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October 21

How to remove the HD?

From one of these...

...before disposal. Thanks, hydnjo (talk) 00:25, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I know this is not the point, but are you sure you don't want to try selling one of those? They're quite sought after. Chevymontecarlo 06:24, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried Googling "replace hard drive iMac G4"? There are quite a few tutorials. You need Torx #10 and #8 screwdrivers (which are non-standard unless you take Macs apart often, which I imagine you don't based on the question), but otherwise it looks pretty straightforward. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:50, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

It's possible to securely delete all the information off a hard drive before sale (or disposal or recycling). I looked at the Google cache of this (temporarily down?) page, and it has some options. It's also possible to use dd to copy /dev/random over the entire disk a couple times, which should be more than sufficient. You'd need a Linux live CD for PowerPC to do that, which shouldn't be hard to make. Paul (Stansifer) 18:21, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to all for your suggestions. hydnjo (talk) 22:36, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

C: Pointers to Pointers and other Pointer Issues

I'm really kind of confused with pointers in C. Let's say you malloc a blob of memory:

void * blob = malloc(sizeof(char *) + sizeof(int));

and you use the blob to hold two things like this: | a char * | integer value |

so blob would point to the memory adress of the beginning of the blob of malloc'd memory.

If you made a pointer to point to it:

void * pointToBob = bob;

Could you use bob and pointToBob interchangeably?

Or what if you had

void ** pointToBob = bob;

How could you used that?

I'm confused how you could possibly use a pointer to a pointer to change a value in the originally malloc'd blob. I'd appreciate any help with this problem and any sort of general explanations on the questions of pointers. I feel like I don't understand much more than "a pointer holds an adress to a place in memory". Thank you very much :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Legolas52 (talk • contribs) 00:58, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Am I safe in assuming that bob/Bob is everywhere a typo for blob/Blob? Assuming yes, the answer is that void * pointToBlob = blob; makes pointToBlob have the same type and value as blob. However, void ** pointToBlob = blob; will give you a compile warning, because a pointer to a pointer is not the same type as a pointer. But a more basic problem is that your malloc line is a thing that ought not to be done. In some systems, the "int" type must be aligned in a specific way in memory space, so it may not be possible to store an int at the place you think you are going to store it. This is simply bad code. Even if it works, referring to things in memory that has been allocated in this way is so ugly that I'm not even going to try to write it. If you want to store multiple different things in a single block of memory, create a struct to hold them. Looie496 (talk) 01:23, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

As Looie said, your malloc statement is not a permissible way to allocate a pointer and an int, because of alignment restrictions; trying to access the int might crash your program.

However, void ** pointToBlob = blob; is legal C and won't produce a warning, because C allows void * to be implicitly converted to any other pointer type (though C++ doesn't). There's no deep logic to this; it's just a special exception intended to make malloc easier to use. The result of this definition will be that pointToBlob will point to the same memory block as blob does, except that it will "think it's pointing to" a void *. You could then store a void * into the memory block through that pointer, even though you allocated space for a char *, because those pointer types happen to be guaranteed to have the same size. But that's probably not what you intended. If you wanted a pointer to the blob variable itself (which is a different thing from the memory you allocated), then you should have written pointToBlob = &blob instead of pointToBlob = blob.

Basically, the rules for pointers are straightforward: if you say &foo then you get a value that points to foo, if you say *p in an expression then you get the value of whatever p points to, and if you say *p = (whatever); then you change the value of whatever p points to. For example, if you wrote void ** pointToBlob = &blob;, then *pointToBlob = malloc(100); would be the same as blob = malloc(100); (they both write the result to the blob variable). But if you wrote void * pointToBlob = blob; and then pointToBlob = malloc(100);, you would be assigning to the variable pointToBlob, which is a different variable from blob, so blob would remain unchanged. Although those rules are simple, they're hard to think about. The reason seems to be that human beings are not good at separating the name of something from the thing itself. For example, what does pointToBlob mean? Do you intend it to point to the variable named "blob", or are you thinking of the memory you allocated as the "blob" that it points to? This kind of ambiguity is what makes pointers difficult. The good news is that it gets easier with practice. -- BenRG (talk) 02:16, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

As has been said, you can't use a pointer to point to both a char * and an int like that. You can, however, do it like this:

struct mystruct
{
  char *p;
  int i;
 };
 struct mystruct *blob = malloc(sizeof(struct mystruct));

You can then use blob->p and blob->i to refer to the char * and int values, assuming the malloc() succeeded. You can easily check this, because if malloc() fails, the resulting value will be a null pointer. JIP | Talk 12:09, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Pointers really come into their own when you use them to point to arrays of dynamic size (although other structures and uses are also important). Consider this (not production-quality) code:

Several code examples

Single math test input

int n,i;
float *a;
printf("How many questions are on the math test? ");
scanf("%d",&n); /* give scanf() a pointer to n so it can assign to n through it */
a=malloc(n*sizeof*a); /* enough space for n floats; *a is a float, so sizeof*a==sizeof(float) */
printf("What are the answers? ");
for(i=0;i<n;++i) scanf("%g",a+i); /* a[i]==*(a+i), so a+i==&a[i] and we store into each in turn */

Now suppose that we have more than one test to give. Each might have a different number of questions, so now we need a separate array for each. Each array is (indicated by) a float*, so we need a float** to refer to all of them together:

Multiple math test input

int nt,*nq,i,j;
float **a;
printf("How many math tests? ");
scanf("%d",&nt);
a=malloc(nt*sizeof*a);   /* enough space for nt float _pointers_ */
nq=malloc(nt*sizeof*nq); /* enough space for nt ints */
for(i=0;i<nt;++i) {
  printf("How many questions are on test #%d? ",i);
  scanf("%d",nq+i);
  a[i]=malloc(nq[i]*sizeof*a[i]); /* enough space for nq[i] floats */
  printf("What are the answers? ");
  for(j=0;j<nq[i];++j) scanf("%g",a[i]+j);
}

Of course, you could also use a struct, as JIP mentioned:

A struct instead of two arrays

struct test {int n; float *ans;};
int nt,i,j;
struct test *a;
printf("How many math tests? ");
scanf("%d",&nt);
a=malloc(nt*sizeof*a); /* enough space for nt test structures */
for(i=0;i<nt;++i) {
  printf("How many questions are on test #%d? ",i);
  scanf("%d",&a[i].n);
  a[i].ans=malloc(a[i].n*sizeof*a[i].ans); /* enough space for a[i].n floats */
  printf("What are the answers? ");
  for(j=0;j<a[i].n;++j) scanf("%g",a[i].ans+j);
}

You can use a pointer to conveniently point to an object temporarily (which often involves the structure-pointer operator ->):

Using a temporary pointer

struct test {int n; float *ans;};
int nt,i,j;
struct test *a,*current;
printf("How many math tests? ");
scanf("%d",&nt);
a=malloc(nt*sizeof*a); /* enough space for nt test structures */
for(i=0;i<nt;++i) {
  current=a+i; /* point at the i-th element of the array; no new object is created here! */
  printf("How many questions are on test #%d? ",i);
  scanf("%d",&current->n);
  current->ans=malloc(current->n*sizeof*current->ans); /* enough space for current->n floats */
  printf("What are the answers? ");
  for(j=0;j<current->n;++j) scanf("%g",current->ans+j);
}

Finally (and this is very optional), you can use pointers as your loop variables to make idiomatic, very direct C code:

Replacing integers with pointers in for(...)

struct test {int n; float *ans;};
int nt;
struct test *a,*current,*end;
printf("How many math tests? ");
scanf("%d",&nt);
a=malloc(nt*sizeof*a); /* enough space for nt test structures */
end=a+nt;              /* points just past the end of a */
for(current=a;current<end;++current) {
  float *fcurrent,*fend;
  printf("How many questions are on test #%d? ",current-a); /* you can still get the index if you want */
  scanf("%d",&current->n);
  current->ans=malloc(current->n*sizeof*current->ans); /* enough space for a[i].n floats */
  fend=current->ans+current->n; /* points just past the end of current->ans */
  printf("What are the answers? ");
  for(fcurrent=current->ans;fcurrent<fend;++fcurrent) scanf("%g",fcurrent);
}

Just to wedge in one more use of float **, we can apply the "convenient alias for something" idea one more time:

With extra aliases

struct test {int n; float *ans;};
int nt;
struct test *a,*current,*end;
printf("How many math tests? ");
scanf("%d",&nt);
a=malloc(nt*sizeof*a); /* enough space for nt test structures */
end=a+nt;              /* points just past the end of a */
for(current=a;current<end;++current) {
  float *fcurrent,*fend,**fpp=&current->ans;
  int *ip=&current->n;
  printf("How many questions are on test #%d? ",current-a); /* you can still get the index if you want */
  scanf("%d",ip); /* this assigns to current->n, so we'll have the number later, but we can also call it *ip now */
  *fpp=malloc(*ip*sizeof**fpp); /* enough space for *ip floats */
  fend=*fpp+*ip; /* points just past the end of *fpp */
  printf("What are the answers? ");
  for(fcurrent=*fpp;fcurrent<fend;++fcurrent) scanf("%g",fcurrent);
}

Fundamentally, pointers let you access something that you get to choose (at runtime if you like). There are several reasons to choose things at runtime:

5 reasons

1. When you don't know how much space you'll need, so you ask for it dynamically.
2. When you have an array of things (dynamic or not) that you want to work on one at a time, and you make the pointer point to each one in turn (like current). (You can also work on them in any other order by writing a[whatever]: a[2*i*i-3*j+42], a[askUserWhich()], a[phaseOfMoon()], a[pickRandomly()], etc. Each of those uses pointer arithmetic to pick out an element for you.)
3. When some other code is picking an object for you; it gives you a pointer to the one it chose.
4. When you're picking an object for some other code: you pass it a pointer to which object you want it to work on. This is especially important when your objects are large: you pass merely its address, and no copying occurs. (See also aliasing; this is very useful, but can also be confusing.) Sometimes "work on" means "assign a value to", like with scanf(): you tell it where to put the value it reads from the input.
5. Not really about runtime but about convenience: even if everything is allocated statically, it might be useful to keep a pointer to, say, myStaticArray[3][5].structMember[2] if that long expression refers to a value that you need to refer to frequently.

Except for #3 (which is just the opposite of #4), we used all of these in the examples I gave. Another way of looking at it is that there are only three things that can go on the left side of an assignment:

1. A (non-array) variable name: x=1;
2. A part of a struct: struct.y=1;
3. A dereferenced pointer: *p=1;

Without the third choice, the struct would itself have to be a variable name or a member of another struct, so all you would get would be a.b.c.….z=1;, which is not very interesting. The third choice gives all kinds of possibilities because dereferencing a pointer can give you another pointer or a struct as well as a normal variable: a[4]=1; (because that's *(a+4)=1;), getPointer()->a=1; (because that's (*getPointer()).a=1;), **(*myStruct.ptrMember->memOfTarget)->mem2ndTarget=1;, etc.

I hope this long ramble ("general explanation") helps; I find that the usual introductions to pointers (like int i; int *p=&i; *p=42; printf("%d\n",i);) are so anemic that they prevent seeing the true utility of the subject. --Tardis (talk) 15:09, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all of your replies! The one thing I kept seeing over and over was that I must use a struct to access this info, can't I do this instead?:

void * blob = malloc(sizeof(char *) + sizeof(int));
char * blobChar = blob;
int * blob = blob + sizeof(char *); //since the integer is 4 bytes after the char *

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Legolas52 (talk • contribs) 21:40, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I think you meant

void * blob = malloc(sizeof(char *) + sizeof(int));
char ** blobChar = blob;                   /* since it _points to_ a char * */
int * blobi=(char *)blob + sizeof(char *); /* can't do arithmetic on void * */

It might work, but it might also crash, or summon the nasal demons (and the answer will depend on the machine you try it on). (Also, who said that sizeof(char*)==4 everywhere?) The struct, as a language construct, exists so that this can be handled properly by the compiler. It also requires less typing and is more readable: struct {char *str; int len;} *s=malloc(sizeof*s); …and that's it! We now already have s->str and s->len with no further work. --Tardis (talk) 23:32, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

One reason why that might not work is that some systems require pointers of a certain type to be aligned at specific intervals in memory, such as addresses divisible by 2 or by 4. In your case above, you might end up with a misaligned pointers. By using a struct, the compiler guarantees that the addresses of the members are aligned, by inserting padding bytes between them if it has to. JIP | Talk 07:42, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

compiling emacs

Hello. I am trying to compile emacs 23.2. After a successful ./configure, make gives me the following:

PS223:~/Downloads/emacs-23.2% make
cd lib-src; make all                            \
         CC='gcc' CFLAGS='-g -O2 -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wno-pointer-sign  ' CPPFLAGS='-D_BSD_SOURCE  ' \
         LDFLAGS='-Wl,-znocombreloc  ' MAKE='make'
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/rksh/Downloads/emacs-23.2/lib-src'
make[1]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/rksh/Downloads/emacs-23.2/lib-src'
boot=bootstrap-emacs;                         \
       if [ ! -x "src/$boot" ]; then                                     \
           cd src; make all                                    \
             CC='gcc' CFLAGS='-g -O2 -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wno-pointer-sign  ' CPPFLAGS='-D_BSD_SOURCE  '         \
             LDFLAGS='-Wl,-znocombreloc  ' MAKE='make' BOOTSTRAPEMACS="$boot"; \
       fi;
cd src; make all                            \
         CC='gcc' CFLAGS='-g -O2 -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wno-pointer-sign  ' CPPFLAGS='-D_BSD_SOURCE  ' \
         LDFLAGS='-Wl,-znocombreloc  ' MAKE='make' BOOTSTRAPEMACS=""
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/rksh/Downloads/emacs-23.2/src'
make[1]: *** No rule to make target `/usr/local/include/gtk-2.0/gtk/gtk.h', needed by `dispnew.o'.  Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/rksh/Downloads/emacs-23.2/src'
make: *** [src] Error 2
HPS223:~/Downloads/emacs-23.2% 

What is going on here? It looks like there needs to be a rule to make gtk.h, but this can't be right? Anyone got any idea how to get round this? Thanks, Robinh (talk) 08:58, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

have you installed the gtk development headers? (Or configure without gtk). The package is normally called gtk-dev (debian/ubuntu etc) or gtk-devel (redhat/mandrake etc). CS Miller (talk) 10:47, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for this. I am on SuSe 11.3, and YAST isn't particularly clear (there are lots of gtk-type options, but checking them results in an incompatibility warning. How do I tell whether gtk-dev is installed? Thanks, Robinh (talk) 11:03, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I've never used YaST, so I'm not sure how to check what packages are installed with it. However, this [1] seems to be a useful guide. The package you want is probably called libgtk-dev / libgtk-devel, now that I think about it. CS Miller (talk) 11:42, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Got it!

Resolved

. Cheers, Robinh (talk) 11:54, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, this really shouldn't have happened. The autoconf script that wrote configure should check for gtk headers (and version), and indeed when I configure emacs on Ubuntu I see it checking gtk headers, libraries, and associated things like Pango, Cairo, and Freetype. If these aren't found, or are of the wrong versions, it should be be configure that fails, not the make. If you can reproduce this on a fresh install of SuSe, that's a notifiable bug in the configure.in script. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 13:18, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Hello Finlay. I too thought that configure would find any problems. The behaviour is not reproducible, following a 'make clean' which may have cleared out some problem file somewhere. Best wishes, Robinh (talk) 13:36, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Minor problem with my LG Flatron

OK, so I've been having some non-critical yet annoying problems with my LCD display (a Flatron W1934S, to be specific). The overall image appears fine, but there are some wavy patterns jizzing up on my screen, which can be seen especially on a dark background. Is it because of an unstable AC connection or something? Blake Gripling (talk) 10:35, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Noisy AC connection (perhaps from an electric motor on the same ring), loose AC connection, loose or damaged video cable, or source of RF interference near the display or the video cable. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 11:34, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Apart from the above, and don't ask me how it works... but try adjusting your contrast. I had the same problem with a Dell monitor. Sandman30s (talk) 14:31, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

So to avoid interference, place any wireless emitting devices away from the monitor, and make sure that there are not that mucgh intercerence from devices from the cables to and from your computer and monitor. See if that helps. Sir Stupidity (talk) 21:37, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Blackberry 9500 Storm

Hi, I have my phone blacberry 9500 storm, was using zero line of france, turkey, I'm staying on the contract has expired, other operators çalıştıramadığımdan, mep2 code entered incorrectly 10 times, mep2 does not turn on, I can not enter the MEP code. please help. Thank you.

my adres= [email removed] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.224.127.41 (talk) 13:23, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I've removed your email address, to prevent you getting spam on it. People will answer here, not by email. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 13:32, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I expect it's not likely to be easy [2]. It's usually a rather bad idea to hit the limit with phone unlock codes. If you haven't actually entered the MEP2 code incorrectly 10 times then I'm not sure what's wrong. It may be worth calling your operator. As your contract has expired, they may be willing to provide any unlock codes for free perhaps even with instructions. BTW just to emphasise you should stop typing anything in until you know what to do Nil Einne (talk) 05:52, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

tsql

Hi! Why doesn't exist the 'end tran' keywords? the rollback statement must always immediatly follow the trasnsaction to rollback? t.i.a. --217.194.34.103 (talk) 14:47, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

The database would have to store the state it was in before the transaction, and it gets too hard with several transactions that may be modifying the same data. So it just sticks to the latest one. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:11, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

motherboard

where is the rt clock and how the quartz is deformed in order to produce the regular square wave? t.i.a. --217.194.34.103 (talk) 14:50, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

The real time clock can be positioned anywhere on the board, and may be integrated to some other ASIC on the board. Our article lists some examples; you can check your motherboard for one of those chips. You might want to read crystal oscillator; the quartz is an electromechanical resonator in the form of a piezoelectric crystal. Nimur (talk) 15:22, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

thank you, I read "When the field is removed, the quartz will generate an electric field as it returns to its previous shape, and this can generate a voltage. " But thus voltage is sinusoidal or square? --217.194.34.103 (talk) 15:51, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

It is a complicated waveform; it is not perfectly sinusoidal because in real life, crystals are not simple harmonic oscillators; but it is really close to sinusoidal. The exact waveform shape depends on the perfection of the manufacturing process and physical properties of the crystal. Digital systems usually need a square-wave. For this reason, a crystal oscillator will usually be connected to an active circuit with a power source. This circuit includes a transistor amplifier (or a more sophisticated IC) to "clip" the sine-wave into a square-wave, and often one or two external tuning capacitors. A simple clip circuit with two diodes is shown in our article. More complex circuits exist to shape the waveform, but for most purposes, an "approximately" square-wave signal is good enough. The particular parameters to worry about would be the rise time and the jitter - a well-designed circuit will have a "fast" rise-time and a "small" jitter (by using a good tuning circuit and a very high gain). Exactly how fast rise-time and how tiny the jitter will be determined by cost and requirements. Many RTC clock ASICs will contain all/most of these analog circuit elements, plus some digital logic, internally. Nimur (talk) 16:23, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Internet Usage

I've just downloaded a program called NetMeter to keep an eye on my internet usage. I'm in a hotel and have a daily limit of 1 GiB. I'm looking at the program now and my upload and download figures are increasing. Even though, to my knowledge, nothing is uploading or downloading. It says that I'm downloading 36 KiB/sec at the moment, and that I've downloaded 21 MiB in the last 30 minutes.

• Why are the upload and download figures increasing when this is the only web browser I have open?
• Does that amount of use sound plausible?
• It's WiFi, so could that figure be the whole router's traffic and not just my laptop?

Some internet sites say that 5 GiB per month is enough to use Skype and YouTube. But according to NetMeter, I'd use 10 GiB a month just by leaving the machine connected to the internet for six hours a day; without even watching a single video or making a single call. What's going on?! — Fly by Night (talk) 15:19, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Consider using a system program like netstat to see what programs have open socket connections. Lots of programs use a network connection - this is very irritating if your network usage is being monitored. netstat -b will tell you the program name for each process that has an open connection. It's also possible that your NetMeter program has an internet connection open, and relays monitoring data to some server Nimur (talk) 15:24, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

My laptop runs on Windows Vista. I've just typed netstat -b and it says that "The requested operation required elevation." What does that mean? I typed netstat -no and it returned a table whose column titles were Proto, Local Addresses, Foreign Address, State and PID. There are currently three different local addresses connected to different foreign addresses.

• What does all of that mean?
• Are the other local address other people using the same router?
• Does that mean that the Netmeter stats were for the router and not just my laptop?

— Fly by Night (talk) 15:45, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

If you're getting 'The requested operation required elevation', try opening netstat or the cmd window if you're using that as administrator. Either right click on the program in start menu and choose 'run as administrator' or rather then pushing enter use ctrl+shift+enter. Nil Einne (talk) 15:57, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Here is the Windows netstat documentation. Local address is your computer's address - specifically, which address the network socket is connecting into. It can help you diagnose the purpose of the connection. Foreign address is the IP of the server on the other end. State is the socket status - which is explained here - but basically tells you if the connection is "active." PID is the process ID for the responsible program that owns that socket; using "-b" tells you the program name so the PID is redundant (unless you are running multiple copies of the same program). Nimur (talk) 16:40, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Windows Update maybe? I disabled it on my computer, but I think if you have it enabled it will automatically download new updates. Also, check which network interface the program is monitoring; if it's set to "all interfaces" it could be seeing network activity which isn't related to the internet, or could be seeing double the amounts depending on your setup. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 15:55, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

NetMeter's network inteface is set to All interfaces (no loopback, no duplicate). I've used the netstat -b command. I had to run it as an administrator as Nil suggested. I closed down all of my windows and ran netstat -b, the only thing running in the background was justched.exe which is a Java update checker. I stopped that. Then I ran netstat -b again and nothing was accessing the internet. But NetMeter still said that I was downloading 9 KiB/sec! — Fly by Night (talk) 16:22, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Sigh, for "computer experts" you're pretty incompetent. @OP; netmeter is not designed to work with wireless, so it's picking up on every network packet between your wireless adapter and the router. The excess bandwidth you're seeing is just the two devices communicating with each other. A program designed to work with wireless would filter this out. 72.95.222.173 (talk) 16:30, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

72, perhaps you would like to explain what communication the device is sending to the router? If there are no open sockets, there is no IP traffic. Are you suggesting that netmeter is capable of monitoring lower-level packets than IP (link or phy data)? Do you have a source for that? Nimur (talk) 16:34, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

That's a very good point, 72.95.222.173. It did seem far too high. — Fly by Night (talk) 17:28, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that 72.95.222.173 is wrong. -- BenRG (talk) 05:42, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

While not necessarily agreeing with the OP72, I wonder if this is being approached from the wrong way. It's been a while since I've used bandwidth monitoring programs on Windows but can't you find some which will tell you more details about what connections the bandwidth is being used on rather then the complexity of trying to working out from netstat? [3] may work although may also be unnecessary complex for the OP Nil Einne (talk) 17:19, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

What have I said that you don't agree with? — Fly by Night (talk) 17:28, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion as I was thinking about this discussion rather then the thread so by OP I meant 72. Nil Einne (talk) 19:34, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Other then per IP, from memory some programs may also tell you per program which may be more useful Nil Einne (talk) 05:54, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

P.P.S. Just realised I used OP to refer to two different people in that comment. Oops! (Basically I was thinking of 72's comment and said OP to refer to them as I was replying to Nimur then started thinking of the general thread and said OP to refer to the real OP. Nil Einne (talk) 01:54, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

The usage graph in NetMeter has changed now that I'm using Skype. It was all red. Now there is a yellow sub-graph. It looks like the yellow is my usage and the red is something else. Maybe other people's usage or traffic between my computer and the router. I've just ended the call and the yellow part has vanished. Does anyone have any idea how to change the settings? — Fly by Night (talk) 19:56, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Red is download, green (and yellow) is upload. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 20:05, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

According to the key, red is download and green is upload. There is no green representation in the graph. — Fly by Night (talk) 21:45, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Yellow and green are the same. The green turns yellow when it's in front of red. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 21:59, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

php

Say in php there was

echo "There are $number pages";

how could you get the script to put that into a .html file? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 18:38, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

If that is in a php script, accessing it through a web server will produce HTML. If you mean "I want to save this to a file", you need to open a file pointer and write it like:

$fp = fopen("your_file.html","w");

fputs($fp, "There are $number pages");

fclose($fp);

Then, you will have a file with that text inside of it. -- kainaw™ 18:40, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Or, if you meant you wish to run from the command-line, you may want to use PHP Command Line Interface. Nimur (talk) 18:44, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Or, perhaps, the questioner has a command-line script and wants to put it in a web page. Assuming the web server can parse PHP, you add to your HTML document the text: <?php echo "there are $number pages"; ?> -- kainaw™ 18:54, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Spreadsheet of irregular payments

I have a long list of rent money paid, and the dates they were paid on. i.e. the spreadsheet has two columns. The tenant was supposed to pay a fixed amount on the 1st of every month, but actually paid the rent very irregularly. Some months were missed completely, some were paid late, a few may have been paid early. The tenant has to pay x percent compound interest on late payments, if they are paid more than fourteen days late.

The question is: how do I work out on a spreadsheet what the tenant owes, including interest? The problem is that the data has irregular and missing dates, so it will be much harder to calculate than if the dates were just regular dates one month apart. Not a homework question. Thanks. 92.15.29.194 (talk) 20:11, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

charge them simple interest, not compound. Sorry, it's not right of you to charge them the 15% you feel confident you could have made on the stock market either. Charge them 8% simple interest. 85.181.49.255 (talk) 21:02, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I think you might have to put in a third column with the dates that each rent payment should have been paid on - ie the first of each month. You may have to add rows in for the months that the rent was not paid - for these months, you should manually insert the amount of rent into the the rent column and put N/A in the date column. Then, assuming that we're starting on row 2 and that column A has the date the rent was paid and column B has the rent amounts and column C is the one you added in, put the following in cell D2: =IF((A2-C2)>14,B2*(1+Data!A$1)^((A2-C2-14)/365.25)-B2,0). This deals with the months when the rent was paid. For the months when the rent was not paid, put the following into E2: =IF(A2="N/A",B2*(1+Data!A$1)^((Data!A$2-C2-14)/365.25),0).

The sheet Data has the annual interest rate in cell A1 and today's date (or the "as-of" date) in cell A2. I can't check if this works since I don't have access to Excel on this computer. You'll get errors in column D for the months where no rent was paid (you can get rid of them automatically by selecting column D and pressing ctrl+G) - then add up columns D and E. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 21:37, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

When the rent was paid for a particular month, was it always paid in full? If so, that makes the calculation much easier. Work out a daily interest rate. When you simply subtract 2 dates in Excel, it calculates the number of days. So, suppose the due date is in column A, the paid date is in column B, and the amount due is in column C, then column D could contain the number of days paid late as B2-A2, and column E could contain the interest due as '=IF(D2>14,(D2-14)*C2*daily_interest,"")'. Calculate a sum at the bottom of column E and request they pay that. However, if they are already struggling to pay the rent do you really think asking for the interest is actually going to make them pay more quickly in the future? You might just be dumping further despair on your tenant. You also need to consider what to do if they refuse to pay the interest, do you persue them through the small claims court? And if they are a benefit claimant you might eventully get the money at the rate of £1 per week. Your local Citizens Advice Bureau will almost certainly be able to provide you better advice, for free. Astronaut (talk) 21:54, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

The former tenant is quite well off and rented the place as part of a business. 92.29.125.8 (talk) 11:05, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm wondering how to deal with a missed payments. Supposing the tenant missed one payment in January but paid all other payments that year in full and on time. Should I calculate the interest due from the January until the present time; or should I regard the February and subsequent payments as late payments for the previous month? 92.29.125.8 (talk) 11:05, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

The 14 day interest-free period causes both methods to give different answers. Note that if you go with the second approach (which seems like the likelier option), then my answer above would not be right. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 11:20, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

The 14 days is not interest free. If the rent was paid on day 13, no interest added. If it was paid on day 15, then 15 days of interest are added. I'm wondering if this would make the two modes of calculation equivalent, if all the late rents were more than 14 days overdue. 92.15.28.203 (talk) 19:39, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

As the comments above note, there are multiple ways of calculating compound interest when the debt is being sporadically incurred and repaid. If this is just an academic question, then the answer depends on the method described in the hypothetical credit agreement that both parties entered into at the beginning of the contract and (depending on whether the debtor is a consumer or a limited company, several acts of parliament). But your post (as ip 92.29.125.8) strongly suggests this is a real scenario, which means this question is veering off into the territory of legal and professional advice, which the reference desk absolutely does not provide. You should speak to a qualified accountant. I'm reluctant even to tell you which laws you might be breaking (lest I help you self-help yourself to Pentonville) but I definitely would not go sending an invoice or a demand until you've spoken to a qualified professional. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 17:15, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

This is about manipulating data with a spreadsheet and maths, no legal stuff involved. I could re-write it if you wish as a scenario in Cuckooland, where the teddy bears trade Smarties. 92.15.28.203 (talk) 19:39, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

October 22

tsql what is for keyword go?

if it's followed by a number >1 it's useful but otherwise.. t.i.a.--217.194.34.103 (talk) 09:28, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/transactsql/thread/b9813ad0-6053-4723-8516-87cf27ebcf35 --Sean 17:28, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

List of software licenses used in a particular Ubuntu/Debian installation

Hi, I'm aware that the package vrms will list all non-free/contrib software, but I'm looking for a tool to list all licenses of installed packages by name, including the free ones. After all, just because they're free, doesn't mean they all share the same distribution terms (think Public Domain vs. BSD vs. GPL2-only vs. GPL3, for example). Is there a way to compile such a list, other than by doing it manually? -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 14:13, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that info is captured in a well-formed way either in the .deb package format (it would be in the control file, but I don't see anything there) or in the standard file layout that's deterministically parseable. It's a standard feature of Debian packages that they create a file called /usr/share/doc/packagename/copyright, but that's human readable (to the extent that lawyers can be considered human), not a readily machine readable format. And I'm not sure that every package has such a copyright file, and that they always put it where they should (the Debian guys are pretty thorough, but are non-free packagers so careful?). Beyond that, you can list all the installed packages with dpkg-query -l and for a given package list its constituent files with dpkg-query -L packagename, so (if you really needed this info) you could use this to examine every file in a given package, and then you're reduced to grepping the files for things that resemble copyright messages. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 14:40, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Clarification: I know the licenses of those few non-free packages I have installed, in fact, I even have one system where vrms detects no non-free/contrib software. It's only the different free ones that are troubling me.

Sadly, comparing the output of dpkg --get-selections|wc -l (332 lines) and of find /usr/share/doc -iname "*copyright*"| wc -l (320 lines) shows that even the Debian guys didn't include a copyright notice with every package. :-( -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 14:50, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)On further inspection, quite a few don't have a copyright file:

• If I run dpkg-query -l | wc -l that reports 2934 (really 2934 minus a few lines for lines of header)

dpkg --get-selections doesn't produce a header ;-) -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 15:19, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

• If I run ls -R /usr/share/doc | grep -i copyright | wc -l that reports 2466 (they're almost all copyright, but there's a few oddbods with other copyrighty names, so I've included them)

So that would suggest about 16% of packages don't have a /usr/share/doc/packagename/copyright file. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 14:51, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Further research shows that every package in the mainline Debian distribution is required to have a file named copyright in /usr/share/doc/packagename. The reason that they don't all show up during find /usr/share/doc -iname "*copyright*" is that some are actually symlinks - that is allowed for packages that use one of the more common licenses like BSD, GPLv2, GPLv3, etc., wich are stored in a common directory, and for packages that share the same copyright info with their required base-package. So basically one has to look at every file that the above-quoted find command spits out, but the result will be pretty much free of duplicates, thanks to find skipping over symlinks. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 15:47, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Is a Storage Area Network head a Server?

Hello.

   I want to know what exactly a Storage Area Network is - I am aware that a SAN contains HDDs which hold volumes which are attached to servers via logical unit numbers. My question is rather whether a SAN head is considered a server. And I refer only to the SAN head, not the DAS arrays connected to the SAN head, and I am also not referring to SAN switches or storage routers.

   Best regards to everyone. Vickreman.Chettiar 14:33, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

A SAN device speaks a SAN protocol like FC or iSCSI and in essence pretends to be a big disk drive, so it should be considered a "storage device" and nothing else. I can't definitively say that some daft person won't consider all expensive enterprise electronic boxes to be "servers", but they shouldn't, and manufacturers to make both (like IBM, Sun/Oracle, and HP) don't. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 15:10, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Just to clarify - since a NAS head, which serves files, is considered a file server; could a SAN head, which serves volumes (i.e. LUNs), be called a volume server? And as an aside, though it's just a matter of semantics, what is with the Area in Storage Area Network? Wouldn't it suffice to call it a storage network? I don't really understand the Area part... Vickreman.Chettiar 20:31, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Is "SAN head" really a term in any use? If by that you mean a SAN device that aggregates a number of other SAN devices and presents them to a user on a single connection (something like a Brocade Fibre-Channel Switch), then I don't agree that it necessarily serves "volumes"; SAN is a block-level thing, so it serves blocks. Those blocks might just be direct-mapped from volumes in the downstream SAN devices, but such a device can remap and aggregate blocks (and devices, and connections) in more complicated ways. I think the A is there for symmetry with LAN, and to make it a word (rather than calling it an "SN"). -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 20:43, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

For the record, the term SAN head is used by Hewlett-Packard. See the sixth paragraph of this Channel Register article by Ashlee Vance which quotes a HP Security Architect, which is what led me to begin with to figure a SAN head is considered a server, but I thought I'd check with the reference desk because I was unable to find any mention of SAN heads being classified as servers in the Wikipedia article on SANs. Vickreman.Chettiar 02:15, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Is "ARC relationship" an Oracle term or generally accepted computer term?

Is "ARC relationship" an Oracle term or generally accepted computer science term? If it is Oracle only what is the standard name of this relationship. (If it is a general purpose term we should have an article on it!) -- Q Chris (talk) 15:00, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Wipe out a USB stick

I've got a USB stick with some promotional material on it that resists deletion. It is within a partition disguised as virtual CD-ROM, which is read-only. The permissions cannot be changed. I also tried to remove it with a 3U removal tool and also deleting the whole thing with "sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/scd0". Everything without success. Does anyone have an idea of what can I do? Is there something which would reset the USB stick completely? (mtab output: /dev/scd0 /media/NEW iso9660 ro,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,uid=1000,utf8 0 0 /dev/sdb1 /media/disk-1 vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=mixed,uid=1000,utf8,umask=077,flush 0 0)

Have you tried bringing it over to a Windows or Mac machine that doesn't understand the partition table, and have it format the device as a FAT32 or NTFS or ext3 (or whatever) volume? Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:41, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

The problem persists in a Windows machine, Windows also consider this thing to be a legit CD-ROM, which cannot be formatted... Mr.K. (talk) 15:47, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

What happens when you use disk partitioning software to delete the partition? Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:54, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

GParted does not see the partition that is a virtual CD-ROM. It sees only the other free partition.--Mr.K. (talk) 15:56, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

That's sort of awesome. My next step would be to use disk partitioning software on a foreign machine (meaning Windows or Mac) to try to delete the partition. Or use some sort of embedded device, like a USB-stick-accepting camcorder, to try formatting the stick. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:05, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, actually it was their intention to be awesome difficult to remove. Mr.K. (talk) 16:36, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

That won't help. The controller on a U3 device manufactures a virtual CD-ROM volume (and a virtual usb hub) from flash blocks on its device that it does not normally export as part of the normal usb-mass-storage device that it also presents. The protocol for manipulating this (to reserve some blocks and present them as a virtual CD, and to undo that) is proprietary and trade-secret; I'd imagine it consists of some vendor-specific commands sent to the virtual device hub. The U3#Removal section discusses a Windows program that the U3 people implemented which does the "remove" operation (I guess you had to pay them $$s to get the "create" software). -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 16:42, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

(I never knew about this — thanks.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:10, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm aware this is not the answer you are looking for, but: USB sticks are cheap. Send it back to whoever placed the advertisement junk on it, with a cover letter saying that you'd rather give it back than being forced to watch their promotional junk in order to use it, and that any promotional efffect they were hoping for was negative. If enough people do this, maybe they'll think a bit about their next ad campaign. -- Ferkelparade π 16:03, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

It's not "promotional junk" but rather a common "feature" on a lot of flash drives. Shadowjams (talk) 09:21, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

That U3 thing is stored somewhere else on those keydrives, it's not stored on the accessible flash ram using fdisk. There's a provided tool by those manufacturers that will permanently remove it from the drive. I don't know if there's an open source version of the same thing, and I'm curious about where it's actually stored... but look at this link [4]. Shadowjams (talk) 09:21, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

There is an open source version, see the Weblinks section of U3, which had already been mentioned above as U3#Removal. (RTFA ;-)) -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 10:09, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

It isn't open source if you have to '$dollar signs' for it (RTFA ;-)). Shadowjams (talk) 10:17, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Are we referring to the same thing? I presume 78 is referring to [5] which while I don't know whether it will do what you need (or whether it works at all), is called open source by the article and is hosted on SourceForge who require things hosted there be open source. I don't quite understand your "$dollar signs" bit, but there's nothing stopping open source software from people charging for open source software under most definitions, for example the well known GPL doesn't stop it. However open source does usually at a minimum require the source code be available to anyone who owns the software and requests it, and without any additional payment except to cover the cost of distributing the source code. And people who use the software and obtain the source code are allowed to redistribute both for anyone to use without requiring permission or anyone requiring payment. So charging solely for those usually doesn't work very well (but offering additional services may) since other people may just redistribute it and your market may only ever be the first person to buy. Nil Einne (talk) 14:02, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I prefer to be addressed by my last octet, you insensitive clod! - Just KIDDING :-D

You, as opposed to Shadowjams, did indeed understand what I was saying. Thanks for jumping in. :-) -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 14:35, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Can I change the font of a .pdf file?

Some authors have a really poor taste for fonts...--Mr.K. (talk) 15:43, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

What software do you have? Adobe Acrobat Professional can do lots of modifications (although whether it can change fonts I don't know) that other programs can't. Nyttend (talk) 20:08, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this is impossible in general, and would require grody hacking in the few special cases where it might be theoretically possible. Even if you could change the font, the spacing parameters would not change, so the result would probably look pretty bad. Looie496 (talk) 20:25, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Adobe Acrobat Professional can change the font of text. You first select the text using the text touch-up tool. Then, you right-click on it and select "Properties." A dialog will appear with a font drop-down list.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 23:56, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

ubuntu help

i have ubuntu 10.10 .it takes an extremely long time for me to shut down the system or to log out ..why might this happen? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Metallicmania (talk • contribs) 17:09, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Probably because some program or daemon is taking a long time to shut down. I'm not sure this will work, but try hitting the Esc key during the shutdown. If I remember correctly, this will kick you into text mode, and you should be able to see a line saying what the OS is doing at that time. (I'm sure somebody will correct me if I have this wrong.) Looie496 (talk) 18:11, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

im quite new with linux so i do dont think ill be able to figure out that stuff —Preceding unsigned comment added by Metallicmania (talk • contribs) 18:17, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Basically what I'm suggesting is that you hit Esc while the computer is slowly shutting down, look at the bottom line of text which tells you what the computer is doing, and tell us what it says. Without that information it's pretty much impossible to guess what the problem might be. Looie496 (talk) 20:23, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

i think ive managed to resolve that but heres another query. i had vista on my lappie and there was a 100 gb c drive and a 2 gb d drive . i used the d drive for backing up stuff. when i changed to ubuntu the d drive is missing. the 100 GB in C drive is anailable as root but no idea where is the other location.is there any way i can find out where that 2 GB is ?Metallicmania (talk) 16:55, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Installing Ubuntu required you to repartition the drive. If you don't see that old partition, it probably means you installed in a way that overwrote all the existing partitions. It's possible to leave old partitions intact when installing, but that requires doing a custom install, and I'm guessing you didn't. Looie496 (talk) 18:44, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

The output of sudo fdisk -l (that's a lower-case L after the dash) might be helpful to us if we're to assist you with this issue. This is a command that you will have to type into a terminal window, and it will prompt you for your password. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 22:15, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

well this is the output i got 

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000e3713

  Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/sda1 * 1 14224 114251776 83 Linux /dev/sda2 14224 14594 2966529 5 Extended /dev/sda5 14224 14594 2966528 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/dm-0: 3037 MB, 3037724672 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 369 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x80174800

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Metallicmania (talk) 11:21, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I'm not sure if I would be allowed to re-format what you posted (this being the reason), so I'll just quote this with proper formatting:

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e3713
  Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       14224   114251776   83  Linux
/dev/sda2           14224       14594     2966529    5  Extended
/dev/sda5           14224       14594     2966528   82  Linux swap / Solaris
Disk /dev/dm-0: 3037 MB, 3037724672 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 369 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x80174800
Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Judging from this info, I'd say you re-partitioned your hard drive into one single, large partition usable for programs and data (/dev/sda1), and a smaller one (/dev/sda5 within the extended partition /dev/sda2, note the identical start and end cylinder numbers) for swapping.

I'm not sure, though, what /dev/dm-0 is supposed to be for, this could be some sort of onboard RAID controller providing a RAID1 or RAID0 with a capacity of roughly 3 Gigabytes. That seems pretty small for a RAID, though.

The output of sudo mount might be helpful for us telling you what it is used for. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 18:58, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

sorry bout the nonformatted output .this is the output of sudo mount

 /dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0)
  proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
 none on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
 fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
 none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
 none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
 none on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
 none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
 none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
 none on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
 none on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
 binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
 /home/raider/.Private on /home/raider type ecryptfs         (ecryptfs_sig=89229615e50cdc0e,ecryptfs_fnek_sig=5253ffe114df5b03,ecryptfs_cipher=aes,ecryptfs_key_bytes=16)
 gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/raider/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=raider)

regardsMetallicmania (talk) 03:43, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't see /dev/dm-0 in there, so it isn't mounted. What I can see is that your home directory is on an encrypted file system. I'm not sure if /dev/dm-0 has anything to do with that, and haven't used dm-style RAIDs, only md-style RAIDs, so I can't help you any further here. Maybe another Wikipedian knows if it's safe to attempt a mount of /dev/dm-0 to see if anything of the data you are looking for is stored there, or if it will interfere with your encrypted home directory. /dev/dm-0 is the most likely place where your data may be stored, if it is still stored somewhere at all. Judging from what I've seen so far, I'd expect your data to be gone, though - overwritten when you chose to perform a full-disk install of Linux. Sorry, I wish I had happier news for you. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 15:38, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

actually i really didnt mind loosing the data. but what about the disk space?is it lost? thanx a lot for your time and patienceMetallicmania (talk) 16:55, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Quoted from your fdisk -l output, emphasis mine:

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
[...]
/dev/sda1   *           1       14224   114251776   83  Linux
[...]
/dev/sda5           14224       14594     2966528   82  Linux swap / Solaris

So all of your disk space is put to good use, the large part (cylinders 1-14224) for storage, the smaller part (cylinders 14224-14594) for Swap space. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 22:59, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Click here

Many pages on the Ohio Historical Society website, such as its profile of the Kirtland Temple, have a little note at the top: "Click here for a new search". Having read our click here article, I'm confused — in specific cases like this, why is "click here" a bad idea? For example, people printing offline won't be able to use a search page, no matter how well it's described. Nyttend (talk) 20:05, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

The "accessibility" section of click here says "Screen readers, used by the visually impaired, can read out only the hyperlinks on the page as a quick method of navigation." The other links on that page (those in the menu down at the bottom) read sensibly when presented like this ("calendar", "places", "about", etc.), but this link will just read "here", with no context. If the link text was "new search" then it would be fine. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 20:15, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I saw that part, but I don't understand — what else would be expected to be read? The URL of the link target? Nyttend (talk) 22:01, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand what you don't understand :) As I said, if the text inside the A tag was "new search", that would make sense, but "here" doesn't. You may have to ask a more detailed question if you need me to explain further. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 22:11, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

And while not as bad as the accessibility problem, if you printed that page (say to hand out to people on your historical society's trip to that building) it does look kinda daft having "click here" on a bit of paper. We're so used to seeing stuff like this because so many web authors take no care at all over what a printout of their site should look like (so it ends up as a screendump, full of useless navigation cruft that makes no sense on paper). Smart websites (of which Wikipedia is a good example) take the effort to strip screen-only content from the print (mostly using some deft CSS) so that the printout makes for a sensible free-standing paper document. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 20:19, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I usually just highlight the content on a webpage which I want printed, click File and select Print Preview, then select the As selected on screen option, and hit Print. Sometimes I have to adjust the page size as well before hiiting Print, so that the edges of the webpage don't get cut off. At times the page margins also need to be adjusted (in Page Setup). Rocketshiporion♫ 20:45, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

For example, if you consider HTML like this:

  If you are interested in our news letter click <a href="newsletter.html">here</a> <br />
  If you want to read about our DIY brain transplant kit <a href="braintransplant.html">click here now</a> <br />
  If you have performed a brain transplant on yourself and wish to leave feedback, ask your carer to <a href="im_suing.html">click this link</a>

That would (on a reader that extracted the link texts for quick navigation) yield something logically like:

• [here]
• [click here now]
• [click this link]
• [speak the page text]

Whereas:

  Find out about our <a href="newsletter.html">newsletter</a> <br />
  Information about <a href="braintransplant.html">our DIY brain transplant kits</a> <br />
  Leave <a href="im_suing.html">feedback about your brain transplant</a>

would yield

• [newsletter]
• [our DIY brain transplant kits]
• [feedback about your brain transplant]
• [speak the page text]

With a system like this, there is really no way for a user to know what a link [here] would do, short of reading through the entire text (which on a spoken interface is very tiresome). -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 22:36, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Note that a reader might also use the title attribute on the A tag, although those are so rarely used it's probably not worth the bother. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 22:43, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

October 23

HDD over IP

Hello! I'm looking for some open software that I can install on a Linux (Debian) computer as a server and on Windows computers as clients and be able to easily write and retrieve files over an encrypted connection. Maybe something that lets me type in the IP address to the server with my Linux username and password and virtually mounts the server's hard drive to the client for easy navigation in a Windows file chooser. Thanks! Sorry if this question comes up a lot and I haven't found it in the archives--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 05:41, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Samba (software) is the usual way to share disks and printers from Unix-like systems to Windows. But do you want the data to be encrypted on the network? A quick googling for CIFS encrypted suggests the standard Windows file sharing protocol doesn't have encryption. You could use an encrypted VPN link and do the sharing over it; that is not an entirely trivial thing to set up though. 88.112.56.9 (talk) 09:31, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Try this and see if it helps. Might be easier than a full-scale VPN. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 10:03, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your responses. I do have access to a VPN, so if encryption isn't handled by the software, that's okay. I forgot to make clear that I want to transmit files over the Internet, not a LAN. I had a look at Samba, and it looks good, but I can't tell from the documentation I've read if it works over the Internet. Does it?--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 20:24, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

It does, but you don't want to use it over the Internet; only the encrypted VPN tunnel should go over the Internet. As far as Samba and SMB are concerned, all of your machines will be on the same LAN (that happens to be virtual).

Another possibility is Dokan's sshfs, but I'm not sure it's ready for prime time. If you just want to copy files back and forth with an Explorer-like application, you don't need any of this; just use WinSCP. -- BenRG (talk) 02:41, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Extracting gegraphic coordinates from .kmz files

Is there any way to automatically extract geographic coordinates from Google Earth .kmz files to a text file or to a spreadsheet? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.199.216.230 (talk) 07:29, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

kmz files are just kml files gzip compressed. If you have a linux/unix/mac computer you can do cat your_file_here.kmz | gzip -cd > your_output_file_here.kml and then read the resulting file, which probably has the coordinates in it. I don't know the particular format of KML files but they're pretty standard and a lot of languages have modules that will understand them for you. Shadowjams (talk) 09:17, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Once unzipped, Keyhole Markup Language is XML, so you'd typically use an XML parser like Beautiful Soup, libxml2, or one of those listed at Category:XML parsers to extract data from it. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 11:28, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Here is an example that uses Beautiful Soup and Python to retrieve the coordinates for the course of the Bay to Breakers race (from, indirectly, Wikipedia):

#!/usr/bin/python
from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup
import urllib

url='http://toolserver.org/~dschwen/kml.php?page=File:Finlay+McWalter%2Fsandbox/overlay.kml'
soup = BeautifulSoup(urllib.urlopen(url).read())

for c in soup.findAll('coordinates'):
    for d in c.contents:
        for location in d.split():
            # https://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kmlreference.html#coordinates
            s=location.split(',')
            latitude, longitude, altitude = s[0],s[1],'undefined'
            if len(s)==3: # coords can be "lat,long" or "lat,long,alt"
                altitude=s[2]

            print 'lat=%(lat)s, long=%(longitude)s, altitude=%(altitude)s' % locals()

More complicated files will, of course, require more complex code. If this was a .kmz file rather than a .kml, you'd also have to run it through zlib to unzip it. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 15:15, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Which language is this?

I'm using Singular and I would like to know what language it's using. Let M be a 3×3 matrix:

$M=\left({\begin{array}{ccc}m[1,1]&m[1,2]&m[1,3]\\m[2,1]&m[2,2]&m[2,3]\\m[3,1]&m[3,2]&m[3,3]\end{array}}\right).$

The trace of the matrix is given by tr(M) = m[1,1] + m[2,2] +m[3,3]. To calculate the trace in Singular you can use an for loop:

int tr; (Tells Singular that tr is an integer)

for (i = 1; i <= 3; i++) {tr = tr + m[i,i];} (This is the for loop)

Does anyone know if that for loop for (i = 1; i <= 3; i++) {tr = tr + m[i,i];} is from a programming language? Thanks in advance. — Fly by Night (talk) 11:14, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

It's Singular's own language; its webside says it's "an intuitive, C-like programming language". -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 11:21, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Cool, where did you find that? (I found the exact same if loop in the if loop article, and you're right: it was in C). — Fly by Night (talk) 11:28, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

It's on the homepage of the Singular website. While that code resembles C, it's not - C doesn't have (genuinely) multidimensional arrays. That code m[i,i] would have to be written m[i][i] to be syntactically valid C. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 13:02, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

C doesn't have multi-dimensional arrays, but C# does. However, C# does not have pointers or pointer arithmetics, so array indexing is the only way to access the arrays. In practice, it shouldn't matter that much. JIP | Talk 19:36, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Pedantry demands that I point out that m[i,i] is in fact syntactically valid C, but doesn't do what you want. --Sean 20:09, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, the infamous comma operator (,). It's so rarely used that I think people forget it's there. What it does is evaluate its left operand, cause a sequence point, evaluate its right operand and return the value of the right operand. Just for the benefit of this discussion. JIP | Talk 13:33, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

how much faster is a mobile i7 duo than a core 2 duo at the same clock speed?

So Apple's 15inch MacBook Pro can be:

- 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 Duo
- 2.4  GHz Intel Core i5 Duo
- 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 Duo
- 2.8  GHz Intel Core i7 Duo

While its MacBook Air is:

- 1.4  GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (11-inch MacBook Air)
- 1.6  GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (11-inch MacBook Air)
- 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (13-inch MacBook Air)
- 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (13-inch MacBook Air)

What I would like to know is how the two architectures compare, gigahertz-for-gigahertz? They use exactly the same RAM... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.153.222.131 (talk) 12:06, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Here's a list of benchmarks from cpubenchmark's website for high end CPUs. Don't know how to differentiate between the very similar model-names but basically from my read through the i5/i7 range are more powerful than the Core 2 Duo equivalent: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html and http://www.cpubenchmark.net/mid_range_cpus.html ny156uk (talk) 19:25, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Emacs Colour Scheme

I'm using Emacs version 21.4.22 (released January 2009). But I hate the colour scheme. The background is grey and some of the words appear in a bright, hard-to-see pink. How can I change the color scheme? I'm a total novice; this is my second time using Emacs. So a step-by-step guide would be very much appreciated. I hope you can help! — Fly by Night (talk) 14:49, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

The simplest is to change the background colour when you start emacs with e.g. emacs -bg green (you may want white, though). If your emacs shows you many different font colours (on source code, I assume?), you probably have font-lock-mode enabled - I think that is the default for recent emacsen. You can configure the colours in you .emacs file. Here is an excerpt from mine:

 (global-font-lock-mode 1)
 (setq font-lock-maximum-decoration t)
 (setq font-lock-face-attributes    
       '((font-lock-comment-face "Firebrick") 
 	(font-lock-string-face "brown4") 
 	(font-lock-keyword-face "Purple")
 	(font-lock-function-name-face "Blue") 
 	(font-lock-variable-name-face "DarkGoldenrod")
 	(font-lock-type-face "DarkOliveGreen"))
       )

Copy this into your .emacs file and restart emacs (or put it into a buffer and do M-x eval-buffer to test the effect first). Does this help? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:31, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

It seems like it would help, but I have a few problems. I don't seem to have any files with the extension .emacs, and secondly I don't know what a buffer is nor how to put something into one. I downloaded SINGULAR and am using that. I'm using Windows Vista and I have a single desktop icon that "starts Emacs after starting the X-server". It doesn't look like I have a stand-alone version of Emacs. Rather a bundle version is opened by another program I'm using. I was hoping that there might be an option section or something. I guess I have a few questions to make:

• What's a buffer and how do I put that code into one to test it?
• Is there an options menu where I can change the preferences, if so how?
• Could I download a stand-alone version of Emacs and start SINGULAR from it myself?

Sorry to be a pain. But like I said: this is my second time using Emacs. — Fly by Night (talk) 16:42, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

"I'm using Windows Vista" - aha, there is you problem ;-). I'll do my best, but my experience with Windows (any version) is extremely limited. The .emacs file is emacs' configuration file. That's the full name - under UNIX-like systems, the leading dot makes it invisible to normal operations. There is a FAQ for emacs on Windows [6]. Check sections 3.4 and 3.5 for the init files. Emacs can edit multiple files (and, indeed, non-file data) at the same time. Each of the pieces of data resides in a separate buffer. There should be a top level menu entry called Buffers that allows you to select any of these buffers for editing. You can make new buffers various ways, the easiest is probably to open a new file via the File menu. Normally, the initial buffer that is open is called *scratch*. You can use that for experimentation. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:50, 23 October 2010 (UTC)This was silently merged in here by Wikipedia resolving an edit conflict without asking me. Weird... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:52, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Assuming you are using Linux/Unix (or you wouldn't be using Emacs)... Type cd and press enter to get to your home directory. Type ls -a to list all of the files, including the hidden ones. You may see a file names ".emacs". The "." at the beginning means "this is a hidden file", which is why you have to use "-a" to see it. If you see the .emacs file, open it and edit it in your favorite text editor (emacs, vi, nano, ...). If you don't see a .emacs file, just create one. Next time you start Emacs, it will check your home directory for a file named ".emacs" and load any settings in that file. -- kainaw™ 17:27, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

As my last post said: "I'm using Windows Vista...". Emacs is available for both Linux and Windows, see here. — Fly by Night (talk) 17:40, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

It's probably best to go M-x customize (that is, hit alt-x, type "customize", and hit enter) and navigate to "Faces", "Font Lock", and then "Font Lock Faces". It'll take a little longer to figure out, but you'll be able to use the customize interface to adjust all sorts of thing about your emacs experience. When you've edited something, go C-x C-s (that is, control-x, then control-s; same as saving a file) to save and try out your customizations; it's easier than having to restart emacs. Paul (Stansifer) 18:34, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the advise. But I give up. It's too complicated. There are different colours for everything. I managed to change the horrible pink font colour to blue, but then when I run the program it seems to have its own default colours. I give up. I'll use the MS DOS terminal instead. At least I can read what I've written. Thanks for all your help. — Fly by Night (talk) 18:47, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I very strongly recommend to upgrade to Emacs 23 if at all possible. It is the first version to finally support Xft, which gives a night-and-day improvement in the appearance of text. There are also many other important improvements over Emacs 21. Looie496 (talk) 18:52, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

As I mentioned above: as far as I can tell, I don't have a stand-alone copy of Emacs. I use SINGULAR which opens Emacs after it's started X-server. One of my questions above was whether I could download a stand-alone version of Emacs and then open SINGULAR in the new version. But nobody replied. — Fly by Night (talk) 20:08, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

The Singular manual says that you can run it using Emacs as an interface, and gives instructions not only on starting its bundled Emacs but also on how to separately install Emacs (any version) and then run Singular under it. You might also look for the color-theme.el package. --Tardis (talk) 21:14, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

That's great. Thanks Tardis. I'll try to find a new version of Emacs and see how I go. — Fly by Night (talk) 00:54, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

• I've started a new thread below that focuses on the current problems. Please move down and see if you can help this poor, foolish Windows user. (I have Ubuntu at work...) — Fly by Night (talk) 12:19, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Program to build an electronic translator

Hello there,

I'm working on building an electronic translation facility for Tetun to English. I used to use the program, Tolken99, for projects such as this, but the program no longer works and has not been updated. It would simply be a programme into which one could input a custom dictionary and with an interface that translates from one language to another attached.

On a somewhat related note, does anyone know of any (preferably free) normal text to IPA transcription programs?

All the best

--178.99.129.52 (talk) 16:09, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Is your goal to perform simple word substitution? In that case, almost any scripting language can perform this task; but the translations will be of poor quality. If you want to perform actual natural language processing and machine translation, the short answer is that there is no "easy" program to use or customize. These computerized-translations (like the ones you see on Google Translate or Microsoft Translate are very sophisticated algorithms and elaborate databases that use complex, mathematical/statistical language models. Adding support for a rare language like Tetun will be a huge undertaking. Can you clarify your objective? Nimur (talk) 18:17, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Proxy servers

The recent Wikileaks stories made me wonder about one thing connected with proxy servers and anonymity that I never quite understood: Let's assume, for argument's sake, that I work at John Doe University. In my office, I have access to the internet through the University network (johndoe.edu). I am also a consultant for Jane Roe University and I can use their proxy server, proxy.janeroe.edu

Now, say, I access a site such as wikileaks.org from my John Doe office, with proxying through janeroe.edu enabled in my browser. I know that the administrator of janeroe.edu can find out, upon investigation of server logs, that my computer is actually in the johndoe.edu network and that I am accessing wikileaks.org

But what does the johndoe.edu admin see, if he were ever to check his access logs? Would he only ever see that I was connected to proxy.janeroe.edu? Or could he in any way figure out which sites I accessed through the proxy (namely wikileaks.org) ?

Incidentally, does the situation change if you substitute "VPN" for "proxy" in the above? Thanks. (Oh and PS, if you're now eagerly awaiting a major data leak from a big US university in the next few days, you will be disappointed... ;-) --Quidquididesttimeo (talk) 18:27, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

For just http proxies, there's no reason anyone who runs a machine through which the traffic flows can't see and log whatever they want, and so you have no privacy. A VPN is a bit better, because the local admin only sees you connecting to the VPN server elsewhere. But if both operators connive, they can correlate (in time) VPN packets to plain packets leaving the VPN, and can figure out who's doing what. Networks like Tor use multiple hops of onion routing to make the it difficult to correlate input packets withoutput ones - you'd need the connivance of everyone in the virtual circuit, and if Tor can use long virtual circuits (which cross many institutional and national boundaries) this makes achieving that connivance more difficult. Note that when I say "connive" that includes operators acting under compulsion (e.g. of subpoena) or interception of traffic through their equipment (with or without their knowledge). -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 18:36, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Remember of course you need to trust the VPN server admin (as you would need to trust the proxy provider). The VPN server admin can log anything you do over the VPN just as your local admin can. While they usually promise some degree of anoymity and to minimise logging, there's always a risk a VPN could be worse then any local admins, since the people who run these sometimes are rather secretive and they may be run in other countries from where you live which may have less protective laws then where you live. (On the other hand, having them in another country from you may also make it harder for your local authorities to track what you're doing. There's of course also the risk one could be a honeypot. Also if you're truly worried about anonymity even if you do trust the VPN provider completely, you need to be careful to avoid leaks like DNS leaks, which can be a risk depending on what sort of VPN and OS you are using. Tor is useful, but if you aren't using end to end encryption you should be aware of the risk of exit node monitoring. They may not know which IP address your traffic originated from, but if you submit your real name, telephone number and address repeatedly unencrypted well they may not care they don't know your IP address... In this case of course you don't have any real agreement with the exit node provider, and it's quite likely some exit nodes are doing some monitoring for a variety of reasons. Of course not using end to end encryption is a bad idea anyway, and always going to be a big risk since you really have no idea who is in between you and your final destination and what they're doing. The VPN provider for example, if they are up to something, would be quite happy too have a name, telephone number and real address to correlate with your IP address and all the logs of your activity. (Then of course there's the question of who you're sending your real info to and whether you trust them.) Nil Einne (talk) 12:09, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

But consider the pervasive nature of internet surveillance by large government security establishments, and particularly transnational sharing schemes such as those that may exist under UKUSA Agreement. If you can surveil a significant proportion of the nodes in a given OR virtual circuit, can you start to draw worthwhile statistical inferences about the traffic through that network? If your goal is to correlate packets entering the network with ones leaving it (so you know who is sending to whom), does knowledge of a serious proportion of each node's traffic allow you to infer just a little tiny bit of a probablistic correlation. That alone isn't much use, but if you monitor a great deal of traffic, do those probabilities start to stack up - that is, is that one cable modem in Maryland that's been sending tens of megabytes of traffic into TOR for days just a pr0n provider, or is that the traffic going to Wikileaks? We've really no idea what the capabilities of NSA, GCHQ etc. are; if I were wishing to send stuff to wikileaks, I don't know if I'd be willing to bet my life on the proposition that they don't have worthwhile traffic analysis over it. They're much smarter than I am. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 19:28, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

October 24

Editing my website

So someone saw fit to make me the web-master of an organization's website. The site itself is up and running and they just want me to update the site regularly.

How do I do this?

Sorry for sounding like an ignoramus, but it's only because I have no idea how to do this. Thanks in advance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.40.50.242 (talk) 02:18, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

That's not an easy question to answer. It depends on a number of factors. Is the site basically just a blog with reports on the recent goings-on of the organization or does it have some sort of content management system? Or, and this is the one option that it doesn't sound like you're ready for, is it all hand coded HTML for which you'll need quite a bit of training? If it's not too much to ask, could you provide the address of the site so that we can look at it and maybe tell a thing or two from there? Dismas|^(talk) 02:23, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Say, here's the page. http://www.umich.edu/~bengalis/ This isn't exactly my page, but mine is similar. I don't feel to comfortable sharing my own page. Sorry about being cryptic and all.68.40.50.242 (talk) 02:29, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

A website is nothing but a collection of text files. You open a text file in a text editor and edit it. However, we don't know WHERE the text files are. We don't know if you have access to the server they are on. We don't know how you are supposed to transfer files to and from that server. Editing a web page is very simple. The file transfer is the hard part. -- kainaw™ 03:26, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

That site is being served by the Apache web server, and that "~bengalis" feature is an example of the per-user web directories feature. By default apache is configured to take the public_html directory in a given user's account and make that answer to the URL you've given. So, if this were hosted on a Unix machine, you'd typically expect http://www.umich.edu/~bengalis/ to be kept at /home/bengalis/public_html     This all depends on how the Apache on that site has actually been configured, and how user accounts are set up, and only the university's system administration people can answer that. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 13:31, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

If you go to your web site in a browser and do "View Page Source" (exactly where this is depends on what browser you're using, but it's sure to be in the menus somewhere), you will see the HTML code that generates the page. The first thing you need to do, if you want to do anything useful, is get hold of an "HTML for Dummies" book, or something on that level, and read at least the first couple of chapters. Without a basic knowledge of HTML you'll be helpless. Looie496 (talk) 21:56, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

You will need to get in touch with whomever does the information technology services on your campus and find out their way of accessing the site. Usually student organizations have their own special place to go to for their web support, e.g. at Berkeley it was the Open Computing Facility that did support services for student groups (and hosted the sites). You'll have to ask around to find out what the appropriate office is at your own university. If it is a personal (departmental) webpage, there is probably a totally separate organization for that. You need something like FTP or SFTP access, a program that will let you download and upload files (an FTP program), and then you will need a text editor to edit the files, and some knowledge of HTML to know what you are doing. If you haven't done any of this before, it will be hard the first time. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:24, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

InDesign Middle Eastern Version Fonts

I am using Adobe InDesign CS5 (7.0) middle eastern version to design Urdu-Arabic documents. I want urdu fonts, of type Nastaliq script. Where can i get some nice Nastaliq fonts? (truetype\opentype) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Umar1996 (talk • contribs) 07:32, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Nastaliq has been a script style that is notoriously intractible without special "script manager" support in the operating system (AAT, QuickDraw GX, Graphite (SIL) etc.), or specialized Urdu-specific application programs, so I'm not sure how far just fonts alone will get you... AnonMoos (talk) 16:39, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Emacs Follow-up

This follows on from the thread above. I'm working on MS Windows Vista and have a copy of SINGULAR. This includes a "bundled" copy of Emacs. It was an old version, so I downloaded version 23.2 for MS Windows. In this section of the SINGULAR manual it describes how to run SINGULAR in an already up-and-running, stand-alone version of Emacs. It tells me to add the following "lisp code" to my .emacs file:

(setq load-path (cons "<singular-emacs-home-directory>" load-path))
(autoload 'singular "singular"
  "Start Singular using default values." t)
(autoload 'singular-other "singular"
  "Ask for arguments and start Singular." t)

Now, this code looks like Linux code and not MS Windows. It talks about the singular-emacs-home-directory. Isn't that a directory in Linux? Besides that problem, I can't find my .emacs file. I have gone to the lisp folder, but there are 20 subfolders and maybe 100 EL and ELC files (whatever they are). Nothing ends in .emacs. I;ve run a search and nothing turns up.

• Does anyone know where I can find this illusive .emacs file?
• How can I adapt the above copy so that SINGULAR looks in the right place?

Hopefully someone will be able to help me. This is starting to annoy me! Thanks in advance. — Fly by Night (talk) 12:16, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

The code you see is actually Emacs Lisp code. Emacs consists of a basic LISP engine with some specialized primitives, and a whole lot of LISP code. You configure it by writing some more LISP code, in this case telling it to load some libraries, and set some variables. You put this code into your Emacs configuration file, which traditionally has the name (not the extionsion) .emacs. But see the link to the FAQ above ([7], section 3.5) on how to find and how to name your config file (in particular, I'd try the last line of 3.5). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:01, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Right, so I did C-x C-f and then ~/.emacs. I pressed enter and a blank page opened. I pasted in the code and then did C-x C-s to save. It saved it to C:/Users/My Name/AppData/Roaming/.emacs, which is a different folder to the one than SINGULAR is saved in, and a different one than Emacs is saved it. I did M-x singular as the manual suggests and it just says [no match]. What should I do next? — Fly by Night (talk) 13:31, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

The .emacs file is only evaluated on startup, or when explicitly requested. Have you restarted Emacs after creating the config file? If you want to go the more interesting route, navigate to the buffer with your .emacs and type M-x eval-buffer. Also, I strongly suspect that the <singular-emacs-home-directory> should be replaced by the path to your Singular installation.--Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:50, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I found a folder call Singular which contained a program called Singular. But when I replaced <singular-emacs-home-directory> with <C:\cygwin\lib\Singular> and try to run it with M-x signular it returns cannot open load file: singular. I tried removing the angled brackets but Emacs starts up and tells me there's a Syntax error. If I put them back then there's no syntax error. If I type M-x Singular then it says [no match]. Any ideas? — Fly by Night (talk) 15:08, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

This goes into weird Windows territory. Under UNIX-like OSes, the path is certainly a simple string - no angle brackets. Here is an example from my .emacs:

(setq load-path (cons "/Users/schulz/SOURCES/ELISP/" load-path))

It should be the path to the directory that has singular.el in it, as far as I can make out. I don't know how Emacs works under Windows, but under UNIX file names are case sensitive. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:10, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

If you're running emacs for Windows instead of cygwin emacs, then the correct way to enter the directory name in lisp code is "C:\\cygwin\\lib\\Singular" or "C:/cygwin/lib/Singular". Both should work, assuming that C:\cygwin\lib\Singular is the "singular emacs home directory". 130.188.8.15 (talk) 12:02, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Good catch! Of course \ is the escape character used to encode various special characters in strings. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:42, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Comparing two nVidia cards

I have two nVidia graphics cards (in two different machines, one of which runs Windows 7 and the other Ubuntu Linux). One is an older (but at the time rather expensive) GeForce 9800 GT, the other is a newer (but cheap) GeForce 210. Right now the 9800 is in the Windows machine, where it's used for games (e.g. Bioshock 2, Starcraft 2); the 210 in the Linux box doesn't have much real work to do (a bit of Google Earth is probably the limit of its labours). It occurred to me that the 210 would be the better gaming card. I'm having some difficulty reading the complicated tables in the two articles for them: if I understand correctly, the 9800 has a much higher texel fill rate than the 210. I can't find an online benchmark that reviews both cards (not surprising, as they're from more than a year apart). Some sites quote Futuremark scores for the 210 that are incredibly low, but I don't know if they're comparing like-for-like (as there are so many versions of Futuremark). I'd happily just run a benchmark myself, and swap the 210 in to see if it scores better or worse, but I don't know what benchmark to run. Futuremark now costs money (and frankly I'm reluctant to pay for something I'll run exactly twice) - can anyone recommend a worthwhile Windows graphics benchmark program? It doesn't have to be terribly accurate: I don't care about numbers, or about rating my card against others I don't own, I just want to know which card is the faster. Thanks. 87.115.213.248 (talk) 13:12, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

This article compares the 9800GT's little brother the 9600GT against the 210, and the 210 gets very bad results indeed. It says of the 210 that it can "hardly be of any interest for a gamer." -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 15:34, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Considering the specs, 64 bit memory bus 16:8:4 shaders vs 256 bit memory bus 112:56:16 shaders, you don't have to look at a benchmark to tell you the 9800GT is going to destroy the 210 in nearly everything (the 210 has DX 10.1 support I believe) and I didn't even look at clock speeds. That BTW is another key reason why you have trouble finding reviews comparing the two, it's a pretty pointless comparison. The 9800GT was close to the top of the line of it's time and it's not that old, the 210 was always the extreme budget end and is only really one generation later and not even a major generation change. BTW, the reason any single benchmark is usually fairly useless in properly comparing cards is because cards tend to have advantages in different areas so you need to compare a variety of different benchmarks to get a proper idea of where cards stand relative to each other. Although in this case, any decent benchmark will tell you how crap the 210 is compared to the 9800. If you actually have games you are interested in with some sort of benchmarking and the cards it's probably better to compare with these real world stuff anyway. Nil Einne (talk) 18:40, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

archive

For storing thousands of txt files, what is the best format? .zip has limits —Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.120.33.249 (talk) 14:10, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

"Best" for what? For compression size? For compression speed? For decompression speed? For random access? For error-tolerance? For compatibility? And what features of ZIP is it that you find limiting? -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 15:32, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

If you have lots of small files, ZIP won't compress all that much, because it's not a "solid" archive format. In that situation, .tar.gz will be smaller (possibly much smaller, depending on how much redundancy there is between the files). AnonMoos (talk) 16:31, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

WinRAR (for Windows) is one popular alternative. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:44, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

7zip compresses pretty well too. It also has many options like compression method and dictionary size, which you might have to play around with to get the best results. KyuubiSeal (talk) 14:38, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I need help on recording sounds...

I need help on recording sounds. I have Windows 7 and I pressed the record button in my Windows Sound Recorder, it picked up sound from my microphone on my headphones, but it didn't pick up sound on the monitor. When I play back the file, the sound from the microphone is there, but the sound from the monitor was really low, I could barely hear it. I checked the recording devices and saw the microphone ready, the stereo mix ready, but the Line In was not plugged in. My sister said that it might be because of the Line-In not plugged in. I want to record both the sound from the microphone and the sound from the monitor. Is there a solution to fix this problem. Please answer. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sirdrink13309622 (talk • contribs) 17:05, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

This depends on whether your sound-card hardware supports "loopback" - in other words, if it can pipe the audio-output to an input signal. If so, Audacity (or Windows Sound Recorder) can select the "stereo mix" or similarly-named input channel (instead of microphone or line-in). If the sound-card does not support this internally, you can always fake it by piping through a male-to-male 3.5mm audio cable from your line-out back to your line-in. The biggest hazard with this setup is analog noise, but it usually is pretty bit-identical unless you wrap the line around a power-cable or something. Nimur (talk) 17:16, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

And FWIW the really low sound from the monitor on your original recording was probably just from your microphone picking up the sound from your speakers, not from something functioning incorrectly. Incidentally this is another (rough and ready) possible solution - crank the sound and keep the microphone close to your speakers, though sound quality won't be great; Nimur's suggestion is preferable. Now, if you find you are unable to record the sound from the monitor and the microphone together, you can record them independently and then combine them in a program like Audacity. Alternatively, as you don't say what the source of the 'sound from the monitor' is, you may already have the sound on your computer such as an MP3 song track; if this was the case you could just record what you want through the microphone and mix the tracks straight in Audacity without re-recording what's coming out of the monitor. --jjron (talk) 13:40, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Yahoo Posts

How do you delete old yahoo posts? I clicked on my link when I posted a comment to a news story and I saw my old posts and I was wondering how to delete those? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.147.4.245 (talk) 18:04, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

reading a pen drive

So I have a USB pen drive and a laptop with windows 7. recently I gave the pen drive to someone, I know they read some of what was on it, but is there any way of finding out what? I mean by finding out when each file was last opened, can that be done? Is there any other way? The files are all on microsoft works, if that helps.

148.197.121.205 (talk) 18:05, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Probably not. If you open the drive in Explorer (the file viewer thing, not the web browser thing), view-as "details", right-click on the header (that lists name, date etc.), click on "more...", and then check the "date accessed" field, that will add a "date accessed" column to that view. If you view a folder on your hard drive (which is surely formatted in the NTFS file system) then you'll see the actual dates and times those files were viewed. But flash drives seem mostly to be formatted in the FAT32 file system, which (at at least for me) doesn't store date-accessed data, so you'll just see a dummy value there. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 19:03, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

FAT does store access times, though only with 1-day granularity (ref). You can add "Date Accessed" as a column in Explorer's Details view by right clicking on the column headings. -- BenRG (talk) 19:33, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

How is the access date determined? I have mplayer.exe on my computer which I use every day and it's access date is ‎November ‎2009. NTFS drive 82.44.55.25 (talk) 19:47, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

AFAIK an interaction between program and OS Nil Einne (talk) 01:40, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Alright, thanks for your help. I'm sure it would have worked, but it seems at some point I picked the wrong one up, so now, I have lost all my saved files, which are lying around somewhere waiting for someone else to read them. 148.197.121.205 (talk) 20:00, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

The New Windows Live Messenger

I (read: the Windows Live system) just updated Windows Live Messenger to the latest version. I guess a lot of Windows users have done this lately. The new version is OK (I have never really liked MSN); is is a more well-integrated application in Windows 7 (we all know the old msnmsgr.exe was't working well with respect to its taskbar button). However, there is one thing that really, really annoys me: If you press the X button of the main window, the msnmsgr.exe isn't closed, but only minimized. But if you press Alt+F4 (or Alt+Space, Arrow up, Enter), msnmsgr.exe is closed, and you have to restart it. Is there a known solution? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 21:02, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

The Windows Live Messenger forums might be a good place to ask, if you haven't already. Vimescarrot (talk) 23:03, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

October 25

High Quality Digital Audio Setup for a Home Sound System

I am looking for some advice on purchasing a high-quality audio DAC for an antiquated, but high-quality sound system (a suggestion on a nice ADC would be good too for recording vinyls, etc.). What I plan to do with this is route music from a PC to the stereo system, but high sound quality is a must for this system.

I am wondering if the quality of HD audio that is integrated on the motherboard of all modern PC's is such that it will be sufficient for my purposes (note here that this setup is not for me, specifically, but for my father who is a self-proclaimed audiophile, but does not understand digital systems at all and does not care to learn, so it must please his ears and not mine--which is certainly subjective, but something at or above CD audio quality may suffice). I recall in the past when routing audio from an older sound card that electronic noise was a considerable issue at the time and this would be unacceptable here, so I question whether it's possible at all to use integrated audio and not get that electronic noise (I understand it's not possible to entirely do away with it, but if it's practically inaudible then that's fine), or if I will need an external converter which connects to the PC via USB or S/PDIF.

The sound system in question accepts two different physical inputs: a 1/4" stereo plug or the red and white pair of RCA connectors. Is there any difference in sound quality (possibly lower noise?) between these inputs either?

Does anyone here have any experience with this? -Amordea (talk) 04:45, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

What are you going to use as the source of your music? --80.40.144.68 (talk) 09:01, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

As for the source, probably FLAC's or high bit-rate MP3's (MP3's less likely given they are lossy) or perhaps even raw CD audio (a la disk images). Basically any quality digital format that could be contained on a hard drive. -Amordea (talk) 02:09, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Basically, any sound-card (including the one built into your computer) will be sufficient. The phrase "hi-fi" is currently (for the most part) an obsolete description: everything sold on the market today is "hi-fidelity." Let me explain: in the "old days" (let's say, 1950s), an audio amplifier would have "imperfections" in its gain characteristics. It might notch out particular frequencies or introduce a certain noise level or so on. The term "High Fidelity" was coined to refer to those audio systems that amplified the recorded sound with essentially no frequency distortion - "faithfully" replaying the recorded audio. In very old systems, this was a huge engineering challenge - tubes and speakers had all kinds of non-ideal characteristics that would interfere with the sound quality in a very audible way.

Ever since the days of solid state amplifiers, the electronic capabilities of an amplifier are way beyond anything any human could hear. Today, cheap transistors have perfectly flat frequency responses from DC to 20 GHz; noise figures are so far below anything an ear could discern; and 44.1 kHz sampled 16-bit digital audio accurately stores and reproduces exactly the original waveform (far beyond any capability of any human audiophile to distinguish). Now, software tuners and graphic equalizers exist to intentionally add imperfections to alter the tone of audio playback so that it can sound identical to the distortion of an old audio system. Let me rephrase this: every cheap, crappy sound-card you can buy is already 16-bit at 44.1 kHz with a flat frequency response. The worst possible quality digital audio system is already "perfect" and "indistinguishable" from original source. (The low-end models will have fewer features, but it's very unlikely they will actually have poor quality). "Professional quality" sound-cards will try to pitch some extra specs - 96kHz audio (which is useless to you and anyone who has human ears); and better latency during recording and pass-through (a spec which I have never independently validated - every sound card I have ever spent money on has always been limited by my computer's operating-system audio-system latency).

Modern "noise" is much more likely to come from a few sources: first, poor-quality digital sources (such as low-bitrate MP3 files) are the biggest culprit. MP3 is a lossy format; it does not perfectly store the original waveform, but stores a similar version of it. At 128 kbps bit-rate, which is reasonably common, I can tell that the sound is distorted (especially if there are high-frequency instruments or wide-band sounds like applause). My oscilloscope can certainly tell the difference between 128kbps and original waveform. But properly produced MP3 files, (let's say, 192 kbps or higher) are for the most part indistinguishable from an uncompressed recording.

The second possible source of noise is "coupling" - electromagnetic interference, in the form of power line hum, and in some cases (especially if your sound card is cheap and inside a computer) you can hear digital signal noise leaking on to the audio lines. On my laptop, whenever there is activity on the front-side bus, I can hear a faint high-pitched squeal leak onto the audio line. And on some of my speaker-setups, if I am sloppy with my wiring, an audio cable will loop around an AC power cable, and I can hear the 60 Hz hum if I turn the volume up pretty loud. Regarding choice between 1/4-inch and RCA connectors, it is doubtful whether this will make any perceptible difference. (I have used both; I prefer 3.5mm connections because they're small, and 1/4 inch when running long cables because I happen to have a lot of sturdy and long 1/4-inch cabling laying around). Make sure your 1/4 in isn't mono (some old systems, and some current professional-audio equipment, uses 1/4-inch for mono signal exclusively).

It is most probable that the weakest link in your audio system will be software - if you have a crummy sound-card driver, you might hear glitchy playback; if you have poor-quality sound files with sloppy compression, you will probably be able to hear squelchy squealy noises during playback. But I wouldn't spend much money on a sound-card, unless there's a specific feature you need - say, digital/optical audio connection, or 7.1 channel surround-sound. I'm of the belief that 2-channel (stereo) sound is sufficient for most "entertainment" purposes; some movies benefit from a rear or side channel, but most of the time, extra channels are gimmicks. Nimur (talk) 18:06, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Very informative. Thank you!

The "coupling" you mentioned is perhaps my biggest concern about the integrated audio. I personally wouldn't be able to hear it given that my hearing is rather poor now, but my father might and if he does, he would simply not use the system (and I already have to overcome the hurdle of his suspicion of digital audio--even though he listens to CD's, which I have pointed out is digital--and certainly do not want to add to the unreasonable stigma he has against it).

The system is just two-channel audio (it is from the 1970's), so I have no need for the bells and whistles of surround sound. What sound card would you recommend? Do you think the integrated audio (on say an Intel 945G motherboard in an AcerOne netbook) would be sufficient and would not produce any noticeable hum or static?

One problem I've noticed with this particular setup (routing audio from the netbook to the stereo amplifier) from what I can hear is that the bass is too much, which I can compensate for by turning the bass volume way down, but that is a rather inelegant solution. I am wondering if it has something to do with having to route the sound through the headphone/speaker port. Would I need a sound card with a line-out port for this purpose? I frankly don't know the difference between the speaker port and a line-out. -Amordea (talk) 02:09, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I would suggest that your integrated audio on the netbook is perfectly fine for these purposes; test it out and see if it's suitable. Regarding "too much bass," I use WinAMP. WinAMP is zero-cost (but not open-source) software; it has an interesting historic legacy and a spectacular user-interface. Among other features, it provides a software graphic equalizer that you can use to set the bass-levels and other tone quality to your liking. If you prefer free software (as in Linux), Rhythmbox, Amarok, and others exist to provide the same functionality. More technical audiophiles may enjoy Audacity, and jackd. The software I listed above will range in user-friendliness and expertise-requirements from "trivially easy" to "professional audio programmer", so you and your father can decide where you fall on the spectrum. Nimur (talk) 02:30, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

And regarding "speaker" vs. "line-out" - on many computers, the difference is that "speaker" is amplified, and "line-out" is not; but the amplification is usually pretty small to the point of nonexistence. See our article on line level for more on this detail. "In theory" a line-out should never be connected to headphones; but in practice, modern electronics protect against this with digitally-controlled impedance matching (so you usually have nothing to worry about). Nimur (talk) 02:33, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I recommend for you to use a digital audio editor instead of a media player. I simply connect my XP desktop to my stereo system and use this player/editor. Sometimes I connect RCA connectors to a TV's audio line outs, record the sound of a concert program, keep it in my PC as an audio file and listen to the file on the stereo. Oda Mari (talk) 07:55, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

VBA Question Part 3

If I want to run multiple SQL INSERT INTO queries, in VBA; What should I write to distinguish between queries? I've tried newline but that doesn't work in VBA. I've tried running the queries like this;

strSQL = ""
strSQL = strSQL & " INSERT INTO [CCF Static]([Main Table ID], [Integrations Team Member1], [Sales Team Member1], [Merchant Name1], [Merchant Type1], [Partner1], [Tier1], [Merchant Sector1], [Date Entered Into System1])"
strSQL = strSQL & " SELECT [ID], [Integrations Team Member], [Sales Team Member], [Merchant Name], [Merchant Type], [Partner], [Tier], [Merchant Sector], [Date Entered Into System]"
strSQL = strSQL & " FROM [Master Query beta 1]"
strSQL = strSQL & " WHERE [Master Query beta 1].[ID] = DATE() & "" & DATE()-1;"
MsgBox strSQL
DoCmd.RunSQL strSQL

strSQL = ""
strSQL = strSQL & " INSERT INTO [Brands]([Customer Name], [Merchant Sector])"
strSQL = strSQL & " SELECT [Merchant Name], [Merchant Sector]"
strSQL = strSQL & " FROM [Master Query beta 1]"
strSQL = strSQL & " WHERE [Master Query beta 1].[Date Entered Into System] = Date() & "" & Date()-1 AND [Master Query beta 1].[Merchant Type] = [PSP] OR [Merchant] OR [Reseller] OR [Sole Trader];"
MsgBox strSQL
DoCmd.RunSQL strSQL

But I get the following error: 'Run-time error '3075':

Syntax error in string in query expression '[Master Query beta 1].[ID]= DATE() & " & DATE()-1;'.

Any idea why? Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 10:35, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, this is just a problem with how you've formatted the SQL string, or maybe rooted in a misunderstanding about how to use SQL. (It's not a VBA problem.) Look at what it's spit back at you: there is a single, unmatched quotation mark that you've added there. Why? That's not going to be valid SQL. A general rule with this stuff is to first just have the SQL string output (e.g. with a MsgBox or by using Debug.Print) to see if it makes sense to begin with, before worrying about the VBA side of things. As it is you have a malformed SQL query, and I'm not at all sure what you think it shuld be doing. DATE() & " & DATE()-1 doesn't make any sense to me at all.

If you are trying to add a space, you need to properly format the question marks in the string so they are passed (as escaped characters) to the query. In VBA this is through double-quotations, so "" will produce " in the final query, and """" will produce "". --Mr.98 (talk) 14:20, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Note that building up SQL commands in plain strings is dangerous; see SQL injection. Paul (Stansifer) 16:03, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Though I don't see any opportunities for injection attacks in the above. And it's not too hard to protect against said attacks — it just requires passing the strings through a screening filter first. Though I will agree that not knowing SQL very deeply and also building up SQL commands in plain strings in a language you are not terribly comfortable with probably is a good recipe for danger! Assuming that you are going to have other users using it, anyway. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:26, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Just as an aside, and to reiterate what I said above -- I assume you are using MS Access. If you are not totally comfortable with SQL, work out the SQL statement (with dummy date if necessary) first in Query view, and then, after you're sure that the SQL works, translate it into the VBA strings. Otherwise you are entangling two very different possible sources of error (VBA and SQL) together in a way that is hard to tease out, especially since Access gives extremely cryptic error messages regarding SQL statements (as you've seen). Just a suggestion from a long-time Access programmer. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:57, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you guys so much. You've hit the nail on the head, I don't know what I'm doing, your advice is appreciated. I'll go back to building this in Query view. Thanks again. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 09:41, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

what are functions of DATABSE SERVER..??

what are functions of DATABSE SERVER..??—Preceding unsigned comment added by Lokesh.mavale (talk • contribs) 17:34, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

See database server.—Emil J. 17:47, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Od Dear - i'm scared to ask but - how do I choose what new PC or Laptop to buy?

Please understand - I am not a techie. I am 63, and have used IT in Scotland for about 20 years. I can use the whole Microsft Office Suite - professional - and use the PC daily, mainly for storing digital pictures (also copied to external hard drive), plus the Internet to keep in touch via e-mail but notsomuch facebook etc. I buy and browse online and have never had a problem. I bank and invest and study the markets online. I also like to convert digipics and music to picture vids for which I have the software. Trouble is - like me - my kit is getting old - and slow - and I keep getting messages that such and such a file is missing or corrupted - which leaves me cold. So the question is - and please forgive me - which Santa Claus do I trust? I am mid 60's, reasonably put-together, not wanting to waste my life on video games, but wanting to stay informed, avoiding hard mail and bugs, worms, trojans, viagra, and anti-death-offers, store pictures and music, and not sit around any longer than the kettle takes to boil. So do I shop online, buy a second-hand system (I don't need all the accessories such as keyboards etc.), and I will NEVER use a laptop on the Beach as I saw some youngsters doing last weeek in Spain - (sad Bar Stewards), or do I walk into PC World and say, "Please help me" - and then get ripped off? Thanks. Oh - Budget? Middle range I suppose - I don't want anything I will never use during the next 5 years or so. Thanks again. 92.30.211.53 (talk) 19:32, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

There are online buyers' guides — if you google desktop computer buyers guide then a number will appear — I would ignore the buyers' guides that are more than about 9 months old. Computer Shopper is a US publication with a "Desktops" section that might be useful, and Consumer Reports is a respected US nonprofit that does computer reviews, though its detailed ratings are behind a paywall. Personally I would get a machine from a large commodity PC maker like HP or Dell that stands behind their product (or claims to, anyway) with a year of free technical support. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:33, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

One question is: do you want a desktop or a laptop? Your keyboard and mouse will probably work with the laptop. (You would want to confirm this before choosing the laptop.) The laptop is lighter in weight. It will allow itself to be more easily set up in more than one location, if that seems a plus. I am assuming of course that your present computer is a desktop—I could be wrong about that. Bus stop (talk) 20:43, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

go to your local Apple Store and ask for advice there <smirk> --Ludwigs2 21:13, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Except you can't use Microsoft Office Professional on a Mac. (And the Office 2008 software is exceptionally buggy on a Mac.) I say this as a Mac user, not a hater. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:56, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

ludwig2's suggesion is good for getting ripped off in my opinion, as you're leaving it up to the salepeople to help you decide, which often resultes in them steering you to the most expensive items, with not neccessarily the best value. look at recent consumer guides for an idea of what to get, as well as for reviews. 70.241.18.130 (talk) 16:11, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that you need a new computer. Computer hardware doesn't normally get slower with time; it works like new until it fails completely. If your computer has gotten slower, it's almost certainly a software problem, and those can be fixed for free. Your computer probably came with a "recovery CD" or "recovery partition" or something of that sort, and after you run the recovery process it will be just like new. That means that all of your personal files will be gone—so move them to the external drive first!—and you will have to reinstall any software that you installed yourself. It's a hassle, but you'd have the same hassle with a new computer. -- BenRG (talk) 21:59, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

It's true that all Windows computers I have had do tend to slow down over time — but the original poster may feel that his or her computer is slower because the demands of his or her favorite Web sites may be increasing. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:54, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean by "middle" budget range? 500 USD? 2000 USD? To do what you want to do (use Microsoft Office, edit photos, and access the internet) will not take a terribly expensive computer. How well you can use the internet will be more a function of your internet access than your computer. Your ability to avoid viruses and Viagra ads will be a function of your Antivirus program and Spam filter, respectively, not your choice of computer. I really can't see any value in buying a second-hand system. You can get new computers today at a very reasonable price, and you can be pretty confident that they're going to work well (and, as Comet Tuttle recommended, there are many companies that will offer free tech support and a year long warranty). To be honest, I think that walking into a computer store and telling them what your looking for might be the best bet. In my experience, most people at such places are actually helpful and knowledgeable, and are more interested in getting you to buy a computer that you'll like, rather than the most expensive one. That's just my experience though. I would recommend Microsoft over Apple; not only will you be able to use Office, it will also be cheaper.

I would probably be expecting to pay about 500 USD for a machine (if you get a desktop; laptops will be a bit more expensive) to do what you want; get yourself something with 4 GB of RAM, an Intel Pentium processor, maybe a 500 GB Hard Drive, a DVD read/write drive, and an Integrated Graphics Processor. On the other hand, it's not really that expensive anymore to get a PC that's more or less "top of the line". For under 1500 USD, you could probably get something with 8 GB RAM, an Intel Core i7 processor, a dedicated graphics card, a 1 TB hard drive, and maybe even a drive that can read Blu-ray Discs. This will be a lot more than what you currently are using your computer for, but it will also stand a better chance of being useful for a lot longer. More memory will help speed things up, and will also allow you to do more things at once without as much slowdown (the better processor ought to help with this too, to some extent). It's likely that webpages are going to continue to get more and more complex as time passes (Wikipedia is really the exception to this rule; it's sickening how much junk is on so many sites these days). In addition to requiring a better internet connection, such pages will also demand more memory and processing power. I think that Blu-ray is going to become more and more prevalent in the next few years, so I would strongly recommend getting a computer with a drive that can read Blu-ray discs. Buddy431 (talk) 00:58, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Pretty much any PC will do all the things you mentioned above. Prices for new PCs start from around £300 for the lowest specification. It is actually quite difficult to buy an off-the-shelf system from a retail store like PC World, without a keyboard, mouse and monitor. If you can spend a bit more, it is worthwhile getting Microsoft Office bundled in with it. Buying from PC World does seem expensive and you are never sure if you are getting a good deal, especially when you notice their prices are identical to other stores like Comet, but the alternative is to buy from a small independant (perhaps on a local industrial estate), or buy online. Even though they often go on about the latest equipment, computer magazines can be useful sources of information about other suppliers even if you don't buy the exact model being reviewed that month. I've bought many Dells and have been pleased with every one of them, though other people here will tell you they would never buy a Dell.

Having said that, an alternative might be to refurbish your old PC. Back-up your documents, photos, emails, etc. Locate all the installation and driver disks. Add some more memory and replace the hard disk drive with a larger capacity one. Then reinstall the Windows operating system and Office and all the driversand other software you need. Download and install all the updates you're offered and put your backed-up data back. You will be amazed how much faster your PC seems. Astronaut (talk) 06:55, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

A reliable source for information about my mobile phone's software

My Sony Ericsson K850i mobile phone recently failed with a problem described in many places on the internet as the "blue ring of death". My research suggests I need to update the phone's firmware if I am going to try to fix the problem. However, all the information I have comes from various forums and fan-sites and seem mostly concerned with overcoming percieved shortcomings in mobile phones. Some sites also offer links to software tools to help with updating the firmware, but the software is usually home made, of dubious provenance and often lacking in basic usability or any guidance on how it should be used. Replacement firmware can also be downloaded, but once again it seems to be of dubious provenance.

What I'm looking for is a reliable source, perhaps from Sony Ericsson themselves, which details the file system, software and possible solutions, and perhaps provides software tools and firmware. The source of the software/firmware should give me confidence that my PC is less likely to be infected with malware and convince me that my phone is getting some proper updated firmware (rather than some home modded firmware put together by a fanboy in his bedroom).

Particularly important in my case, is to find out how I can recover my list of contacts, which everyone so far has said will be destroyed by the firmware update. Astronaut (talk) 23:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

How about the shop you bought the phone at, or your mobile-phone contract provider? They may be able to repair the phone for you. Nimur (talk) 23:34, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Forgot to mention, the shop where I bought it said they couldn't do that if it was out of warranty. Astronaut (talk) 23:42, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Here is the page for your phone on the Sony Ericsson website. I believe you are supposed to run a particular type of cable from your PC to the phone; you can then back up your contacts list and upgrade the firmware. I have had a Sony Ericsson phone (different model) and bought the cable for that model over eBay for under US$5.00. Disclaimer: I never updated that phone's firmware; I used the cable to copy files back and forth. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:40, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Mobile phone unlocking

As a consequence of the problems outlined in my question above is that I have found lots of websites offering SIM-lock removal services. As far as I can tell, all these sites will sell you a way to unlock your phone, but none will tell you how to unblock your phone for free. Strangely, I've not seen anyware where I can buy software to unlock phones. My local phone unlocking shop seems to be able to do this in just a couple of minutes with one small laptop. So, if I wanted to go into business unlocking mobile phones, where would I get the software from? Astronaut (talk) 23:36, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Phone_unlocking#Unlocking_technology suggests various methods, such as leaked unlocking codes, rewriting the firmware, and spoofing SIM data. It's possible the unlocking software is custom made by each person doing the unlocking, and not available for download, certainly not for free or these people would be out of business very fast. I don't have a mobile phone so I don't know if that's a helpful answer or not. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 13:37, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

October 26

iSCSI over DDR InfiniBand

Hello everyone,

   I'm aware of the iSCSI protocol being routed over 10GbE networks, but I want to know whether it is possible (not where to get such a product) to send and receive iSCSI CDBs over DDR InfiniBand networks. And if so, whether this has actually been implemented.

   Thanks as always. Rocketshiporion♫ 02:55, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Compatibility Concerns: Old Games and New Operating Systems

• Age of Empires: Because Age of Empires was released during the time of Windows 95 and 98, there is a possible risk that trying to install and play the game on later Operating Systems such as 2000, Me, and XP might cause serious incompatibility problems.

• Shogun: Total War: It is said that the upper limit of compatibility for this game is the Nvida 8 series of graphics cards and that the game is incompatible with the Windows Vista Operating System. Trying to play the game with a graphics card later than the Nvida 8 or with an Operating System past Windows XP will cause compatibility issues.

Can someone verify any of this? --Arima (talk) 04:00, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Considering the minimal differences between some 9 series cards and some 8 series cards, I would be surprised if a game really doesn't work with them but works with all 8. I'm not saying it's impossible just that it would be surprising to me. A perhaps more likely possibility would be the need for old drivers that don't work with 9 series cards (at least theoretically). Alternatively and even more likely to me would be 7 series cards as the limit with 8 not working. Nil Einne (talk) 10:00, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I can confirm that AoE works fine on XP (and therefore almost certainly also on 2000). 81.131.40.42 (talk) 11:07, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

And also that Shogun: Total War runs on XP (at least for the first ten minutes of play, because I took an immediate dislike to it and then discovered Heroes III), but I couldn't tell you about its compatibility with recent graphics cards. 213.122.39.199 (talk) 11:25, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

The first Age of Empires worked on my Windows 7, 32-bit. Also, Windows ME is built on DOS the same as 95 and 98 are (unlike 2K, XP, etc which are NT) so it should work fine. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 13:42, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

And you can always right-click on the exe and run in compatibility mode in Vista or preferably Windows 7. Win98 has such a small footprint anyway that you can run it in a virtual or dual-boot if you are so inclined. Sandman30s (talk) 11:13, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

technology about a browser called “Spacetime”

i found a 3D browser called “spacetime”，it‘s cool，but somehow not very popular........ i wonder how this browser works or some details else about it. thank you~！~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cedric.ye (talk • contribs) 14:13, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

SpaceTime seems to be a wrapper around Trident (layout engine), the layout engine of MS Internet Explorer, putting individual Trident views on different little floating boxes. Bar some wow-factor, I don't see the added-value. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 14:46, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

asp.net

I think it's not only the .net version of asp, like instead vb and vb.net, but I cannot understand the difference. --217.194.34.103 (talk) 16:21, 26 October 2010 (UTC)