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August 3

Excel trendline angle

Hey, I was asked an interesting question a couple weeks ago, and since I didn't know the answer, I thought I'd try to see if any of you could answer it. The question is: Is there a way to measure the angle the trendline makes in Excel? 151.198.251.25 (talk) 00:49, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes and no and depends what you mean. a couple of pointers:

• the visual angle of the trendline in an excel scatterplot will change if you resize the plot; there is no easy way to measure that directly, since excel doesn't have access to the plot dimensions (short of dropping into vb and retrieving the chart display size).
• You can get the slope of the regression line of the normalized (un-resized) plot using Excel's SLOPE function, and since the slope is just rise over run, its arctangent should be the angle of the line. so use =ATAN( SLOPE( A:A,B:B ) ), where column A contains the x values and column B contains the y values. --Ludwigs2 03:32, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Similarly, you can right-click the trendline, select Format Trendline... Options and then select "Display Equation on chart". That will give you the slope and intercept. --Phil Holmes (talk) 07:47, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

yes, but that won't be in a machine-accessible format (it will be rendered as part of the graphic). --Ludwigs2 14:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

The OP asked for a measurement. No mention of machine readable. I think I was adding to your information with something simpler. And if you select the "graphic" I think you'll find it can be copied and pasted. --Phil Holmes (talk) 17:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

oh, I see what you mean. ok. --Ludwigs2 20:51, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Is there a Wiki anywhere that lets us make biographies & autobiographies of common people and ourselves?

What would be considered vanity here would be alright in the Wiki I speak of - Bios of ourselves, friends, teachers, etc. But what is the most popular Wiki of that nature? Thanks. --Let Us Update Wikipedia: Dusty Articles 04:48, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think a mainstream wiki exists that allows the creation of biographies of non-public figures except for yourself and your family, because of issues related to privacy of personal information, and the potential for abuse, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. Regards, decltype (talk) 07:42, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

There are a number of places that let you publish (auto)biographies of individuals that would not be suitable for Wikipedia (sorry, Decltype!) Biographicon and Wikibios are the two listed at Alternative outlets. I haven't used them myself, so can't say anything more than that they seem to follow the Wiki anyone-can-edit philosophy; I don't know how widely used they are. It's not uncommon to refer people who have create bios of themselves, their family or friends on Wikipedia to one of these sites instead. --Kateshortforbob _talk 14:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I foolishly failed to take into account WP:WHAAOE. Biographicon says that the site announced in 2008 that it was shutting down due to insufficient interest, but it certainly appears to still be running at the moment. There is also Biographical Wiki for biographies of dead people which seems to be quite populous. I'm guessing it's pulling most of it's data automatically from genealogical records, though--Kateshortforbob _talk 15:05, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. I may write a lot of friendly bios of friendly people, but can I write about bullies and how they picked on classmates and why they should be avoided, etc.? On which of those bio-wikis is that okay? --Let Us Update Wikipedia: Dusty Articles 06:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Kate, I foolishly failed to take into account that the internet has a website for everything. However, IIUC, Wikibios requires one to provide the e-mail address of the subject, and they will ultimately have control over their bio. As for writing negative biographies, Wikibios prohibits content "that may be construed as: unlawful; illegal; threatening; harmful; abusive; harassing; stalking; tortuous; defamatory; libelous; vulgar; obscene; offensive; objectionable, (...) giving rise to civil or criminal liability; or in violation of an applicable local, national or international law." I'm fairly sure a "bully biography" would fall into one or more of those categories. decltype (talk) 10:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Desktop icons on main window unavailable on one of three log-on accounts in windows XP?

Some friends of mine told me to look at their windows XP computer. The husband, wife and daughter have multiple log-ons (I have forgot how to to this, can someone remind me?) set up by the person who got the computer for them. All the accounts, except the husbands work fine, but the husbands account has no icons at all on the main window. However, there are normal icons on the startup bar and the tray at the bottom. Dragging and dropping from these to the main window has no effect, and opening folders, copying and pasting to the main window also has no effect, as does using the "send to (desktop) option-the background (a picture of a dog) remains without icons. I changed the picture to the traditional XP rolling hills, this made no difference, and using system restore, which in any case only goes back a few months on his computer, made no difference either. I suppose I could start a new account for him and get rid of the old one (remind me how) but with the hassle of setting up all his old files I would in any case prefer a more sophisticated solution. Something to do with the registry perhaps? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.1.88.6 (talk) 05:53, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Or something to do with malware? Try cleaning it up with Malwarebytes anti malware first before deciding in making a new account which would be (if it is on normal view, not classic)

Start-->Control Panel-->User Accounts--> Create new user account.

That should give you the option to make a new account.

Sir Stupidity (talk) 08:16, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

If you haven't done so already, you may want to try this, from Microsoft: Your Desktop Icons are missing in Windows XP. --Kateshortforbob _talk 14:51, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

no visual songs

37GB capacity with 11 GB available but no songs appear on playlist plus songs —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.106.65.211 (talk) 07:00, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi. You haven't given us enough information. What program or device are you talking about? --Mr.98 (talk) 11:34, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

errata sqlcmd

Hi!

I had wrote that the right snippet should be

DECLARE @myVar varchar(255)
SET @myVariable = '$(myVar)'
SET @myVar = @myVariable + ' ' + suser_sname()
PRINT @myVar

in this example I found :

-- c:\sqlvariable.sql
DECLARE @myVar varchar(255)
SET @myVar = '$(myVar)'
SET @myVar = @myVariable + ' ' + suser_sname()
PRINT @myVar

but I think I was wrong, the right code should be

DECLARE @myVariable varchar(255)
DECLARE @myVar varchar(255)
SET @myVariable = '$(myVar)'
SET @myVar = @myVariable + ' ' + suser_sname()
PRINT @myVar

t.i.a. --217.194.34.103 (talk) 10:14, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

This question was asked and answered above. Did you have a problem with the answer? Did it not work? Did you just ask a new question without checking to see if the old one was answered? -- kainaw™ 12:10, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I just wanted to correct my code snippets --217.194.34.103 (talk) 12:34, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

No problem. It would have been better to post this in the section above so everyone knows what it is in reference to. -- kainaw™ 15:07, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

In C++/CLI

what's the differnce between _nogc normal C++ pointers and __gc pointers that work on .NET reference types? tia --217.194.34.103 (talk) 10:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

__gc objects are managed memory, and responsibility for deleting them lies with the garbage collector; __nogc objects are manually managed, and the programmer must explicitly delete them. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:24, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

there mihgt exist a garbage collected language that is directly compiled in machine language?

tia --217.194.34.103 (talk) 12:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there are garbage-collected languages that are compiled into machine language. "Directly" is an implementation detail and depends on your interpretation of "directly" - nearly all compilers use multiple stages with intermediate representations. There is, for example, a garbage-collected version of C++. Objective Caml supports interpretation, byte code, and direct native code generation for execution. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:46, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Sure, there's no relationship between whether a given implementation of a language uses an intermediate language and how memory is managed. Stick to garbage-collected C++ primitives and you're done. gcj compiles java to an executable too. What "directly" means is implementation-specific and mostly quibbling - does GHC compile Haskell "directly"? Does GNU Common Lisp? All compilers have intermediate data structures between phases - does merely documenting the intermediate language (or using a pre-existing one like C) make the process "indirect"? -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Even an interpreted language like perl can have a particular script hard-coded into its interpreter. You can recompile the interpreter to produce a "perl" executable that only interprets the specific script you wrote. See, for example, Embedding Perl in C/C++ or Linking Perl with C. So, as above, it's not even really sensible to draw a clear distinction between "compiled" and "interpreted." We can say the same about garbage collection. If you manually manage your memory, whether your language is compiled or interpreted, you are writing a simple garbage collector. So, the ultimate way to ask this question is, "how sophisticated is the memory management, and how much is automatically handled for me, in the particular language, implementation, compiler, set of standard libraries, operating system, ... , that I am writing my code in?" Nimur (talk) 17:21, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Software transfer

I have an old laptop and the HD is on it's last legs and is about to die. Is it possible to transfer the programs/software that I have on it onto a new HD. And before someone asks I don't have the keys for most of the software due to a couple of house moves. Mo ainm~Talk 16:11, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

See List of disk cloning software. While you're at it, you can clone your hard disk to a bigger hard disk — the new hard disk doesn't have to be the exact same size — and (most of) the software will take care of enlarging the partition for you. Personally I use Norton Ghost. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

It is not hard to clone one HD to another. The problem is, that means copying over the old operating system, drivers, etc. Some of which may not be compatible with the new laptop. It would take a bit of work to update those, probably, and at the end of it, you still have whatever OS you had on it before. (Which may or may not be an issue for you.) You can't just copy the files from one to the other, though — it would take a full clone to copy all of the registry information over so that it would work the same as before. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:00, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

(Since Mo Ainm didn't mention he is actually going to buy a new laptop, I had assumed he or she was going to buy a new hard disk for the existing laptop. Mr.98 is correct that if you clone the hard disk and put it in a new laptop, various drivers will probably be needed for the laptop to operate properly — hopefully Windows auto-detects the fact that the drivers are missing and offers to grab them for you via Windows Update.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:56, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

You're right — I had misread it as getting a new laptop altogether. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:34, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

So would my copy of MS Office work on the new HD if I cloned my old HD? Mo ainm~Talk 19:47, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

It should work, yes. Cloning the disk literally copies everything exactly as it is now onto the new disk and unless Windows sees some sort of major problem, everything should work exactly as it is does now. ZX81 ^talk 20:19, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Brilliant thanks everyone now I need Norton Ghost suppose it is torrent time ;) Mo ainm~Talk 20:36, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

By the way, messages like that cause me to avoid helping you in the future. Software developers rely on people being honest and purchasing the software they spent a year writing. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:02, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Clonezilla should do just as well, and it's free. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:40, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Brilliant I will try that one so. Mo ainm~Talk 21:42, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Just one more thing — with laptops it can be hard to physically hook two hard drives together using just the standard cables. This is just because laptops usually only have one hard drive bay and space is a premium. So you might have to get a USB enclosure to make this work. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:36, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Menu Items Remaining After Clicking

Recently, I've been getting a niggly little problem - items in drop-down menus on this Vista machine are remaining on screen after I have clicked on them. Only the item which has been clicked on within the menu remains (e.g. 'Save as...'), and it remains over everything else on the screen. It doesn't matter whether it's a menu brought up in the browser, or brought down from the task bar, or brought up over the desktop. There is no way to get rid of it. Does anyone know why this is happening and how to make it stop? TIA! --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I've seen this problem before on Windows machines, it looks to be some rendering bug with Windows. I've always fixed with a reboot. This forum post suggests right-clicking the desktop and pressing Esc as a fix. --—Mitaphane _{Contribs | Talk} 19:33, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Cheers. I rebooted this morning (after an update) and the problem has been happening. It was happening before then, too. I have been looking around the forums and I've found numerous people saying 'right click + esc', but that doesn't work for me. What I did find, that seems to have worked, is a post telling people to switch off fade options and whatnot in the systems settings window - which I have done and it seems to be fixed - but I really would rather find out why this is happening and fix it without having to switch off stuff when it was perfectly alright before with the same stuff switched on. Cheers, though. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:41, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried updating your graphics card drivers? It sounds like fade in/out animation isn't working with your graphics card (or at least in the manner that Windows expects it to). If you can swap your graphics card, that might be another way to see if the problem is specific to the graphics card. --—Mitaphane _{Contribs | Talk} 20:08, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm on a HP G60 laptop with integrated chipset. I won't be able to change the graphics card, and I get periodic updates for it. This may, in fact, be the problem, and I may have to wait until the next update comes along fixing what the last update may have broken, as is sometimes the case. Cheers again. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 20:40, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

My printer doesn't work

I have a Samsung ML-2510 laser printer. I'm sure that it doesn't have colour--I never attempted to print in colour--just B&W; and while it printed before, it doesn't now. I took the cartridge out and shook it--such worked for the office copier in the past; but this time I only get a partial print. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.66.10.69 (talk) 16:26, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I would guess that the toner has simply run out and needs to be replaced. Shaking it can sometimes work to restore print quality when the toner is getting low, but if you're getting only a partial print out, the normal reason for that is just a lack of a toner. It can be something more serious with the printer itself, but that's harder to diagnose and the toner is the more likely problem. When did you last change the toner and how many pages have you printed since then? (some printers will tell you this information if you print out a configuration page). ZX81 ^talk 16:54, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

(EC) The cartridge has probably run out of ink. The website for support is here. You can download the user manual to tell you how to check if the ink has run out or not. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:52, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I got it on sale almost 2 years ago, and have likely printed a good number of sheets. Do I have to get a new cartridege, or can I simply refill the existing one? How much would either cost? Thanks.76.66.10.69 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:00, 3 August 2010 (UTC).

You would normally just get a new cartridge. I really don't think there is an option to fill up an existing cartridge. As for the price, that would depend on your vendor (look for it online, or go to a local supply shop), but it won't be much more than US$10-20. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:41, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Doing a quick Google search for "Samsung ML-2510 Toner" came up with quite a few placing selling compatible toners (getting an original is going to be harder/more expensive but compatible ones should work just as well), one of which being here for $25. I have never used that company and therefore not necessarily recommending them, I'm just trying to give somewhere you could possibly get it from. ZX81 ^talk 20:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I successfully refill toner cartridges for an old HP 6L printer. I don't know how successful the refilling of Samsung ML 2510 would be, but I think I refilled a similar cartridge many years ago. Refilling can be very messy, so if you can get compatibles for a price that you consider reasonable, then that option might be preferable. Compatibles and refills tend, on average, to give a slightly lower quality of printing than originals. Dbfirs 07:12, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Samsung makes some good low-end printers. I agree— replace the toner. The starter cartridge that comes with the printer has a yield of 1,000 pages, while standard cartridges are 3,000 pages. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 10:43, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

can a jailbroken and unlocked iPhone sync music with iTunes the same as before?

First of all, please note that we are explicitly allowed to jailbreak our phones now!

With that out of the way... after I've done so (with ultrasn0w after jailbreaking with jailbreakme.com, this is an iPhone 3GS modem 05.12.01 version 3.1.3 (modem/"baseband" mc139dn), will I still be able to change the music on it by syncing with iTunes?

Or does iTunes know somehow that the firmware is unauthorized/has a jailbroken version now, or for any other reason will give me shit/difficulties?

Thanks. 92.230.233.168 (talk) 17:24, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Note that "allowed" is a nuanced thing here. That ruling means jailbreaking is not a crime; it doesn't mean Apple has to let you, has to permit you to sync with iTunes or use ITMS, or can't still brick your phone. As to syncing to iTunes - it seems to depend on the jailbreak - previous jailbreaks have broken iTunes sync, which I believe were subsequently patched by later fixes. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:46, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Backup

I have a lot of easily replaceable files on various hard drives, so I don't need to actually back them up. But I would like to somehow record the files so that if something happened to the drives I would know what I'd lost. So are there any good programs for scanning drives and recording a list of all the files on them, with things like size and modified date etc? Thanks 82.43.88.151 (talk) 17:34, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

You don't say what operating system you're using. If it's Windows, open a command prompt, cd to the root of where all these files are kept, and say dir /s /v > log.txt, and log.txt becomes that list. On Unix, Mac, and Linux it's much the same, except you say ls -lR > log.txt instead. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:41, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

dir /s on Windows 7, /v isn't a valid parameter anymore.

If you use Mac OS X, the command given by Finlay will work too: open a terminal, write cd /, then ls -lR. --Dereckson (talk) 21:10, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

On Windows 7 (also Vista and XP if you've installed it) you can use Powershell instead. Once you're at the right directory try get-childitem -recurse > log.txt. get-childitem can also be replaced by gci, dir, ls or some other alias. Nil Einne (talk) 07:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I tried the cmd method but "log.txt" doesn't appear in any directory after it's finished. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 10:54, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The obvious question are you sure the directory you're trying to write to is writable from the user you're running the cmd in? If you're using Vista or Windows 7, be aware unless you've opened the cmd as administrator, it's going to be a restricted user. For example, if you're trying this from the root of the system drive, it won't work in a normal Windows 7 or Vista config because you can't write to the root from a normal user. Ditto for program files. You could always specify where you want the file to be written and make sure it's something you can write to (if in doubt perhaps try copying a file there from the cmd). Try for example dir > %userprofile%\log.log and then look in your user directory for it, e.g. cd $userprofile% (you may also have to change drive if it's on a different drive) then dir log.log.

Also remember you will need to include quotes if the file or directory name you are specifying has white spaces. E.g. dir > "Z:\This is where I store my logs\Latest log.txt". And remember the directory won't be created so if you want to store it it in "Z:\This is where I store my logs" you need to create that directory first (and make sure it is writable). Oh and finally remember if the file exists and is in use, it's possible it can't be written to/overwritten. BTW on a related note do note > will overwrite/replace any existing file, whatever it is. Use >> if you want to append to an existing file. If the file shouldn't exist I often use >> as a form of simple security against mistyping or accidentally specifying a name of a file that already exists, that way if it does happen I should be able to recover the other file (there may be some way avoid overwriting at all I've never bothered to look). Of course you could also do a dir and look for the file yourself first.

Nil Einne (talk) 13:46, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I run everything from administrator. It's still not working. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 14:23, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

1. What about when you try "c:\log.txt" instead of just "log.txt"? 2. Does it take a long time, hitting the hard disk, before it gives you another command prompt? Or do you just immediately get another command prompt? Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:58, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Running everything from administrator is somewhat irrelevant if the directory isn't writable by whatever administrator account you are using although actually I believe if the directory isn't writable you should get an access denied message in the command prompt. (I'm presuming here some sort of Windows XP or later, for anything older it should be the same but particularly for the 9x kernel line I don't know.)

I suggest you try something like CT or I mentioned above. Specify the directory and make sure it is writable one. If you are running from an administrator the C root (if you have one) would usually be writable by the administrator or alternatively the userprofile directory should always be.

You may want to try a dir /s first, if you haven't already, so that you get to see the output (although the file should still be created if you properly piped the output even if the command you specify doesn't exist or isn't working). If you don't get any output with that it sounds like there's something strange going on.

BTW you are sure you're looking in the right place for the file right? If for example you're in C:\Users\82.43.88.151 (as shown in the command prompt) and you do a dir > test.log the file should end up in C:\Users\82.43.88.151. If you cd "P:\All My Junk" I hope you recognise as the command prompt shows and I alluded to above this won't change drive so you will still be in C:\Users\82.43.88.151 until you do a P:.

If in doubt you could search for it, if you're using Vista or Windows 7 I presume you aware how the search differs from Windows XP and how to make sure it's searching everywhere you want it to.

Nil Einne (talk) 11:12, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Is there a name for this type of data

I frequently use two dimensional databases (usually in a spreadsheet format or SPSS) and occasionally relational databases (in Access). Most of the data I work with is fairly simple, but occasionally there is a type of field where there are many possible values. I don't know the best way to deal with this, and I have been unable to successfully search for this as I don't know the correct terminology.

I will give the simple example of a contacts database. For most fields there is a single value, for example if the field is "Name", the value might be "Dave". But a complicated field may be something like "Group" for which there are several answers, "Home", "Work", "Hockey club" etc. One way of dealing with this is to have a field for each group and a true/false for each record, but that results in a huge number of fields. My question is: is there a name for a type of field where there are many possible values and combinations of values?

Thanks for your help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CyrilPenaCastillo (talk • contribs) 19:13, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

This is commonly referred to as an "enumerated" field. Most relational databases have an "enum" data type. You can fake it with a lookup table and foreign key. -- kainaw™ 19:18, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I just noticed you specified "combinations". An enum field doesn't do combinations well - most databases don't do enum combinations at all. Neither does a lookup table. What you have is a "many-to-many" relationship. A common example is the student-to-teacher relationship. Students have one or more teachers. Teachers have one or more students. So, you cannot have a simple "teacher" field in a student table or a simple "student" field in a teacher table. Instead, you have a mapping table which contains a record for each student-to-teacher relationship. If possible, you want to avoid many-to-many relationships. So, you might break Group into LocationGroup containing {Work, Home, School} and ClubGroup containing {Hockey, Football, Soccer} - which assumes you can't be in more than one ClubGroup. If you simply cannot get the group fields down to a set that you only have one value set, you can hard-code combinations like: {Hockey, Football, Soccer, Hockey/Football, Hockey/Soccer, ...}

There is another way to tackle combinations, but it is not for the non-programmer. A number, like 285, is a collection of binary values, like 01101100101. Each digit can be a 1 or 0. You can arbitrarily assign each digit to be a column value and, if it is selected, make that digit a 1. Then, you can set or unset each digit as needed. The problem is that when you are done you have to write the user interface to encode and decode all those 1's and 0's properly. -- kainaw™ 19:27, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by CyrilPenaCastillo (talk • contribs) 20:16, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Some databases, like MySQL, distinguishes the SET and ENUM types, the first allowing combinations of values, the second to pick only one.

Here two MySQL fields from two MySQL tables:

`place_status` set('start','hidden') DEFAULT NULL

`perso_sex` enum('M','F','N','2') NOT NULL DEFAULT 'M',

place_status could have 0 (null), 1 (start or hidden) or 2 (start and hidden) values. perso_sex could only have one value. --Dereckson (talk) 21:06, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Please don't try to do what Kainaw suggests—it's a hacky solution and will cause you more grief than help. What you want to do is create a junction table, a very standard thing in relational databases. Basically you have one table of your main entries (tblAddressBook), and then a table of the possible values for your multiple-valued field (tblPlaces), and then a table that sits in between and just contains keys that are "associated" with one another (tblJunctionAddressbookPlaces). In Access these relationships are very easy to indicate with the "relationship view."

I elaborated about this in a previous post, here. Please feel free to ask more questions if it is not clear. This is a nice illustration of what it will look like in Access. Junction tables are easy, flexible, and do not bind you to figuring out your entire data structure from day 1, unlike the ENUM or wacky binary options above. (You can also easily still use it with regular SQL Join Queries; see the example in the link above.) I think in formal theory this may be called an Associative Entity, but I've always just heard it called a "junction table" or "join table" by Access programmers. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:25, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Exactly how is that different than the many-to-many relationship table that I suggested? It looks the same to me. Perhaps you got hung up on my suggestion to NOT use binary mapping if you are not a programmer and assumed that telling a person to NOT do something is a suggestion that they do it. -- kainaw™ 22:09, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't see your one useful suggestion buried within all of your bad ones on my first pass. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:23, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Guys, don't fight. There's a lot of ways to design database systems. "Good" and "bad" are meaningless subjective opinions without context. Every implementation has different needs. Nimur (talk) 22:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

"Good" is subjective without context; "bad" can often be universal. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:40, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I have no idea why you guys have complicated things. This is simply a lookup table. In your source table, create 2 fields called name and group. Group is a numeric field. Your lookup table, called group, will have 2 fields, the type (numeric) and group (character) for "home", "work", etc. Then your join would be on the source table (field group) and lookup table (field type). You can set it up as a foreign key relationship if you decide to use indexes (recommended). Many development components make use of these relationships automatically and your form will pick up the data in the lookup table and it should be selectable. Queries on the data will involve joins, typically outer joins. Sandman30s (talk) 11:12, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

A lookup table will not handle the many-to-many relationship that the questioner described. -- kainaw™ 12:07, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Why do you say that? Consider this (syntax might be wrong, haven't done databases for a long time)

CREATE TABLE Students
{
   id             INT NOT NULL UNIQUE PRIMARY KEY,
   personal_name  STRING NOT NULL,
   family_name    STRING NOT NULL,
.....
}


CREATE TABLE Teachers
{
   id             INT NOT NULL UNIQUE PRIMARY KEY,
   personal_name  STRING NOT NULL,
   family_name    STRING NOT NULL,
.....
}


CREATE TABLE Classses
{
      id             INT UNIQUE PRIMARY KEY,
      teacher_id     INT   REFERENCES Teachers (id)
      name           STRING NOT NULL
...
}


CREATE TABLE StudentClasses
{
      student  INT REFERENCES Students (id),
      class    INT REFERENCES Classes (id),
}

As the StudentClasses table doesn't have a unique designation on any of its fields, there can be multiple entries in it, for each student, and for each class. I would however, add a constraint to ensure that {student, class} is unique.

You could populate the database like this (doesn't directly aline with the above schema)

Database tables

Students id name 1 Alice 2 Bob 3 Charlie 4 Dave

classes id name 1 Biology 2 Chemistry 3 Physics 4 Geography 5 History 6 Modern Studies

StudentClasses student class 1 2 1 4 2 1 2 6 3 2 3 6 4 3 4 5

which gives the result

StudentClasses

student	class
Alice	Chemistry
Alice	Geography
Bob	Biology
Bob	Modern Studies
Charlie	Chemistry
Charlie	Modern Studies
Dave	Physics
Dave	History

CS Miller (talk) 20:56, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

That table indented the rest of the page, presumably due to a missing tag, so I removed it. Please feel free to re-add it and remove this comment after fixing. --Sean 21:04, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I thought I'd fixed it after commiting; it didn't show in a section edit. Mediawiki doesn't seem to like indented tables. Here goes again... CS Miller (talk) 21:39, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

You just gave a very good example of a mapping table or junction table. It is not an example of a lookup table. -- kainaw™ 12:03, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Cisco Valet M10

I see some reviews refer to it as a router, others as an access point. Which is it? And what are the benefits of a router vs. an access point? 24.189.87.160 (talk) 23:56, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Technically speaking, it is both a router and an access point in the same box (and in this case, on the same circuit-board and probably on the same network controller chip). For the home user, this is great - the "box" is an all in one device that requires minimal configuration. But there are some unusual networking situations (not very applicable to a "home user") where you would want separate devices for routing and providing wireless link. For example, if you were building a campus-wide network with many distant locations that people can walk between, you want to make sure your access points can perform wireless hand-off. To coordinate this, the router should be located at a position in the network so it can communicate with different Access Points and perform that handoff. You can read about routers and wireless access point for technical details about what "routing" means in the sense of computer networking. Nimur (talk) 00:25, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, it helped a whole lot. 24.189.87.160 (talk) 00:38, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

August 4

Shady Facebook Group

I've been invited by my Uncle Don to join the quite obviously spam group "Make Money Online" ([1], if that works for you guys). I'm quite confident that Don didn't really create this page himself, not least of all because all of his aunts are dead, while the creator of the group claims that "his aunt has been making tons of money...". However, from my end of things, it does look like Don's account created it. How did this likely happen? Did Don give his password to someone he shouldn't have? Or did I do something wrong on my end to invite this sort of thing? Buddy431 (talk) 01:39, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't view the page due to not having a FB account... but have you considered directly asking your uncle if he created it? 24.189.87.160 (talk) 06:56, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I've had probably 3 friends send me such spam messages over the past year. They attributed the problem to a computer virus, which may mean the virus snooped packets, or installed a keylogger, to log their usernames and passwords when they logged onto Facebook, and either (a) sent all the info to the bad guys, who have a script to make all the victims join this group and spam their Facebook friends about it; or (b) the virus takes care of these tasks itself without needing to send any info out to the bad guys. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:57, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes multi-level scams like these come with canned backstory's that you're just expected to copy/paste. APL (talk) 19:31, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

What is this image process called, and how can I do it?

Hello! Given this:
+ I want this -->
That is, is it possible for image software to take two single-layer near-identical images and extract the differences to a transparent background? Is there a name for this process? Is it something I could do with GIMP or ImageMagick? Any pointers how? Thank you!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 03:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

It is called difference masking. I don't know about those programs, but in Photoshop, you open both files, then drag one image onto the other and change the blend mode of the top layer to "Difference." Then, you go to Select --> Color range and select the background. Hit DEL, and remove the bottom layer. You now have the objects on their own layer with a transparent background.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 04:43, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Some versions of photoshop leave some weird dithering issues around the edges. This is generally the right approach, but computationally the issue's pretty straight forward. Shadowjams (talk) 06:48, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

You can write a simple script in MATLAB or GNU Octave (or any language that is convenient to load the images as arrays of pixel-values). Pixel-by-pixel subtraction of Image 2 from Image 1 will come close to your desired output. But what it really looks like you want is a more complicated algorithm (pseudocode below):

if ((img1[x][y] - img2[x][y]) <= threshold)
    output[x][y] = white
else
    output[x][y] = img2[x][y]

You can write this as a very simple for-loop in Octave. You can set the threshold to account for various noise, or set to 0 for exact-match detection. You might need to perform image registration to align the images perfectly. Nimur (talk) 15:52, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I rarely use MATLAB, but wouldn't you want: if(abs(img1[x][y]-img2[x][y])<=threshold) -- kainaw™ 16:37, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

(Yes, probably would want an absolute-value in there for most cases). Nimur (talk) 22:36, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

This is surprisingly simple in GIMP. Under File, select Open as layers. Select both images and they will open in one image as layers. In the layers dialog, select the top layer. Then, in Mode, select Difference. Done. -- kainaw™ 16:45, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Great answers so far, thank you. I'd also like to add the following question: What if these photos didn't have the exact same background? What if I stood still taking pictures of a person walking somewhere and wanted to create an animation of just the person? The background would be the same, but it would be slightly shifted and have small differences at the edges from the imprecision of my hands trying to hold the camera in the same place. Can these programs show any tolerance to a situation like this, and only extract the main differences?--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 19:08, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps image registration that Nimur mentioned might help accomplish this? Is this technique available in free and open software?--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 19:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't recommend a technique because the ideal technique depends on the image. There are probably hundreds of different techniques for extracting an image from a background. Photoshop, for example, has the magic wand, the quick-selection tool, the extract filter, color-range command, the lasso, the magnetic lasso, channels, the marquis, and so on. I watched two DVDs of video tutorials on masking (essentially the same thing as selecting) in Photoshop -- [2], [3]. So, if you want some hints, I can give them to you, but I'd need to know more about the image you want to mask. You can combine selection techniques (in fact, you should) to achieve better results. Masking an image can take hours. The ease with which you mask depends on how similar the subject is to the background. An ideal situation would be a subject against either a green screen or blue screen. The more contrast, the easier the program will be able to distinguish the subject.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 20:19, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

That's a difficult challenge - not totally impossible, but difficult. Image registration will be a precursor step - aligning the backgrounds. This is accomplished by numerical optimization to find the maximal alignment (cross-correlation) between the images. Then you could either subtract or mask. There are other, much more complicated ways to do this: motion vector estimation, for example, is a critical piece of modern lossy video encoders, like H.264 - and allows an estimation of what pixels have "moved" between two images. Very quickly, these types of image processing tasks cross a line from "basic addition, multiplication, and subtraction of images" to "advanced nonlinear optimization problems in high-dimensional vector spaces", and are open research topics. Some advanced image tools, like PhotoShop or Gimp, may support some best-effort implementations of these kinds of operations. Nimur (talk) 22:36, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I found a plug-in for GIMP that performs image registration and works quite well (check it out here), but I'm still having some problems with the basic step of getting the differences of two images. When I followed Kainaw's GIMP instructions above for my sample images, I got this image:

It's not exactly what I was looking for, but it's close, and it looks like I might just be missing an extra step or two to get what I need. It seems like the brighter leaves bleed through the image of the molecule, and the bottom-left symbol is a bit transparent. Is there a way to rectify this?--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 04:49, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

To remove the bleed (assuming that the bleeded image has constant, not variable, transparency), I'd try to cut out the molecule image onto its own layer, overlay the a copy of the background and set its mode to "difference", and then adjust the transparency until (hopefully) the molecule looks approximately like normal again. If different parts of it have different amounts of transparency, I think the only solution is to do the opacity reduction with the airbrush tool, a steady hand, and some good luck. Adding and removing transparency in parts of an image can be achieved by editing the alpha mask. Paul (Stansifer) 14:04, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Wait a second; the problem isn't bleed at all. That's what the difference image is supposed to look like. What you want is to (a) turn all non-black areas to white in the difference image, and (b) use the result as a transparency mask in the original image to turn the background transparent. Paul (Stansifer) 14:10, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. The process Paul Stansifer just described is equivalent to the pseudo-code I posted earlier: masking, and then selecting image2 data where necessary. This is not something Gimp can do in one step; and it is why I suggested the algorithm in Octave's image-processing kit. You could perform that process in Gimp in several steps: use your result with the black background as an intermediate step; then, chroma-select black areas; then create a mask from that selection; then use that mask to select pixels from image 2). Nimur (talk) 20:09, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Wow, excellent work, everyone. While I'm not familiar with Octave yet, I will keep Nimur's advice in mind if I need this trick for a large quantity of images. With a small number of images, though, GIMP's being working great! Thank you.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 02:27, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Whatever happened to pump and dump spam?

Whatever happened to pump and dump spam? A few years ago, my inbox was full of emails trying to get me to buy worthless stocks that the spammer had bought in advance, trying to drive up the price so they could sell at a high price. But I've not seen any of this type of spam for ages. Why is that - did enough people catch on to the scam to make it worthless (I doubt this, seeing that I still get plenty of messages from various Nigerian princes), did the people doing it get arrested, or are spam filters just much better at blocking this sort of thing than they are at catching prescription medicines and fake designer goods? 59.108.42.46 (talk) 11:18, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I've only had a chance for a brief look, but a couple of anti-virus/anti-malware companies speculated that it was caused by improved spam filters and a regulatory crackdown at the SEC ([4]),([5]). This website, which analyses spam, suggests that the spammers used deliberately malformed image files to bypass optical character recognition in spam filters; it's possible that OCR has improved enough that this technique is no longer effective (personally, I no longer see image spam of any kind - a few years ago, it constituted about 30% of the spam I saw). Apparently, there is also now software which detects trading patterns which indicate pump-and-dump scams ([6]). The drop seems to have begun in late 2007/early 2008, but there was also a hosting provider McColo which was notorious for having spammers as customers, which was closed down in late 2008. This might account for some of the drop; although many of the spammers later set up shop elsewhere, it's possible that they switched to a new business model. I haven't been able to find a definitive answer so far, though --Kateshortforbob _talk 16:03, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I still get image-spam for generic drugs, so I'm not sure if it is better filtering. However, I'd agree with Gabrielle Glaister about better regulation. The 'stocks' were generally on the non-SEC regulated pink sheets. According to the Caveat Emptor - Buyer_Beware section, any 'stocks' that are spammed are automatically suspended. It would be easy to set up a few hundred email accounts on the major webmail accounts and have them auto-forwarded to central account ran by the market; if a company is listed on several of these accounts then it would be ipso facto evidence that it is being spammed. The same could be done with the major ISPs with their co-operation. Of course, it could be possible that a company P'n'Ds its rivals to give them a bad name, but I've not seen or heard of it. CS Miller (talk) 19:26, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I think you mean Prima facie evidence. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:18, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Those sorts of scams relied on the patsy's willingness to believe it would be possible to make money buying the stocks. Several years ago, the economy was only going up, and it was really easy to believe that a random stranger could provide you with hot stock tips. The recent financial crash means that hardly anyone views the stock market as a means to a quick buck. It's much harder to believe that investing in stocks will make money, so a pump-and-dump will have a much lower success rate than previously. The pump-and-dump scammers probably are now falling back on "traditional" 419/v1agr4 scams. -- 140.142.20.229 (talk) 21:50, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

raw to png

I need a program that can convert .raw to .png, and back again. Any suggestions? Thanks 82.43.88.151 (talk) 12:54, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think ".raw" is one format. However, ImageMagick can handle the more common raw formats. See [7]. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:08, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

IrfanView and Raw Therapee can also convert many RAW formats easily to a png, though going back to a specific RAW format isn't possible. The obvious question is, "why are you trying to do this"; why just not keep the photo is a RAW format until the very end, when you then convert to the PNG? Buddy431 (talk) 13:45, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

RAW formats are, by their very nature, platform specific, camera-specific, model-specific, sensor-specific, etc. There has been a small effort by some of the major camera vendors to provide consistent output raw files - truthfully, these are not raw data any more (they have been reordered into standard output formats). There seems to be a common misconception: RAW does not merely mean "uncompressed" or "losslessly compressed" - it also means "in the specific pixel, bit, byte, and Bayer pattern order of the particular sensor that generated it". It theoretically also means "with absolutely zero digital processing applied" - but the definition of "absolutely zero" varies from implementation to implementation. This said, once you have images out of the camera, it's better to switch to a standard but losslessly-compressed (like PNG), or uncompressed (like BMP or TIFF) image format if you need to preserve image fidelity. "RAW" files are really a programmer's debugging tool. They have caught on in digital photography because of the side-effect that they are also uncompressed. If you want to convert an image to RAW, you can easily write a program to do so. Nimur (talk) 16:04, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't write a program to do so, I wouldn't know the first thing about writing programs. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 16:08, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

You should probably use a format like TIFF, which will not modify the raw data in any way and will be uncompressed; but has a standard file format, and can be used with a huge variety of existing digital imaging software. Nimur (talk) 22:28, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Nimur, I don't understand what you're saying here. Of course you could define a TIFF variant that stored the same data as your camera's raw format, but no off-the-shelf software would support those images. Or you could use a commonly supported TIFF variant, but that would not preserve the original data, which I think was the whole purpose of this exercise.

There are basically three or four parts of converting the digital sensor output to a JPEG image: demosaicing, optional denoising, clamping and quantizing to an RGB color cube, and the actual JPEG compression. Of those, the JPEG compression is easily the least lossy step, if you use a high quality setting. The only reason to keep camera-raw images around is to preserve the image's original color gamut and/or to benefit from future improvements in demosaicing and denoising algorithms. You lose all of those benefits (except denoising, I suppose) if you convert to PNG or TIFF, unless you define a specialized version of PNG or TIFF that no standard software will understand.

82.*, what is your ultimate goal? Do you want to losslessly compress your camera-raw images to take up less space? There is a file format called Rawzor designed to do exactly that, but the format seems to be undocumented, without even an open-source decompressor, so I can't in good conscience recommend using it if you care about long-term availability of your images. You could also use Zip or 7-Zip. -- BenRG (talk) 23:16, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

A brief test of compressing a Canon RAW image saved less than 2% compressing with .Zip, so I'd conclude that they're fairly well compressed already. --Phil Holmes (talk) 08:21, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Not only compressed, but some data is encrypted as well. Look at Digital Photography Review's interview on the subject; and Decoding raw digital photos in Linux, including source-code for reverse-engineered versions of the proprietary lossless compression used by major vendors: dcraw.c, and additional tools for Canon: clean_crw.c. Nimur (talk) 20:16, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I've been reading a little about Adobe's DNG format. It's a TIFF variant (I should have known), it can probably accommodate all of the metadata from other common camera-raw formats, it supports lossless JPEG (which compresses pretty well), and it's a widely supported open format. However, I don't know what tools can be used to losslessly convert from other camera-raw formats to DNG, and I suspect that many DNG-writing tools will write uncompressed output. Dcraw supports raw/linear TIFF output, but I don't know if it's DNG and it definitely isn't compressed. -- BenRG (talk) 06:41, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, DNG is actually just a TIFF that stores the camera's capture, exposure, and other meta-data in a "free-form data" region of the TIFF spec. It's commonly referred to as a "RAW", but it is not actually a raw format. A quick web-search will obviate that this format is not well-liked by the camera manufacturers; those that offer it on their camera do so begrudgingly. (This says nothing about the utility or technical merits of DNG - it only illuminates a conflict of business-interest between camera-vendors and software-vendors). Adobe's own DNG Profile FAQ helps explain some technical details of DNG; at first glance, these "portable RAW" files make perfect sense - but only to consumers who plan to use PhotoShop or similar products. As I mentioned above, actual raw image formats from the manufacturer are not very useful to the average photographer. Most photographers who want a "raw" really just mean that they want an uncompressed and unprocessed version of the image. What these photographers do not understand is that an "unprocessed version of the image" is literally nothing more than a bit-stream out of the CMOS or CCD sensor - and unless you like reading ADC control bits, silicon-specific process controllers, and receiving the image in whatever pixel-order was convenient for the manufacturer of the silicon to route into his output pins, actual RAW format is totally useless. And, camera vendors like Canon and Nikon, take pride in their "flawless" final image output that highlights the hardware perfection of their products. They do not want to expose any "intermediate" steps. They see no benefit in encouraging end-users to use additional post-processing; the more image-processing that gets offloaded to 3rd-party PC software, the more commoditized the camera hardware becomes.

Anyway, why is it so hard to get the "un-processed" sensor data in the first place? Shouldn't this just be the "direct" output from the sensor? Well, in a perfect world, yes. A CMOS or CCD sensor is just an array of voltage-inputs to an analog-to-digital converter, and by reading its outputs, you should ideally get a "raster scan" of the pixel values at each point in the image; and you would call that the "RAW" output from the sensor. But this is not at all how an actual consumer-grade CMOS of CCD sensor actually works. This is because of engineering realities related to the manufacture of cost-effective CMOS and CCD sensors. The data has to be compressed, or re-ordered, or patterned, or read out in strips, or every 6th line is read, while a capacitor charges up to re-read the next set of every 6th-line, and so forth - in fact, the sensor might not even be in RGB format, it's much more likely that it uses a YUV colorspace that preserves its Bayer pattern - and then the data is spit out over a proprietary protocol onto the sensor's IO output. These bits/bytes/data are not an "image" yet; a variety of on-camera electronics and software must first process the sensor RAW output and generate (1) an uncompressed image. Then, if desired, software and hardware noise-reduction and image processing may take place, producing (2) a "clean" version of the uncompressed image. Finally, the device may compress this image to (3) a JPEG, and save it in this file format. Most photographers really want something "somewhere between stage (2) and (3)" when they say they want "raw" data from the sensor, without properly defining exactly where between stage (2) and (3) they actually mean. (For example, are noise and dead-pixels desired or undesired in the RAW?)

As you go farther up the "expensive"-ladder, you pass the consumer-grade DSLR, into the professional full-frame sensors, and ultimately into the specialized imager technology for scientific and industrial applications; and you can start expecting reasonable, meaningful data to actually come out of the sensor (i.e., if you just read the bits, you could reconstruct an image from it). But down at the reasonable price-points where mere mortals and consumers operate, there is so much ugly "detail" in terms of getting the optical image out the wire of the sensor, that the result is a very complicated raw data stream. Nimur (talk) 15:35, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

You're making this more complicated than it really is. Camera raw formats store digitized sensor outputs with as little digital postprocessing as possible. That's what DNG stores, so DNG is a camera raw format. There would be no point storing the data in some weird interleaved straight-off-the-hardware bit order, but that's not what camera raw is about and never has been. It's about keeping your postprocessing options open. The color channels from a Bayer sensor are not sRGB or YUV, but something more like LMS or XYZ, but in any case, they are stored uninterpreted and untransformed in a camera-raw file. -- BenRG (talk) 10:16, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

DVD Ripping

My DVD collection is taking up too much space so I am trying to rip my collection to my hard drive. I used Corel DVD Copy 6 to rip my Star Trek The Next Generation DVD's but I found it the be extremely unreliable (crashing frequently etc.). What DVD ripping software would people recommend? I want something reliable, and I want to be able to play the movies on my PC, PS3 and XBox. Thanks 86.45.185.245 (talk) 15:03, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

DVDShrink, DVD Decrypter or AnyDVD for ripping the DVD to disk, then you should probably encode the ripped files into a better format like XviD .avi or x264 .mkv, using HandBrake, MEncoder or AutoGK. HandBrake can directly copy from DVDs, but it only reads from non-copyrighted protected dvds (your star trek ones are most likely protected) 1230049-0012394-C (talk) 15:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I've heard many good things about DVDFab. It lets you back up to your hard drive, another DVD, or can output to specific mobile formats. --Zerozal (talk) 18:35, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

A minor note is that to use DVDFab without paying money is a trial for 30 days.Sir Stupidity (talk) 08:52, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Apple Travel Adapters

Does anyone know of a maker of travel power adapters (http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MB974ZM/B?mco=MTY3ODQ5OTY) for the Magsafe power supplies for power books and other macs that isn't made by Apple and is therefore not £30 for a few pieces of plastic? I'm sure someone must make the same thing, unbranded with Apple, for like a third of the price?

86.153.255.200 (talk) 16:22, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The basic set of travel adapters comes with new computers, and if you buy used you should always ask if they are included. The kit is mostly a replacement for those, with (I think) a few funky extras. best places to look for off-brand units are eBay and Amazon (if anyone sells off-brand units, they'll have stores up there). --Ludwigs2 16:41, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

No adapters but the local one came with my recent MacBook Pro (bought in Switzerland) and none came with either of my previous two Apple Laptops bought in the US. You can, however, use ordinary adapters. The bricks themselves are multi-voltage multi-frequency, the adapters just provide the electrical connection to the mains. You can also pull off your local end piece, and use a normal local HiFi power cord. Most people should have some of those lying around. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:34, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

E-mail postage system

I have heard and read about a proposal (I'm sure there have been several) about a new e-mail system in which users have to pay a small amount of "postage" (say, 1 cent US) per individual e-mail sent. The objective is to greatly reduce spam, as it now would cost a spammer US$10,000 to send out his 1 million e-mails; and the cost to an individual is low. Editorializing and implementation details aside, does Wikipedia have an article on any such proposal? Has any consortium seriously advocated such a proposal yet? Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:02, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

See Internet taxes. It has been proposed to thwart spam. IN the article, you will also see that it has been suggested as a way to move money from the (white) United States to the (black) Africa in an attempt to make up for the racial divide of the global economy. -- kainaw™ 18:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

That part of the article is, incidentally, unsourced. (The apparent source says nothing about Internet taxes whatsoever.) --Mr.98 (talk) 22:53, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The UN referred to it as a "bit tax", not "email tax" or "internet tax". They defined it as "a very small tax on the amount of data sent through the Internet." It appears that that the reference to the UNDP report was replaced with just "Id". -- kainaw™ 00:24, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

See also Hashcash for a non-payment scheme. All these schemes have drawbacks, which is why they're not in use. --Sean 19:07, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Attention economy#E-mail spam covers something similar. However, the extraordinary success and utility of email basically preclude any non-backward compatible changes. Also, for many people, Bayesian spam filtering has so effective that spam is basically a non-problem. Paul (Stansifer) 19:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the links. Hashcash is awesome. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:55, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Button on taskbar disappeared

I was at a library with Firefox, but this happens with Explorer too. If you go here then you see a list of open programs, each one a "task in progress". I did this in order to beable to describe what I was doing: that has nothing to do with my specific situation. Yesterday each one of the buttons represented some web site. On one of them, a popup ad showed up despite the popup blocker, and the button for the site I was on disppeared, replaced by the one for the popup ad. I never saw the site again (except by going to it all over again) until I clicked on the red X for all the rest when I was finished.

I've had the buttons rearrange their order, too, when one of the sites was acting up. What's going on?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:38, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The taskbar is a list of open windows, not open programs. A popup window can close the window that it popped up from. As for order, you can customize the order to be alphabetical, it order opened, related to screen position, etc... -- kainaw™ 18:40, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm just telling you what the other site said. But the window wasn't closed. It was there, but I couldn't get to it without closing all the others. And the buttons got rearranged without my consent.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:50, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Are you positive that it didn't go into "grouping" mode where multiple windows of the same program are grouped into a single button? -- kainaw™ 18:53, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

They did not.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:12, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

This does not answer the "why", but are you aware of Alt-Tab? If you ever "lose" a window, hold down the Alt key and hit Tab a few times. This will let you get to any existing window, whether hidden or not. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:37, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

A hint about the "how": this sometimes happens on IE8 if the circle keeps rotating and rotating. The sort of thing that could shut the Internet down, for example, though that rarely happens on my computer.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:58, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

It happened to me again today. Alt-Tab worked.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:23, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Google Wave killed, any Wave like replacements?

Google today announced they are killing Google Wave [8]. It's an amazing tool I use to collaborate with several remote freelancers all in different locations. We can't live without it (once we finally wrapped our minds around it). Are there any commercial products or services that offer anything similar? The main feature is persistent, time re-windable shared group chat/email/discussion/task tracking/meeting scheduler/to do list/brainstorming with live typing? --69.148.250.94 (talk) 23:44, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

You may have noticed articles noting that Google has already open sourced "much of the code". I haven't seen news of any replacement site yet. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:19, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed that. But I have intention of compiling code myself. I just want a sevice to log into! :) --69.148.250.94 (talk) 04:58, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

You may not currently be able to find all of Google Wave's functionality in a single tool, but you might like to check out this recently reposted Lifehacker top ten of web based collaboration tools [9]. Equisetum (talk | email | contributions) 11:56, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

You can host your own servers for MediaWiki, Jabber, and all of the other constituent parts of a collaborative workflow (including Google Wave, when the source becomes available). This cancellation of Google Wave is exactly the reason why it's so frightening how much of our world's e-Commerce has been implicitly subject to vendor lock-in. When Google decides that GMail is not profitable, what will all the GMail users use? They will have to re-learn how to actually use email. This means: running an email server, and running an email client. If you want a "convenient web-based interface," that is fine; you can set that up on your own server as well. But the status-quo right now seems to be "assume somebody else, like Google, will do all the set-up for me, for zero charge." It's 2010. Every single part of a modern IT infrastructure, from the router to the enterprise-scale server to the Web 2.0 Application layer, can be run on cheap commodity hardware using free and open-source software. Do not allow Google, or IBM, or Apple, or any other company to hold your business hostage to their whims, just because access to their server-hosted tools is "convenient." Nimur (talk) 15:51, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

August 5

Intel vs AMD: Has Intel achieved a decisive victory?

I used to follow the processor industry pretty closely, but not buying a new PC in the last 5 years has meant I haven't paid close attention to recent developments. I do regularly read tech news, though, and all I've seen lately is praise for new Intel product lines -- nothing about AMD. Has this grudge match been settled when I wasn't looking? Is AMD no longer competitive? 218.25.32.210 (talk) 01:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi

Intel currently has the lead with the following products

Intel Xeon 3000 Processor Series, which consists of:

• Intel Xeon 3100 Processors
• Intel Xeon 3200 Processors
• Intel Xeon 3300 Processors
• Intel Xeon 3400 Processors, which are a line of single-socket server processors with wattages ranging from 23W to 130W, cache sizes ranging from 2MB to 12MB, and frequencies ranging from 1.73GHz to 3.73GHz.
• Intel Xeon W3500 Processors, which is a line of processors intended specifically for workstations.
• Intel Xeon W3680 Processor, which is a 130-watt six-core workstation processor with a 3.33GHz base frequency, 3.6GHz maximum frequency, and a 12MB L3 Cache.

Intel Xeon 5000 Processor Series, which consists of:

• Intel Xeon 5100 Processors
• Intel Xeon 5200 Processors
• Intel Xeon 5300 Processors
• Intel Xeon 5400 Processors
• Intel Xeon 5500 Processors, which are manufactured using 45 nanometer technology for dual-socket computers, and consist of dual-core and quad-core processors.
• Intel Xeon 5600 Processors, which are manufactured using 32 nanometer technology for dual-socket computers and consist of dual-core, quad-core and hex-core processors.

Intel Xeon 6000 Processor Series, which consists only of Intel Xeon 6500 Processors, which are manufactured with 45nm technology for dual-socket computers and consist of quad-core, hex-core and oct-core processors.

Intel Xeon 7500 Processor Series, which consists of:

• Intel Xeon 7100 Processors
• Intel Xeon 7200 Processors
• Intel Xeon 7300 Processors
• Intel Xeon 7400 Processors, which consist of quad-core and hex-core processors manufactured using 45 nanometer technlogy.
• Intel Xeon 7500 Processors, which are designed for computer systems with 2 to 256 processor sockets, and have up to eight cores each running at a maximum frequency of 2.666GHz, and are equipped with caches ranging in size 8MB to 24MB.

But AMD is still actively competing with, and has in someways (such as processor core count) surpassed, Intel with the following products

1. AMD Opteron 6000 Processor Series, which consists of processors which are designed for dual-socket and quad-socket servers, with 12MB L3 caches, either eight or twelve cores each, and frequencies ranging from 1.7GHz to 2.4GHz. The AMD Opteron 6000 Processor Series, which currently consists only of the Opteron 6100 line of processors, supports up to twelve DIMMs per CPU in four channels.
2. AMD Opteron 4000 Processor Series, which consists of processors which are designed for single-socket and dual-socket servers, with 12MB L3 caches, either eight or twelve cores each, and frequencies ranging from 1.7GHz to 2.8GHz. Each AMD Opteron 4000 Series processor supports up to six DIMMs of DDR3 1333MHz RAM in two channels.

By the way, I also changed the title of your question from "has AMD decisively lost against Intel?" to "Intel vs AMD: Has Intel achieved a decisive victory?". Rocketshiporion

Not sure what was wrong with the original title....--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 04:52, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

And you're supposed to be a linguist? Active sentences are less confusing that passive sentences. We expect the subject to perform an action, not the action to be performed on the subject! Objects should be placed in the predicate! Also, the word against implies that losing is something performed on Intel. Therefore, the current wording is less ambiguous.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 06:32, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Man, the folks from Language Log are gonna kill you; there's no passive voice in the original title. Heck, this usage of "lose" isn't even transitive; you need to add a direct object to make a passive construction: "Has the battle been lost by AMD?", which is awkward because "battle" is unnecessary. Paul (Stansifer) 13:48, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I've asked Rocketshiporion on his or her talk page to not change any more section titles, per our recent week-long debate. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:18, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

This is just idle speculation, but AMD's initial success at the high end was made possible by two huge blunders on Intel's part, NetBurst and Itanium. It isn't normal for Intel to screw up that badly, and AMD has a hard time competing with Intel's R&D budget when Intel isn't shooting itself in the foot. -- BenRG (talk) 04:35, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

The Intel NetBurst architecture wasn't a complete screw-up; the NetBurst microarchitecture evolved (together with the Banias/P6M architecture) into the Core and Penryn architectures, which have more recently evolved into the new Nehalem architecture. Itanium was more of a disaster; Itanium processors were always single-core or dual-core and manufactured using 90 nanometer technology, and only recently has the new Itanium 9300 line of dual-core and quad-core processors come out. But even then, the top-of-the-line Intel Itanium 9350 Processor; has four-cores and a 24MB L3 cache, runs at 1.73GHz, and consumes a whopping 185W of power. Compare this to the Intel Xeon X7560 Processor; which has the same amount of cache memory, double the number of cores, runs at 2.26GHz, and consumes 130W of power. IMHO, I don't know why anyone would want to use Intel Itanium 9000 processors instead of Intel Xeon 7000 processors; they can both be used in systems which scale to dozens of processors. Rocketshiporion 15:20, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

HP-UX doesn't run on x86. But don't ask me why anyone would want to use HP-UX. 98.226.122.10 (talk) 23:32, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Colorado will not load on Internet Explore 8, but other articles will

I already asked the help desk, Wifione suggest I come here/try Google Chrome, It works on Google Chrome. My Internet Connection is fine for all other Wikipedia articles/general websites

For Internet Explorer: 8.0.6001.18702

For MSN 09: 9.60.0053.2200

Computer: Compaq Pesario

operating system: Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 5.1: Service Pack 3 BionicWilliam (talk) 08:23, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

At 110 KB long, the Colorado article is quite long and does take longer than usual to load, but otherwise it works fine on my on my Windows Vista/IE 8 laptop. There have been no changes to the article in the last couple of days, so I suggest you check your PC for malware or rogue IE 8 addins that could cause it to fail to load the page. Do you get an error message, perhaps in thesystem event logs? Astronaut (talk) 11:16, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

It is not the article length that makes it quite a burden on the browser, it is the total download size, I would imagine. Total, with all of the images and etc., the page is 1.2MB in size. That puts it kind of on the heavy end of the spectrum. Most long articles seem to be generally around 400KB by comparison. United States of America is about the same size. I suspect it is just because there are a lot of images on the Colorado page. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:44, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I get "This program cannot display the webpage" messege, and I've tried going on IE with no add-ons through my system tools and still doesn't work. I just download a new Webroot Antvirus with Spy Sweeper update a couple days ago. I removed Trend Micro Antivirus from Computer after a day or to since on of them was freezing my computer a lot. I've also not had any new add-on's for IE and Colorado Article was fine a month ago. BionicWilliam (talk) 06:58, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm running IE version 8.0.6001.18928, and although the article took a little longer to load than most articles or other pages do, it didn't have any problems. Have you encountered this with any other very long pages? WP:MPS is 281 KB long, and it has tons of links and other things besides simply text; it takes about as long to load as the Colorado article does. Nyttend (talk) 02:34, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

WP:MPS loads, United States Loads; so no I haven't encountered it. BionicWilliam (talk) 03:45, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

We have a definite issue here - it's very slow to load in firefox as is Texas. I will do some experiments with other states. Exxolon (talk) 19:26, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmm Texas was only slow on first load, assume some caching happened. Still not sure why Colorado is still slow. Exxolon (talk) 19:28, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Colorado doesn't try to load at all for me, it go's right to "This program cannot display the webpage" BionicWilliam (talk) 04:32, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

News Flash, Colorado just loaded for me :O :D, I mean wierd I didn't do anything abnormal. Thanks for all of guys help/suggestions BionicWilliam (talk) 04:38, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

An edit removed some category related stuff - this seems to have fixed the issue. Exxolon (talk) 12:47, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Finding a MAC Code/wireless dongles/uninstalling browsers

Hello, here are my latest computing problems, sorry to be a nusisance but these are causing me a lot of annoyance.

I have recently moved house and want to set up broadband (ADSL), however several new ISPs websites have told me that there is already broadband on my phone line so they need a MAC code from my previous broadband provider before they can do anything. There is plenty of advice on this online, with numerous websites telling me to contact my previous provider, however I don't have a clue who the provider is so I can't contact them and in any case, any contract would not be in my name and I'm not sure they'd be willing to just dish out the MAC code to somebody who is not authorised.

Is there a way of analysing the phone line to find out who 'owns' it - or can I get round the issue of having to have a MAC code some other way? Cable broadband is one option but not particularly cheap, or alternatively, mobile phone network broadband. I do have a '3' mobile USB dongle but it keeps disconnecting when used on my laptop (it works fine on my PC so I think the problem is related to Windoze).

That brings me onto my next question - why does the '3' dongle keep disconnecting when used on my laptop? The problem is extremely annoying and goes like this: I load up the '3Connect' software and once the USB modem status says 'Ready to connect', I click connect. It works OK and the status says 'Connected' for about a minute then the connection drops out. I go back to '3Connect' and it says 'Ready to connect' so I click connect again and it comes up with an error message that there is a problem connecting and would you like to try again. Clicking OK results in the same message and this error is fatal, in that the only way of connecting again is to reboot the laptop, when I can use it again for a minute before experiencing the same problem. It works fine on my desktop PC, it rarely disconnects and if it does, I can reconnect without having to reboot. I am therefore pretty convinced that it is a problem with the laptop and not the dongle or the mobile phone network these things use (GSM or whatever it is). It is also not a problem with the location, as if I use the laptop in the same room as the PC it won't work.

Both machines have Windows XP, SP2, although both are long overdue a rebuild, which I am dreading as there is so much stuff to load (on the desktop PC at least). I would very much like to ditch Windoze on the laptop as I can survive without Windoze-dependent software on that as long as my desktop still has Windoze. However, will the '3' mobile broadband dongle work with Linux (Ubuntu being my preferred choice)? Has anyone had any experience of using these things with alternative OSs? I don't think the 3Connect propriatery software would work so it would need some kind of generic driver or app.

Next question, are there any significant disadvantages of using mobile broadband over fixed line/ADSL broadband? I think the 3 dongle costs about £10 per Gb but it is pay-as-you-go and I haven't needed to top it up yet so I don't need that much allowance, really just Facebook and general email/browsing, although I sometimes use Youtube a bit to watch music videos (these are usually pretty low res) and I also use Spotify sometimes for listening to streamed music.

Finally, there seems to be some kind of bizarre conspiracy against other browsers on my desktop PC. I used to have Firefox, Safari and my browser of choice, Chrome all installed and working OK on this. However, in the last couple of weeks, something has deleted all the program files. There is no trace of them in C:\Program Files although the Desktop, Quick Launch and Start Menu shortcuts are still there, clicking them brings up a message that it can't find the folders. I am not surprised, as they have been deleted (and not in the Recycle Bin). So, I went to the Google website and attempted to install Chrome, apparantly it only takes a few minutes, and on my laptop, it did (I was using a public WiFi network to download it). On my PC, it downloads the installer and then says 'Installing', with one of those silly progress bars that fill up and then empty again (giving no actual indication of progress) and it never completes. The same goes if I try and install Safari or FireFox. Now this sounds to me like a virus but I did a full scan using my AVG antivirus and nothing was found. I know you are probably going to suggest rebuilding it but that is a last resort and in any case, it is perplexing why these browsers have been removed. Internet Explorer still works but I would rather use something else.

Anyway, thanks in advance for any answers you have and sorry about the long post, I need somewhere to moan about my computer problems, otherwise I will end up throwing them out the window!!! GaryReggae (talk) 08:43, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Forgot to mention, the mobile broadband dongle mentioned is a ZTE MF112.GaryReggae (talk) 08:49, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I assume you are in the UK. If you can use the internet from home, then you can do a whois inquiry on the IP address. If not, you will have to pursuade BT to tell you the ISP currently occupying your line. When I called BT just a couple of minutes ago, they suggested they would need your phone number or postcode to "do checks on your line" which would tell them the ISP. In theory, you can then call the ISP to get them to issue the MAC code. However, I have an awful suspicion you will repeatedly come up against the "we won't talk to anyone but the account holder" line used by so many organisations these days (when my sister's ISP switch was taking a long while, I ended up pretending to be my brother-in-law so they would talk to me!). An easier way might be to contact your solicitor (if you have bought) or the letting agent (if you are renting) to get them to tell you the name of the previous occupant and perhaps a forwarding phone number. Then you can call the previous occupant and get them to press for their internet to be disconnected (after all, they're probably still paying for it). Astronaut (talk) 14:34, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

You do not actually need to use the 3 Connect software on windows (though it does need to be installed in order for the drivers to be available). You can connect/disconnect using windows built-in networking (on Vista, just right click on the network icon and connect to 1.3G, not sure where it is on XP though). I found this rather more convenient than the 3 Connect bloatware. If you're familiar with programming you can use the RAS functions to handle the connection. I have found Three to been very reliable this last year, though I had a lot of problems previously which I put down the the local cell tower being overloaded. You could try moving the laptop to see if you can get a better signal, or try a USB extension cable. Price-wise I'm using their 12GB/12 month package (cost £80 inclusive of dongle) which is very good value for money if you're a light user (I generally browse without images which is easy to toggle on/off on Opera)

The dongle will work fine on Ubuntu (nothing to install). You just need to right-click on the network icon (top line, right), Edit Connections, Mobile Broadband, then fill in the provider deails. I did have some problems with DNS and had to manually configure /etc/resolv.conf (added nameserver 141.1.1.1) but as I was only doing a test with the LiveCD I never followed it up. The ubuntu forums are very helpful though. Good luck. Kram (talk) 20:49, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

On disadvantages, the main one is reliability which is very dependent on your location (just go looking in the forums for examples of woeful experiences, though bear in mind that satisfied users don't tend to post). The other niggle is data allocation expiry (on Three pay-as-you-go, if you top up with 1GB it only lasts a month, and does not roll over), which is why the 12 month pay-as-you-go package was so attractive (and its much cheaper than getting a landline installed). Another issue is over-restrictive nanny filters used by some providers (Vodafone, are you listening?). You can supposedly get the filter turned off, though I didn't bother (I only got the Vodafone dongle as a backup for the occasions that Three was unavailable, and it had an attractive non-expiring data allocation (provided you connected at least once every 6 months), sadly no longer available on new dongles). BTW I have stayed clear of Contract packages as I don't fancy getting burned by over-usage charges, though they may be appropriate for some users. And a plug for NetWorx by SoftPerfect (google it) which is a great (free) bandwidth usage monitoring tool. PS Sorry for the slight rant! PPS I recall seeing some mention of USB power issues with 3G dongles on laptops, so you could try (borrow?) an externally powered USB hub to see if it helps. Kram (talk) 21:23, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies folks. No luck with the MAC Code yet but I have sent an complaint to BT along the lines of I set up a new contract with them for a phone line and it is unacceptable that I cannot use it for broadband. I optimistically asked them to either just disconnect whatever the previous person had on it (as its nothing to do with me!) or to give me a new line that does work properly. No answer yet but I have a complaint number now so can complain further if they ignore it! The cheeky so-and-so's want to increase my line rental as well, not until they sort out the problems!!!

On a more positive note, I am writing this from my laptop using the '3' mobile broadband dongle. It works fine now I have installed Ubuntu, as you said, just a case of following a simple wizard. I was surprised how easy it was to get it working, I didn't even need any settings except for what network it is on but Ubuntu seems to have presets for those. Now I have this up and running I am not in such a hurry to get BT moving. I do agree about the data allowance expiry on the mobile broadband dongles, I bought a dongle with 3Gb allowance in early June and haven't used all that much yet (mind you, downloading that 700Mb Ubuntu installer will have helped me get my money's worth! Thanks again, GaryReggae (talk) 17:43, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Recovering data from a bad latptop harddisk

This hard drive has too many bad sectors and at some point windows did not start so i got rid of that laptop and retained the hard drive. I bought another laptop, it works well but would not boot from ultimate boot cd. This laptop has cdrw /dvd drive and i burned ultimate boot cd in a cdrw and it worked on the older laptop. Current laptop apparently wont boot from the old hard disk either - it shows windows boot menu with safe mode etc.

So I decided to boot from linux cd and copy data from old hard disk to a usb drive. Damn small linux boots but i dont see the hard drive or usb stick in the file manager - i looked in etc/ and also in dev/. So,I a clicked the green thing near hda1 or hda5 on the widget on lower right corner (does not belong to the file manager), but just could not find the drives.

My next attempt was use ubuntu, on booting it started to read the old hard drive and said "I/O error bad sector 3636657" or something along those lines. There are too many bad sectors so, it is still doing that. I don't know whether ubuntu will eventually start. But if it does start, i could easily find the drives in its file manager.

Another thing i could have done wrongs is that i have misplaced the jumper on the old hard drive. Current laptop has no jumper on its hard drive. I don't know if that causes any of the problem.Perhaps you could please give some suggestions on how to recover data. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.99.136.3 (talk) 10:17, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Puzzled why you dumped the old laptop but kept the dying hard drive. Most people dump the dying hard drive and install a new hard drive in the old laptop.

Anyway, recovering data from a dying hard drive can be difficult. I recently tried doing this, before eventually giving up when various Linux distributions consistantly refused to mount the drive any more. The drive had gone from making intermittant rattling noises to a constant noise like a meat grinder. I did have some luck in using Windows Recovery Console to rebuild the Master Boot Record and Partition Table and was then able to access the drive for a short while before it failed again - unfortunately the part I needed to access was hidden from Windows (in the system recovery area) and it was the restart with a Linux Distribution (to allow me to access that area) that broke it again.

As for jumper settings, if you are accessing the faulty drive through a USB port, I don't think the jumper settings matter. However, if you have mounted the faulty drive inside the case on the second connector on an IDE cable, the jumper setting does matter. Astronaut (talk) 11:31, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't know whether SpinRite would be able to fix the broken hard drive... Chevymontecarlo - alt 15:38, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I would second SpinRite, also take a look at Drive Savers, a send-away drive recovery service that I've had much success with. They are very expensive (upwards of $1000 per hard drive recovered), but very effective, so you'll have to weigh the value of your data --rocketrye12 ^{talk/contribs} 20:21, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Third SpinRite. However, running the hard drive through SpinRite could damage it further. So if the data is worth more then $1000 send it away to professionals. If it's not use SpinRite. --mboverload@ 04:21, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Lost XP file

When I boot up, I get a message saying 'Cannot find KBDMPI.DLL. Anyone know what this file does and how I can restore it? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.82.209 (talk) 17:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

If you had a system install disk with Windows XP on it, you could insert it into your computer's disc drive and I think there's an option to repair/maintain the OS I think. Anyway, the file should be on there, if it's a system file. Once you resolve things, I'd scan your computer for malware and other nasties, as it maybe have been caused by that. Chevymontecarlo - alt 15:36, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

There are 0 Google hits for this dll name: KBDMPI.DLL. This makes me suspect it isn't a core dependency of Windows but rather some other software program dll that has been installed on your machine. As Chevy mentioned, a restore using a system disk and a malware scan is probably the best option. --—Mitaphane _{Contribs | Talk} 19:27, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Safari

I have just downloaded Safari (web browser). I was bit excited when I read on the Wiki article that it is a "graphical" web browser. That filled my mind with dreams. I have always expected more than browsers can give us. Lately when I switched from IE to Firefox I was not disappointed - the spell-checking thing in itself is quite cool. So what more has Safari to offer ? Can I directly adjust colors etc. of my Wikipage or other pages ? What else it will do for me. Thanks -- Jon Ascton  (talk) 17:42, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

"Graphical" means that it is not "text-based" like Lynx (web browser). IE and Firefox are both graphical web browsers. -- kainaw™ 17:51, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I use primarily Safari on the Mac, Firefox on Linux. Safari is a bit "smoother" and fits better into the Apple ecosystem, but I think technically Firefox is as good or better, and it has a great plug-in engine. Don't expect too much. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:02, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

One thing that safari does that most other ones do not, is that it uses any color profiles that happen to be embedded in a picture...not all pics use them, but if they do, safari will render the pic better and more accurately. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.110.109.88 (talk) 02:37, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Slow Blender interface

I'm minding somebody's house for a week, and doing a bit of programming which involves some 3D models. Blender works fine for me at home, but on his (higher spec) PC, the interface is intolerably slow - there's a delay of about three seconds when selecting an object, pressing a button, opening a menu, and so on. (The actual rendering is very fast.) So I hunted through the processes and services to find some likely culprits, and stopped messenger, ad-aware (he is running avast, too, but I left that on), and some residual service left over from a previous Norton installation. Each time I got rid of one of these processes Blender seemed to perk up a bit, but after a few edits it was back to the incredibly slow interface; and this isn't with complicated models - even if I just have a couple of incredibly simple models with a few vertexes each, it's still like this. He has XP and a Radeon Xpress 200. The Blender version is 2.49. There is plenty of free memory and disk space. I'm on the verge of giving up, but: is there is any known common cause of a slow Blender interface? Wurstgeist (talk) 20:19, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
OK, some research tells me that this is because the Radeon R300 (the Xpress) had crappy drivers, and the Blender programmers were too stubborn to write a workaround, saying ATI should fix the drivers instead, and now ATI belongs to AMD and you can't get updates for these old drivers any more and nobody ever fixed anything. My only solution seems to be to start Blender's "game" every couple of minutes and then stop it again, which resets something or other in Blender's inner workings and stops it being slow for all of the next two minutes. Unless anyone has a better idea? Wurstgeist (talk) 00:57, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Do the poor soul a favour and get them a proper graphics card ;) (for those about to complain: my first ever graphics card was an Ati, specifically it had the Mach32 chip - it was dreadfuly painful to work on in the olden days of Win95; I then had a Matrox (G200? is that right?), and my next one was an Nvidia, as have been all my graphics cards since then; so this is not just speaking of one thing without knowing the other) --Ouro (blah blah) 08:55, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I have used both ATI and Nvidia graphics cards, both with their share of issues perhaps slightly more for ATI. I will continue to buy either depending on price, performance and features for my requirements. And I would argue you are speaking of one thing without knowing the other if your last experience with ATI was a Mach32. Realisticly any recent standalone graphics card is going to be far, far better then such an old IGP, be that IGP ATI or Nvidia Nil Einne (talk) 13:41, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Nil Einne, please accept my apology. Perhaps I had gone a bit too far. In any case, I stick to Nvidia because they satisfy my needs and I had gotten used to them I must say. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:43, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried finding the most up to date version of the graphics card drivers? Never mind, I see the problem with that! Sorry about the lack of a better idea. Ah, open source. Great for some things, horrible for others — like when the programmers feel that the problem is "someone else's fault" and refuse to make workarounds. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:45, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried simply disabling hardware acceleration? If you're not sure how [10] has a hackish method that used to work. [11] also has a suggestion of a method that may keep some hardware acceleration Nil Einne (talk) 14:06, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

August 6

3D GPS or similar

I've always wanted a device one can carry around (here in the UK) say a distance of a few miles, and have it record at least specific points on the route. It would give you your displacement from a given point in three dimensions, when you pressed a button on it. The problem is I have a feeling these will be designed for companies that can, and do, invest a lot of time and money surveying ground, and would therefore be prohibitively expensive. It's only an interest of mine, so I could do with one on an absolute shoestring - and the spec's not too high I hope. Thanks. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 14:54, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Most GPS that can save a log can also save elevation data. The question is, what do you want to do with the results? If you want to graph them, you might want to look at GIS software. Nimur (talk) 16:17, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

A quick web search turned up GPS Visualizer, a free-to-use online tool. You can also find loads of products that can save logs: a web-search for "gps logger" returns numerous products. Verify that the one you buy can save elevation. Nimur (talk) 16:19, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Laptop's battery behaves strangely and reviving it

I recently bought a 6 year old laptop, and the seller said that it hold charge only for a minute. He is indeed right, when the green light is on , indicating the battery is full, it retain charge only for a minute. Strange thing is, evne when plugged in, the green light turns to orange, meaning battery is not full and starts charging again. In other words, it somehow loses charge even when powered and the laptop is on use. It is a lithium ion battery and i read that freezing it could revive it, im thinking i can put it in the freezer in the coldest temperature for a day.

Do I have to wait till it dies or can i freeze it right away?. should it be completely drained before i freeze it?. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.99.136.3 (talk) 15:29, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Normally, I thought freezing was only supposed to work temporarily for failing hard drives, so be careful you haven't got the two mixed up. Chevymontecarlo - alt 15:34, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Those batteries are too far gone for any "tricks" to work. Replacement is your only option. Six year old Li batteries are ancient, particularly if they worked daily. Roger (talk) 17:42, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, probably. Chevymontecarlo - alt 09:53, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

html

On Windows, when you delete a html file it automatically deletes it's resource folder for css and images etc. How does Windows know to delete this, and is there away way to stop it? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 15:40, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Rename the folder or the html file. Sandman30s (talk) 16:32, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this question, 82.43. I was sure you were totally wrong about the symptom you asked about, but tested it myself and am astounded that XP indeed decides that it has the authority to go and delete a whole folder that I never told it to delete. My faith in somebody is shaken. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:51, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

{ Windows explorer | Tools | Folder options | View |Managing pairs of Web pages and folders } = "Show both parts and manage individually". -- SGBailey (talk) 21:19, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

All versions of "Windows" do this by default (also when moving files). Microsoft calls the associated collection of files a thicket. Dbfirs 08:44, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

XP DLLs

Is there anywhere a list of all these damn dlls and what they do?--88.104.82.31 (talk) 18:53, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, this was as close to something as I could find, but elsewhere on the Web I would say yes, probably, although I'm not sure exactly where. Chevymontecarlo 19:29, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

This site Win DLL might be a good start for at least a list, but what they do may be more difficult. Searching each one individually, though, would yield a lot of information. --rocketrye12 ^{talk/contribs} 20:24, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Upgrading graphics card

Alright guys, I have a Dell Latitude 620 laptop. And the graphics rendering is so slow it's hideous: even Hulu takes up my full processor (games are bad enough I can't play either). is there any way to upgrade one's graphics card on a laptop? Any recommendations? Oh and it looks like I do have a slot open on the left, which I assume is PCMIA or whatever it's called. Magog the Ogre (talk) 18:59, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Most laptops do not have upgradeable graphics cards, and assuming you're talking about the Dell Latitude D620, your laptop is no exception. Here is the service manual for the D620, which discusses how to install a hard disk, DVD drive, memory, wireless LAN card ... but it appears the graphics chipset is on the motherboard and there's no option to add a different one. Your PCMCIA slot lacks the high bandwidth necessary to hook up a graphics card — some manufacturers make PCMCIA graphics cards, to my surprise; but I'm sure the performance is horrible. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:12, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Could the performance possibly any worse than what I have right now? Magog the Ogre (talk) 20:21, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Almost certainly. The PCMCIA card I found uses a chipset from Trident (?!) meaning it's a last ditch solution for people who require a second monitor at any (performance) cost. By the way, run "dxdiag" to see what sort of chipset you have — the above link about the D620 was slightly confusing to me but seemed to be stating that Dell offers one configuration with an Intel graphics chipset and a different configuration with an NVidia chipset. You should of course make sure you have the latest graphics driver for this chipset, though since you're a gamer I have taken it for granted that you've already done that. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:59, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Hulu's performance might not be limited by the graphics card; decoding video is traditionally a CPU task. Apparently Flash player does have the ability to offload to the graphics card, but I don't think it's necessary; watching a Hulu video on my machine took up 12% of one CPU when I tried it. But playing video involves a lot of data being schlepped around, and not having enough RAM can make things super slow (and the process of swapping can peg the CPU). When you're trying to watch video, is switching back and forth between applications slow? Paul (Stansifer) 00:41, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

(Struck out an argument which, on retrospect, was completely bogus, since my computer has a graphics card, too. But I still suspect that Hulu is way more likely to run into a space limitation than a raw computational power limitation. Paul (Stansifer) 01:25, 7 August 2010 (UTC))

I am in no way a "gamer", but it would sure be nice to be able to... play some games. Actually I'm using Ubuntu, so I can't run dxdiag. But I'll give you a dump of lspci, which displays all of my controllers:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 3 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 01)
03:01.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ601/6912/711E0 CardBus/SmartCardBus Controller (rev 40)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5752 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection (rev 02)

I also don't have a clue if my drivers are up-to-date; normally Ubuntu's software center handles that automatically though. Magog the Ogre (talk) 03:26, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

So you've got the version with the Intel graphics chipset; from what I can gather from the literature linked above, your laptop could be configured at the factory with an NVidia graphics chipset, probably superior; you might want to call Dell and ask if there is any way to upgrade your graphics to the NVidia variant (or to upgrade your graphics hardware in any way). But I think it's a dead end, unfortunately. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:37, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks so much, your help is great appreciated. Magog the Ogre (talk) 22:53, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

How do I upload a photo to a page I just submitted

I recently created a new wiki page, Fariborz Maseeh. I'd like to include a photo of him. How do I do that?Kfmwork (talk) 22:00, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

See Help:Files for instructions on adding images. I suggest you address the concerns that have been raised on the article (the notices that have been added to the top) first, though. They are more important. If you don't add some references that confirm the subject is notable, the page will probably get deleted (you don't need much - just a newspaper article about him is fine). --Tango (talk) 23:58, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

August 7

Nested Virtualization

Hi.

   I'm wondering whether it is possible to run Virtual Machines inside another Virtual Machine, i.e. is it possible to install and run a hypervisor (such as Hyper-V, Xen, etc.) inside a Virtual Machine in order to further virtualize that Virtual Machine's hardware (which is itself of course virtualized)? This is purely a theoretical question for personal interest.

Rocketshiporion Monday 07-August-2010, 10:30am (GMT)

Yes, that is possible. IIRC, you can run VMware ESXi inside VMware Workstation (assuming the host system fulfills the requirements to run ESXi natively - i.e. 64-bit CPU, 64-bit host OS, and at least 2 GB RAM available for the guest), and I believe I saw a screenshot somewhere of VMware running inside a VirtualBox. Some combinations are blocked by the manufacturer, though. For example, you cannot run VMware Server on a Linux host that is actually a guest inside a VMware Workstation installation - you can install the software, but it will refuse to run in an already virtualized environment. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 11:11, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Virtual machines cannot normally be nested using the same hypervisor: for example, you can't run Citrix on both the physical host machine and on virtual machines hosted on the physical host machine. So you would need two different hypervisors, so that you could alternate them between nesting levels, in order to avoid this problem. I think the only exception to this is Microsoft's Hyper-V, which permits direct nesting up to eight levels. Note though that Microsoft's Hyper-V is only available in their Windows Server 2008 operating-systems, and none of those are particularly cheap. A particularly good hypervisor is Xen Hypervisor. But why do want to nest virtual machines? It's a lot easier and less complicated to just keep all of the virtual machines at the root of the physical host machine, unless of course you're running one of those Microsoft hypervisor operating systems which limit the number of virtual machines you're allowed to run on your physical host machine to either one or four virtual machines. Elspetheastman (talk) 13:01, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

<squeeze>Nesting hypervisors can make sense if you want to try out a large-scale deployment without having sufficient test hardware, and don't want to run your experiments on your production hardware. So you could fire up VMware Workstation on a Windows 7 (or possibly W2K8, not sure if Workstation will install on that) 64-Bit edition or a recent 64-Bit Linux with sufficient RAM and disk space, run one or two instances of ESXi, and a couple of virtual servers simulating your production environment, then move them one by one to the ESXi instances to see if everything works as planned. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 13:45, 7 August 2010 (UTC)</squeeze>

I stated in my original post that "this is purely a theoretical question for personal interest"; and I'm not actually intending to nest any virtual machines. In addition, Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor is available separately from Windows Server 2008, as a standalone hypervisor named Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, which is available for download completely free-of-charge. Rocketshiporion Monday 7-August-2010, 1:10pm (GMT)

Yes, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is provided for free, but it's useless on its own - you need Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager in order to manage any virtual machines which you host on a server running Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager is not free - in fact, its licensing model is too complicated for most people (myself included) to figure out. Elspetheastman (talk) 13:18, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, which is available as a free download, can be managed remotely from any computer running on Windows 7 by using Windows 7 Remote Server Administration Tools, which is also available as a free download. The hyperlink which you have provided for Xen Hypervisor does not lead to any webpage, but instead causes a dialog box to appear asking whether I would like to save an .iso image named livecd-xen-3.2-0.8.2-amd64.iso located at the URL http://www.xen.org/download/LiveCD/livecd-xen-3.2-0.8.2-amd64.iso to my computer. Rocketshiporion Monday 7-August-2010, 1:30pm (GMT)

RAID 6+5

Hi.

I am curious about whether a RAID span of the form RAID 6+5 exists. By RAID 6+5, I mean a single-parity span of dual-parity arrays, in which the capacity of the span conforms to the following equation.

t = (m-1)*(n-2)*d, where:

• m = number of arrays in span
• n = number of disks per array
• t = total capacity of span
• d = individual capacity of each disk

This is a theoretical question for personal interest. Rocketshiporion

Copying External Hard Disk Drives in OS X

Are there any system tools in OS X for duplicating external hard disks? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.220.46.47 (talk) 16:36, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean disk cloning, or something like RAID striping? --Mr.98 (talk) 18:09, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Disk cloning —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.220.46.47 (talk) 21:07, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Disk Utility can make and burn disk images (you'd make an image of one disk, then burn it to the other). I've used GParted to good effect with OS X drives, after putting it on a bootable disk. There are proprietary tools for managing disk cloning more regularly (like CopyCatX or SuperDuper), but I haven't used them, personally. I think I used CarbonCopyCloner once to good effect. It kind of depends exactly what you want it for — if it's for a one-time sort of thing, it might be easier to use something like GParted or even Disk Utility. If it is for regular backups, one of the ones that works more straightforwardly with the Mac GUI might be more sensible. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:18, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I was thinking of something more along the lines of a unix utility that's built in to OS X. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.220.46.47 (talk) 21:44, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

How about dd (Unix) ? Unilynx (talk) 22:12, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Computers infected with malicious software/files

Would there be any way to measure this or would it just be too difficult? Have there ever been any estimates as to how many computers in the world that are infected? Chevymontecarlo 19:27, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Here is an interesting compilation from trend micro on what they've monitored; some statistical analysis could reveal more accurate world-wide numbers. Also here is another and another. --rocketrye12 ^{talk/contribs} 20:29, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Excellent finds. Thanks a lot. Chevymontecarlo 21:55, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia animation thumbnail inconsistency

How come the thumbnail of first animation in the gallery here: Front crawl#Ergonomics is animated, while the thumbnails for the second and third are not? --71.141.115.116 (talk) 21:41, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

There is likely to be a problem with the other two, as they appear to be supposed to be moving. It might be the result of an error caused by a previous editor who was trying to improve the article, or there's the less likely reason that the other two are not supposed to move. Chevymontecarlo 21:57, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Most likely the mediawiki software didn't thumbnail the gifs properly. There might be a way to purge the cache and force a rethumbnailing. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 10:51, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

August 8

Adobe Flash Player

Am I the only one to experience Flash player crashing on Firefox (v.6.8) while browsing through IMDB? I have the latest version of Flash, it never happened with previous versions, and it doesn't happen with other websites or browsers. 24.189.87.160 (talk) 04:29, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I just visited IMDB in Firefox 3.6.8 with Flash Player 10.1 and didn't experience any issues, even with Adblock Plus and NoScript disabled. Do you have Adblock Plus, by the way? It's a plugin for Firefox that blocks all the flash ads you don't want, but keeps the flash video players and such that you do want. Maybe a flash ad is causing the issue for you, even though the site works great for me.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 05:44, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Tried it without AdBlock, the crashes happened less frequently, but they happened nonetheless. 24.189.87.160 (talk) 09:49, 8 August 2010 (UTC)