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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)

I think you're looking for the hdiutil command (see its man page at Apple Developer). The create verb has an option for using a source folder or volume. This will not be a strict clove (files will probably be defragged like a normal copy, for instance). You might also check out the diskutil command, though that seems less appropriate. --Ludwigs2 20:43, 8 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)

I've noticed that in general, over the last few months most animated GIFs no longer thumbnail correctly on Wikipedia. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:04, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

It is size related. Thumbnailed animated large GIFs no longer animate. The intent is apparently that "somebody" is going to go through and change them all to be in a video format. Here is a Village Pump Technical thread in which I complained about this and got some informational links about why the decision was reached and a workaround or two. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:12, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

What's funny is that sometimes it seems to go just fine as a thumbnail. See at right. Maybe it is a cache thing with 120px image in that case. Personally I would prefer some kind of Javascript solution rather than a conversion to a "movie" format, which adds huge overhead and difficulty of reuse. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:09, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

And the "movie" format doesn't appear to be able to loop either, which is very important for many gifs 82.43.88.151 (talk) 08:23, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Eh? [12] [13] Nil Einne (talk) 12:32, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

But HTML5 is still years away. AJCham 12:46, 9 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)

HP 564 Refill Ink

Hello. Can the HP 564 cartridge be refilled with the same refill ink as the HP 27? Does the refill ink for HP 564 have to be special since my printer (HP Photosmart C309g) uses thermal jet? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 14:21, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Connecting E-Mail with iPod Touch

School is just about to start, and as I sit down to link my iPod touch to my new e-mail address (we had linked with hotmail, and have transfered to Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access). Last year I had no problem browsing a bit and finding the incoming and outgoing server names, but this year I can't seem to get it right. I pull up the screen on Web Access, and it specifically says "Outlook Web Access host name: exch2k7@lmc.edu and the host address as https://exch2k7@lmc.edu/owa. So, I typed this in, typed in my username and password, and it wouldn't verify, with SSL or without. So, basically, what am I doing wrong? I can probably give you more information if needed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.82.213.44 (talk) 19:30, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

You don't need to use OWA - use the iPod Touch's email client. Exchange has an IMAP service (which I think is installed by default) and the iPod's built-in email client does IMAP pretty well. You use the same server name, client name, and password as you've been given to use with OWA, except you're configuring the IMAP and SMPT features instead. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:02, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't have an Exchange account to hand to test this, but if memory serves you have to give your full email address as the login name - e.g. jenny_smith_1980@lmc.edu, not just jenny_smith_1980 -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:09, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Problem solved! Could anyone be willing to help with the settings for the old hotmail? It was registered @email.lmc.edu, rather than the new @lmc.edu. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.82.213.44 (talk) 20:44, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Disabling Your NAT (Network Address Translation) firewall. Pros and cons

I have been playing Halo 3 online and when i start the matchmaking it says "WARNING! Your NAT type is not open" and something els about you wont be able to play certain games with certain people.. I checked the default IP address for my router (NETGEAR Wireless ADSL Firewall Router DG834GSP) and it ses my NAT is enabled. There also was an option to Disable the NAT's firewall and i was wandering if i did disable the firewall would it fix the problem and/or would it also put my computer and/or xbox 360 at risk?122.107.18.7 (talk) 23:54, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if it would fix the problem, but disabling the firewall wouldn't put your computer at risk. Windows XP and later includes a firewall of its own. Also, NAT works by translating a single public IP address to multiple private IP addresses. In other words, your ISP only gave you one IP address, but you have more than one computer, so you need NAT to make up IP addresses that only work in your LAN and then route them through the public IP. So, they can't just attack your single public IP address out of the blue because multiple computers share it. The router wouldn't know where to send any malicious packets addressed to it unless those packets are a part of a communication session that you had already set up on your own.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 00:01, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

This issue, as I understand it, is not so much that there is a firewall, but that you do not have the router configured to direct the game packets to the Xbox correctly. To fix this you need to set up what is called "port forwarding". There are lots of instructions explaining how to do this, and the Netgear site explains this a bit further. Basically what you need to find out is 1. the IP of your Xbox, 2. the ports that need to be forwarded to the Xbox, and your router should have a place to put all this in. I say this as someone without an Xbox, but I've set up port forwarding for torrents and it is basically the same thing. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:36, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I actually don't think you can disable the NAT on those routers, at least not on one I have. What you would disable is the SPI (stateful packet inspection). Unless you had multiple IPs from the ISP, which is unlikely, you need NAT to have multiple devices on the one IP.

You should also see if Upnp is enabled on your router. I'd be surprised if Xbox didn't use that to automatically open up those ports, saving you from having to do it manually. Shadowjams (talk) 10:19, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Mobile phone apps

Hi. I have a few questions that I'm hoping someone can help with. I am mostly interested in the situation in the UK but any general info would be welcomed too. Assume complete ignorance on my part.

1. Do mobile phone "apps" that need to communicate with the outside world (e.g. weather forecast, news, social networking, etc.) all use the Internet, or do they also utilise the traditional phone network? Or is it now the case that there really isn't any difference?

2. Such "apps" appear to often provide functionality that on a PC would be accessed via a web browser, so that most people do not need to have dozens of small specialised pieces of software on their PCs with each one accessing a different service. Why is the mobile phone model different? Is it anything to do with the difficulty of implementing a general-purpose browser for such a small screen?

3. If a charge is made, then how are these services typically charged for? Are there mechanisms whereby access to a particular Internet service is automatically charged to one's phone bill, like when one makes a premium-rate phone call? Or are payments made separately using the same methods as one would use with PC-based access to such services?

TIA... 86.135.171.33 (talk) 01:02, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Well: 1:These apps will generally use the Internet, not the phone network. I'd imagine that the phone network cannot send information because of lack of bandwith. 2: I don't think so, it's called giving people more functionality and raising brand power. Also they can put ads on their apps. 3: That would depend on the moblie provider.Sir Stupidity (talk) 03:09, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Regarding 3, do you know for sure that there definitely are some mobile providers that use this kind of charging system (even if others don't), or are you just speculating that some might? 86.135.171.33 (talk) 03:14, 9 August 2010 (UTC).

Yes, they use the mobile phone network. How would they connect to the internet without it? (unless you're using WiFi at home or a coffee shop). --mboverload@ 04:16, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

1-They use the mobile phone network to connect to the internet.

2-Purpose-built native apps run much faster on a low-powered device like a phone. Apple tried to make developers build apps via the web but they sucked in general.

3-A charge is made to your iTunes store account (various payment methods). I don't know how Android (Google) phones work with their store. --mboverload@ 04:33, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

When you ask about "the traditional phone network" I assume that you were not thinking of landlines (the most traditional of phone connections). Yes, mboverload's answers are correct, of course, but Sir Stupidity is correct in stating that there are bandwidth issues in accessing the internet over mobile networks, and this is a serious problem with mobile devices in some rural areas. Dbfirs 07:26, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

On the question of how the apps get their data - neither Sir Stupidity nor mboverload's answers are quite accurate. The "traditional" mobile phone network (which is still generally used for mobile calls, texting, etc., has a very low bandwidth and would not be much use for the apps. Mobile phone operators have built higher bandwidth data networks (either 3G or HSDPA) to carry data over the air interface. The data is then carried over an upgraded "phone network" before typically being forwarded to the internet. To summarise - mobile data is carried over upgraded mobile data networks and then the internet. --Phil Holmes (talk) 07:48, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I wondered if I should mention this, but in some areas there seems to be slow internet access in places where the companies claim that they have not upgraded. Is internet data impossible over an old-fashioned plain mobile phone network? Dbfirs 12:02, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

It is possible on 2+G networks, using for example GPRS or EDGE. Let's not forget the first iPhone didn't even have 3G (despite it being available in most smart phones of the era). Note that depending on the network and phone, 3G may be used for the voice and SMS where available, it will definitely usually be used for MMS. From the apps POV, where it uses GPRS/EDGE or UMTS/HSDPA should usually be transparent, it will use whatever the phone is connected with and the phone will usually connect with the highest speed network available, falling back as necessary, unless of course you manually disable one for whatever reason (I know someone with a 3G phone who didn't use WAP or the internet and disabled 3G because they found it reduced battery life).

Note that many countries still lack widespread 3G networks, some of them may not have them at all. The iPhone 3G & 3GS also were only tri-band so may not be able to use the 3G network even if it is available in some countries, in NZ for example the iPhone is sold by Vodafone who use 900mhz for much of their coverage outside major urban locations. In fact, we are somewhat of a rarity in having 900mhz and 850mhz used for differing 3G network I believe, it's not uncommon in Europe that only 900mhz is used.

I used to use the internet on my Panasonic VS2, one of the key things stopping me was the price not the speed, this was GPRS only (even if it was EDGE, Vodafone NZ doesn't support that). If you are downloading MP3s or regularly browsing the internet or visiting the reference desk or whatever then GPRS and probably even EDGE is going to be painfully slow, but for just visiting news sites and stuff, it's IMHO acceptable particularly if you use wap sites or proxies which reduce the images and stuff. Similarly when it comes to apps, it depends on what they do. If they just submit high scores online then I'm sure you'll be fine with GPRS or EDGE, if they upload high res photos every minutes, then that'll likely be unbearable.

Nil Einne (talk) 12:08, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

merging one image from multiple video frames

i've been doing a little experimenting on merging multiple similar frames into a video to make a better quality image, and i've seen something before on how to increase the resolution by averaging pixels or something like that, but i can't remember where it was. i've found various success with reducing noise and getting some more natural color off of dark video, but i'm just looking for any tips. i'm using gimp. thanks! 210.254.117.185 (talk) 03:42, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

And is there anything currently available that can approach the methods described here: [14] ? 210.254.117.185 (talk) 04:19, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Is it called a command-line interpreter, a command-line interface, a terminal editor or a shell?

The article on cmd.exe calls it a command-line interpreter. The article on Terminal.app calls it a terminal emulator. Windows PowerShell's first sentence has a link to command-line interface and shell (computing). The inconsistency is confusing me. Is there no single united term for these things? Should all these articles be merged or reorganized in some way?

No. They do not mean the same things. --85.77.181.105 (talk) 06:00, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

If the distinction isn't clear from reading the topics, then they're in need of work TEDickey (talk) 08:20, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

If I have this right, a terminal emulator can remote into a command-line interpreter, which uses a command-line interface. Unless the terminal emulator is a graphical one. From a Windows viewpoint anyway. Feel free to hack away at this ;) --mboverload@ 08:24, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

That sounds backwards. A terminal emulator can "contain" a "command-line interpreter". But command-line interpreters need not reside within a terminal emulator, since their functionality is much less than a terminal emulator. Even the Windows command-line interpreter uses only a small fraction of the functionality of the Windows command-window TEDickey (talk) 08:30, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Windows 7 Administrator Problem

Hi, I was recently getting annoyed with my flatmate installing random programs he found on the Internet on the computer we both use for work and such. So, I made a new account that was an Admin, then proceeded to make the other accounts standard users. Then, I made the silly mistake of editing the Registry to make the other account invisible on the logon screen. Now, when a UAC dialogue pops up, I can't click "Yes", or enter an Admin Username or Password. This means I can't edit the registry to fix the original problem! Help!

Thanks, 110.175.208.144 (talk) 13:48, 9 August 2010 (UTC)