:23, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

thanks, guys. but the point would be a mobile device, more mobile than a netbook, something I can just put in my other pocket... I guess you would have found already it if it were out there... Thanks anyway. 82.113.106.94 (talk) 14:26, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Something like this [6] ? --Phil Holmes (talk) 14:59, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

n800 + USB adapter (or any other portable linux device with usb and wifi but I believe n800 is the cheapest as of now). --194.197.235.240 (talk) 15:35, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

A cheap (second hand) Symbian/WinMo smart phone with the appropriate software (eg. Joikuspot for Symbian) will also do the job, although it does tend to drain your battery rather fast. --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:25, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

As Phil Holmes said, there are definitely devices like this, I've read about them before. Other then the one linked to there's also [7] [http://www.techchee.com/2009/09/11/huawei-e5-portable-3g-wifi-router/ and hardly surprisingling, we even have an article MiFi. Whether this would be more effective then something above, I don't know Nil Einne (talk) 14:25, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Setting up a whitelist for email

Is there a way to set up in gmail so only messages from specified senders is allowed in my inbox? Thanks! 20.137.18.50 (talk) 13:52, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

If the whitelist is not very long, the simplest way is to set up a Gmail filter. From your Gmail inbox, click on Create a filter. In the Has the words box, paste the following:

-from:{ address@one.com address@two.com }

Replace the above addresses with the actual addresses you want to whitelist. You can add as many addresses as you want, just make sure each address is separated by a space. Click on Next Step, then check the box marked Delete it. Click Create Filter and you're all set. Let us know if this works for you. Coreycubed (talk) 14:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

One thing to be aware of when using a white-list, however, is that it will tend to block e-mails from people you know, such as when they get a new e-mail address. Also, sometimes people you know may send you something from another website, like an e-cards site or even Wikipedia. StuRat (talk) 15:24, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Quantifiers in bash shell expression?

Regular expressions (in perl, at least) allow the use of quantifiers like

([0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3})

to match an IP.

Is there a similar way of using quantifiers when dealing with bash shell expressions?

Imagine matching all files in a directory that have an IP address as file name, without the use of perl, grep or other external tools. Going the brute force way like

ls -1 [0-9].[0-9].[0-9].[0-9]
ls -1 [0-9].[0-9].[0-9].[0-9][0-9]
ls -1 [0-9].[0-9].[0-9].[0-9][0-9][0-9]
...

doesn't seem right, even though it would probably work. -- 78.43.60.58 (talk) 14:05, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Shell globbing is more limited than regular expressions, and I don't believe bash has quantifiers. The solution is, of course, to use "perl, grep or other external tools". The whole Unix philosophy, especially shell scripting, is centered on the toolkit approach. -- Coneslayer (talk) 14:08, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

In particular, you could pipe ls through grep in order to get a list of files: ls | grep "..." | ls -l should take the list of filenames, filter it down, and then give you a long listing for each of the filenames that remain. (It won't work if there are files with newlines in their name, but that's a very unlikely problem.) Paul Stansifer 15:52, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I think you mean something like ls -l `ls | grep "..."`. You can't pipe things into ls to control what it lists. However, I think switch the OP used was -1 (one), not -l (ell). That switch lists only one filename per line. When ls is piped into something, its only lists one file per line by default, making the -1 switch unnecessary if you're piping into grep or something for filtering. -- Coneslayer (talk) 16:09, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh, duh, you're right on both counts. ls -1 | grep "..." is all that the OP should need for this task, where the -1 is optional, but nice for clarity. Paul Stansifer 22:56, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Specifically, this line works: ls | egrep "[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}" 83.250.239.198 (talk) 15:07, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Software cheat prevention

Where does a computer store the memory to prevent uninstalling and reinstalling trial software to use the trial period again?--Mikespedia is on Wikipedia! 14:41, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

It varies depending on the software, but I've seen some applications store this data in tiny hidden (and seemingly unrelated) files in the Windows directory/other system folders, but most commonly it seems to be stored in the registry in keys that aren't actually related to the product and aren't named accordingly either. Although I've not seen it happen I would imagine some bits of software possibly even "dial home" with a hardware ID of the computer to check if it's previously had a trial running on it or not. ZX81 ^talk 15:04, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I've definitely come across software which requires online activiation for a trial. I've also come across software which hides details in unused sectors of the disk, e.g. Adobe products and other software using MacroVision SafeCast hides it in absolute sector 32 Nil Einne (talk) 14:31, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

It will be different for different types of software. So if you are trying to reset a trial period, there is no single place to look for it. I'm not sure if the Ref Desk is willing to give you advice on specific programs or not (it is piracy of a sort). --Mr.98 (talk) 15:07, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

In addition to registry keys, some programs will use Alternate data streams attached to innocent looking files (or even folders). Process monitor is a useful tool for investigating program behaviour, though in the spirit of the arms race, countermeasures can be expected! 94.196.85.114 (talk) 17:46, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Windows 7 – sound keeps dropping

Hi, I'm using a Dell Inspiron Windows 7 laptop. Every time I put it on stand-by, then bring it back, there is no sound: regardless of the volume, online videos, system sounds etc. play as if it's muted, and in Windows Media Player, it refuses to do anything (the bar doesn't move along, no video plays etc.) – anyone got a solution? Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►Not-content─╢ 16:15, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The sound driver may be defective; it's one of the responsibilities of the sound driver to re-initialise itself and the sound hardware when the system is coming up from standby. If the supplied driver is defective then it may be failing to discharge this responsibility properly then you'd get no sound after coming back up. You should make sure you're running the latest driver that Dell supply; failing that, Dell's online support service may have a fix. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:24, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Link checking

Hi, I'm looking for a quick and effective way to check the validity of URLs (i.e. - do they 404 or not?) in an Excel spreadsheet. Is there a program / plugin that would systematically go through each cell containing a URL and tell me wether it returned any data or not? I can put the URLs in a text file if possible.

The link checkers I've investigated so far seem to only accept single URLs, and doing each one manually would take forever. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.149.255.225 (talk) 17:04, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The following code works with AutoIt, freeware scripting software that I use to automate everyday tasks. All you'd need to run the code would be to install AutoIt and save this as a text file with the .au3 extension.

#include <IE.au3>
$file = FileOpen("C:\URLs.txt", 0)
$file2 = FileOpen("C:\results.csv", 2)
$o = _IECreate("www.google.com")
While 1
	$url = FileReadLine($file)
	If @error = -1 Then ExitLoop
	_IENavigate($o, $url)
	$d = _IEPropertyGet ( $o, "title" )
	If $d = "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" Then
		$result = $url & ",Invalid"
	Else
		$result = $url & ",Valid"
	EndIf
	FileWriteLine ($file2, $result)
WEnd
FileClose($file)
FileClose($file2)

It's simple code, I tested it with a few URLs and it worked just fine. Feel free to modify the paths to suit your needs. This was run on Windows XP with Internet Explorer 8. If you run this and it doesn't work quite right for you, let me know what's wrong. (Alternatively, if this is too technical in nature to begin with, please say so!) Coreycubed (talk) 19:46, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

"wget" has an option, --spider, which will do this. It's a standard tool on Linux, and probably the BSDs and Mac. Its also part of cygwin if you use MS-Windows. An example is

wget --spider --no-verbose http://www.google.co.uk/    www.google.com/foo ; echo $?
200 OK

http://www.google.com/foo:
19:42:39 ERROR 404: Not Found.

FINISHED --19:42:39--
Downloaded: 0 bytes in 0 files
1

The first line is the is command, the rest, apart from the last line is from wget. The '1' is the errorlevel returned from wget, '1' means an error occured, '0' means no errors. wget can also read the URLs form a plain-text file. CS Miller (talk) 19:46, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Thankyou both for your contributions, I will review this and attempt to implement it! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.31.58.156 (talk) 21:08, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Google search

Is there a way when searching on Google to only find recent events if for example as I was doing, looking for security threats on social networking sites, I am finding lots going back to 2007, now I assume these threats are no longer valid today but maybe wrong, so is there a way to find the latest security threats for online social networking sites, thanks Mo ainm~Talk 17:35, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

You can use Google's advanced search to specify how recent the page is (you may need to click on the plus sign near the bottom to display the field that lets you select the date). This may not be 100% reliable. --Normansmithy (talk) 18:05, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Good tip thanks. Mo ainm~Talk 18:47, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Similarly, Google News Search lets you limit a search to news articles about security threats after a specific date. -- kainaw™ 20:52, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

How to make an mp4 file

I have a sequence of svg images. I know how to make an animated gif from them, but I need to make a mp4 file. How can I do that? If possible please with free software (Linux or Mac OS X), this is just a hobby and I can't pay lots of mony. Thank you. Hevesli (talk) 20:35, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

This article discusses how to do so with ffmpeg. You may have to make the SVGs into a bitmapped image format like PNG first (which you can do with Inkscape or Gimp, and which Imagemagick's convert program can do wholesale); experiment a bit with this, as different SVG renderers do subtly different things, and they all seem to have nontrivial bugs. I haven't tried this process myself, so I'd be interested to know how you get on - please let us know. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:40, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

If you're animating SVG files, Synfig Studio might be the tool that you want to produce the animation in in the first place. It's got a steep learning curve, though. Paul Stansifer 22:50, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Java 2d graphics

If i have method as such

	public void PaintComponent(Graphics g){
		g.drawString("test",50,50);
		repaint();	
	}

How can i call this from another class? Assuming i have created an object of the class. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.148.254.106 (talk) 20:56, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused about what you're doing, and I think you may be too. paintComponent() (note the lowercase initial p) is a method of a Swing component which is called (by the system repaint handler) to actually do painting. repaint() is a method that anyone can call, which doesn't do any painting, but instead enqueues an event that requests the system repaint handler to, at some later time, call paintComponent on that control (technically it enqueues and event which is handled asynchronously in another thread). I'm confused because you're calling repaint() inside your paintComponent(), which will enqueue a fresh repaint event, which will re-call your paintComponent() again, ad infinitum. I think what you want to do is to remove the call to repaint() in your paintComponent() method, fix the name of that method, and then call repaint() in your other class. I'm sorry if I've only served to confuse things; if so, this article might explain things better. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:10, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Maps

Is there any good software for making maps? Software that has customized tools for things like cities, watercourses, roads, borders, topography, etc, not like Photoshop where you have to make everything yourself. Thanks, Shannon^talk _contribs 21:38, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

If you want to make maps of the United States, you're in luck. There is a ton of freely available GIS data. The Census Bureau provides most of the data you would need -- water, cities, roads, railroads, etc. You can also search the website of the state's Department of Transportation (usually http://dot.state.[ab].us where [ab] is the state abbreviation, though there are exceptions) for more complete data. (If you were to use state data you must be careful not to run afoul of copyright. State data may be copyrighted, while federal data by law must be public domain.) You feed all this data into a program such as Quantum GIS which then spits it out for you in a nice map. All you would need to do then is customize how you want the map to look and export it as an SVG. (You might want to take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Maps task force/Tutorial for basic instruction. Although that tutorial specifically targets road maps, the basic process remains the same.)

I dunno whether there is freely available data for European countries. I think there is some for Germany from the Bundesamt für Kartographie and Geodäsie, but I haven't been their website in a while so I don't know if they still provide it. I think there might be some for the UK, as well, but it might not be free. Most likely, you would need to Google third-party data if you were to focus on Europe.

Feel free to contact me if you have further questions (I wrote most of the linked tutorial for USRD). Xenon54 / talk / 22:40, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

No, not premade maps of an actual place, just software that can make features on maps without a basemap, i.e. just free to make any map whether of a real or nonexistent place. Shannon^talk _contribs 01:38, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

So you're looking for, as an example, something that can take a blank canvas and just draw a river, a road, and a border, that does not necessarily have a relation to somewhere in the real world? I am not aware of any such software, although you could try going into Inkscape and using the freehand pen tool... Xenon54 / talk / 01:51, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I meant that. I make most of my maps with Photoshop but feel it's not good, sufficient, professional enough. Wonder if the people who make the atlases such as Earth Concise do it; I have a feeling they all have some sort of special software. Shannon^talk _contribs 07:33, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

This is a LONG shot. Some games (especially 3rd person perspective role-playing games) come with a map/terrain editor packaged in e.g. Heroes of Might and Magic II or Warcraft III World Editor. It MAY be the case that some companies offer the map editor as a free download. It MAY be the case that you can export the created maps as jpegs. It MAY be the case that the graphics look realistic rather than cartoony. This Google search brings up a few results. Good luck. Zunaid 07:54, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

avi player for win mobile 6 on htc p4530 (herald)

Can you suggest one? I've tried pocket dvx and sompyplayer but don't work.. thanks in advance --87.5.31.44 (talk) 21:59, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I used TCPMP for quite some time and loved it. It's not compatible with all builds, so mess around with it and see if it works. There are custom builds for certain phones, you may want to check PPCGeeks' HTC Herald forum for suggested media players. (There's a paid version called of TCPMP called CorePlayer which I didn't like as much.) Coreycubed (talk) 14:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

What a nifty connection problem.

On my Windows Vista computer (the one I'm using now), it seems that I lose my Internet connection every few minutes, for all of two or three seconds, before getting it back. It's unnoticeable during general use, but it can get annoying when I'm, say, going to knife someone in the back only to be told that I'd lost connection and I'm actually lying comatose on the floor.

I also have Ubuntu on this computer, which I'm extremely unfamiliar with. I tested out the problem the only way I know how; by playing a game - specifically, RuneScape. The problem didn't seem to exist on Ubuntu, though with a game as slow-paced as RuneScape, it's difficult to be certain.

This is a connection problem that I've never heard of before. I don't suppose anyone has any advice? Vimescarrot (talk) 22:12, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Rather than saying you "lost your Internet connection", is it possible it's just delayed by some other process ? Automatic updates, for example ? Or some malware reporting your porn-viewing habits back to base ? :-) StuRat (talk) 01:14, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I've no idea. Is it? I wouldn't know how to check. This problem has been persisting for a year and a half now. Does anything update every two minutes? I use Windows Live OneCare for all my security "needs"...For anything that actually needs safety, I use Ubuntu. Would OneCare pick up a porn-reporting malware? Wouldn't that malware be bored senseless by my lack of original taste by now? Vimescarrot (talk) 01:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, you could try using the Task Manager to kill every non-vital process, and see if that solves it. If so, reboot and kill processes selectively, until you find the culprit. StuRat (talk) 06:31, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

If I was to kill all my protection, how much risk would I be putting myself at? Just playing BF2142, not using a browser. That seems to have worked, at least a little bit. Vimescarrot (talk) 15:45, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I think you'd be OK as long as you just play that one game, provided you trust them not to send you any malware. StuRat (talk) 15:50, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Turns out to be wishful thinking. I killed OneCare entirely and the problem still persists. I don't know what other programs in my task manager are actually safe to kill; I don't know what most of them do...I'll still give it a go, but it'll take me a while; the game is the only way I know of to test it, and I don't play that often (twice a day, maybe). Vimescarrot (talk) 17:06, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

If it's not too technical for your comfort level, you could grab Wireshark and run it while you play your game. When you see the big pause, note the time and go see in Wireshark what was happening on the network at that time. Hopefully you'll see something suggestive like a lot of traffic to useless-updates-for.some-crap-I-installed-and-forgot-about.com which could lead you to a solution. Of course, there are many things that could be going wrong besides network congestion. Maybe some large background process is starting up, maybe the cat sitting on the router at your ISP is licking himself furiously and getting static in your packets. --Sean 18:37, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

...while licking his packets. StuRat (talk) 18:43, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it's a bit obvious, but this would also be a good time to make sure you have the most recent drivers for your network card. If the probably really doesn't exist in Ubuntu, a glitch in the windows drivers would definitely be a possible explanation for this. Indeterminate (talk) 10:59, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

JPEG Image won't display in IE6

Can anyone help me figure out why this image will display in Firefox but not IE6? [removed] Helpful replies only, please. The Hero of This Nation (talk) 23:37, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Whoever made the image saved it as a CMYK (cyan-magenta-yellow-black) JPEG, rather than an RGB (red-green-blue) JPEG. Printers understand CMYK. Monitors display everything in RGB. CMYK JPEGs will not display in any version of Internet Explorer and look very odd in Apple's Safari browser. Is this your image? Whoever made it needs to open up the original again and then save it again as an RGB JPEG. Do not open the current JPEG -- open the original AI, EPS, PSD, etc., file used to create the logo.--Chmod 777 (talk) 23:50, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, that is very helpful -- now I am able to tell the person who made the image what to do to rectify the situation. The Hero of This Nation (talk) 23:56, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Why are all my rar downloads corrupt?

I used to have no problems downloading. Now almost every RAR file I download is corrupt. Even small rars. Some of them are fixed by RAR repair, a lot aren't.

I downloaded a more recent version of winrar, it didn't help.

What do you think is causing this? How can I fix this?--Gary123 (talk) 23:45, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, one thing to try is to use a different browser. If you are using IE, see if Firefox does anything different. If you are using Firefox, try IE, or Safari, or something else. Additionally, are all these RARs from the same source? Because it could be the source website that is messing them up. You could try downloading them to a different computer and seeing if those are still corrupt or not. Figuring out tech problems is primarily an issue of eliminating possibilities—finding the one variable that indicates the source of the problem. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:36, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I've used both firefox and seamonkey. I have the problem at multiple download sites. --Gary123 (talk) 02:25, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Could you give us a link to test? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 04:08, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Back in the olden days, viruses used to append themselves at the ends or beginnings of files, thus rendering them corrupt. Still, weird error. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:01, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

For example one librivox zip, I downloaded recently was corrupt the first time, but I re-downloaded and it was fixed. Do you think it might be a connection problem? Except that when I check the size of the corrupt files, it is often the correct MB size. Also for corrupt audio rars, often some mp3 are extracted but not others. --Gary123 (talk) 07:30, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Make sure you're extracting from the beginning file and not one of the subsequent part files, otherwise it will always show corrupt. Also try extracting with 7zip —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fire2010 (talk • contribs) 13:56, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Bad Internet connection? Maybe it is not only RAR files that get corrupt, but all (big) files (in which corruption is easily detected). --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 14:00, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The size of the file does not affect whether corruption is detected or not. Corruption is detected using a checksum on the file. On of the following is most likely the cause: your connection is poor (and you are dropping packets), the server isn't serving the files correctly, the uploader didn't compress them correctly, or your unzip program isn't working. Or of course, it could be a "ghost in the machine".=DSmallman12q (talk) 22:46, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

No, I did not mean that either. The two brackets are not related. I just meant that a corrupted EXE (for instance) is easier to spot than a corrupted Shakespearean novel. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 12:33, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

March 11

"&" in command line

Does & mean anything when used at the command line in Windows? Apparently in Unix it makes a command run in the background, is this the case on Windows as well? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 06:06, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It is usually used to put two commands onto one line. The following example moves to the root of a drive and lists its contents:

cd \ & dir

It is also used to duplicate a handle (e.g., standard error [A.K.A. STDERR or 2] or standard output [A.K.A. STDOUT or 1]). Say you wanted to list the contents of a folder and output any errors to a text file. You could type this to do that:

dir > .\list.txt 2>&1

The above example redirects the output of the dir command to a text file named list.txt. It also puts any error messages in that same file by redirecting STDERR to a copy of STDOUT.--Drknkn (talk) 06:20, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

This doesn't exactly answer the question, but might be useful: Microsoft's command line reference list [8] It doesn't include operators though.

In bash a single & will background the command, but a && is an "and" operator so it works to execute commands in succession, but maybe the more straightforward way to do it in bash is to use " ; ", which is the command separator. I'm not sure if there's ever a practical difference though (except the &&s will actually evaluate). Shadowjams (talk) 07:01, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Bash's && short-circuits like in C-derived languages: if the first command fails then the second command isn't tried. With ;, both commands are run regardless of their exit statuses. —Korath (Talk) 07:30, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. The one I was thinking of was the one I've seen used at the end of a command, as in

xdvi foo.dvi &

(for previewing DVI files on Unix); judging by Shadojams' comment, it sounds like the command-final & has the same function in Windows. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:30, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

In DOS (and the command prompt for Windows), the '&' serves the same purpose as the ';' in Linux, it's an unconditional sequential execution operator. DOS isn't multiprocess aware, so it can't run background processes. All the & says is: "When the program to the left of me finishes (whether or not it succeeds), run the program to the right of me." —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 16:41, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense. Thanks for the help! rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 17:00, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I posted a detailed explanation of what the ampersand does in Windows. Posting detailed explanations is not something I will do again for you.--Drknkn (talk) 17:04, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Was that necessary? Nothing he posted asked you for an additional "detailed explanation". Thanks, gENIUS101 21:39, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You're right. I shouldn't have said that. He did nothing wrong. I apologize.--Drknkn (talk) 23:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

RAID stripe data recovery

I purchased a Apple Intel Tower which subsequently had a hard disk fail . The hard disks (2) in OSX (10.6) were set to a Raid stripe(?) config - now that the main Hard disk is dead... is there any way to recover any data from the 2nd striped HD ?--Boomshanka (talk) 10:16, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Nope. If any hard drive in a striped array fails, all the data is gone. 121.72.196.8 (talk) 11:07, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Striping RAID 0 is often referred to as "not a RAID" because there is no redundancy in the data. That is why losing a drive loses the whole thing. RAID 0 is not used for handling drive failure. It is used for drive speed - dividing large read/tasks among multiple drives at the same time. -- kainaw™ 13:33, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, the term "stripe" is used in raid levels higher than 0, so it's possible you had redundancy. If not, data recovery from the failed drive might be possible, but it's an unreliable and expensive process. There are some cheap hacks that you can try though, like putting the drive in the freezer for a while, then trying to start it while it's cold. This is said to sometimes temporarily fix electronic problems for long enough for you to read the data from the drive. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 12:19, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Windows Vista

I would like to disable users from using USB ports. How do I go —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tajadi (talk • contribs) 10:32, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

That depends on the purpose. If all you want to do is keep someone from plugging a random USB device into your personally-owned computer and getting it to connect, some scripting/ADM templates and creating a user account with limited privileges for everyday work is a simple approach. If the computer in question is part of a company network where several users need to log on, and some might even have elevated or full administrative privileges, things get a little bit more hairy, and you might want to look into one of the commercially available solutions. -- 78.43.60.58 (talk) 11:43, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Or you could physically disable the ports, by filling them in epoxy, clipping the leads on the motherboard, etc, assuming you don't need any USB access at all (say, for keyboard and mouse). Again, purpose-dependent. —Korath (Talk) 12:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

That's a bit drastic. Most likely OP just wants to block mass storage devices from being used. You can do this from the control panel when logged in as administrator —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fire2010 (talk • contribs) 13:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You can lock it down/configure what is allowed using Group Policy. The Microsoft page here has more information on this. Another option is to use 3rd party software such as DeviceLock which allows a lot more control over what is/isn't allowed and also locks down Windows XP machines (which Group Policy can't do). ZX81 ^talk 18:23, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Limiting Ubuntu Hardy Heron's use of CPUs / Cores

Is there any way of telling Ubuntu that unless specifically requested otherwise, it should only use the first core (core 0) in a multi-core machine? The reason I'm asking is that I want to run virtualization software on it, and the two virtual machines have different CPU needs, so my plan would be to run the CPU-intensive VM on the second core (core 1), while running the host system and the less CPU-intensive VM on the first core (core 0). The virtualization software allows for such a setting per VM, I just haven't found a way to make the host stick to one of the two cores. Is that possible, and if so, how? -- 78.43.60.58 (talk) 11:18, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Kinda. You can use the taskset program to set the processor affinity of a given process. So you could, with a bit of labour, set all the CPU-intensive processes in the host to CPU-A and set the virtualisation program (VmWare or whatever) to CPU-B. You can't completely banish the host from CPU-B, but this procedure should be enough to give the VM essentially all the cycles on it. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 11:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

But I don't think this will, in most circumstances, turn out to be a terribly good idea. The scheduler is pretty smart, is cache aware, and knows a great deal more about the real-time characteristics of your running system than you can. This IBM article lists the very few reasons where setting processor affinity might be a worthwhile idea. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 11:56, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately reason #1 from that article is "I have a hunch", which I believe is what 78 has. 74.212.140.226 (talk) 17:33, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

What? It's not that complicated. You can pass the number of cores to use as a kernel parameter at boot time. Just edit your grub menu.lst and add maxcpus=1 to the end of your "kernel" line. (Alternately, if you use maxcpus=0 or nosmp, SMP will be disabled. I'm not entirely sure what the difference is, for your purposes.) If you want to boot into full SMP mode, just reboot without that kernel option (ie, keep at least 2 menu entries in grub). If you want to do it without rebooting, well... that's complicated. Indeterminate (talk) 10:49, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

The way I understand the article you linked, that would completely disable the CPUs with higher numbers than the number specified on the maxcpus=n line. Which would mean they are out of reach of the VMs as well - obviously not what I want. :-/ -- 78.43.60.58 (talk) 15:39, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah, right, this is for a host OS, my mistake. In that case, perhaps isolating the second core from the scheduler is a better option. The description claims that this works better than manually setting the affinity of all the processes. The boot option for that is isolcpus=1 (since it starts at 0). Then when you create your VM, you can move it onto the second core using taskset. The isolcpus option has apparently been superseded by dynamic scheduling domains, but that's getting way out of my comfort zone. It'll probably remain in the kernel for the foreseeable future. Indeterminate (talk) 21:26, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

That works, with one caveat (which you mentioned) - this requires manually setting the processor affinity of the VM that has the CPU-intensive workload using taskset, as VMware Server seems to be bound by the isolcpu setting as well. While you can add processorn.use = "FALSE" to a VMware config file, it will still use processor #n if that is the only one available because of the isolcpu setting. Again, not saying that you were wrong here, just pointing out a caveat in case some day someone else searches the archive for a solution to the same problem I had. It's tempting to think "Okay, I set isolcpus for the host OS, I defined the per-VM processor use in the config files, now my VMs should run on the CPUs I specified, riiiiight?" -- 78.43.60.58 (talk) 10:22, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Upload speed

What is the minimum upload speed a server should have so that loading pages won't take too long on the other end, and a small number of users won't consume all the bandwidth and make the site unreachable? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fire2010 (talk • contribs) 13:58, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

That depends on how many users is "small" and how much data each one is expected to consume. For a half a dozen users looking at purely static HTML pages of a KB or two in size, consumer grade DSL (768 Kbps upload) would be more than sufficient, but for fifty users on an AJAX enabled site with constant communication, or a Flash video server, it won't be nearly enough. Basically, you need to work out the peak expected upload rate (total size of X number of users download Y KB of data at the same time, divided by the number of seconds you consider reasonable for responsiveness). —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 16:36, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Were can I find Debian 5.0.0 CD/ISO?

Resolved

Can anyone point me to an ISO of Debian 5.0.0? I spent many time searching and I find nothing. I really need version 5.0.0 and not later versions like 5.0.4. I know I can mess around with repositories and change them to older ones (or later one) and do all sort of fun things, but what I need is really the installable ISO. Thanks --SF007 (talk) 16:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Just found it here! http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/archive/ --SF007 (talk) 16:32, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Secret Web Page

Is it possible for me to upload information to the internet and not have it show up in a search engine? Or, are the search engines so thorough that they will find and catalog anything I post? Hemoroid Agastordoff (talk) 20:44, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, with a proper robots.txt, well-configured search engines can be told not to index a site (or specific pages within the site). —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 20:50, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

If you don't link to the page, it will never be found (short of an intrusion or guess); but if you don't link to the page, some might consider the entire endeavor pointless. ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:54, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, if you have the page at a complex random URL never mentioned anywhere, not linked to from anywhere, and not linking anywhere (or at least not being used to go anywhere - otherwise the referrer field can give you away), search engines are extremely unlikely to find that page. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:58, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec)In addition to robots.txt (which legitimate search engines respect, but which the spiders than scammers and spammers use ignore) you can exploit how search engines find your pages. Search engines collect web pages using a web crawler, which traverses the network of links inside sites. If there is no link to a page, a web crawler can't find it and won't read it. So long as you (and, crucially, anyone you tell about the page) doesn't post a public link anywhere, a crawler won't find it. In theory someone could guess the page's url and speculatively try that (bar a few common and legitimate examples, no sensible spider will resort to guessing), but you can avoid that by giving pages an essentially unguessable name (e.g. http://agastordoff.net/320894503984309482304983.html); and you need to make sure that your web host's auto-index feature is disabled (or provide a blank index for that folder). Strictly, if the content is secret or illicit, this amounts to security by obscurity, which is really no security at all - so anything that you want to protect more than just casually you should at least hide behind a password, or better yet a proper login (and transmit over ssl). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:04, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Alternatively, you could always encrypt the content itself, rather than require an SSL login. Anyone can get your data, but without the decryption key it's worthless. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 21:05, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

This may surprise a lot of people, but most of the information on the Internet is actually not available through search engines. It's called the "Deep Web" or "Invisible Web". A search engine can't index something it can't find, so as is said above, if a page is never registered with a search engine or linked from anywhere else, it won't show up on a search engine. A website without any links that is never registered in a search engine is kind of like a pond that isn't connected to a river or any other water source--no matter how hard you try, you can't swim from any other body of water into the pond, because there's no connection. For all intents and purposes, that pond doesn't even exist to you. That's kind of a bad analogy, I know, but hopefully it makes sense.

Some other reasons why a site/information wouldn't show up in a search engine is if it's part of a password protected site (so the search engine "spiders" can't scan the site), a dynamically generated site, or if it isn't in a textual/HTML format (for example, the contents of a picture or video can't be indexed by a search engine). 24.247.163.175 (talk) 22:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Many ways:

1. Set up a robots.txt file that tells search engines to exclude the content (relies on search engines to obey it... many/most do, though)
2. Put the content behind a password
3. Set up some kind of simple CAPTCHA
4. Don't link to it from anywhere else (relies on nobody else linking to the page)

Which of these makes the most sense depends on who you want to view the page more than it does who you want to keep out. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:31, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Google also uses Sitemaps to find and index sites. If you have put one on your site, make sure that your "hidden" page doesn't appear in the sitemap list. --Phil Holmes (talk) 09:23, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Another way is to use <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" /> in the header of the HTML file. With "noindex,follow" you probably cause search engines to follow links from your page but don't index the page itself - I think that's the classical way "google bombs" are created. Icek (talk) 18:24, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Addendum: I meant to say that google bombs are probably created by having many pages with "noindex,follow" which link to the page you want to "bomb", with the bomb keyword as the link text. The pages then can link to each other too, without appearing on Google's results page. The linking of bomber's pages to each other may increase the PageRank. Icek (talk) 18:43, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

The safest way to go would be to password protect it, or put it behind some type of authentication firewall.Smallman12q (talk) 22:41, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

March 12

Computer unable to renew IP Address

I have until recently been successfully using a Dynalink RTA1025W wireless router for an ADSL2+ connection. It was used wirelessly for my laptop, running Ubuntu 7 and through ethernet cables to an XBox 360 and a pc and laptop running xp. I recently had the router replaced under warranty due to an unrelated hardware problem and the replacement unit will only interface with the wireless laptop and the xbox. When attempting connection with the windows computers, it says they're unable to renew their ip addresses. I have looked for this problem extensively on the Web but have never found an example of where the problem was a new router of the same model. Does anyone know of any settings for the pc or router that I should try in order to solve the problem? Help would be greatly appreciated and I'd be happy to give further details Mix Lord (talk) 07:20, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

The first thing to check is whether the DHCP server on the router is turned on. If it is, we'll see what else we can think of... --Phil Holmes (talk) 09:21, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

DHCP is on, thanks for your help

203.219.227.72 (talk) 09:28, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

This is really guesswork, but maybe the windows PCs are remembering addresses that the router has allocated to your other devices. Bring up a command prompt and type

ipconfig /release

followed by

ipconfig /renew

If that fails type

ipconfig /all

and paste the results here so we can take a look. -- Q Chris (talk) 09:40, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

ipconfig/renew takes ages then says "An error occurred while renewing interface Local Area Connection : unable to contact your DHCP server. Request has timed out.

ipconfig/all gives the following info Primary DNS Suffix................... Node Type............................Unknown Ip Routing Enabled...................No WINS Proxy Enabled...................No

Connection-Specific DNS Suffix....... Description..........................SiS 900-based PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter Physical Address.....................00-14-2A-78-3F-83 Dhcp Enabled.........................Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled............Yes IP Address...........................0.0.0.0 Subnet Mask..........................0.0.0.0 Default Gateway...................... Dhcp Server..........................255.255.255.255

Apologies if I have uploaded any sensitive information there which may make my computer vulnerable.

Definitely check the physical stuff: Is the link light on on both the back of your network card and for the appropriate port on the router? If not, try a different router port, network cable, and lastly, it doesn't hurt to re-seat the network card (unless it is onboard network, as most everything seems to be these days...). Also, if your router isn't of the "built-in ADSL modem" type, try bypassing it by plugging your PC straight into the modem. Usually, trying to find a new driver for your ethernet card/system board (whichever you have) is useful, but I think Windows 7 does a pretty dang good job of finding the best driver. It also doesn't hurt to call your provider, and provide them with your MAC address (the one labeled "Physical Adress" on your readout above). I wouldn't be surprised if frontline techs can't see this type of information (and they'll walk you through all of the "unplug and replug all of your cables, power cycle the modem etc.), but a real "tech support" type person can see if any requests are coming from that MAC address and/or if there is a restriction on it for any reason. Finally, when it all comes down to it, there's always the possibility that your network card/system board have gone bad. I mention this last because it's usually the hardest to test for a desktop. You'll have to take your computer somewhere with another, otherwise working internet connection and try it out. Sorry if any of this was too obvious.NByz (talk) 05:40, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I was just taking a shower and thinking to myself: My feeling would be that if, when you did the release/renew, it took more than say... 5 seconds to return the error, I would lean towards calling your provider first, and the less time it took, the more suspicious I would be of your local hardware (especially your network card/system board).NByz (talk) 05:59, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

And of course, doublecheck your network settings in the control panel. Under TCP/IP properties, make sure everything looks normal in there. Everything should normally say "Obtain automatically."NByz (talk) 06:01, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

All routers I have come across use NAT by default, so the router allocating an IP address to connecting devices is not dependent on the router receiving an upstream IP address from the ISP. Even when unplugged from the phone/broadband you should be able to connect, receive an IP address, and view the router admin screens. I think I would do three things, firstly check out the router status from your laptop - looking at connected devices, etc. See if there is a limit on the range of addresses the router is set to allocate. Secondly I would check the LAN configuration on your windows box, make sure it isn't configured to ask for a fixed address. If neither of these work try borrowing another router or taking your PC to another network to see if it will connect to that. BTW, you have not given anything away about your network settings because you weren't even connected! -- Q Chris (talk) 09:38, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

best free fire-and-forget antivirus for Win 7 Home?

We just bought my computer illiterate mother-in-law an HP desktop with (legit) Windows 7 Home. What's the best free antivirus that I can install and set to regularly run/update itself on a regular schedule? In addition to the usual Admin / User account split, I want to make this desktop as bullet-proof as possible (for free) so that I don't have to be constantly going over there to do recoveries and such. I think most people with tech un-savvy parents can relate. I was thinking Spybot S&D would be a good start due to its realtime registry protection. Anything else? 61.189.63.188 (talk) 10:49, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I've used AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition for quite a while, and it fits this purpose nicely. I set it up for my in-laws a few years ago and they have been happy with it, and more importantly I do not get calls about viruses. It's quite unobtrusive; the only issue I've found is that when a new version is released, it suggests you go ahead and buy the paid product (much like their website does) with small links to upgrade to the newer free version. This is fairly harmless. In my case, I told my in-laws that if it ever asked them to upgrade to a paid version, to look for the free version or to give me a call. (They actually ended up buying it anyways, but not because they forgot; my mother-in-law saw the notice, actually researched the difference between the paid and free versions, learned what the new features meant on her own and decided whether or not they justified the purchase. I was quite proud of her for this.) Coreycubed (talk) 15:10, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd say Avast!. You have to get a code via email to use it, and then in 6 months or something it makes you get another one... I'm sure some people could accidentally convince themselves they need to buy the non-free version at that point. <shrug> If you want super free, you should check out ClamWin. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:09, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

61, you are an excellent human being for doing the admin/non-admin split. 74.212.140.226 (talk) 17:32, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I use Avira, and they have a free version. Nod32 gets consistently high ratings. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:17, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I recommend Microsoft Security Essentials (download link). Unlike AVG, it doesn't nag you to buy a paid version. You'll hardly notice it at all, actually. I also like NOD32, but it costs money. Indeterminate (talk) 10:26, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Truecrypt error?

I get this message in my Ubuntu terminal when I use Truecrypt:

(truecrypt:8647): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+2.0-2.12.9/gtk/gtkwidget.c:8547:
widget class   `GtkPizza' has no property named `row-ending-details'

What does it mean?Quest09 (talk) 11:39, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

It's a bug in the software library that displays your buttons and things on the screen (called wxWidgets). It was fixed a couple of years ago so you may be able to get an updated version of the wxWidgets package that will fix it. I'm not sure of the effect of the bug, but it's discussed a bit here and here. Apparently changing themes might help. --Sean 13:41, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Simple Python program

I have a very basic knowledge of Python and I am working in a simple program, mostly to myself and to learn the language.

I just want it to open a text, display it and if you double click a word, it should show the definition (from a dictionary) of the word in a separate window.

I know how to do things like opening, the dictionary with the definition and simple stuff. But how do you associate a double click on a word to an action?

Furthermore, can you have a Python window with drag-and-drop properties? Like you drag a file into it and the program opens it? --ProteanEd (talk) 17:30, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

All of these things are possible, but doing stuff with windows and clicking and drag-and-drop is probably not a very good learning exercise. I've been programming in Python for a while, and the thought of building a GUI program in it (or in any other language) is kind of terrifying. Things like Project Euler or 99 Prolog Problems (you don't need to know Prolog to solve them, though it might be hard to understand some of the examples) are more suited to training at programming. GUI programming (especially GUI programming that needs to interact with the outside environment, like drag-and-drop) tends to involve an awful lot of wading through manuals and tedious tweaking. I'd much rather try to find the best solution to "P09: Pack consecutive duplicates of list elements into sublists" than to figure out how to recognize a double-click event, and I'd learn more from the former, too. Or you could try to make your program a command-line program that gives the definition of a word that the user types in.

Even if you one day want to write GUI programs (a noble goal), I'd recommend getting the fundamentals down first. The reason that Python, and Scheme and other such languages are good for learning is that they don't give you a lot of extraneous trouble most of the time. In my (limited) experience, GUI programming is a lot of extraneous trouble.

That said, if your heart is set on this particular task, there's a list of GUI toolkits on the Python wiki. Good luck! Paul Stansifer 20:03, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

The simplest gui package for python is probably tkinter, which comes with it. Its main drawback is that the widgets are rather ugly and have their own style. It doesn't come with any docs, but the "Tkinter reference: a GUI for Python" document linked from tkinter is pretty good. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 08:50, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Countering virus infection without antivirus program

Resolved

1. Does My Computer essentially mean your whole computer where ALL files are located? Which means, if I wanna do an extensive search through the whole computer (in my case, for virus), selecting "My Computer" as the location would mean my whole computer?

2. Another computer is infected by virus (NewFolder.exe), on 12 March 11:20PM GMT+8. I have already rebooted it to Safe Mode. If I am to conduct search with the following criteria:

• location: My Computer
• to include searching "hidden files and folders", "system folders" as well as "tape backup")
• Date created: from 12 March to 13 March (it's already 13 in my place)
• type of file: Application
• file size: at least 20,000KB (the virus size is 24,713KB or something around that number)

Is it safe to assume that the result will show ALL the virus files in my computer? Due to some reasons I don't have an updated antivirus program, and since the computer has plenty of important stuffs that aren't mine, I can't afford to reformat it.

Quick reply will be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance. — Yurei-eggtart 19:56, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

No, this is pointless. Viruses very often aren't individual files, but are instead changes done to several pre-existing files. You can't make assumptions about the sizes of files, because many viruses are polymorphic (they change with every infection, to evade detection). You can't assume they're applications, because many aren't. You can't trust the creation date, because that is trivial for a virus to forge. Viruses can lurk in places that a simple search like this can't find (the boot block, for example). Worse, some advanced viruses install a rootkit, which thwarts all but the most sophisticated attempts to detect them. You need an up to date anti-virus obtained from a trustworthy source; there is no substitute. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:08, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

There are plenty of free anti-virus programs (e.g. Antivir, Avast!, AVG). Clarityfiend (talk) 20:18, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I heard that there are many unreliable free antivirus programs, but I guess I'll try AVG out of desperation... But is it possible to download, install then execute it while being in Safe Mode? — Yurei-eggtart 20:27, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Edit Looks like AVG has issues with other antivirus programs on the same computer? The infected computer has expired Norton antivirus program, am I supposed to uninstall it just in case (is it possible in Safe Mode?), in order to install AVG without problem? — Yurei-eggtart 20:50, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

You should never use more than one anti-virus software on a computer (and you should always have an updated anti-virus software). So uninstall the expired Norton, and then install AVG. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:56, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

More questions raining down... I don't see any Uninstall file for Norton. I've googled around and it says I should use Add/Remove program. There's the Norton Removal Tool, but I can't find the product key anywhere and updating it is impossible, what can I do if Add/Remove program doesn't completely work? And again, are all these possible via Safe mode? Thank you guys for the quick replies, really needed it (still needing it ._.). — Yurei-eggtart 21:14, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

They tell you to save your key so you can reinstall Norton again; if it's expired then there's nothing to worry about. If that doesn't totally remove it (after at least two reboots after running the uninstaller) then Revo Uninstaller is pretty thorough. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:21, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh God, I can't Add/Remove programs without going back to Normal mode. It's nearly impossible to operate with the virus lagging it. plus the fear of it corrupting any essential windows component. wwwhat am i supposed to do if AVG fails to help me? Reformat? Oh that's the worst thing I can do. Please enlighten me with ANY, ANY tip that may help in my situation. Oh my kudos to Wikipedian for swift replies... Uhh what will happen when the virus finishes duplicating folder-named .exe files? Time to corrupt the system files? As much as I don't want that to happen, I'd like to hear if theres such a possibiltiy — Yurei-eggtart 21:46, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Edit: the uninstallation of Norton is still ongoing but Windows is warning me about low disk space, thanks to the virus duplication. What will happen when the disk space is completely full? Anything I can do to slow it down or whatever? Okay it has already reached its limit, now the uninstallation process hasn't been moving. Any method to improve the fast or something? — Yurei-eggtart 22:10, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I start by pulling the drive and connecting it to a clan PC using a USB adapter. Scan it with Avira (AVG rates about the same), Superantispyware, Spybot – Search & Destroy and Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. If I get a hit for Vundo / Virtumonde, then there are other tools. Pop it back in the system and it is usually workable to where you can install all those apps and scan again. You may need fixes for bits that can get disabled: MSInstaller, regedit, winsock and the like. If in doubt, call a prof ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:15, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I guess Gadget850 means a "clean" PC and an USB disk enclosure. That's good advice - there comes the time when things are so broken that you can't really get it to run well enough to fix itself. Before you run those programs (I agree that they're all good) you should backup the data from the victim to the clean "medic" PC; with a system this badly mangled (and frankly I find uninstalling Norton often adds to the mangling) you can't discount the possibility that the files, or even the filesystem, are in jeopardy. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:12, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I have no idea what "USB adapter" or "USB disk enclosure" is so I don't know if there's one in my house. Will be it possible if I download, install and run Malwarebytes free version on the infected computer in Safe Mode with Networking, at the same time having expired Norton around? I have no knowledge of removing any component from the CPU so if my proposed method will work as fine, I'd love to do that instead.
Assuming I'll go with Gadget850's method, I'm kinda confused: cleaning up C drive essentially means cleaning up the whole infected computer? Well, there's only C drive in the computer; D is CD ROM one and E is.. unused. — Yurei-eggtart 09:52, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

CHEERS EVERYBODY, thank you for all the concern, my brother came to the rescue and got it done in 20minutes, no reformat required. He reckoned it was a weak virus. I got scolded, but not as bad as expected :'))) There's still rootkit left in the computer, but it should be okay from now on. Thanks again for all the help! — Yurei-eggtart 12:19, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

what is the name of the task manager executable on windows 7? (I'd like to start it with a shortcut)

Resolved

What is the name of the task manager executable on Windows 7? (like taskman.exe, taskmanager.exe, or something like it). I'd like to be able to start the task manager via a shortcut. Thanks.82.113.121.104 (talk) 23:24, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

taskmgr.exe (which I discovered using taskmanager) -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:31, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

thanks! that was it. I've added a resolved template... 82.113.121.104 (talk) 23:36, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Why can't you simply use Ctrl+Shift+Esc? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 23:49, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Not answering the question, but Process Explorer is much better —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fire2010 (talk • contribs) 20:28, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

March 13

Best inkjet printer for occasional use and refilling

I have a 5 year old Canon Pixma IP3000, which I used about once or twice per month. The current set of cartridges may be about 3 years old; I refilled them regularly. Now they are clogged, and deep cleaning doesn't help. I would have bought a new set of cartridges, but since I also begin to get paper jams, it's time to buy a new printer. I checked out Consumer Reports (to which I'm subscribed), but they only look for print quality, speed, and price per page. I don't care about price per page, and speed isn't much of an issue for me, either. Is there any review for what matters in my case, or does anyone have a recommendation? — Sebastian 01:41, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Pretty much every printer I've ever had has had problems with paper jams, but feeding in paper one sheet at a time solves the problem, for me. Many have also had more serious problems, so I consider myself lucky when I get a printer that only jams. StuRat (talk) 01:57, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, StuRat. Actually, the jamming is pretty bad now; I went to the local hardware repair service with it, but they said they couldn't fix it for the price for which you get a new one. I do want to avoid waste, and it goes against my grain to buy a new product instead of fixing the old one, but in this case it looks like I have to bite the bullet. Also, I do want to look out for a printer that takes better to the occasional use. The Pixma kept saying that it's low on ink just from sitting there, and I kept refilling it almost every time I used it, which freaked me out because I don't know where the ink went, if not on the paper. (The printer has a sponge that collects ink, but I'm not sure if that's where it went as it's hard to reach and not meant to be emptied or replaced.) — Sebastian 02:26, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

So feeding in one page at a time doesn't stop the jams ? As for the disappearing ink, I'd guess that the cartridge isn't properly sealed, leading to evaporation of the liquid component. The small solid component then probably dries on the sponge. Ink drying and clogging the ports is likely to be a problem with any ink-jet printer, so you may need to bite an even bigger bullet and buy a laser printer. While the purchase price is likely to be much higher, not having to continuously replace dried out ink and cartridges may make it cheaper in the long run. StuRat (talk) 13:31, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

No, unfortunately, it still jams. But thank you very much for your explanation; that seems indeed possible. At first, I thought it would be unlikely for the ink to evaporate through some minuscule leak (such as bad sealing of the fill hole), but it's possible that it evaporates from the sponge. Thanks also for the idea of the laser printer; if I used my printer more often, that would indeed be an interesting alternative. (There are some available at $350.) — Sebastian 02:34, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

As with most specialist questions of this sort, you may want to check out a more dedicated forum. In particular, I was looking in to refilling my catridges recently and found [9] was often recommended as a place to check out & seems to have useful information & quite a lot of people who have experience. [10] may be useful as well although I never really visited it.

FWIW, I found Canon printers were often recommended (except perhaps for CISS), although this may be influenced by the fact that I have a Canon printer and have a degree of bias towards them (liking their policy of individual ink catridges as well as avoiding chipped catridges for so long and even when they had them not generally completely preventing you from using unreset refilled catridges but simply warning and then recording in the EPPROM if you do followed by disabling monitoring). Canon also tend to have translucent catridges making manually monitoring the ink level and refilling easier and usually have removable print heads so you can try cleaning them if they clog which often works a few times I believe (buying new ones is possible but unlikely to be worth it).

Epson tend to have a reputation for worse clogging and similar problems particularly if you don't print often and are also know for their chipping practices (usually preventing you from printing if the catridges is refilled or expired) & generally strong stance against remanufacturers & third party catridges & chips including DMCA and patent infringement lawsuits. They do have a reputation for their photo quality particularly on special media which is probably the main reason they do receive a fair amount interest among refillers despite their problems.

HP don't seem to receive so much attention, although their printheads included with catriges would seem to be an advantage to those worried about clogs and for casual users. Not sure why but it may be because they've generally been closer to Epson in the way they've dealt with third party catridges and refills (e.g. chipped catridges refusing to work if refilled or expired, suing manufacturers although I don't think they've gone the patent route yet) and generally lack individual ink tanks and haven't had a reputation for quality so the only reason of interest is likely to be the print heads in catridges.

Never paid much attention to Lexmark but they don't seem to have been of much interest to refillers either, they're perhaps like HP but worse they don't even have their printheads built in to catridges.

In other words for my mostly uninformed opinion it'll probably come down to Canon or HP but I would recommend you research more first. I do know that if you do decide on Canon, the IP4500 which still uses the older CLi8/PGI5bk catridges would probably be better if you can find it then the newer IP4600 which uses the CLi521/PGi520 as the new catridges are smaller [11] and resetters and third party chips are newer and likely to be more expensive (and therefore the 3rd party catridges too) although this may not matter to you. It's still available here in NZ & of course is cheaper too although we tend to be behind & it isn't available at NewEgg (however perhaps retail stores will have it cheap).

Particularly since you appear to live in the US, you may also find it worthwhile checking out recommended suppliers of ink, some are better then others. Also methods of refilling.

Nil Einne (talk) 03:47, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your exhaustive tips! I'll have to check into the forums and good idea about checking ink suppliers. I wouldn't mind buying a Canon again; generally, I liked my old printer, and more friendly policies is something I want to reward. It didn't even occur to me that other printers might not have transparent cartridges - that's just so low! — Sebastian 02:34, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Hex line numbers

How can I add hexadecimal line numbers to the beginning of each line in a text file? I know that nl can do this for decimal line numbers, but is there a way to use awk, sed, or some other command to do this? I'm hoping to take a text file like this:

First line
Second line
Third line
...
Ninth line
Tenth line

And turn it into something like this:

0x01 First line
0x02 Second line
0x03 Third line
...
0x09 Ninth line
0x0A Tenth line

or this:

01 First line
02 Second line
03 Third line
...
09 Ninth line
0A Tenth line

Daram.G (talk) 15:24, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

awk 'BEGIN { n = 1 } { printf("0x%X %s\n", n, $0); n++ }'. I don't know if there's a way to force the number of digits to be a multiple of two. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 16:19, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Wow, that worked like a charm! Thanks a lot. Daram.G (talk) 18:45, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Awk maintains a line count in the variable NR ("number of records"), so a simpler version of that program would be:

   awk '{ printf("0x%X %s\n", NR, $0) }'

--Anonymous, 05:16 UTC, March 15, 2010.

Using sed is harder but this "program" is derived from section 4.7 of the sed info examples:

sed -e 'x
/^$/ s/^.*$/1/
G
h
s/^ *\(.*\)\n/\1 /p
g
s/\n.*$//
/^F*$/ s/^/0/
s/.F*$/x&/
h
s/^.*x//
y/0123456789ABCDEF/123456789ABCDEF0/
x
s/x.*$//
G
s/\n//
h' file-name

One bug I have is the line number comes out twice. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:41, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki LocalSettings.php -- setting up Guest read-only account.

I'm setting up a wiki which requires being logged in to view any page except the login screen. In addition to the ordinary editor and admin accounts, I would like that there be an account called "Guest", that is allowed to view any page, incuding its source, but not to edit anything. How do I accomplish the last requirement? Here's what I've got so far:

# Prevent new user registration except by sysops.
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false;
# Require login to view anything
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;
$wgWhitelistRead = array("Special:Userlogin", "-", "MediaWiki:Monobook.css");

Thanks, --NorwegianBlue ^talk 15:29, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Add this to LocalSettings.php (in addition to what you already have):

$wgGroupPermissions['user']['read'] = true;

$wgGroupPermissions['user']['edit'] = false;

$wgGroupPermissions['editor']['edit'] = true;

and then add all accounts you want to be able to edit to the "editor" group (the default WikiSysop account should have the rights to do that). You can create a Guest account and not add it to the editor group to get your desired functionality. You may also want to give some additional users the right to create accounts and make them editors - I think bureaucrats will be able to do that by default. mw:Manual:User rights management gives more information on this topic. --Tango (talk) 05:38, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! Worked perfectly. What I hadn't understood before reading your reply, was that I could add new groups in LocalSettings.php myself. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 11:48, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Dell function keys

Resolved

My new Dell Studio's default behaviour is for e.g. F5 to increase the screen brightness and Fn + F5 to be the 'real' key, opposite to every other laptop I've used. This is very annoying. There was a thread on here recently talking about how to toggle this to the reverse, but I can't find it. How? Thanks 94.168.184.16 (talk) 20:20, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Entering dell function into the little search box at the top of the page produces this: [12] --Phil Holmes (talk) 10:44, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Ta. 94.168.184.16 (talk) 13:12, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Single page PDFs > Online accessible format

My local archives did a massive project a few years back, scanning a dozen Tweedsmuir Histories. They're saved as individual PDFs, and each is high-resolution. (300 dpi, 18" x 24" or so, 100%.) Similarly, the local library system scanned a whole series of books by a 1930s historian. In both cases, the scans are somewhat useless, it's easier to just pull out the real book.

Is there any sort of website that these could be uploaded to, to be viewable in a format similar to Google Books? I've found various sites where people can publish magazines online, complete with the whole flippy page bit, but nothing free or cheap... they'd have to apply for a grant if it cost too much. -- Zanimum (talk) 21:40, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Scribd; that article also links to some of Scribd's competitors. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:48, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

You can also upload them to Google Books; it seems to need to sign up to be a Google Books partner. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:53, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Both options are only good if you have only one file to upload. Sadly, all 300 or so pages of each of the dozen books is a separate PDF. I can find a merge program easy, but the resultant file would crash a supercomputer. (I exaggerate, but it would be unwieldly.) -- Zanimum (talk) 22:09, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I've merged some very large PDFs (full of scanned images) with PDFTK without issue. PDF readers are fairly smart (and one would assume those used by Scribd and Google Books are smart too) - they only load so much of a document into memory, so you can have a very large PDF without breaking things. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:16, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

(Granted, I suppose I wouldn't actually need to open the merged PDF, if its only reason for being was to be uploaded.) -- Zanimum (talk) 22:11, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Are they somewhat useless because the files take so long to load, and because they haven't been OCR'd? Because the simplest solution to that is to OCR them, and reduce or eliminate the photographic data itself (offer separately / upon request?). If they're not encumbered by copyright, etc., you could upload them to Wikisource or Project Gutenberg. I'd probably remove the photographs from the PDFs beforehand. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:01, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

All of the OCR programs I've tried don't work. And as far as I know, I've tried all the free licensed ones mentioned on Wikipedia, plus more. Any recommendations? As for copyright, the 1930s books will be OK in a year or two, but the Tweedsmuir histories are a mess of orphaned works. -- Zanimum (talk) 22:09, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I've uploaded old books to the Internet Archive. All you have to do is create an account and you'll be able to upload the pages in whatever format you want. Also, when you say the programs didn't work, do you mean that the OCR program interpreted the characters incorrectly? I've found ABBYY FineReader does better at mitigating that than other programs. Also, I've found that it helps to increase the resolution above 300 DPI when the characters are very small.--Chmod 777 (talk) 22:16, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

If it were me (and I've been in a similar situation with my own records), I'd first 1. try to find a way to download all the PDFs at once (maybe using a spider), 2. use PDFTK+ImageMagick to compress the individual PDFs into something reasonable (e.g. reduce the colors, to black and white if possible), 3. use PDFTK to combine the resultant files (takes forever, but won't crash a supercomputer, no—probably would take an hour or five on a modern computer), then, 4. maybe try an OCR program (whether it works depends on a lot of factors relating to the originals), 5. upload them to ScribD or something like that. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:21, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Note that Scribd has an API which can do uploads; you should be able to find a library that talks the API for several popular programming languages (there's certainly a python one) which would automate the upload of your many files (heck, add an os.walk() call to the python example and you're mostly done). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:26, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

And Google Docs has an API likewise - here -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:27, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

If these are solely black and white text, perhaps with some simple diagrams, consider converting them to 1 bit and compressing with JBIG2 or perhaps CCITT Group 4 compression if you want compatibility with PDF older then 1.4. The resulting PDFs shouldn't be too large especially since they're only 300 DPI. If they have colour, photos or complicated diagrams on some pages only, you can handle those seperately. Nil Einne (talk) 02:53, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

If they are of general public interest, please put them on the Internet Archive via here. They do all kinds of format conversions and OCR'ing automatically too. I can't stand scribd because you have to sign up for an account just to read stuff. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 08:52, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I can't stand its UI, either... ¦ Reisio (talk) 08:57, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

March 14

latex multicols

I'm using the multicols package in latex but am having some difficulties with certain things. Firstly trying to get floats to sit inside the column, currently i have this:

\makeatletter
\newenvironment{tablehere}
  {\def\@captype{table}}
  {}
\newenvironment{figurehere}
  {\def\@captype{figure}}
  {}
\makeatother

In my preamble then i simply declare floats as \begin{figurehere}...\end{figurehere}, However this seems to make latex not consider the image and the caption as one entity, so at times i'll have the image on a separate page to the caption. Is there a better way?

Secondly, i have some wide tables that i want to put on a separate page, thats easy just do \begin{table}[p] but this makes the tables appear on a page at the back of the document, is there a way to put the page in the middle of the document, closer to where its being called?Thanks--82.26.227.101 (talk) 11:52, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

My monitor won’t work with a splitter cable

I have recently changed my monitor which had a VGA connector. My old monitor was a Viewsonic TFT. This was linked to my LCD television using a VGA splitter cable and worked perfectly, giving a display on both the monitor and the TV at the same time. My new monitor has a D.Sub connector. It is connected to my LCD TV exactly the same way and with the same splitter cable as my old monitor. Now though, when I connect the splitter to the TV my monitor’s display doesn't come on, the TV does. Unplug the TV and the monitor comes back on. Has anyone got a clue as to what is causing this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shsharri (talk • contribs) 12:35, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

There is no need to SHOUT. I have taken the liberty of converting your message to use lowercase where appropriate - it is now so much easier to read.

I think more information is needed. What kind of D.Sub connector does it have? - a white DVI connector perhaps? Take a look at List of video connectors and see if you can tell which it is. I'm also a little puzzled - you say the monitor is connected to your TV. Is that to view your PC on both TV and monitor screens, or to view TV pictures on both TV and monitor screens? Astronaut (talk) 13:07, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Yea, we need you to fill in a chart like this:

                     OLD SETUP  NEW SETUP
                     =========  =========
Output from computer:   VGA        D-SUB
Input to TV:            VGA        VGA
Output from TV:         None       None
Input to monitor:       VGA        D-SUB
Output from monitor:    None       None

If this is correct, the confusing part is how a D-SUB signal is split into a D-SUB and VGA signal, under the new setup. StuRat (talk) 14:20, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

What brand and model is the new monitor? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:43, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Handwritten Character database

I'm doing a software project (for college) that tries to recognize handwritten characters(English alphabet). So far I've been working with scanned handwriting samples provided by some friends. But for good training and testing 10,000's of characters might be necessary. I tried googling for such ready-made labelled databases. The only useful one I found was that of NIST and I can't spend (any) money to purchase it.

1. Is there a free handwritten character database out there?
2. Where can I find a list of good features that can help identify a character. Currently my features are not good enough (for characters like D and O etc.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.93.2.126 (talk) 17:05, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd distinguish between two types of writing:

1. Handwritten with ballpoint pen, as many people do now. That's probably the closest to your project, but I'm not sure if there is such a database available.
2. Calligraphy - written with brush. I would start with kaishu, and maybe progress to caoshu later. There should be many pages available online, but there's no mechanical way to assign the encoded character to the picture. — Sebastian 19:32, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Please disregard my above post. I just realized that by "character", you did not mean Chinese characters. — Sebastian 02:36, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

This has some links (but not all are freely available), including this one, which looks promising. And see "zip code", the last entry on this page, which is apparently a classic database of digits from the USPS. You'll find digits and capital letters in the third dataset on this page, though there aren't too many examples. and it seems to have dirty data. Paul Stansifer 21:25, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

"Gothic" fonts

Why are fonts such as Bank Gothic called "Gothic"? ╟─TreasuryTag►Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster─╢ 17:09, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

From our Sans-serif article: "Before the term “sans-serif” became standard in English typography, a number of other terms had been used. One of these outmoded terms for sans serif was gothic, which is still used in East Asian typography and sometimes seen in font names like Century Gothic." Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:49, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

East Asian sans-serif typeface says "Gothic is an outmoded typographic term for sans-serif. It was so named because the type color of early sans serif typefaces were thought to be similar to that of the blackletter or 'gothic' script."; however there is no reference to support that claim. --Normansmithy (talk) 11:30, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Rotten Tomatoes webpage problem

When I click on the appropriate buttons here http://www.rottentomatoes.com/features/special/2007/botbp/ I just get taken to the same webpage again. What is wrong please? I am using Firefox, all "cookies" enabled. The same thing happens when I use Internet Explorer 8. Is there anyone for whom the webpage does not do this? Is it some sort of pop-up which my browsers are banning? Perhaps it is being banned for malware reasons. Thanks 89.242.120.116 (talk) 18:52, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

That thing is from 2007, and has a stated cutoff date. ¦ Reisio (talk) 05:59, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

The smallprint says the cutoff data for gathering the statistics was in February 2008, it does not say anything about the webpage being unusable after that or any other date. So it still a mystery. Very bad web design by RT to have glossy duff webpages that do not do what they say they will. I have found the current URL and will update the RT wikipedia article link, which is where I got it from. 89.242.243.82 (talk) 11:47, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Banned torrent

I was downloading a torrent from a private torrent tracker and it got banned by the tracker. Apparently the uploader forgot to make the torrent private so it's still being seeded over DHT and Peer exchange. Will they stop working when I have to update my tracker or will they continue to work forever? Thank you 93.136.219.166 (talk) 20:16, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I am not quite sure but, They will peter out, but updating the tracker will not affect things. The tracker is a way for different peers to find each other, so without the tracker it is difficult for new peers to join the swarm Taemyr (talk) 11:38, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Photoshop problem

Why is it that sometimes, in Photoshop, no matter what I do or if I restart the program, or create a new layer, or switch layers, or whatever, it only lets me draw a straight line? How do I fix it? Thanks, Shannon^talk _contribs 22:19, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

With what tool(s)? Some really basic things: Try tapping the "Shift" and "Control" keys a few times—it might just think they are being pressed (and that can restrict its line-drawing functions). Last if not least, try rebooting the machine, see if it persists. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:16, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Which files are the most difficult to compress?

This question has frequently arisen in my mind. In file compression, it is obvious that the files that are the easiest to compress (i.e. shrink the most when compressed) are those which consist entirely of the same byte value, perhaps even entirely of 0-bits or entirely of 1-bits. But which files are the most difficult to compress (i.e. shrink the least when compressed)? This obviously depends on the compression algorithm, but has there been any definite research results about this on any popular compression algorithm? This question might sound like the answer cannot be known, but upon further thought, the problem is often indeed solvable. If we assume a given file size (such as an n-pixel digital photograph), there are a finite number of possible files, so there must exist a specific solution (if not necessarily a unique one). It's just a matter of finding out what that is. Unfortunately, for pretty much all non-trivial cases, the number of possible files is so huge that a brute-force approach to solving the problem would not complete until the Sun goes supernova. So finding the solution requires a more clever approach. Has any been tried? JIP | Talk 22:35, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Generally, files that compress have predictable patterns of bytes (not just all the same). Files that compress poorly have a random byte structure. --Phil Holmes (talk) 22:46, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

That's right — a file with randomly generated content is not going to be compressible. (I mean, there might be a little, like if your file randomly contains the letters "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" at one point; but that's unlikely indeed.) See data compression, which is a surprisingly small article but has many links to related interesting articles. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:55, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

It was a much larger article, before it was compressed. :-) StuRat (talk) 02:53, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Though, just to be pedantic, and useless to the spirit of the question: depending on the nature of the random data, there might be simple ways to "compress" it. If your random data is the first billion digits of pi, it would be easier to just write a short program that generated the data, than it would to compress the data itself. This is related to Kolmogorov complexity—technically you want data that is not only random, but complex, or something along those line (I am not a mathematician... or a computer scientist!). Or put another way, it depends on our definition of "random". But has nothing to do with real-world file compression as far as I know. And should thus be ignored by the poster unless they are just curious! --Mr.98 (talk) 00:39, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Let me introduce you to the work of a chap named Claude E. Shannon on entropy (information theory). Marnanel (talk) 23:27, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Besides "stuff that was chaotic to start with" and "stuff that's already been compressed", another class of files that are hard to compress is encrypted files. If an encrypted file contains any patterns that a compressor can take advantage of, those patterns may also be useful to an attacker trying to break the encryption. This is why whenever encryption and compression are used together, the compression must be done first. 98.226.122.10 (talk) 01:44, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

The main problem with the question is that it is ill-posed. You've made an incorrect assumption to start with, which will affect the entire approach you take. As per sun#Life cycle, the sun will NOT go supernova but will instead evolve into a red giant star, following the main-sequence. You may want to read up on stellar evolution and formation and evolution of the Solar System and come back if you have any further questions. By waiting for the sun to go supernova you actually afford yourself an infinite amount of time, thus a brute force method would be guaranteed to work. Zunaid 12:15, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Intro to Computer Science

I'm trying to learn more about computer science and possibly work on some projects. I have a decent grasp of Java but I don't know where to go from here. Should I just keep working in them? So far I've just been doing the Java tutorials and experimenting with some of the articles they have. Any recommendations about what I should do? Much appreciated. 66.133.196.152 (talk) 23:36, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

If you've self-taught yourself to have a decent grasp of Java, congratulations. Take on more ambitious and bigger projects that will force you to learn more about particular areas that you aren't comfortable with yet: Networking, graphics, user interface, performance optimization.... There are plenty of software engineers in the first rank of their profession who are self-taught. Comet Tuttle (talk) 04:54, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Studying computers is like studying medicine. You can become an eye doctor, a cardiologist, a plastic surgeon, etc. Likewise, you can work as a network technician, a programmer, a computer repairman, etc. That's why I don't like the phrase "computer science" very much. It's too vague. At a university, if you major in computer science, you end up learning mostly programming. But there's so much more to computers than writing programs. Many people earn one or more certifications in networking, security, web design, server administration, hardware repair, Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, etc. You could specialize in any one of those fields (among others) and have more than enough to learn. I'd recommend learning a little bit of everything. Whatever you find interesting, you should specialize in.--Chmod 777 (talk) 05:10, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Some quotable guy once said: Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. 98.226.122.10 (talk) 06:25, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Recommendations for a wireless router

I have a Linksys WRT54G router which has for the most part been good to me, but I am looking for a better one. I'd like one with great range and speed, a connection that doesn't drop/need to be restarted, and preferably dual band. I looked up reviews for routers, and one that stands out is the Netgear WNDR3700. Anyone else have suggestions? I'm not averse to spending a lot of money if it means I get a quality router that lasts me long time, so expensive suggestions are welcome. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 23:50, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried swapping out the firmware for something like Tomato (firmware) or one of the other HyperWRT firmwares? It's apparently compatible with your router and I have heard that it helps improve stability and similar. Gunrun (talk) 09:11, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Neither are compatible with mine, since it's v.8. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 10:03, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

+1 for Tomato. Stable, nice interface, lots of options (if you need them). I'm running it on my WRT54GL. 121.72.169.25 (talk) 10:06, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Consider VPN capability. - Kittybrewster ☎ 10:15, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

March 15

Cannot access admin account

Sorry for the double-posting, but this problem most certainly wasn't planned. I cannot access my administrator account on Windows XP. It has no password, but whenever I try to log on, all I get is "Loading personal settings..." and it stays that way forever. I have a backup admin account, but I was dumb enough to put a password on it, and even dumber to not remember where I put the password that I wrote down. So now I cannot log on to Windows as an admin, only my limited account (which I am typing this from) is still accessible. I don't have an OS installation disk, so reinstalling Windows is not a possibility for me. What are my options?24.189.90.68 (talk) 05:40, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

There are so many ways to get administrator access on XP, it's not even funny. :p http://www.google.com/search?q=%22windows%20xp%22%20forgot%20admin%20password ¦ Reisio (talk) 06:01, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

No worries, Ctrl+Alt+Delete saved me, thanks! 24.189.90.68 (talk) 10:00, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

New SSD: clone or reinstall?

I am currently using a normal hard drive. If I buy a new SSD, can I just clone the hard drive to the SSD or do I have to reinstall the OS? 121.72.169.25 (talk) 10:25, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

SSD/Moore's Law

Does Moore's Law applies to SSDs? Should I expect SSDs halve in price or double in capacity next year? 121.72.169.25 (talk) 10:25, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

to connect two wifi devices

How to connect two wi fi devices, one compoter and other a robot so that afrer connecting the two the robot could be run using the computer? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aishranj (talk • contribs) 11:37, 15 March 2010 (UTC)