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July 3

Not so respectable search engines

This post got me thinking. Quest09 pointed out that only respectable search engines are going to follow robot.txt instructions for a website like Facebook. I know that we at Wikipedia have the NOINDEX template which similarly politely requests that search engines not point to that page. So my question is, what if I want to search for pages that are excluded from the indexes of respectable search engines. What non-respectable (but still pretty good) search engines could I use for searching these types of pages?. Buddy431 (talk) 01:43, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I doubt it'll be easy to find any public, useful search engine that doesn't follow good webetiquette. For starters, you need a load of hardware (=money) to run a useful search engine given the indexing requirements and size of the web. More importantly, if there really were someone willing to spend all that money, they'll quickly find people don't take too kindly to poorly behaved search engines and it will likely be banned from many sites. Note that this sort of thing does get discussed in various places so even sites which haven't yet been visited may be blocking the search engine (the infamous Cuil had some problems with poor behaviour briefly discussed in our article in the early days, there were discussions aplenty about blocking it). It's even resonably likely that they piss people off enough to report them to their ISP (depending in whether people think the ISP will do anything useful), particularly if you try to evade the ban in some way and this would probably be a TOS violation.

As an aside, I personally was banned from a website when I attempted to run an archiving at a glacial pace, fully respecting robots.txt etc. My only real mistake was I didn't provide contact info (well I put my e-mail in but I later realised it wasn't actually provided by the program to the server) but I somewhat doubt I would have been contacted or it would have made a difference. I was unbanned when I realised I'd been banned after a few weeks of wondering why the site was always down and finally checking it with something and then contacted the webmaster and promised not to run the archiving program again. From what I've read, I don't think it's that uncommon that webmasters are suspicious of bots and ban unknown ones even if they are resonably well behaved, so you can see the problem with a poorly behaved bot.

Some sites may have their own internal search engines that are allowed to index things forbidden to normal bots (wikipedia is obviously one) so if you have a specific site in mind it's often best to try that.

Nil Einne (talk) 17:50, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Building an asset register

Any suggestions for quick and easy (and free!) software I could use to create an asset register for a charity? Ideally, I'm looking for something that will run in Windows, scan the entire network of ~30 Windows PCs and list stuff like computer name, IP address, technical specifications, software installed, etc, then store the resulting report in a commonly used format like an Excel Spreadsheet or an Access Database so I can add other assets like printer, photocopiers, faxes and so on. Astronaut (talk) 03:23, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

The Dude from MikroTik is a excellent at mapping the network. It won't show you what software is installed on a PC, although if there are open ports you can make a guess.--TrogWoolley (talk) 13:00, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Securing Vista Home Premium on a shared computer

Any tips please for locking down program settings in Windows Vista Home Premium, especially Firefox and the NoScript addon? And how about software to automatically close all programs and log users out if the computer is left idle? I need to stop my baby sisters from messing up the computer my mum uses for web banking. Many thanks in advance! 86.136.139.69 (talk) 15:02, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

With the caveat that I use 'Win XP Pro' still, you could set up seperate Windows user accounts on the PC for each user, and one specifically for banking alone is a very good idea. If your baby sisters are old enough to use a PC a 'guest' or similar account for them is ideal, as it has limited user privileges, meaning thay can do less accidental damage. If you set up the PC to go on standby or sleep after a short period, in XP at least there is a checkbox that requires you to use your log on password to log back onto the PC. There should be a similar setting on Vista, though I am not certain Home Premium has this, I would be surprised if it didn't. Note that standby mode will NOT close all programs, merely require you to log on to the PC again after it goes on standby. Also try looking up "password" or "log-on" with the inbuilt Windows help functions (usually function key F1), it should lead to the info you require. -- 220.101 (talk) ^\Contribs 17:05, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

For your sisters use Windows SteadyState to create a completely locked-down account that deletes itself after logging off. I use it at work for our breakroom computers. It is an amazing program. --mboverload@ 21:36, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Merging Feedburner Feeds

I'm in the process of moving my blog to a new domain. I'd like to know if it's possible to keep all my RSS subscribers from the previous domain automatically -- can I move them over to the new feed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.189.6.78 (talk) 16:21, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Arithmetic result exceeded 32 bits

Hi everyone.

I got a new camera recently and accidentally set the date as 2009 rather than 2010, so all my photos show the wrong date. I used Windows Photo Gallery to fix them, but some refuse to be fixed. I try editing them individually and it says "Changes to the taps, caption, rating or date taken could not be saved to this file" (it does the same when trying to change a rating on the files). I then tried editing them via the right click peoperties command, and it came up with an "unexpected error" - "Error 0x80070216: Arithmetic result exceeded 32 bits". I tried editing the source file (rather than the copy) and the problem persists. I am running a 32bit Vista install on this pc. Does anyone know why this is happening, and whether it can be fixed? -mattbuck (Talk) 20:39, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Before someone comes along with a proper answer have you applied all the latest patches from Microsoft Update? --mboverload@ 21:26, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Also, could you find one of the images that you're having a problem with and try and edit it on another computer to see if you get the same error? --mboverload@ 21:34, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Computer is up to date. I'll try anotehr pc tomorrow. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:40, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

MATLAB Query

I am currently teaching myself to program (very basically) in MATLAB and am having trouble in understanding part of the code that is used in the guide I am working from. I would much appreciate it if someone could help me understand. My question is as follows: the code I used originally listed for me the squares from m to n for m<n and 0<m, with m and n integers. The code was then adapted to list the squares for m≤0 and also m>n. Ultimately there is only one line in the new code that I don't understand but the problem is that it completely baffles me as to how it works.

Original Code:

   Isquares=zeros(Ihigh-Ilow+1,2)
   for I=Ilow:Ihigh
      Isquares(I,1)=I;
      Isquares(I,2)=I*I;
      disp(['I = ' num2str(Isquares(I,1)) ', I*I = ' num2str(Isquares(I,2))])
   end    

New Code

  Ilow=round(Ilow); Ihigh=round(Ihigh);
  range=abs(Ihigh-Ilow)+1;
  Isquares=zeros(range,2);
  for I=1:range
      Isquares(I,1)=Ilow+sign(Ihigh-Ilow)*(I-1);
      Isquares(I,2)=Isquares(I,1)*Isquares(I,1);
  end
  end

Could someone please explain to me, step-by-step, what the bolded line is doing? Thanks 92.11.130.6 (talk) 21:32, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Never mind, solved it. 92.11.130.6 (talk) 11:31, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Engvar in firefox

Running Firefox 3.0.19 under Ubuntu (9.04 I think; not sure how to check quickly). After a recent update the spell-chequer apparently switched from US English to Commonwealth English. How can I change it back? I can't find a preference for it in either the Firefox or OpenOffice.org menus — bizarrely, a Google search suggests that the latter is relevant. (OpenOffice.org 3.0.1)

(Actually, my real preference would be to take the union of US and UK English — if I type the word furore it's unlikely to be by mistake. But if it has to put the red line under either aluminum or aluminium, I prefer it to call the second one the error.) --Trovatore (talk) 21:54, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

• I don't know about OpenOffice, but you can install dictionaries for different dialects of English here and switch between them by right clicking in the edit box and selecting from the "Languages" menu. --59.95.108.152 (talk) 17:06, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Ah, thank you very much! I hadn't noticed that right-click menu.

Anyway, I did eventually find my own solution, which I also reproduce here for anyone interested: Go to about:config (that is, literally type about:config with no http or anything into the location bar) and change the value of the string spellchecker.dictionary . --Trovatore (talk) 20:32, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

How electronic voting works??

I am posting here because its more computer related. How electronic voting works?? I mean, they ones that created the machine coulndt just put, that 1 in x votes to guy A goes to guy B, but still saying that he voted in the guy A? How electronic is reliable? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.78.131.252 (talk) 22:48, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

First, you have to define what you mean by "electronic voting". That could simply refer to having some sort of electronic machine tally paper ballots, such as an Optical scan voting system that reads marks made on a paper (or holes punched in a ballot, or whatever). In these cases, there is a physical document (the paper ballot) that remains, which could be looked at by hand in case the results from the machine counting were in doubt (as happened in the United States Senate election in Minnesota, 2008. These types of machines can be quite reliable (or can be relatively unreliable, if they aren't built well). There is less of an opportunity for fraud, because if the machine's accuracy is in doubt, you can always go back and look at the paper ballots that it counted.

On the other hand, there are now some systems that use an electronic direct recording system to count votes. Direct recording systems are by no means new. It was common in the past in the United States, for example, for voters to literally "pull a lever" to indicate which candidate they wanted to vote for, which would mechanically increase some counter by one for that candidate. In a direct recording system, there is no physical ballot to fall back on if the machine's results are in doubt. This can increase the chance of miscounts (either mistakes, or deliberate fraud). With electronic (rather than mechanical) direct recording systems, it becomes even harder to ensure that votes are being tallied correctly, mostly because computers are a lot more complicated than even the most elaborate mechanical vote recording systems. Generally, the government running the vote would set strict standards on the electronic recording devices, to minimize the potential for these types of vote counting errors.

Our article Electronic voting is pretty detailed, covering both document based voting systems (filling out a ballot and having a machine read in) and direct voting systems. Additionally, the Voting machine article may be of some interest, for a broader look at how votes are (and historically have been) tallied. Vote counting is a logistically difficult task, and there are problems associated with nearly any method of tallying that you could come up with. Buddy431 (talk) 23:30, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I was talking about DRE voting machine —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.78.131.252 (talk) 05:08, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Greasemonkey links

I'm trying to write a greasemonkey script that can list all the links on a page that start with

[<a href="page/

So for example "http://example.com/page/30" and "http://example.com/page/9" will be listed, but not "http://example.com/images/logo.jpg". Thank you for your help :) 82.43.90.93 (talk) 23:18, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

var allLinks=document.getElementsByTagName('a');
var pageLinks=[];
for (link in allLinks)
{
    if(link.href.match(/page\//))
       pageLinks.push(link);
}

//The array pageLinks should contain all the desired links at this point.

--59.95.108.152 (talk) 16:36, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

program that will record anything

whats a program that will record anything on my pc screen and the audio too. i need it for a sporting event thats live streaming online tonight but i have to work so i wanna record it and watch it later —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexsmith44 (talk • contribs) 23:48, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I think Camtasia Studio will do the trick? There is a 30 day free trial version. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:16, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Bear in mind, such recording may well be illegal. --Tango (talk) 00:28, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

It's just time shifting, which is covered by fair use provisions in the USA, anyway. But we aren't here to give legal advice one way or the other... --Mr.98 (talk) 01:42, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

FYI: Fair use says nothing about time-shifting. The right to do this is covered by the Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. ruling. SteveBaker (talk) 11:39, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

The case ruled that time shifting fell under "fair use". That a case clarified this is not unique; the fair use doctrine itself says nothing about much of anything specific (indeed it is maddeningly vague, putting basically all discretion at the hands of individual judges), and it is only through caselaw that specifics and precedents are ironed out. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:24, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I recommend Fraps. Our article List of screencasting software lists others. Comet Tuttle (talk) 05:27, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

July 4

Splat!

If there is anyone else here who uses the program Splat!, I have a rather specific question. This morning I began a line-of-sight terrain analysis using the command line splat -t [tx_site].qth -r [rx_site].qth -p [terrain plot].png. It is now over 13 hours later, and Splat is still happily motoring along, sucking up a large percentage of CPU time in the process. All it claims to have done is loaded the appropriate terrain files (four of them) and written a site analysis report, both of which it did within seconds of starting up. Is it normal for Splat to take this long when performing analyses? The transmitter and receiver are also a little over 60 miles apart; could this have had any bearing on the time required? Thanks in advance, Xenon54 (talk) 01:11, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd run the "is this normal" question by the developer at the bottom of this pdf: [1]. It is apparently a "CPU and memory intensive application". 198.161.238.19 (talk) 17:14, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Youtube Player with A Video in E-mail

Does anybody know how to put a youtube player with a video in an e-mail message?? I don't want a web link, but a youtube player with a video that is ready to be played in the e-mail. 174.114.236.41 (talk) 04:33, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Due to security concerns any any proper email program would not allow you open a flash object (in this case a YouTube video) in an email you have received. Research says gmail will strip it out, as will Outlook. Your best bet is to just send them the link. --mboverload@ 06:53, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Wireless

Resolved

Is it possible to disable to wireless part of a WGR614 Cable/DSL Wireless Router? I have one which I want to use to network two computers to share the internet via ethernet cable, so the wireless part is pointless and I hate the thought of signals buzzing in my head all day long while it's in use. Short of opening the thing up and cutting the cable to the aerial, is there another way to shut off the wireless signals? 82.43.90.93 (talk) 09:07, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

If it is like a normal router, you can just go into the settings page and disable the wireless. No need to bring out the scissors. 121.72.189.19 (talk) 09:51, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I worked it out! 82.43.90.93 (talk) 10:47, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Sharing internet between two computers via a ethernet cable router

I get my internet via an ethernet cable. My computer (Windows 7) has two ethernet ports. I want to connect a second computer (Windows XP) to the first and share the internet between them. I connected a router (like the one in this pic) to the second ethernet port on Windows 7, and connected the XP computer to that router. Now the internet doesn't work on Windows 7, even though it's showing up on the Network and Sharing center as connected and working, and the second computer also isn't getting internet. What am I doing wrong? 82.43.90.93 (talk) 10:47, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Plug the router into the incoming ethernet cable at the wall - and then plug both computers into the router - that should work fine. SteveBaker (talk) 11:29, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't work either :( And the two computers still can't connect to each other 82.43.90.93 (talk) 11:52, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree with what Steve says, are you using 2 ethernet cables from both computers into the router? Mo ainm~Talk 12:37, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes. The router thing has four ethernet ports and what looks like a phone connection. I connected both computers into the routers ethernet ports. Both computers detect the router, but they don't connect or detect each other 82.43.90.93 (talk) 13:16, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

What is the model number of the router? Jc3s5h (talk) 12:52, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Netgear dg834g 82.43.90.93 (talk) 13:16, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Maybe something here you are missing. Mo ainm~Talk 13:30, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I went though all of that and it's still not working :((( 82.43.90.93 (talk) 14:10, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Try turning off router and both computers and leaving them off for 5 minutes before starting them up one at a time. - Kittybrewster ☎ 14:26, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I did, still nothing 82.43.90.93 (talk) 14:44, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

(unindent) That sounds simple enough to do, having read all of the above I still cannot fathom why this shouldn't be working. I have a setup like this at home myself. If you've already tried switching everything (both computers, router, modem (your internet cable needs to be coming from somewhere, for assurance reset the next device upstream from the router, this will be a modem in most cases)) off and on again, that leaves one question: have you configured the router? You might need to log onto the router itself (say accessing http://192.168.1.1 or a similar address from your browser). I had to do it for mine (TP-Link) when I bought it two months ago. Username and password are usually given in the instruction manual, as is the procedure to (auto)configure the device once logged in. If that step also doesn't help you, then I'm stumped to the bone. --Ouro (blah blah) 15:10, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Probably 192.168.0.1 admin password - Kittybrewster ☎ 17:46, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I can't find anything in the routers config pages which might help. Under "attached devices" it registers both computers and their mac addresses. But they're still not connecting to each other :( 82.43.90.93 (talk) 18:03, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Understood. Are they both connecting to the internet? Do they have the same SSID? Kittybrewster ☎

The windows 7 computer connects to the internet. It has two ethernet ports, so I wanted to connect a second computer (Windows XP) to the first via its second port. That didn't work, so I got a router as people here said that just connecting them with the ethernet cable wouldn't work. I've tried all possible combinations of ethernet cables from computers to the router and none of it works. I've even tried a second router in case the first was broken. Still nothing. The internet isn't really even the issue at this point, I just want the two computers to connect to each other so they can share files and stuff, and of course the internet if possible 82.43.90.93 (talk) 19:08, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

OK. What you need to do is to connect ethernet cable from computer1 to router and from computer2 to router. Then check each computer is connected to the internet. If they both are, then we have various boxes ticked. Then we go to stage 2 to get them talking to each other. Kittybrewster ☎ 19:14, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

That's not the issue. What are the IP addresses of each computer? If you go to Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> Command prompt and type ipconfig it will tell you your computer's IP address. Then, ping each computer (e.g., ping 192.168.1.2). If the pings go through, then go to the Control panel in Windows XP and choose Folder Options --> View and uncheck "Use simple file sharing." Then, right click on your hard drive in My Computer and choose Properties --> Sharing and share the drive. Then, from the Windows 7 PC you can go to Start --> Computer and on the left-hand side, expand "Network" and hopefully, you will see your other PC. In other words, sharing files is a very complicated task. I walked my friend through these steps the other day over the phone and it took two hours! It's much faster when I do it to the computers in person. There are so many things that can go wrong--firewall settings, workgroup settings (make sure they'e in the same workgroup), interface differences (Windows XP home vs. Professional), etc.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 19:29, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

The power-up sequence is important, because when the computers power up, they receive information about what IP address to use, and other important information, from DHCP, which is usually provided by the router. If the router is off when the PC is powered up, this obviously won't work. So be sure to power up the router before you power up the PCs. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:27, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

return type

in a c programing, printf() is a commonly using in build function.now I am coat with a doubt whats its return type.Similarly what about scanf()? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.204.84.14 (talk) 16:31, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

printf returns the number of characters it printed (not including the terminating null). So printf("%d", 349) returns 3. scanf returns the number of arguments it successfully matched . -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:35, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

The return type of both printf and scanf is int, regardless of the types indicated by their format strings. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:37, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

can u explain a bit more —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.204.84.14 (talk) 16:39, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

not any better than the articles printf and scanf, and the corresponding pages in your compiler/library's documentation can. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:43, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

what abour printf("abcd"); —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.204.84.14 (talk) 16:42, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

4 -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:43, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

• The man pages contain all you need to know about standard functions like printf. On *nix you can just do man printf to see the manual. --59.95.108.152 (talk) 16:49, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

print() and scanf()- c programing

i like to print/scan a set of data , it may be integer,charater,float,string,or mixed (there is no order that means data may 1001fdff10565anoog12102.552gfg or aadfd.hghg665gffgf55662055 or 10a or a or he is good boy or world cup 2010 or 21 cup 2010 or any combination.).then how to print or scan it

scanf really only works when the data is of a fixed format (strictly, clever handing of errors can allow some flexibility, but this quickly becomes more work than it's worth). If the data isn't of a fixed format, you'll have to examine the data yourself, character by character, and figure out what to do. Some cases may call for using a regular expression, and more complex cases may require a formal parser. There isn't, and can't be, a general library function that takes data in any random format and somehow divines meaning from it. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:41, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

syntax

i need commonly used tags or syntax of pascal.Can u help me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.204.84.14 (talk) 16:45, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

If you mean the Backus Naur form of the Pascal programming language, try this. If you mean you want to know how to do some basic programs in Pascal, try the Pascal programming wikibook. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:49, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

formating output

i wand to display 2 raised to some no (ie; 2^3) using c programing.how? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.204.84.14 (talk) 16:49, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

By using the appropriate document format (e.g. RTF, HTML, etc.) While you could attempt that using printf, it requires a massive kludge and is easier just to sidestep the issue. --Sigma 7 (talk) 18:17, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

If I understand it correctly, you have a variable P and want to display 2^P in a C program? That could be printf( "%d", 1<<P );. You may want to range check P first. -- SGBailey (talk) 08:32, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

And if you need a base other than 2, or if you need non-integer powers, use the library function pow. -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:59, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

dump mediawiki articles' source to text file

Hi, I have a personal mediawiki installation and I just want to get the mediawiki source for every article (or even better, certain articles with source matching a regular expression). What is the easiest way to do this? Is there a mediawiki extension/plugin that I can use? Is there mysql code that will reconstruct the source and I can dump that to a text file? Whatever is easiest/quickest is what I'm looking for right now. Character encodings, multimedia, etc. don't really matter to me. Thank you for your help. --Rajah (talk) 18:23, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

The database dumps of Wikipedia are around 8GB downloaded and uncompress to about 35GB. XML format.

You can then use Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Database Scanner to find the articles you want with RegEx. --mboverload@ 23:36, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I guess I was unclear though that this is a "personal mediawiki installation", i.e. my own wiki. This has nothing to do with Wikipedia per se. --Rajah (talk) 16:02, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

The SQL code would look something like this:

        USE wikidb; # change to match the database name chose at setup - wikidb is the default

        SELECT old_text FROM text, page
          WHERE old_id=page_latest
          AND page_title LIKE 'Test%'
        ;

which would retrieve every page which had a name beginning "Test". MySQL's regular expression syntax is described at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/pattern-matching.html  : -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:45, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I will try that. I ended up using Special:Export for my needs as all the articles were in a certain category. --Rajah (talk) 16:02, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

In general, the database layout is described here. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:52, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. --Rajah (talk) 16:02, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Why such a long-winded bookmarking procedure in Firefox?

To bookmark the page that I'm viewing in Firefox I have to:

1) Click "Bookmarks"

2) Click "Bookmark this page"

3) Click "V" on the "Edit This Bookmark" menu

4) Choose from a menu

5) Click "Done"

Why cannot I just:

a) Click something that means "Bookmark this page"

b) Choose from a menu

c) Click "Done"

The later procedure would avoid the pointless showing of two different menus at 2) and 3). Note that I want to place the bookmark in a particular category that I have previously made - just having uncategorised jumble of bookmarks is of no value to me. Thanks 92.15.12.165 (talk) 18:31, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for saying that. I find it very tedious to maintain Bookmarks in Firefox. Bus stop (talk) 18:38, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Does double-clicking on the star icon in the address bar not work for you? Nanonic (talk) 18:43, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. I never knew that. Bus stop (talk) 18:44, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Another way is to hit CTRL-B to open the bookmarks sidebar and then drag the url via the favicon into whatever folder you want (and even drag them around into a different order if you wish). Nanonic (talk) 18:47, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Interesting! It is "Power"-B, in Mac OS-X, I think. That is nice, because the triangles remain in the pointing down position, which is the "open" position, the next time you come back to it. Bus stop (talk) 18:55, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

"Power"?! The key that you're referring to is the Command key. Dismas|^(talk) 23:35, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Or press Ctrl+D; then type a name for the bookmark if desired, or leave the default name; then press Tab to move to the folder selection box; then use the up and down arrow keys to select a folder; then press Enter. -- BenRG (talk) 19:21, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

If I "double click" the star (why isnt one click enough???) then I get:

i) Double click the star

ii) Click "V" on the "Edit This Bookmark" menu

iii) Choose from a menu

iv) Click "Done"

I still get the pointless and unnecessary menu at ii). 92.15.12.165 (talk) 19:56, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I usually just right click the tab i want bookmarked and select bookmark this tab, then select what menu i want--90.221.201.166 (talk) 22:20, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I just drag the tab or the favicon to the bookmarks toolbar. --Sean 16:53, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, and if you want to put it in with the main bookmark collection (ie, not in the toolbar), you can just drag the tab or favicon up to the bookmarks menu, then down to the folder you want it in. Indeterminate (talk) 03:46, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

The reason you have to click the star twice is not that it's a "double click" action, but because the first click creates the bookmark (when the star becomes filled, that's bookmarked), and the second click edits it (even if you go back to the bookmarked page later, and click the filled star once).

The reason you then have to expand the dropdown for selecting the folder is because choosing a folder isn't what everyone wants to do with that dialog, so it shows a summary of common options first, and you expand what you need.

(None of this is to detract from you wanting an easy way to achieve what you want to do, just to answer your original question of why the interface works that way) - IMSoP (talk) 00:55, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Creating a Backup

I'm new to computers and I'm trying to create a backup of at least some files in case I need them in the future. I found "Create a Backup", I put a disc in my disc drive, it blinked green and then stopped. I got the error message "Removable Storage Not Running The Backup Utility cannot connect to the Removable Storage Service. This service is required for use of tape drives and other backup devices. Please exit and start the Removable Storage service using the System Service function of the Management Console". I found Start>Control Panel>performancew & maintenance>administrative tools>Computer Management. The Computer Management screen included storage and within that removable storage. When I clicked on it I got the message :"The service cannot be started either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it, This snapin's display may be inconsistant with the removable Storage Service. If the problem persists please restart the snapin." What is a snapin and how do I get one and restart it? Which files should I back up? I had a problem today and had to do a system restore to yesterday and that problem was fixed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.9.92.164 (talk) 22:31, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Go to Start --> Run... and type cmd then press ENTER. In the window that appears type sc config NtmsSvc start= "auto" and press ENTER. Then type net start NtmsSvc and press ENTER. What messages do you get back?--Best Dog Ever (talk) 23:30, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for that information Best Dog Ever. I'll go do that now and get back to you on (hopefully) completion.98.77.194.107 (talk) 15:08, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

After the first enter I got:

Modifies a service entry in the registry and Service Database SYNTAX: sc<server>config[service name]<option1><option2> CONFIG OPTIONS NOTE: The option name includes the equal sign then: type= down to password= then the original C:\Documents & Settings\my name> I entered 'net start NtmsSvc' and hit enter and got the same: system error 1058 has occured. The service cannot be started either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it. I guess either the snapin's display is inconsistant with the removable storage service or it has no enabled device associated with it. Do you have any way of looking up error 1058?98.77.184.11 (talk) 18:40, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

The "sc<server>config[service name]<option1><option2>" message appears when the sc command is typed incorrectly. Make sure you type the command exactly as I have shown it above (spacing and all), because I typed it correctly. And the net-start command won't work unless the sc command is typed correctly.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 19:12, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

YOU ARE RIGHT I didn't see that there was a space between the equal sign and the first double quotes. I did it again with the space in and it said: Reply 1: ChangeServiceConfig SUCCESS Reply 2: The Removable Storage service is starting

        The Removable Storage service was started successfully

Now I'll go try to do the backup again and get back to you with how it turned out. Thank you ever so much.98.77.196.221 (talk) 21:47, 5 July 2010 (UTC) I got to the Backup and Restore Wizard's screen 3. Type=file can't be changed. Place=D:\ is given. Browse led to D and I was unable to create a new folder error 16389. No matter what name I entered in the name slot, with or without the .bkf it said "The backup file name could not be used. Please insure that it is a valid path and you have sufficient access.98.77.196.221 (talk) 22:09, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

After some research, it appears that the backup utility cannot save files to CDs or DVDs. If you'd like to save your backups to a CD or DVD, then you may have to back them up first to your hard drive, and then burn the files in that folder to a CD or DVD.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 22:31, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for that information Best Dog Ever. I'll go do that now and get back to you on (hopefully) completion.98.77.194.107 (talk) 15:08, 7 July 2010 (UTC) I created a backup (.bkp) file and tried to burn it to the DVD using Windows Media Player. It kept saying put a disc in even when I had a disc in and it kept ejecting the disc. I did have the backup file of photos in My Pictures. What did you mean by "back them up first to your hard drive"? Are they in the wrong place to be used? I also tried using the Backup utility and still got the same error even though it had a .bkf

Not a problem. I haven't used Windows Media Player to burn disks, but you can just copy and paste the files to the disk, instead. In other words, you can insert a blank disk, then go to My Computer and then browse the disk, then paste the backup files you copied earlier. Then, go to File --> Write these files to CD.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 07:07, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

I've tried EVERYTHING. I give up! I am going to have to buy a new disc driver.98.77.196.152 (talk) 20:17, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

most common keyboard type nowadays? (USB or PS/2)

What's the most common keyboard type nowadays, USB or PS/2? --Belchman (talk) 22:37, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

New USB keyboards outnumber PS/2 keyboards two to one.^[2] Many new computers don't even have PS/2 ports. If you buy your computer straight from the manufacturer, you're almost certain to get a USB keyboard with it. I'm not sure what the ratio is for all computers (both new and used), though.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 23:25, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm in IT and echo Best Dog Ever. We have not bought a computer with a PS/2 port for like....3+ years? --mboverload@ 23:29, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

On the other hand, in my experience, all the computers I've bought up till even a couple of months ago, did have PS/2 keyboard ports; but they all come with USB keyboards now. Comet Tuttle (talk) 04:39, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

We're buying only Dell business machines. What do you use? --mboverload@ 05:23, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

July 5

Website addresses

I have found that 99 times out of 100 (or so), I can type a website address with or without the initial "www" letters ... and I still am directed to the correct website. So, for example, www.burgerking.com would work just as well as burgerking.com (without the initial "www"). So, my question is: why do we have that "www" at all? What is the need or use for it? Why is it listed as part of one's website address if it is implied and essentially meaningless and irrelevant? Thanks. (64.252.65.146 (talk) 00:05, 5 July 2010 (UTC))

Someone will come with a better answer later, but in the interest of speed: The domain name system is read left to right (leaving out some parts) com - google - www (the server AT google named WWW that serves pages on the world wide web). As you said, most sites have it setup now where you can just type in the name without the WWW and there won't be a problem. --mboverload@ 00:10, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Strictly burgerking.com is the domain name and www.burgerking.com is the name of a specific computer (or bunch of computers, sometimes) that burgerking operate. A decade or so ago, things were often organised to mail.burgerking.com was their mail server, www.burgerking.com was their world wide web server, irc.burgerking.com was their chat server, and so forth. Specifing the machine name helped burgerking figure out which service you were after. But it's possible to figure out which part of burgerking should get your traffic anyway, by distinguishing it using the internet port that's used (mail, web, chat, etc. use different internet ports). And these days burgerking.com gets so much web traffic that it can't be handled by a single computer any more (for a while you'd see www1.burgerking.com, www2.burgerking.com as they tried to spread the load). These days big sites will have an internet router that's smart (and load-balancing) and that figures out where all the traffic should go based on more complex rules. So burgerking's DNS server just sends all traffic to that router, which forwards it on to the correct internal machine. Others (such as Wikipedia) still use that machine name to mean something (even though, as at Wikipedia, it's no longer a single machine that services a single address). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:21, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

An excellent answer. --mboverload@ 03:12, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Wow! Thanks for the answers. But, I did not understand a word that was said above. Can you please "dumb it down" for those like me who are computer / technology illiterate? Thanks. (64.252.65.146 (talk) 03:18, 5 July 2010 (UTC))

The website doesn't have their DNS records setup correctly so that just typing in burgerking.com would take you to their web server. DNS would be a good place to start. Perhaps someone will find a better way to put it. --mboverload@ 04:12, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

The simple answer is that it's a meaningless convention that persists only because people have come to expect it. There's no reason for it. -- BenRG (talk) 05:19, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'll try anyway.

The string you type into a browser is used to determine the address of one or more computers; when you type it in a browser, you are (usually) sending a request out to the web for some computer to give you back a web page identified by that name. The string is translated to a computer address, the string is handed to a computer at that address, along with enough information to send the web page back to your computer.

"WWW" was a convention established in the very early days to mean "World Wide Web", and distinguished a web page from some other use of a 'domain'. As correctly identified above, "burgerking.com" is the domain; if you sent someone at that server an email, you would only use the "burgerking.com" part of the address, i.e., the domain. "burgerking.com" is unambiguous to the computers that translate string addresses into computer addresses; it translates to one such address, and that identifies a computer (or a group of computers that all respond to that address; google does not use one computer to respond to all of its hits).

"www" has become so common, and the first part of a web address is so seldom anything else, that it has become a default. I don't know where the default is applied; it could be in your browser or in one of the (many) machines involved in translating string addresses like that to computer addresses. But the "whole address" still has www, so it is accepted either way in your 99 out of 100 or so cases.

Occasionally you will find some large company that has addresses at something like "www2"; I'm not sure why this is, perhaps it helps the computers that do the translation to have a smaller group of addresses to look through (just all the www2 addresses, not all the www addresses). If the company had both a "www2.burgerking.com" and a "www.burgerking.com", you would need to type "www2" when you wanted that address. The only place I've seen this used is on a link, i.e., you use www.something to get to a page, and a link on that page goes to www2.

Strictly speaking, the whole address should be "http://www.burgerking.com", with "http:" designating the communication protocol ("HyperText Transfer Protocol") to be used. But that got assumed to be the default long ago, and so you don't have to type that, either.

Sometimes browsers will even add the ".com" for you -- try just "burgerking" in the address.

Is that any closer to what you were looking for?

rc (talk) 15:12, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, indeed ... very, very helpful. Thanks so much! (64.252.65.146 (talk) 16:23, 5 July 2010 (UTC))

As a minor correct/note I don't think it it's accurate to say the 'whole address' still has www. Well it may be for burgerking and it's perhaps true for a majority of websites, but it clearly doesn't have to be as I remarked in Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2010 April 20#www.

If for example the A/AAAA record for the domain xyz.co.nz and subdomain www.xyz.co.nz point to the same IP address then clearly it's questionable if either one can be said to be the correct address from the DNS records alone, in other words there's no reason why the www has to be thought of as the whole address from that. If internal links in the server use www.xyz.co.nz (rather then relative links) or the server is advertised as www.xyz.co.nz then you could argue from the POV of the designers www.xyz.co.nz is the correct address (although in some cases you may see both and some may say your reading too much into something some random person who may not even understand the concepts involved and likely isn't really trying to make such a decision did). Of course if the server always redirects you to the www if you visit the subdomain that that's far better evidence the www is correct (even if has the same A/AAAA record). If there is no A/AAAA record for the main domain instead a CNAME pointing to the www subdomain, then in that case you could likely argue the www is the 'correct address' (although it could also be the opposite in some cases). If there are different records, with for example the A/AAAA record for the main domain pointing to a server that does say a 302 redirection to the www.xyz.co.nz (well probably other things for other traffic) then also you can say the www is the correct address. Of course there are whole lot of other possibilities that I haven't mentioned including many things that I'm not aware, my knowledge of DNS records and web server configurations isn't that great (although I do have a domain name for personal use).

But to summarise, there are many different possibilities and in some cases whether www.xyz.co.nz or xyz.co.nz is the correct URL for the companies website is a rather complex and perhaps even unanswerable question.

Note that www.xyz.co.nz (or www) is a subdomain of xyz.co.nz (or xyz) which is a subdomain of co.nz (or co) which is a subdomain of nz (ditto for www.burgerking.com, burgerking.com and com). Both xyz.co.nz and www.xyz.co.nz are domain names. A decent example is you can get a domain name as whatever.name.my but name.my actually has DNS records, these are used to forward e-mail for name.my so anyone with a whatever.name.my actually get to use a whatever@name.my e-mail address if they want to. my also supports 2LD so you can also get whatever.my.

Nil Einne (talk) 17:39, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

See World Wide Web#WWW prefix (permanent link here).—Wavelength (talk) 17:05, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to all for the above input. It was very helpful and much appreciated. Thank you! (64.252.65.146 (talk) 19:13, 17 July 2010 (UTC))

PlaySound function in MSDN library

When I use the PlaySound function on a .wav file, it only plays a part of the file. For example, it plays only the first 58 seconds of a 76-second file and only the first 78 seconds of a three-minute file. Is this a known problem? Why does this happen?

I'm using 32-bit Windows. The PlaySound function is used in a Win32 console application that I created using Microsoft Visual C++. --Bowlhover (talk) 03:16, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Do you have a minimal example that illustrates the problem? For example, are you using SND_SYNC or SND_ASYNC? decltype (talk) 22:52, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

How do one toggle scrollbars in Firefox (for Windows)?

Popup-windows often appear without scrollbars even when the content is too big to fit within the window. (Because I use large fonts).

Is it possible to toggle the scrollbar(s) manually (in Firefox 3.6.6)?
--Seren-dipper (talk) 04:24, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

See if this addon will help you. Popups use javascript to disable features. Use this addon to block that. --mboverload@ 04:41, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Templates

Hi there. On my wiki, there is a template I copied from here, but when I put it onto the page, it just shows the syntax of the template! HELP! Velociraptor888 12:08, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Why isn't anyone replying? Velociraptor888 12:47, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Have you read the bit at the top of the page under "When will I get an answer?" ? --Phil Holmes (talk) 13:04, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Velociraptor888: Which template did you copy? --59.95.105.39 (talk) 13:28, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Template:Round16. Velociraptor888 15:16, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

That template uses parser functions, which means that the parser functions extension needs to be installed and enabled. also, if has a dependency of template {{!}}, used for creating conditional table elements, so you'll need to copy over that template as well. --Ludwigs2 17:21, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, Ludwigs2! But how do you isntall parser functions on a wiki? Velociraptor888 20:23, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

In addition to the parser functions most templates have a HUGE cascade of other templates they rely on to make them work. Like 50+ for info box I think. This will take an hour or more, especially if you're not familiar with Mediawiki.

1. Find the template you want to have on your wiki
2. Edit the template on Wikipedia. For example, for infobox
3. At the bottom of the text box you will see "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page:"
4. Open ALL of those pages into tabs in your browser and edit them. Copy them all (named the same) into your wiki
5. With those tabs open you then need to find "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page:" on EVERY ONE of those templates and REPEAT the steps above.

It's a big job. I had to do it. --mboverload@ 21:41, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

OK. I see. But judt how do you isntall parser functions on a wiki? Velociraptor888 09:09, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Could anyone tell me how to install parser functions on a wiki? Hello! Velociraptor888 18:50, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

COME ON, REPLY! And also, I've copied Template: Infobox international football competition, but it just saying "No title" and "No information". Velociraptor888 19:18, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Yelling at us is rude and not likely to encourage responses. As the instructions at the top of this page indicate, it may take several days for an answer. -- Coneslayer (talk) 19:21, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but how can you fix my two problems? Velociraptor888 19:23, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I can't, because I don't know anything about setting up MediaWiki. When somebody who can help comes along, they will probably respond, if you seem like the sort of person that they would like to interact with. -- Coneslayer (talk) 19:24, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Velociraptor888: you might try reading the mediawiki docs. start with mw:Extension:ParserFunctions. I hope this solves your problem, because I am losing interest in giving you any further advice. If I wanted to deal with screaming brats I'd have had kids of my own. --Ludwigs2 20:11, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

JavaScript help

What could cause the browser to have difficulty converting form elements into an object document.formname[x].value? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.217.216 (talk) 13:00, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid we're probably going to need a little more detail here. What kind of "difficulty"? What's the result? What's the browser? And, if you can, what's the code itself? Because otherwise the easiest answers, just given the above are "you're doing something wrong" and "javascript can be squirrelly sometimes," neither of which are very useful to you. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:51, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

DIgital Pictures

Is there any program that I can use to see with what camera a jpeg has been taken ? The megpixel of the camera/pic ? The other hidden details in the picture ? For example I took this picture using a very cheap digital camera JXD. What is the megapixel capacity of the camera ? The pic is 1200 X 1600 but pictures of same (or even lesser) size taken by others is far, far better. Why ?  Jon Ascton  (talk) 17:38, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

See EXIF and feel free to come back with any other questions if that doesn't answer it. Zunaid 18:09, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Not all files contain EXIF data, alas. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:30, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

A megapixel is just a count of the total pixels (see Pixel#Megapixel). So for 1200x1600 = 1.92 megapixels. Not so great, especially when a close examination of the image makes it look like it is not really able to do a true 1.92 MP, but is interpolating a lot of the detail (which is very clear at the edges of the flower, where you are getting really "chunky" pixels). --Mr.98 (talk) 18:30, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Why are other pic of same (or even lesser) pixels so clear,then ? For example this 512 × 768 pixels (what a beauty, by the way !!) is far more clear than my miserable picture. Why ? Jon Ascton  (talk) 19:37, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not following you. But in camera sensors (and scanners) there is a hardware resolution and a software resolution. The hardware resolution is what the sensor can actually process without any help. The software resolution is when you take smaller amounts of data and try to extrapolate upwards. My suspicion is that the camera has a very low software resolution and then uses software to interpolate a larger image out of it. This method always produces blurry artifacts. High-end cameras have bigger and better sensors in the back of them, and can reproduce high amounts of detail that way without resorting to software resizing. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:41, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Ok. Does that simply put mean more costly a camera more high quality the result. (The pic was actually taken by camera in-built in a MP4 player, not a proper digital camera)? Jon Ascton  (talk) 19:50, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

There is clear pixelation in the full-size image suggesting that it was scaled up from a much lower resolution. It looks like the sensor is actually around 576×432 pixels and the image is scaled up to 1600×1200 after the fact, allowing them to claim "two megapixels" instead of the actual 0.25. Additionally, the flower in the foreground is simply out of focus, and would look blurry at any resolution. If this is a fixed-focus camera, there's no remedy for that but moving farther away from the subject. -- BenRG (talk) 01:16, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

The image quality is largely dependent on the quality of the lens, then the quality of your focussing system, then the quality (and physical size) of the sensor, then lastly the number of megapixels. That is why a 6-megapixel digital SLR with a high quality lens and a large CMOS sensor will always take better photos than a 12 megapixel point-and-shoot with a tiny CCD sensor.

To go in depth: the quality of the lens determines the sharpness of the image coming into the sensor in the first place. A poor lens will not show the subject in that crisp "pin-sharp" focus that is the hallmark of a stunning photograph. Smaller lenses on point-and-shoots also offer much less depth of field so you don't have that effect where the subject is pin-sharp and stands out against a background that is blurred. Secondly the qualty of your focussing system determines how well and how accurately the camera determines the distance to the subject in order to set the the lens to the proper focal length. Higher quality cameras have better systems than can work well even in very low light when focussing is especially hard. Cheaper cameras will often "hunt" for the focus point in low light. Still cheaper cameras (e.g. phones and yes, MP4 players) will likely just have a fixed focal length set to something like 2-3m from the camera. Thirdly, the quality of your sensor determines the amount of thermal noise you'll get in an image, the larger sensors in SLRs means that each individual pixel is physically bigger therefore captures more light so your signal-to-noise ratio is much higher than for cheap, tiny CCD sensors. Note that cheap cameras often chase megapixels as a marketing ploy (most consumers think more=better) when in actual fact the more pixels you pack into a sensor of the same size, the smaller each individual pixel must be (which results in poorer SNR and "grainy" shots). Finally the number of megapixels only determines to what size you can print a photo. Since most people never print their digital images, even a 2-megapixel camera is more than sufficient for creating nice slideshows on a PC monitor. 3-megapixels is quite sufficient to print photos in the standard 5"x7". Therefore anything higher than these limits are only useful when printing LARGE posters or when cropping images and wanting to print what's left at decent quality. Otherwise it's just a waste of space and a marketing ploy to sell an inferior product. Hope this helps. Zunaid 20:20, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Cropping or zooming (I think this is an important distinction because many people may zoom in interest details or whatever even if they never bother to crop the photo for display or are just viewing it on screen). Nil Einne (talk) 21:21, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

You get what you pay for. The $1000-$2000 Nikons/Canons take stunning pictures without much effort, although I must say my $400 Sony H20 with 10x optical zoom and Carl Zeiss lens takes excellent pics, not to mention the HD video recording bonus which is so good, I don't need to lug my digital camcorder around anymore. Proper cameras are a million times better than cellphone cameras. Sandman30s (talk) 22:37, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

It depends what you mean by a 'proper camera' and a cell phone camera I guess. There are plenty of cheap P&S digital cameras nowadays. These aren't likely to be that much better (perhaps still better but not even close to a million times) then a high end camera phone (I'm thinking something like a Pixon or one of the good Sony Ericsson's or whatever where the camera is a core feature of the phone). One thing many lack I guess because of the thickness, size, weight and logistics issue and consumer demands is optical zoom, most cheap digital cameras will have 3x but even many of the better camera phones don't.

K-touch (Tianyu) of China [3] are one which do IMHO produce okay cameras with optical zoom attached to a phone (I say that because in some ways that's how they are designed, the earlier designs even used seperate memory cards for the phone and camera part), the phone part isn't that great (but does the basics which may be enough for some). Some e.g. photos and reviews [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]. As I said IMHO their output is okay considering these are cheap phones and the size (an Ixus would be a better camera, as shown in one of the reviews but also potentially more expensive and in any case doesn't have a phone), there are quite a few different ones, all launched not that far apart and it was over a year ago (haven't see anything new) but the price now seems to be about 800 Yuan or US$120 (perhaps about double or so at launch time I think). Altek a Taiwanese digital camera maker (who may have helped design the K-touch camera phones) appear to be getting into the act too.

A decent digital camera will do loads better (as a case in point one of the reviews bizzarely compared a 2005 SLR to one of the 2008 K-touches, unsurprisingly the SLR was clearly far better) but of course most people don't carry cameras with them all the time and I personally do find the idea of having such a camera phone interesting. Of course a $400 camera with 10x optical zoom will be even better still but many people don't have something even close to that. (Video is also another shortcoming of many even high end camera phones.)

This isn't to say many/most mobiles do have totally shit camera, cheap Chinese brand phones (probably the same for cheap Indian brand phones) are notable for completely bullshit specs on the cameras (and completely shit cameras).

Nil Einne (talk) 05:04, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Quick request to loop an animated GIF

Resolved

Hi. I created and uploaded the following file today but didn't realise it lacks impact without the animation looping. It's a GIF of Thomas Müller's opening goal for Germany against Argentina. Could someone with a GIF editor please edit it and set it to loop? Also feel free to adjust the frame rate if it's too fast. I would do it but I'm bandwidth constrained (using my 3G card because our ADSL is acting up this evening). The file is at Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FIFA_World_Cup_2010_Argentina_vs_Germany_-_Thomas_Müller_opening_goal.gif

Please download the full-res version, make the adjustments and upload it again. Thanks! (p.s. I know the Graphics Lab is probably the "correct" place to ask but I'm sure RD/C will do just fine.) Zunaid 18:08, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Never mind. ADSL is back up so I've done it myself. Reduced the frame-rate to 1 per second and added the loop as required. Zunaid 20:42, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I dare suggest that the movie makes almost no sense to me. It's too hard to see where the ball is and the cuts really don't give any indication of its trajectory (it seems to be all over the place). As a useful encyclopedic graphic, either a static image, or a true movie, would probably be better than a large and herky-jerky animated GIF. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:35, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Or at least reduce the dimensions of the gif to say 300px and add more frames so it plays smoother. 82.43.90.93 (talk) 22:51, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Mr.98, I cannot immediately recognise this as 'useful'. Why cannot it be cropped? --Ouro (blah blah) 05:17, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree with the above; it doesn't impart any useful information to me. It's also presumably a copyvio. Comet Tuttle (talk) 05:35, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Was I really the only one who realised this was almost definitely a bunch of burst photos Zunaid (who does after all come from South Africa) was lucky enough to take of the goal? I admit I did initally wonder why the heck animated GIF instead of a Theora but upon looking at it I realised this was probably a bunch of photos not a video so it wasn't surprising it was an animated GIF and there likely wasn't anything better available. Most of the above comments appearing to be presuming something else Nil Einne (talk) 02:52, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

That's as fast as my camera's burst mode would take. I spent an hour aligning, cropping and resizing the original JPEGs to make the GIF so it's just a "quick and dirty" image to get into the article whilst the interest in the World Cup is still high. I'm busy working on a better version where I will crop and zoom each image differently in order to track the trajectory of the ball, however the time gap between shots is fixed as I mentioned before. This is as best as I can do; I can almost guarantee no-one else who has similar footage knows how to contribute it to Wikipedia. Take it or leave it. Zunaid 05:43, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

It needs additional alignment and image registration. This should be done algorithmically. I will attempt to perform such processing and if my result is any better, I'll post it as a second version. (Manual image-registration can only go so far - I'm impressed you got this much alignment by hand!) If you have unprocessed, higher-quality / higher-resolution source images, let me know - those will work even better as inputs to an algorithm than the current (compressed) GIF frames. I have both commercial and home-brew/open-source options, I can try both techniques. Nimur (talk) 20:49, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Nothing impressive, all I did was crop it so that the top left corner of the goal post was at the same (x,y) co-ordinate in each frame. I should have straightened the images first but was using Paint.net which doesn't have that feature. I'll answer you on my talk page. Zunaid 22:13, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I just want to point out there can be more than "take it or leave it". For example, sometimes sequential data is not best when animated. I personally find this series much more useful in understanding cloud formation than this animation of it. The juxtaposition of images lets you see—backwards and forwards—how they change from one to the other, and see the overall evolution without losing track of what it looked like at the beginning. The animation loses all of that detail and you just get a choppy version of something we've seen a thousand times before. I think in your case that a good sequence of the goal shot might be more useful to the viewer than a choppy animation, which as you point out has many limitations. Instead of being a bad animation, make it into a good sequence. (Would involve some cropping.) Just my two cents. It's not a question of "the camera didn't burst well enough" or "take it or leave it"—it's, "how can we best make this into something useful, informative, encyclopedic, and something that you and I would both take great pride in being used on Wikipedia." It's about making the best image out of what we have—which might mean trying out some different things, and not just assuming that "video is best" because that's how TV does it. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:48, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Quick C question

Resolved

Hello everyone, I was curious; why does the following run correctly:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main() {
   char message[10];                //note the length of 10
   int count, i;

   strcpy(message, "Hello, world!");

   printf("Repeat how many times? ");
   scanf("%d", &count);

   for(i=0; i<count ; i++)
      printf("%3d - %s\n", i, message);
}

"Hello world!" should not fit in a char array of size 10. I tried a char array of size 1 and the program ran fine (I did get a segmentation fault message at the end with message set to size 1). Thanks! 76.14.36.82 (talk) 23:11, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

In normal operation, C does not perform bounds-checking on arrays. So it's a very common error to reference memory off the end (or sometimes off the beginning) of an array. This is bad, you should never do it, horribly things will happen, but you very often will not get an (immediate) error. A segmentation fault does not mean "bad array reference error" - it means you've run so far off the end of memory (or off into some random space) that you've hit a chunk of your process' address space which hasn't been allocated at all, and only then does the OS notice and kill your process with a segmentation fault. This is why C programming is hard, or rather why C debugging is hard; problems lie dormant in code for years. In this case, depending on how the stack is organised, you'll be stomping over other automatic variables or over the return frame. What's happening when you set the length down to 1 is that you are indeed trashing the return frame of main, and when main finishes it tries to return to an address stored in that frame - but you've trashed that, so it returns to a nonsense address, and that's a segfault. Running your program in an environment which does enforce bounds checking can find some of these problems (try valgrind or purify) but really the responsibility is chiefly the programmer's. It's common practice in some companies to ban use of strcpy and make people use strncpy and the like, not because it's really that much safer, but because it forces you to think about how much memory you have to write into. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:08, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you!! 76.14.36.82 (talk) 01:41, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

July 6

picture transfer from cellular phone to PC...

i have a friend who is trying to send a picture from their phone to my pc. their phone does not seem to allow sending to email, but they say they can send pictures in a text message. However, i am talking to them using Yahoo Messenger, so i think when they send the picture to my number its useless, since yahoo isnt set up to recieve and display it. Are there any good programs that would allow me to receieve a photo from that method?

Thanks! 63.26.225.40 (talk) 08:56, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Lots of ways to do this without extra programs. If the phone stores the photo on a memory card (SD card, Memory stick, etc.) the card can be removed and put into a PC's card reader. Alternatively: many phones come with a USB data cable (or one can be bought as an accessory); some PC's particularly laptops have built-in bluetooth, like many phones do (if not a bluetooth USB dongle can be bought); old phones and old laptops used infra-red, but I've not seen one of those for quite a few years. Astronaut (talk) 12:07, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I thought text was limited to 160 characters (or multiple thereof with multiple text messages). How can you send a picture in a text? -- SGBailey (talk) 13:26, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Multimedia Messaging Service -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:35, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Let me clarify. The entire point and context of this post is that there is no usb (the cable was lost) or memory card etc. they can ONLY send pictures to a PHONE NUMBER and not an email. Like i said, any programs that will recieve this? Or any other tips?

thanks again in advance! 63.26.227.89 (talk) 21:30, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Photobucket is an image hosting service that can be set up to accept mobile uploads, though if the phone has neither a good web browser (to browse to the site to fill out the upload form; smartphones such as the iPhone have this) nor the ability to send an MMS message to an e-mail address (none of the various services use "numbers"), that would not work. Some phones can send files via Bluetooth to other phones; if that is possible, you might be able then to upload to Photobucket from a phone that MMS e-mails can be sent from. PleaseStand ^(talk) 03:07, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I always thought MMS was a way to send images to other phones in the same way that text messages are sent to other phones - ie. not to an email address or a Yahoo ID. The trouble is, I've always viewed MMS as being quite expensive. In this case however, it might be the only way to get the image onto a phone with more capabilities (such as bluetooth, a memory card, a data cable that isn't lost, email, etc.) Once on the other phone, it should be easier to get the image off that and onto a PC. Astronaut (talk) 03:51, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

From my experience most phones can send MMS to e-mail addresses, although it will depend on provider support I guess. Depending on your provider MMS, may not be that expensive compared to the outrageous per kb cost of SMS and casual rate if you don't have a data plan. In any case, if your phone really doesn't allow you to send MMS to e-mail addresses (what phone is it?) you could see if your provider has a number you can send MMS to where you can get them online. I've never heard of any IM that can receive MMS but never really looked. Most people probably don't need it since it's more convenient to send it to via email. I would be surprised if a phone without removable memory that isn't a Kin or iPhone would have Bluetooth but who knows. Nil Einne (talk) 06:18, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Email program with external (Excel) contact list?

For our fund-raising organisation I maintain a membership list in Excel. It works fantastically well with the bulk SMS program we use, which links to the Excel sheet and allows me to send SMSes to all members in one shot. Any updates to phone numbers or addition of members is taken care of in the Excel membership list only. The program seamlessly updates its externally linked contacts (i.e. from the Excel list) on startup. At no point do I have to touch the SMS program itself to update contacts.

I'm looking for an email program to reproduce this EXACT functionality. I don't want to manage contacts from within the program as this becomes double work. I just want it to reference the email addies from the appropriate column in our membership list. I've tried searching to no avail, the search terms bring up the wrong type of results. Any help? p.s. Mail merge does not suffice for all our needs. Zunaid 11:05, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

p.p.s. Windows XP or compatible please, ANY email program will do. I will just install it for this one use for our organisation. Thanks. Zunaid 11:10, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

How many people in the list? I do something similar and on occasion send them in batches of 40 from Thunderbird by just highlighting 40 names from a column in excel and pasting them into a BCC field. If I do more than 40 at a time, something (Thunderbird? ISP?) thinks I might be spamming and doesn't send. -- SGBailey (talk) 13:24, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I can and do do the copy paste method as mentioned in Outlook Express already. I'm trying to avoid it. I just want an email program to which I can link our membership list as an "external" contact list. "Set and forget" basically. It's not many addies (<40 definitely) but it's more for the ease of use. Zunaid 22:44, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Jailbreaking on iPod Touch 3G with iOS 4.0

Is it possible to jailbreak it, or must I downgrade to 3.1.2 then jailbreak? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 153.20.24.67 (talk) 11:44, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't own an iPhone, but looking at the article it appears that it's possible, however it does not yet work on all devices. : IOS_jailbreaking#Current_.284.0.29 APL (talk) 16:24, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Web server

I'm looking for a small web server that can display html pages and php. All the ones I've tried so far have additional functions like mysql, but I have no need for mysql so having that running and consuming 100mb of ram seems pointless. Thanks for your help! :) 82.43.90.93 (talk) 14:19, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

All the web servers listed as supporting CGI in Comparison of web server software will support PHP scripts via CGI. Some like lighttpd have optimisations specifically to improve PHP performance. Others, like Apache, have plugin modules (like Apache's modphp) which give PHP more access to web server internals and aim to improve its performance. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:37, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I've have no trouble finding servers that support php. I just can't find one that only supports php and doesn't have mysql and perl and a load of other things I don't need but take up space on my computer. I want a small server than just has html and php 82.43.90.93 (talk) 14:57, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

You haven't told us what you've tried installing, or even what OS you're running, but it sounds like you're installing something like a LAMP stack (or WAMP or whatever) instead of just a web server. -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:00, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Can and Will are two different things. For example, Apache can run MySQL. If you download and install Apache, it will not run MySQL. You have to add that capability (usually as something like a PHP module). Further, Apache can run PHP. If you download and install APache, it will not run PHP. You must add that capability by downloading and installing PHP. As for PHP, it can use MySQL. If you simply download and install PHP, it will not use MySQL. You have to add that capability. So, it is hard to tell if you are worried that something can use MySQL or if you are worried that something will run MySQL. -- kainaw™ 15:14, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm on Windows. I've tried installing various servers like Apache and when it starts up it loads mysqld.exe which takes 100mb of RAM 82.43.90.93 (talk) 15:23, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

None of the listed servers "has myql and perl". Web servers are just that, and nothing more. You're downloading some package of stuff from goodness knows where. Don't do that. Download and install the servers from their own websites and you'll get nothing else. There is no requirement for Lightttpd or Apache to have either perl or mysql installed, and the official installers from their creators do not include either. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:39, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm so confused :( Thank you everyone anyway, obviously I made a mistake with what I downloaded 82.43.90.93 (talk) 16:02, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

When you "installed apache", you apparently did not get it from http://apache.org - which is where you should download it from if that is all you want. Then, download PHP from http://php.net (not from some other website). -- kainaw™ 16:06, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

IIS (which is included with Windows) supports PHP. Databases are installed separately. If you want to add IIS, you just go to the Control Panel, then Add or Remove Programs (called Programs and Features in Vista and 7), and then Add/Remove Windows Components.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 17:08, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Vista comes with IIS (Internet Information Services), but Windows 7 doesn't (Microsoft removed it). Also, as Finlay McWalter is trying to explain above, the Apache HTTP server (what most people call a "web server"), the PHP script interpreter, and the MySQL database software are three separate software programs, each of which can be obtained from their own web sites (although PHP is often integrated with Apache using a configuration known as mod_php, and PHP programs often do use the MySQL database software for backend storage). EasyPHP and others are bundles of those three programs' Windows versions. If you don't want MySQL running, either download and install Apache and PHP separately — you may want to refer to http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.windows.apache2.php for information on how to set up PHP. PleaseStand ^(talk) 02:20, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

My installation of Windows 7 Professional lists IIS in that menu. I prefer IIS because all the configuration is done through a GUI, whereas most of the configuration of PHP is done by editing the php.ini file. But, aside from that, there is not much difference.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 02:57, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I was wrong in that Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate do include IIS, but the home version will definitely not have that feature. PHP should work on either web server though. PleaseStand ^(talk) 03:54, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Microsoft's Installing IIS 7.5 on Windows 7 Home Premium, Home Basic, or Home Starter says that the IIS component can be installed on Windows 7 using the method Best Dog Ever described, and Available Web Server (IIS) Role Services in IIS 7.5 lists which features you do, or don't, get in the various Windows 7 versions. I don't see PHP listed in the table, but if it's considered part of the CGI package, you're good with Home Premium or better. -- Coneslayer (talk) 11:14, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

If you are willing to wait a little bit, the recently announced IIS Express may be what you are looking for. 124.214.131.55 (talk) 11:51, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

dwg verses shp file formats

What is the difference between autodesk's .dwg and ESRI's .shp file formats ? Why are not they made compatible with each other, although their functions are similar? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.199.184.78 (talk) 16:00, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

See .dwg and shapefile. They are two very different formats for similar but distinctly different purposes. -- kainaw™ 16:53, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Resetting Mac OS X permissions back to default state

So I let someone borrow my laptop and they accidentally overrode the permissions for the entire disk to make all folders read/write/execute. How can I set them back to normal? (And I can't use Disk Utility Repair Permissions... it times out after a couple hours) --70.167.58.6 (talk) 17:45, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

wow. just wow. first of all, no one can accidentally override the permissions for an entire disk. Even if you are silly enough to give someone access to an administrative account and give him the password to that account, it still takes a good bit of effort to change permissions system wide. this person was trying to screw you up, just so you know.

now, the best thing to do would be to fire up Time Machine and reset your computer to a state prior to this moment of good-hearted foolishness. If you don't have Time Machine set up, then what you should do is start up from the install CD and run disk utility from there. that will be more stable and reliable than trying to run it from the internal hard drive. However, this will only fix the permissions on standard OSX software, files and folders; it won't fix the permissions on your own personal files, third party applications, unix executables you'e installed yourself, and etc. depending on exactly what he did, this may be a bigger or a smaller problem. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'all folders' for the 'entire disk' do you mean all folders in your users folder? all folders in all users folders? all folders in the system area? does this include special folders (like application package folders) or just regular folders?

In the future if you want to loan your computer to someone, use the accounts preference pane to make a new account for them (standard user, without administrative privileges). it takes all of a minute and a half to do this, and it will protect your computer (and all of your files and personal information) from any dumb thing they may try to do and save you from more instances of the fairly major headache you're dealing with now. --Ludwigs2 20:25, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

"no one can accidentally override the permissions for an entire disk." - What's so implausible about chmod -R ugo+x . when you think you are in /Users/waldubar/tmp/collections/p0rnviewers but actually are in /? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:00, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Nothing is implausible about it, except that

1. you would have to be using terminal, which for Mac OS X users is a bit unusual (there are no common tasks that require terminal on OS X)
2. chmod and chown are common commands, but not frequently used, implying the user had at least some basic unix competence
3. chmod and chown are commands specifically designed for changing permissions, and changing permissions on a machine that doesn't belong to you is tres sketchy
4. you would certainly have to use sudo to change permissions on the entire disk, which speaks to even greater unix competence.

If I were to loan my computer to someone and find him/her using terminal in the first place (without some darned good reason), I would be suspicious. If I were to find him/her in terminal trying to change permissions on files and folders (using pseudo, for heaven's sake, with my administrator password), I wouldn't be suspicious in the least; I would know that they were up to something no good. Now if you like you can give that person the benefit of the doubt and believe that they were just trying to play some sort of practical joke by goofing with the system (there's a certain mindset which finds that kind of thing funny). But what happened here was too complex to easily fit in the 'stupid accident' model. It's a bit like finding some guy standing naked in your wife's bedroom who says he lost his clothes in a poker game and was just looking for someplace to sit while he waited for a cab. yeaunhhunh...--Ludwigs2 16:47, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think 1-3 correspond to my experience at all. I'll grant you 4, but I've seen weirder things. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:58, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

GFDL Picture

Does character that Wikipedia uses to represent the GFDL () have a name? If so, what is it? 98.227.232.84 (talk) 21:41, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

That's the logo of the GNU project in general, and seems just to be called "the gnu". I don't believe it has a proper name (that is, it's not "Geoffrey the gnu" or something like that). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:45, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

... and it's meant to depict the head of a wildebeest (with a strangely spaced-out expression). Gandalf61 (talk) 14:51, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

On the gnu website, it is referred to as the "gnu head". -- kainaw™ 14:56, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

This one in particular is an SVG adaptation of the original GNU Head. Indeterminate (talk) 17:59, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

How to...?

Please tell me how to make, I think it's called a template(?) like this (example)→

. Thanks  Jon Ascton  (talk) 00:22, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Just take a look at Template:Stephen_King. You'll notice it calls, among others, Template:Navbox, which is itself a pretty heavy-hitting, complicated template. When you are "editing this page" of a template, at the very bottom of the screen it shows you all of the templates called in it. To recreate this on your own wiki, you'd need all of the used templates in most cases. To recreate this on Wikipedia, just copy the top-level one (e.g. "Stephen King") and change the contents. Note that it would be non-trivial to copy all of these kinds of templates to a private wiki, as each one incorporates many others inside of it to work correctly. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:31, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

If you were copying a template to your own wiki (rather than using it on Wikipedia), you would use Special:Export here to get the template and all its dependencies and then use Special:Import to load in the export file. PleaseStand ^(talk) 01:52, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

July 7

Looking for an intercom

Hi all. I'm looking for an easy to use intercom for a mentally challenged person to communicate with their parents (who live upstairs). It can't have a lot of buttons, since he isn't very coordinated and would get easily confused. His memory is also poor, so it has to be simple to use. Just a "Ring" and a "Talk" button would be good with a "Power" light but no button (just unplug to turn it off). It should ideally be duplex, so both parties can talk and hear at the same time, but I could slide on this req. It can't use batteries that need replacing. I think it should use wires to send the messages, since radio or electrical interference might cause confusion and he might occasionally get an unintentional call from somebody else, which would aggravate him. The wires need to be long enough to go up 2 floors and to the appropriate rooms, so at least 50 ft, but 100 would be better. So far this is the best match I could find: [14]. Unfortunately, it's in Australia, so uses a 240 volt plug, while here in the US we use 120. I suppose I could use an adapter to go from 120 to 240, but would prefer to find one that runs directly on 120. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. If anyone can provide more info on that Australian unit (like the manufacturer and model number and full specs), that would also be nice. StuRat (talk) 02:22, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

From the sound of the eBay description and the look of the devices and bit of guessing, thoses device probably just uses a typical wall wart type AC adapter so all you'll need if you want that one would likely be two 2 AC adapters which support a 110 input voltage and with an appropriate current and voltage rating and plug to connect to the units rather then a 120-240 adapter. Of course the AC adapter may be a 100-240V one anyway, many nowdays are as the falling cost of the components required for a switching PSU and the increasing cost of iron makes traditional liners PSUs more expensive so many AC adapters nowadays even for simple small cheap devices have switching PSUs and making one support 100-240V isn't that hard. Have you tried asking the seller whether it's 100-240V (also about the specs, model number etc)? Nil Einne (talk) 03:12, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I have asked, yes, but not yet had a reply. StuRat (talk) 03:28, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I got a reply, and they can supply a 120V "wall wart", but they didn't list the model number or manufacturer. One bad thing with this unit is that the buttons either call or monitor/talk depending on how they are pressed, and this may cause confusion. I'd prefer one call/ring button and one talk button, with no monitor option. StuRat (talk) 10:13, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Indeed this [15] mentions an AC 9V adapter for what looks like the same thing so I was almost definitely right about that part. For that one, the adapter isn't even supplied so you don't waste money on something you maybe can't use. The box suggests to me what I had suspected, this is just some cheap Chinese OEM product so there's probably not much point worrying about the brand or model number. More importantly, a quick search also found [16] which appears to be something very similar from a US seller. You can also get a mmaster+slave variant random e.g. [17] [18]. Edit: Ooops er just realise all those being discuussed including your original link is master and substation version (the one big button in the slave is the same size as the two small buttons combined in the master so I didn't realise they were different).

Well anyway I guess the point is you'll probably have no problem finding something similar in the US. You can even get it in kit form without the boxes [19]

Nil Einne (talk) 03:20, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I actually don't want the master/slave set-up, which seems to go along with a one-way monitor function. I'd rather have both units be identical. StuRat (talk) 10:09, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I notice the australian kit only has 20 m of cable. I think you will be surprised how much cable will be required once it is routed around doors & windows and around the edges of rooms. I also note it looks very similar to the kind of thing that sat on my grandmother's wall in her sheltered bungalow; and also similar to the kind of thing I've seen in industrial applications. I'm sure people who build/maintain those kinds of places have suppliers for intercom equipment. Astronaut (talk) 04:52, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'd prefer if it used standard phone cable, so I could buy a cable of the needed length with the proper connectors. I noticed that when you go to an industrial supplier the price goes up around 10X, and if they install it for you, make that more like 100X. StuRat (talk) 10:05, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

If you're going for standard phone cable, why not use a small home PBX (either not connected to the public phone network, or blocking the extension of your "patient" from making outside calls, and not routing any incoming calls to his number, either) and two regular phones? A lot of phones offer an auto-dial feature that will dial a pre-programmed number X seconds after the receiver is taken off-hook, or at the push of any number button. Using standard phone equipment would also allow you to use cordless phones for the parents' end, maybe even their regular (cordless) phone. And if you're afraid that too many buttons would be confusing, just place a cover over the dial pad that leaves only one button available (if the phone requires the press of a button in auto-dial mode). -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 11:09, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Matlab costs

I am trying to do a cost estimate but Mathworks is somewhat unfriendly about giving out information if you aren't already a customer. Does anyone know how to estimate the annual cost of a commercial subscription for the Matlab Software Maintenance Service (e.g. the service that allows one to download updated software as it is released). I've been led to believe that it is a relatively constant fraction of the base software cost, but am unsure what the rate is for commercial licenses. Dragons flight (talk) 03:00, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Skype contacts

Hi, just a quick one; I'm very new to Skype. I've 'added' a bunch of people I know as contacts. How will I find out if/when they have accepted my request? Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►Captain-Regent─╢ 11:18, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

If you click on them in the "contacts" bar to the left, under conversations it should have a little silhouetted person with a green plus sign, saying "xxx has shared contact details with you". If they did it more than a day before you log on, you'll need to click on "show 7 days" or however many days it is. Tell you what, why don't we try it now? :) sonia^♫♪ 11:20, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Kilobytes and Megabytes

Given that a kilobyte is 2¹⁰ (1024) bytes, why is a megabyte not always 2²⁰ (1048576) bytes? Roger (talk) 12:32, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

• Because it is 1000000 bytes. Did you read megabyte? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:37, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
• It's not, and it is! There is a discrepancy between SI units and common usage. Formally, the "kilo-" prefix always indicates 1000, and the "mega-" prefix always indicates a million. For solid state devices, you usually get powers of two (due to addressing issues), so the closest equivalent was used (what's 2.4% between friends, anyways?), and people got used to it. With terabytes, the difference is up to ~10%, and hard disks do not have the power-of-two preference, anyways. So (cynic) manufacturers try to impress customers with larger numbers or (naive) interface designers want to follow standards and support the general public. See Kilobyte and Binary prefix. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:52, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Even solid-state drives use the decimal prefixes. A 64GB SSD holds about 64 billion bytes (see for example this Intel data sheet, section 3.1). This also goes for USB flash drives and SD cards and so on. Although I do have a Kingston 8GB SDHC card that holds about 8×1024×1000×1000 bytes (and a Kingston 2GB SD card that holds about 2,000,000,000 bytes, so Kingston isn't even consistent within its own product line). -- BenRG (talk) 04:50, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Whatever you do, a megabyte is not 10²⁰. It is either 2²⁰ (binary) or 10⁶ (SI). If it is binary it is in powers of 2, if it is SI it is powers of 10. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:01, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Dammit, and here I was about to reactivate my old 500MB hard drive and rent out the spare capacity to Google ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:41, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I fixed my typo, sorry. Thanks for the answers. Roger (talk) 14:03, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Free flat-file database

I want to use a flat file database. I've already done Google searching and there is too much choice to evaluate all of them. Does anyone have any personal recommendations please? I'd prefer something that was not bloatware.

No, I don't want to use a spreadsheet thanks - the important thing is to be able to sort the records by column with just a click - no spreadsheet can do this as far as I'm aware. Thanks 92.15.27.146 (talk) 20:51, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

How do you intend to use this? Or to what end? I think that would help me give a recommendation. 198.161.238.19 (talk) 21:06, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I have at least two areas where I would like to create databases where the rows were the entities and the columns were their attributes. I'm expecting a display similar to that of a spreadsheet. Thanks 92.15.27.146 (talk) 21:09, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you want to do this strictly with flat files when there are so many simple relational database management systems (RDBMS) out there; you can create simple tables in any RDBMS then you use some GUI tool to query your table, then click on the columns in the query result window to sort them as you wish, like you wanted. A silly suggestion that just came to mind - you can trick Windows Explorer into behaving as a flat file database by creating all your files in a single directory then giving them "attributes" which you can define, then single click the window column headers to sort. Paradox is also a very simple relational database that comes for free with Borland products - it's file based (but not flat file) and 'database desktop' is very easy to use to browse/edit tables and sort data with single clicks. Sandman30s (talk) 11:12, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Google Documents spreadsheets can be sorted (though technically it takes two clicks): hover over the column you want to sort by, click the down-arrow that appears and choose "Sort A->Z" or "Sort Z->A" (which also work for numbers). There may be similar functionality in desktop spreadsheet programs, but I've never used any of them. Paul (Stansifer) 16:39, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd welcome names of any other quick-to-learn easy-to-use free databases you recommend, suitable for the non-programmer. 92.24.188.89 (talk) 18:52, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Buying a DVD drive

I want to buy a cheap internal DVD drive for my old computer, that I can use for back-ups, so it has to be writeable. Are there any pitfalls or anything else that I should look out for? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.15.27.146 (talk) 21:07, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I really can't think of any; you're mostly into true commodity territory. It's not at all clear that buying a name-brand model (over a cheaper name that you've never heard of) is cost-effective. It's pretty clear that dual-layer media is rare and disproportionately expensive, so any premium you pay for a dual-layer writer is mostly wasted (but does anyone sell single-layer writers any more?). If all you care about is the occasional backup (and playing DVDs at 1X speed) then you really don't care about speed at all (who cares if a backup, chuntering along in the background, takes 20 minutes instead of 10?). So, tl;dr, no, buy the second-cheapest the store has. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:24, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

One thing I would suggest is to avoid second-hand drives, if you were considering that as a means of saving money. Brand-new ones are incredibly cheap anyway; I was able to find one for under £8 (GBP) with barely any effort, so I daresay even better deals could be found with a little searching. Optical drives (particularly the lasers) have a finite lifespan, and you can't be certain how much use/abuse a second-hand one has suffered. Also, I'm unsure how familiar you are with computer hardware so sorry if this next point is a bit basic for you, but you also need to make sure you get a drive with the correct connection for your motherboard (IDE/PATA or SATA). IDE has been mostly (if not entirely) replaced by SATA, but depending on how old your computer is it may require an IDE drive. AJCham 01:41, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, how can I tell if my motherboard needs an IDE or SATA etc? Thanks 92.29.125.22 (talk) 08:21, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

You can check in your BIOS setup, or system information in your OS, or look physically at the connectors on the board; IDE is wide with 40 pins and SATA is usually coloured and a much smaller clip-type connector with about 8 pins. The IDE cable is flat and wide and usually grey whilst the SATA cables are thin and usually coloured. I agree that you should buy a new DVD writer because I've never had an optical drive that lasted, or worked like new, for more than 3 years. Sandman30s (talk) 10:54, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh and consider USB sticks and USB-powered hard drives for backup, as the lower capacity ones work out in some cases to be cheaper than buying a writer and blank disks. It depends on how much data you want to back up though. You could also consider buying cheap web hosting and uploading (ftp-ing) your data there; then the backup is free! Sandman30s (talk) 11:28, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

If this is a second IDE device, depending on the situation you might need to set the jumpers correctly so it is identified as being master or slave. Astronaut (talk) 14:58, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Beautiful colors

I was watching various tv shows and I saw this beautiful light / color effect, see this for example. Is there a specific name for this effect? How would I go about generating a similar effect on my computer so I can look at it all day long? 82.43.90.93 (talk) 21:59, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Not that I know of... although it does look a bit like an Aurora (astronomy). Maybe some of the aurora-themed screensavers could scratch your itch? Indeterminate (talk) 03:32, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

July 8

creating new language associations in Win7; viewing dead keys

I just created an IPA keyboard using MS Keyboard Layout Creator. Works great. However, I only know how to associate it with an existing MS language setting, which isn't the best fit. Is there a way to create a new language ("IPA") that I can associate with the keyboard, so that when I go to "Add Input Language" (under "Text Services and Input Languages"), IPA will show up with my new keyboard?

Also, the on-screen keyboard that comes with Win7 shows the characters selected with shift, alt, & caps lock, which I can take screen shots of for reference when I forget where characters are. But it does not show the characters triggered when I use dead keys. Anyone know of an on-screen keyboard that, when you press a dead key, visibly changes the characters on the rest of the keys appropriately?

Thanks, — kwami (talk) 06:46, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Import text from text file into Powerpoint slides or OpenOffice Presentation slides

I'm making an interactive presentation and I would like to make different versions where the text on certain slides is different. Ideally, I would like to just make one template set of slides, and then have text files with different versions of the text and import these into the presentation and have it go to the correct slides. e.g. imagine I had a template that on the first ten slides would display text. I could then have separate text files, Moby Dick, the Bible, etc. and text from these works would appear on the first ten slides. (I would delimit the text in the text file so that it knew which text went on which slides.) Has anyone ever heard of this being done or know/imagine of any way to do this? Thanks. --Rajah (talk) 13:01, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Losing AOL Internet Connection

Hi folks, I hope someone here can advise as I seem to be getting nowhere by asking AOL. I signed up for their Platinum Broadband and telephone package a few months ago - I live in the UK. It seemed a great deal and broadly speaking it has been. But lately, I am experiencing sudden internet disconnections without any warning other than a female announcing, "Goodbye". I have reported this to AOL who have helpfully advised me to reload the software - renew the ADSL filters - and reboot the PC adjacent to the main telephone input socket. And then all is well for a while until she yet again says, "Goodbye". I have discovered that when this happens, I can switch off the AOL-supplied router, and after switching it on again, reconnect to AOL, which makes me suspicious I was supplied with a dodgy router, and AOL have promised to replace it on 2 occasions, but no replacement has materialised - as yet. But I also have a sneaking suspicion that as I am retired, and use the internet quite a lot, though I don't tend to download movies or music etc., I may be being "timed-out" by AOL. By the way, the router feels quite hot to the touch when it disconnects. So do you folk think it will be a faulty router, or am I being timed out? I know you can't be specific, but a few clues would be appreciated. Thanks. 92.30.173.26 (talk) 15:24, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Typing in romanized devnagari

Help me find solution for typing in romanized devnagari script. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.199.138.142 (talk) 16:01, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

computer

question 1. where is computer science in the tree of knowledge. question 2. can man be said to be a collection of running algorithms

I don't think there is a standard tree of knowledge, but I'd place parts of it as applied mathematics and parts of it as engineering. As for 2, strictly speaking no. My foot is not an algorithm. In general, algorithms are immaterial. In the deeper sense of "is the human mind the result of a set of algorithms running on wetware", I'd say "probably yes". No doubt others will say no. ;-) --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:25, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

(1) I'm not sure what you mean by "tree of knowledge", but computer science is a formal science (but that article feels a little iffy to me), like mathematics. This means that computer scientists are primarily concerned with deriving and proving results that ultimately come from some set of formal rules.

(2) If you are a functionalist, you believe that a person's mind is the structure of (or, equivalently, the computation performed by) their brain. If, on the other hand, you believe John Searle's Chinese room argument, you believe that a person's mind is (at least partially) the substance of their brain. Paul (Stansifer) 16:28, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I should acknowledge that computer science is a huge collection of disciplines, some of which (like human-computer interaction) are actually observational and empirical, like what we usually think of when we use the word "science". Paul (Stansifer) 16:33, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Does ReadyBoost increase RAM?

I just plugged a 4GB flash drive into Windows 7 and told it to use for ReadyBoost. My RAM is not reporting an extra 4GB, and the system is still slow. What exactly is readyboost doing with the extra 4gb? I read the article but it's confusing 82.43.90.93 (talk) 17:25, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

No, ReadyBoost does not increase actual or reported RAM. The flash drive is faster than your hard disk for certain types of operations (like seeking between lots of small files), and ReadyBoost lets Windows use the flash as a cache for that kind of operation, so that some operations can be done on the flash, instead of the hard disk. The performance benefits of ReadyBoost are generally modest, especially on newer computers with more than 1 GB or so of RAM. -- Coneslayer (talk) 17:51, 8 July 2010 (UTC)