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December 3

Unix history

I just rambled through a series of articles, and now I have a rambling series of questions:

1. Though AT&T weren't allowed (for a long time) to sell Unix as a product because of an antitrust agreement, they licensed it to various universities and commercial firms. What was the nature of these licenses? Did the right to make a version of Unix cost money? Were there rules about what you couldn't do with the code? I'm unclear about how free it was.
2. Unix#cite_ref-faqs.org_5-0 says the settlement was 1958, but every other source I find (and the article Bell System) says 1956, so I think that's a mistake.
3. The same source cited in the Unix article (from which the paragraph is copied verbatim) says that B (programming language) was interpreted, but the Wikipedia article says it was compiled, so is the faqs.org source just generally wrong about stuff?
4. In 1983, AT&T was allowed to sell Unix as a product again. Then several confusing things happen: BSD competes with the newly commercial Unix - how was that allowed, why couldn't AT&T assert control over BSD? Lots of companies suddenly start making commercial Unixes under license - but this was allowed earlier, so why the rush? Weren't all these companies leaping to pay money to AT&T for an OS which was previously free? (Again, I'm confused about whether it was free or not both before and after 1983, and in what ways.) What was the motivation? Why did Apple feel the need to join in with A/UX, when they already had a perfectly nice OS?

Hmm, my numbering system becomes a bit worthless by that last question. Anyway, those are the things I wonder about. (I've just read Threaded code, which answered #3.) 213.122.13.97 (talk) 03:14, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

The original AT&T licenses, to be very brief, stated that you couldn't claim you wrote Unix and you had to share any improvements on Unix with AT&T. The second item is why the popular features of BSD Unix were merged back into AT&T's version of Unix.

The 195x decree was part of a large case that lasted many years. It is likely that you will find different years listed depending on which date of the case the author wants to use. I have always seen 1958 listed, but I'm not surprised to see 1956 also.

As for selling a previously free operating system... Why not? That was done at the time. QDOS was a free OS for use with the SCP8086. Why would anyone pay to get QDOS renamed MS-DOS? Microsoft offered commercial support - a requirement in the commercial market. So, even when AT&T was turning Unix into a commercial product, there were free versions of BSD Unix. AT&T offered commercial support. Now, with Linux, there are many free versions of Linux. Still, there are commercial versions (like Redhat) that come with commercial support. Basically, you can take anything that is free and make a "product" out of it by offering some sort of added value. In this case, the added value is mainly a phone number you can call when you have trouble.

As for A/UX, Apple sold hardware. Hardware is useless without an OS. By giving users the option to run what was basically Unix, the users suddenly had access to anything available for Unix. Even back then, there was a lot of free software for Unix systems (especially the early Internet software). -- kainaw™ 14:00, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

BSD was originally only available to Unix licensees. Eventually all the AT&T code got removed and BSD became free software, with a detour through a lawsuit. USL v. BSDi has some info about that. 67.117.130.143 (talk) 11:38, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

That lawsuit was particularly overreaching, since it was basically a claim that the code written by Berkeley grad students supported by U.S. government grants, which had greatly increased the commercial value of Unix for AT&T, was now closed proprietary corporate property. It succeeded in casting a legal cloud over BSD for long enough to assist Linux in becoming the most widely-used free Unix variant... AnonMoos (talk) 11:23, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

My walkman mp3 freezes when i try to sync music?

I've had my walkman since december 3rd of last year, and it was working fine. About 2 months ago, it started messing up. If i plug it into the computer, it will charge, no problem. Then, when i try to sync the music from Windows Media Player, it freezes. And when I disconnect the player, it's still frozen. I can't un-freeze it until the next day, when it uses up it's battery supporting the frozen screen, and then i can re-charge it, and listen to my old music once again. I'd rather not reset it if there is an alternative way, and just incase it still doesn't let me put music on it. Then, i would have a piece of worthless crap in my hands :P Anyone else had this problem? Any solutions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.79.129.82 (talk) 04:01, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

No specific solution at this point, but if you tell us what specific brand and model you have, it might help somebody figure it out. --LarryMac | Talk 15:01, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Google Voice UK?

Has Google announced any plans to bring Google Voice to the UK? If not, are there any decent alternatives available? --CGPGrey (talk) 11:25, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Found an article that suggests that UK users will be/are able to receive google voice calls, but it looks like there probably won't be a UK roll-out any time soon. The google voice forums don't offer any clues either, other than the fact that a release outside the US is in the pipeline, but with no timescale given :S Darigan (talk) 11:36, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

UK Postcode analysis software?

Is there any software (preferably free & easily available) which can take a list of UK postcodes and give an analysis of geographical spread, eg numbers within 1m, 5m, 10m, etc from a certain point, show the distribution on a map, etc.

Thanks AllanHainey (talk) 13:02, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

See Postcode Address File#Costs and public availability for information on this. ╟─TreasuryTag►Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster─╢ 13:04, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

zsync options

Hi everyone, as we don't have an article on zsync, and I can't figure it out from the man page, I've come here to ask the following question:

Is it possible to generate a zsync-patched output file from an input file and the *.zsync file, assuming they are both already downloaded, without having a network connection? Or will I still need access to the fully-patched file on a remote server?

In other words, does zsync work like this:

[original input file] + [.zsync file] = [patched output file]

or like this:

[original input file] + [.zsync file] = [list of file fragments to extract from remote patched output file]

?

-- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 14:24, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Forget this, rdiff (note: this link forwards to rsync) is the tool I need. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 17:57, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

IE7 certificate error question part 2

Wow, these threads get archived quickly! This is a continuation of this question here.[1] I did submit a help desk ticket, and the response was to add each site to the safe list. But that still doesn't work. One of my co-workers believes that what's causing the issue is that I'm going through a proxy server and the certificate's credentials don't match the proxy server. No, not all the PCs here have this problem. Another co-worker does not but he has an older image than I do. Perhaps not coincidentally, he's able to surf to mozilla.org, but it's blocked for me. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 14:53, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Looking up former IP addresses

DNS doesn't stand for "denial of service", but perhaps it ought. Revoking domain names periodically crops up as a method of censorship, most recently of Wikileaks. But in theory, so far as I know, the former contents of domain name servers aren't copyrighted or otherwise secret - someone could have a Web service that tells you where a domain name pointed on some day in history. But does such a site exist? Wnt (talk) 17:17, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

searchdns.netcraft.com? 125.163.233.25 (talk) 20:46, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Using this site, I typed in file.wikileaks.org (which for some inexplicable reason isn't listed in the mirror site's IP lookups and gives an unresolved link on their cablegate page) and found out it was 88.80.16.63 as of November 30. Substituting the IP for the name, I successfully downloaded [2] and used it to get the latest archive. Wnt (talk) 21:57, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

AFAIK no wikileaks domain names have been 'revoked' recently. Their free DNS provider abandoned them because they kept getting DDOSed. This isn't exactly surprising. I myself use a free DNS provider for my personal website but I do so under the full knowledge that as a free service their are few guarantees and in particular it's rather unlikely my provider is going to stand by me if there is an extreme amount of DNS traffic such as if I'm repeatedly DDOSed to a high level (in fact most free providers I've seen make this clear in the TOS) no matter how noble my cause. Really if you're doing something which may cause such attacks even if the TOS doesn't mention it, it's almost rude to use a free provider without at least getting their permission to use their service despite the likelihood you may come under attack and I haven't see any evidence they actually did that. Even better pay for a service or find someone who is willing to provide a service for free that meets your needs. Note that wikileaks did briefly lose one of their domain names 2 years ago but that isn't exactly 'most recently' since I'm pretty sure plenty of domain names have been taken over etc since then. Nil Einne (talk) 16:41, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Basic domain registering questions

I have some question open about domain registrars:

• 1. the prices vary from $1 to much more. Is something wrong with those $1 registrars?
• 2. if I choose the privacy option when registering a domain, the domain is legally a property of the registrar. Is there any way round that, where I keep my privacy but remain the domain owner?
• 3. is there a free reverse whois search tool somewhere? (where I type the address or name of someone and get which domains he has?
• 4. if I have a domain name of some web-page, can I discover who is the hosting provider and domain registrar?

80.58.205.34 (talk) 18:38, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

1. You get what you pay for. Don't expect much support from a $1 registrar. As an anecdote, I used to do web hosting. Three of my clients had their domain names stolen. All three used Godaddy. None of the client who used Network Solutions had their domains stolen. The thieves offered to return the domain names for $900. When complaining to Godaddy, there was a $1,000 charge to investigate the complaint, so it was cheaper to pay off the thieves.

• 1.1 So, the thieves new what Godaddy would charge and were cheaper than them?

Correct. -- kainaw™ 19:52, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

• 1.2 How can we know that the thief was not you?

It doesn't matter who the thief was. A registrar that allows someone to steal a domain name registration is a bad registrar. -- kainaw™ 19:52, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

2. The registrars always own the domain names. If you don't make it private and don't pay to renew, the registrar takes back the domain name. If you want to transfer a domain name to a different registrar, having it private will simply add a small layer of complication to the transfer process.

• 2.1 Well, and what if the domain becomes valuable? Can the registrar cancel my contract with them and sell it? Or deny renewal and keep it?

All registrars have a lengthy set of rules that you "agree to read" when you register a domain name. Break one of the rules and they can take back the domain name. -- kainaw™ 19:52, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

3. Not that I've seen.

4. Whois is free and will show the registrar info. Ping/Whois/Traceroute will show the IP address, which can be easily traced to a hosting provider.

Please note that the anecdote in #1 is purely an anecdote. Also, the commands in #4 are Unix/Linux commands. I do not know what the Windows equivalents are. -- kainaw™ 18:45, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. 80.58.205.34 (talk) 18:52, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Not OP, but I have a question about this; if the registrars always own the domain names, where do they get them from? There must be some origin of domain names where the registrars buy them from, couldn't you also go to this place a get a domain name your truly own? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 21:16, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

The TLD registries (e.g., VeriSign for .com and .net, CNNIC for .cn) 118.96.155.31 (talk) 22:27, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Theoretically, it is technically possible that every Joe Schmoe who wanted to buy a domain-name could go straight to ICANN, but it is impossible as a matter of organization/policy. Domain_Name_System#Domain_name_registration explains this: ICANN is the authoritative top-level organization responsible for delegating the DNS system. Top-level domains (.com, .net, .mil ,and so on; and the various country code top-level domains), are each assigned to a select set of domain name registrars by ICANN - these are private entities that are given permission to regulate the domain and deal with end-customers. Each top-level domain has a different set of rules: .mil and .gov, for example, are tightly controlled; they are operated by the United States Government on account of a historic "special privileged relationship" with ICANN and IANA. The .com and .net are operated by commercial businesses who have a special privileged relationship with ICANN/IANA; they re-sell domains to end-users like you and I (because we don't have that same special privileged relationship with ICANN). And, the top-level country codes are dealt with on a case-by-case basis: in most instances, a single registrar has authority over each country-code; it may be a government agency, or a private corporation; but in either case, they have a "special privileged position" in their ability to register directly with the top-level DNS system. Nimur (talk) 22:32, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Or, to put it bluntly, these guys control the internet name system, and your business is too small to interest them if you're only registering 1 or 10 or 1000 dns-names at a time. So they have delegated that power to this list of organizations who are willing to deal with you. Nimur (talk) 22:44, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

It's a little similar to the way land ownership works (in the UK and US). You talk about owning the land your house stands on, but in fact you only hold it in fee simple and the Crown or the equivalent holds the actual allodial title. Similarly I talk about owning my domains, but ultimately IANA is pulling the strings. Marnanel (talk) 13:36, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

December 4

Eight Nehalems in 2U: Electrical & Thermal Considerations

   I have been wondering; is it electrically and thermally possible to put eight Intel Xeon 7500 Series processors and a terabyte of RAM into a single 2U server? I mean a single system server, whether it has eight sockets on a singe baseboard or it consists of two quad-socket boards glued together. Amax's ServMax X1401 has half of that (four Nehalems and 512GB of RAM) in half the space, and the Cray CX1000-SC achieves eight Intel Xeon 7500 Series processors and a terabyte of RAM in 3U of rackspace but lacks redundant PSUs and multiple PCIe slots... Rocketshiporion♫ 09:17, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Gulftown Xeon and Desktop Motherboard

If I installed a Gulftown Xeon processor on a (LGA 1366, X58) desktop motherboard, can I also install non-ECC, unbuffered ("regular") memory modules on the motherboard? The motherboard is known to support the processor.

More generally, given a motherboard and a supported processor, how do I determine what kind of memory to install? I am not asking about memory type, clock, size, and the number and placement of modules, but the ECC-, buffered-, and registered-ness of the memory.

Thanks for the answer. 118.96.155.129 (talk) 01:01, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

AFAIK, RDIMMs and UDIMMs cannot be mixed in the same system. As for how to determine what kind of memory to install, supported memory types and configurations will be stated in the processor's technical specifications. And the technical datasheets for most Intel processors are available from the Intel website. You may find the technical documentation for the Xeon 3000 Series and the Xeon 5000 Series useful. Rocketshiporion♫ 09:30, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Embedded objects in HTML and changing their size

Is there a way in HTML to embed an object, like a flash movie, but instead of a height and width value in the embed tag, have them both be variables and use some sort of input (on the page or otherwise) to change these variables "live" on the page (without needing to refresh)?

137.81.118.126 (talk) 01:27, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

They should allow percentage values, such as "width:50%". Then, it will have a width 50% of the container it is in. The advantage is that it will be resized to the page size. If you grow/shrink the window, it will change size. The problem is that this all depends on the ability of the object to resize. I seriously doubt flash is capable of resizing without completely reloading the page. However, you can resize images, tables, divs, etc... easily. I've even set up text to get larger/smaller as the window changes size. -- kainaw™ 01:38, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes, this is easy with Javascript. For example:

Extended content

<html> <body> <!-- below: an image on the Wikipedia front page, sized to its default height and width. Note that we have assigned it a unique id so we can reference it easily. --> <img id="obj" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b0/William_Wilson_Talcott.png/84px-William_Wilson_Talcott.png" width="84" height="100"> <p> <!--the width form entry; 84 is the default. We have assigned it a unique id so we can easily get its value. --> width: <input id="obj_width" type="text" value="84"><br> <!-- the height form entry; 100 is the default. Ditto on the id. --> height: <input id="obj_height" type="text" value="100"><br> <!-- this is the "make it happen" button. It assigns the width of the element with the id of "obj" using the value in the "obj_width" form element, and then does it to the height as well. "return false" just means, "and don't reload the page". --> <input type="submit" value="change" onclick="document.getElementById('obj').width=document.getElementById('obj_width').value; document.getElementById('obj').height=document.getElementById('obj_height').value; return false;"> </p> </body> </html>

In this case, the element with the id "obj" is an image tag, but it could be an object tag as well. Now whether this will produce the right results with the object will depend on how it handles having its canvas resized. I don't know how well, say, Flash would deal with that. My feeling is that you will need some kind of Actionscript in the Flash file itself to dynamically accommodate its changing size if you don't want it to just crudely re-size it the way that an image is. The way you'd do this is have a function within the Flash file that would recalculate its own canvas depending on variable input, and then trigger that with Javascript. It's considerably more complicated than what I've shown above. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:40, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

You can load flash movies directly into a window without any container, and then resize the window (while playing the movie), and they're perfectly happy to adapt to the new size. So I think it would work. 81.131.39.230 (talk) 02:13, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

(edit) I'll play around with this. The flash video in question DOES allow different sizes and seems to work with various sizes, i just dont know how it would respond to being told to change its size on the fly as opposed to editing the tag and reloading the page. :o 137.81.118.126 (talk) 01:44, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

It'll probably depend on the Actionscript that is used in the video in question. Alternatively you could probably reset the object's embed src on the fly with Javascript as well, which might cause just the Flash element to reload (and not the whole page). But I haven't tried that and it might not work. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:47, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I tried it with a YouTube embed tag, using the "object" as "obj" above, and it worked 100% fine. The interface is clever enough to resize on the fly without any difficulty. So it can be done. I don't know how much cleverness is behind that, though. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:50, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I tried this with my video file as well, and also got the desired result, thanks! 137.81.118.126 (talk) 01:54, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Loss of Net Neutrality in US vs Internet Censorship in China

Let us suppose a hypothetical (yet possible) scenario where the United States passes a bill that destroys net neutrality and allows ISP's to selective throttle internet traffic or implement multi-tiered service. While it is likely that certain sites unable to pay a premium will be slower than before, suppose that the ISP really dislikes a specific site, say WikiLeaks for example, are they able to completely block the site or slow the traffic to a point where it takes like an hour just to load one page?

If so, how does this compare to the "Great Firewall" internet censorship in China? In China, you are still able to access blocked sites using proxies such as Tor, but can you do the same if ISPs in America decide to censor certain websites? Are there any technical solutions around this in the US?

Acceptable (talk) 02:23, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

The difference: In China, the blocking of a specific site is mandated by the government, while in the United States, it is mandated by the market. 118.96.155.129 (talk) 02:45, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Where "Market" means that one single company with no competitors that I could get broadband from. We call that Freedom here. APL (talk) 04:01, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I am looking more towards the technical implications of both scenarios. What is the relative difficulty between the two systems in accessing restricted websites? Acceptable (talk) 04:24, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

It's pretty clear that there has been an unreasonable push by the current administration to influence private companies, both in the Wikileaks case and the early International Burn a Koran Day suppression. Even so, the ability of private Internet broadband companies to act as censors must be limited. Techniques like using HTTP tunneling and other tunneling protocols, done in China, might be legally punished as subversive; but in the U.S. they would seem to be legitimate business practices. The cable company would have to make a very clear policy of forbidding, with some kind of fine, any kind of content that they couldn't intercept and successfully interpret - but besides extraordinary customer outrage, there's the little point that they don't have the employees to implement something like that. They're making their profit providing content, not rummaging through it to punish customers. Besides, they'd face the prospect that angry customers would help get new competitors off the ground, or engage in other forms of terrorism. Think of where a cable company would be if one angry person spent an 8-hour night driving around with a pair of long pruning shears.

So I think you'll see any such censorship being imposed essentially at gunpoint, only when companies are intensively targeted by a coordinated campaign of legislative and administrative threats, high-profile boycotts, and denial of service attacks. I'm not saying they won't be pushed into it, but I don't think they'll be willing partners without a carrot-and-stick the size of CALEA - in other words, formal government censorship. Wnt (talk) 16:41, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Is wikileaks down?

Both [3] and [4] seem to be down for me. [5] and [6] says "it's just me." What's wrong here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.169.185.150 (talk) 17:57, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

The .ch address was predicted [7] to go the same way as the .org address, since both are administered by EveryDNS.net. I suppose that downforeveryoneorjustme has slow reactions (something to do with Domain propagation?) and that both domains (but not the IP address) are in fact down by now. 81.131.27.188 (talk) 18:41, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Thee are a number of URLs in the WikiLeaks article; at least some are active. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:51, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikileaks supposedly has new DNS providers [8] [9]. However changes to the name servers can take up to 48 hours or so to propogate depending on the caching settings. On the other hand a whois on the wikileaks.org domain at [10] still shows their name servers as everydns. Nil Einne (talk) 19:08, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Should not any reference here to downforeveryoneorjustme be deleted as just more spam?--Aspro (talk) 19:52, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Huh? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 20:56, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

We need to define "down." At present, (20:19, 4 December 2010 (UTC)), the Wikileaks server is active, the domain name has been de-activated, and the PayPal account has been de-activated. Nimur (talk) 20:19, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikileaks being down could be for a variety of reasons, DDOS attacks, DNS support dropped, its blocked in your country, etc.Smallman12q (talk) 20:23, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Note that as I was told above, http://searchdns.netcraft.com/ provides retroactive name service. With governments returning to using DNS as a censorship gateway, this type of service is now a basic net essential. Wnt (talk) 21:57, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikileaks servers are still up at http://213.251.145.96/ according to https://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/status/10621245489938433 --h2g2bob (talk) 00:41, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

As I noted above, AFAIK wikileaks domain names were never deactived (recently). Their free DNS provider stopped providing service because they kept getting DDOSed to such an extent it was affecting their DNS provider (and therefore other customers), as most free providers would. They still have/d full control of their domain name but need/ed to find some other DNS provider. (Evidentally they were given 24 hours before the service was pulled, the info above suggests they found one but so it's not clear to me why they still seem to be pointing to everyDNS with their wikileaks.org domain name. One would have to wonder who was in charge of the domain name if they thought it a good idea to use a free service without (at least I haven't seen any info to suggest they did) at least making sure they would be okay with you getting repeatedly DDOSed when the AUP said "If we find that any user is utilizing a certain amount of resources which we deem to be excessive we will contact that user and allow him or her to either begin paying us or we will recommend a premium DNS provider such as our friends at Dyn Inc", which may explain why the domain name is still pointing to everyDNS as its name servers. IIRC for some reason some of their domain names were reported as belonged to either wikia or the WMF for a while, given the common confusion and the fact wikileaks is controversial I don't think Jimbo in whatever role was particularly happy with it but it took a while to get someone in wikileaks to fix it which perhaps somewhat supports the theory.) See also [11] which mentions their domain name registrar saying wikileaks still have control although they are facing pressure from both sides. Nil Einne (talk) 16:51, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

java object reference.

Hi, I have a quick question.

Suppose I have some nice code like so:

public void foobar(thing a)

{

thing b = a // this is normal, of course.

}

But what if foobar is a method within class thing... can I say

thing c = this

Basically, I need a method within a class where two object references point one to the object passed and the other to the object that called the method, or vice versa according to a random() coin toss.

Thanks!

Duomillia (talk) 23:02, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't really understand what you want, but perhaps you want to be using the this keyword? It's always valid, where foobar is a nonstatic method. Beyond that, it's difficult to see what problem the code you propose is trying to solve, so it's difficult to give you a constructive answer about what code you should write to achieve your goal. 84.51.189.0 (talk) 23:47, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, let me see if I can rephrase the problem.

There is a class called nCraft. It has the member data nCraft.health and nCraft.fire and a method nCraft.attack(nCraft victim) So for example, I could say alice.attack(bob) and in the method, based on a random() outcome winner = bob and loser = alice or vice versa and health is changed accordingly.

Duomillia (talk) 00:25, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe something like this?

public void foobar(Thing t) {
	Thing winner, loser;
	if(Math.random()) {
		winner = this;
		loser = t;
	} else {
		winner = t;
		loser = this;
	}
}

Also, if other methods depended on who won and who lost, it'd be better to make winner and loser be instance variables, or better yet, have the method return a Thing[]. And, something neat I learned just yesterday, (the super long question about jdialogs) are some code tags. Use <syntaxhighlight lang="java"> and </syntaxhighlight> around your code. KyuubiSeal (talk) 04:32, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! That's exactly what I needed! All I need it for is something like this:

winner.gold += looser.gold;
looser.gold = 0;

But I wasn't sure if I could use 'this' all by it self as a reference to self. Well, it looks like I can. Thanks! Duomillia (talk) 04:49, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

One further off-topic comment, because this isn't the Language Desk: if anyone besides you is ever going to read this code, they'll think that YOU are the "looser" if you don't learn the difference between LOSE and LOOSE. DaHorsesMouth (talk) 21:13, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

December 5

Answers.com

Hello. Why does Internet Explorer display "false" when I go to answers.com? How can I fix that? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 03:39, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

What, exactly, displays "false" when you go to that site? Dismas|^(talk) 03:46, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

A white webpage with false in Times New Roman at the upper left corner --Mayfare (talk) 04:07, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm guessing that you are a using are old browser ( Chrome 9 didn't play up), so go to Firefox, a newer IE version or Chrome. General Rommel (talk) 10:13, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Very messy, ambiguous naming

Hi, I cant seem to find out the name of my HTC smartphone. the network sold it as a HTC Snap (no further qualification). another network in the same country (canada) sells an identical phone as HTC Maple (no further qualification) and a third network sells a clearly different HTC Snap, so i think the one i bought it from are calling the Maple a Snap. the back of the phone under the battery also says MAPL100 which i beleive is a model number indicating which HTC Maple it is, not Snap! when i plug it in the computer, i get the name HTC Maple S520

googleing all those names just made me more confused because there is a host of other names american and european networks have tacked onto this device. so how the hell do i figure it out... can i find it from looking up the IMEI number?

current candidates i beleive it might be are HTC Maple 100, HTC Maple S520 or HTC Snap S520.

why does HTC make so many very similar but different devices anyway? and why do networks like to call them by their own stupid names?

Roberto75780 (talk) 05:12, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

The HTC Maple (code name), HTC Snap (release name), HTC S520, HTC S521, HTC S522, HTC S523 AND the T-Mobile Dash 3G are all exactly the same phone. The only differences will be any customisations the operators make (this might be a physical change to the colour of casing/logos or software branding/applications), hardware wise they're identical. As for why they all call them by their own names... this I can't really answer I'm afraid. All HTC Devices have a codename whilst it's in development and a different name for actual release (often the code name still shows up in the software of the phone), but this isn't new and has been standard practice for as long as I can remember.  ZX81  ^talk 05:45, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

okay, so maple would be like Longhorn is to Windows Vista, and the other names are just netwok assigned nicknames?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Roberto75780 (talk • contribs) 22:19, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Apostrophes in Inkscape

Hi. In, say, Microsoft Word and Photoshop, apostrophes and quotation marks are automatically converted into the appropriate ‘ “ ” ’ direction, from ' and "
Does anyone know if there's any way one can achieve this in other programmes such as Notepad and/or Inkscape without just copy-pasting the correct glyph in? Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►Regent─╢ 09:24, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Universal ways that can work in all applications, no. But you can paste these “smart quotes“ quickly from the Character Map. Or you can write your documents in "straight quotes" then post-process the documents with some kind of script. 118.96.165.219 (talk) 14:00, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

One of my least favorite aspects about Inkscape — and one of the reasons that as a part-time designer I can't quite call it a professional application — is that is has exceptionally underdeveloped text support. (Bug reports filed on this and many other related usability issues usually get put under low priority, in preference to very odd and specific technical things that the programmers think a designer should care about.) Anyway, the only way to do this in Inkscape that I know of is either pasting in the glyphs or memorizing how they can be entered in manually with your operating system. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:01, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Or you can use a "keyboard remapper" or "keyboard macro" application to program two least used keys (or key combinations) to enter the quotes. 118.96.165.219 (talk) 16:26, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I would not recommend copying and pasting from Word or other Office products because you may end up with something like this: "This isn?t right!". Use the character map and make sure that the encoding is set correctly (as a general rule, use UTF-8 everywhere unless there's good reason to use something else). As for Notepad, you may want to use WordPad instead (it's "smarter" in many areas, including encoding). --NYKevin @213, i.e. 04:07, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Term for an easy computer to hack

What term do hackers use to refer to an easy target? 169.231.15.25 (talk) 09:58, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

A honeypot? 118.96.165.219 (talk) 14:00, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

A honeypot is something else entirely. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:05, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Vulnerable, exploitable 82.44.55.25 (talk) 15:19, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Windows, Apple. ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:42, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Simply hilarious. Thanks for that. — Waterfox ^~talk~ 18:28, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I would say a vulnerable target. — Waterfox ^~talk~ 18:28, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

It is rare that hackers hack anymore. The "easy target" is called a "user". Just promise something like an image of boobs and the user will install anything you ask. -- kainaw™ 17:43, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Does that mean female computer users never install viruses? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.134.16.73 (talk) 17:50, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

No, for female users, you promise software that will help them _show_ boobs. ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:36, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Kainaw's brusque post was meant to illustrate the importance of social engineering in surreptitiously deploying malware. Different methods of social-engineering are effective against different kinds of targets. See also, scareware, ransomware, "moralityware", and so on. I think it's a fair and accurate statement to say that at present, the overwhelming majority of trojan software uses pornography as the bait; in second place is malware that uses promises to aid or provide access to pirated music or videos as bait. Nimur (talk) 19:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Scope of CSE subjects in the present world

Pls tell me the scope of each branches(networking, programming etc.) under computer science engineering? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.207.162.21 (talk) 10:22, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Vast. --Sean 18:26, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Consider reading out outline of computer science and the articles linked from there. Nimur (talk) 19:17, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Excel graph... help?!

I'm struggling with one of my graphs. I'll post an image below so you know what I'm talking about.

Picture

I have two data series, one called 'prior to addition' of a substance and one after. I am trying to link this to my X-axis which is time in minutes (in decimal form i.e. 1, 1.16, 1.32 etc). The prior to addition should start at time zero and the after should start at time=1 on the X-axis.

When I add these data series to my graph and select the time frame as my horizontal axis, for some reason, both start from time=0. This is very frustrating as I need the two lines separate on the graph.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong here? Thanks! Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  14:07, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, you have graphed the column headed "Serum A absorba" in two data series. The first series covers the timeperiod 0-1 (ie. Excel cells C4:C10), and is coloured blue. The second series covers the remaining time intervals, 1-4.16 minutes (ie. Excel cells C10:C29), and is coloured red. Unfortunately, while it seems obvious to us that they are time series and therefore one should follow the other, Excel doesn't know that the two data series should start from different places. The x-axis labels are just that... labels only and Excel make no assumption that they are anything to do with time.

An easy solution is to create empty cells in both data series to represent the full time range. Copy the results to another column, relabel the original column as "Prior to addition" and label the copied column as "After addition". Blank out the parts of each column which does not apply to the situation and then graph both complete columns against the time labels. See this image for an example of what I mean). Astronaut (talk) 00:55, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

You, sir, are a life saver! Thank you. 146.87.0.73 (talk) 11:09, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

An alternative would be to try a Scatter Chart as the type of graph being used.--86.133.83.252 (talk) 15:40, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Why isnt the browser the boss?

When a browser connects with a website, as far as I am aware the browser sends the website some information about what software etc is installed on the user's computer (eg Java, Flash etc). The website then picks and chooses what content to provide the browser with.

Why isnt this done the other way around - the website sends the browser details of what the website can provide, and then the browser picks and chooses what it will take.

Wouldnt doing it this way provide greater privacy for the user? Thanks 92.15.1.139 (talk) 14:53, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

CTRL+SHIFT+P ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:45, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I think websites still use your plugins in privacy mode, so that won't make a difference for this question.

Web pages contain tags (<embed> and <object>) which mark where the flash, java, images (with <img>) should go. The browser makes the choice of whether to fetch the flash content. Normally it does so automatically, although installing an extension like Flashblock or NoScript to Firefox will make it ask you first.

If flash isn't installed, the web page may provide an alternative version, eg: a text description. Web sites which follow the WAI guidelines will do this, but most don't provide a fallback.

I've noticed that Internet Explorer sends extra information about what's installed (eg: the Windows Media Center version). This is included in a HTTP header. But if you're worried about privacy, you won't be using that anyway. --h2g2bob (talk) 17:15, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Browsers send information about themselves for convenience -- there's no point in a website sending information that the browser can't handle. Regarding the website sending the browser details of what the website can provide, that's actually what often happens, except that the information is used by the user rather than the browser itself -- it's what happens when you are on a navigation page. As the previous answer says, though, there are instances where the browser makes the decision -- for example, if you have images disable in your browser, it will choose to display a text description rather than download images. Looie496 (talk) 17:42, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

It's worth asking whether things like whether you have Java, Flash, etc. really impinge on a notion of "privacy." How does a website knowing whether you have Flash installed or not affect your privacy? It is not personally identifiable information. The only personally identifiable information sent is generally an IP address, which is required if the site in question is going to know how to "reply" to the browser's request for information (it is the return address, to use a physical metaphor). --Mr.98 (talk) 18:00, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the amount of information a browser sends about itself, in totality, is normally enough to uniquely identify an individual installation, and thus the user (but not by name). The EFF have a test site at https://panopticlick.eff.org/. CS Miller (talk) 18:31, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes but that much information is generally sent in the form of the IP anyway. If you are concerned enough to hide your IP (e.g. via tor) presumably you are concerned enough to use a privacy mode or something similar, no? --Mr.98 (talk) 19:23, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Using privacy mode does not stop the above working; and I like to record my history. 92.15.31.223 (talk) 19:28, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Even if you don't feel the need to use TOR, panoptclick shows a browser can be tracked through open wifi points, forcing a DHCP IP number change, etc. CS Miller (talk) 19:34, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

A functionally correct answer might also be that the internet, the web, and HTTP, etc. were not designed with privacy in mind. (Or security, or spam, or a million other things that plague us.) --Mr.98 (talk) 19:25, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

The browser is the boss: every single piece of content that is downloaded is the result of a browser-initiated HTTP GET. It is not possible for a server to send content that the browser did not ask for. Whether the user is in control of the browser is a whole other story: how technically proficient is the user? Does the user understand the details of using client-side scripts, browser-plugins, and other web features? (These delegate decision-making about transactions and server-requests to scripts and programs that are not typically under the direct control of the user). If the user wants to guarantee that there is no web-traffic that is not the direct consequence of a user-action, then they must disable client-side scriping (JavaScript, usually), and disable all browser plugins (Adobe Flash, Java, and so forth). They should also consider disabling any browser-enhancing add-ons; turn off any automatic content requests (like RSS feed readers); and really, consider using a different environment (such as wget, lynx, or operating a tightly-controlled proxy-server to control all HTTP transactions. WGET will never talk to a server, or receive content from it, unless the user specifically asks for it; once a page is downloaded, a user could render it with a standard browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox that is configured to work "offline" (with no network connection). Nimur (talk) 19:23, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

As I understand it, that's sort of misleading. Every transaction starts with a request from the client, true, but after that in principle the server can send any sort of stream of data to the browser that it wants to. Looie496 (talk) 00:54, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

The server may send exactly one stream of arbitrary data of arbitrary length in response to one HTTP GET request. If your browser chooses to interpret that stream (for example, by processing an HTML <image> or <embed> tag), the browser makes another HTTP GET request for each image/link it chooses to load. If the server sends HTML that offers a JavaScript script, the browser may also choose to execute that script (and the script may initiate additional server-transactions). Similarly, if the server sends binary data for a plugin, the plugin may make have the option to execute further transactions (or run arbitrary code, depending on the plugin). But if you use wget, and do not specify to download links, there will be exactly one server-to-client transaction. In any case, the server can not send data unless the client opens a socket first (typically by performing an HTTP GET request; but also by running JavaScript or binary plugin code that opens a socket). Again, the confusion comes because the OP asked if the browser or the server is in control of the transaction: in fact, it's always the browser; even if the user may not be directly controlling the browser's actions. Nimur (talk) 02:14, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

how do I start a billion-dollar company with an unemployed bay area programmer?

Hi,

I would like to start a billion-dollar company with an unemployed but engenius bay area programmer. My idea is that perhaps I could find one who has no real personal project portfolio (just stuff he worked on for companies, nothing tied closely to his name), then he would do the work as long as he is convinced that it will look good on his portfolio and land him a really golden job when he's done*. I don't expect him, or anyone, to agree with me that it is a bilion-dollar idea. In fact, I expect people to disagree with me even when the market valuates the resulting company at a billion dollars -- I expect them to say the market is being delusional. So be it. My question is how I get the cooperation in the first place. I've had a programmer say "yes, yes!" and then completely disappear out of contact. I'm based in Europe, so how do I do what I'm trying to do? I am looking for someone really engenius who would be highly motivated by equity, not someone I can just rent for anywhere between 8 and 80 dollars per hour, depending on what I'm looking for. Again, the idea is that the person is out of work and doesn't happen to have a great project portfolio, sees that putting the work into the project in question (even if it is worthless), because it is interesting and will be highly visible, is by far the best investment he can make of his time for the next couple of weeks (because of his name in it), he will not have direct costs on the project (he will just be sitting at his computer at home, doing this instead of surfing reddit and slashdot), and, due to being out of work, very low opportunity cost. Can I do it? How? Thank you very much for any help you have on this question! 82.98.48.252 (talk) 20:35, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

'* little will he realize at that point that he will not want to work as a for-hire programmer when he's finished, since he will be worth so much he won't have to! He will realize this later, of course... 82.98.48.252 (talk) 20:41, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

You need to think big if you're going to succeed. Aim at starting a zillion dollar business.--Aspro (talk) 21:05, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Why not just pay him/her some money, and impress them by spelling ingenious correctly. 92.15.8.71 (talk) 22:50, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Searching for an ingenuous programmer makes more sense here. Trustinchaos (talk) 23:39, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Please check out this related discussion. 84.93.178.188 (talk) 23:18, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

If you're so certain you can make a fortune, why not pay the guy? Take out a loan. Mortgage your house, heck even get an advance on your credit card!

Sure, taking on debt to start a business is a risk, but so what? Asking the programmer to take a risk that you're not willing to take yourself will not inspire confidence or attract volunteers! APL (talk) 00:58, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Indeed it's not entirely certain what the OP is providing the programmer out of this deal Nil Einne (talk) 05:02, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Something else programmers like is recognition. So put his name right on top of the credits, maybe even make him VP of the company. StuRat (talk) 04:03, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Unemployment among programmers, especially good programmers, is not very high. The same absurd profitability of the software business that makes get-rich-in-a-couple-weeks ideas like the above seem plausible (even though it doesn't really work like that) is the reason that many software companies are perpetually interviewing people. Paul (Stansifer) 15:28, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

This post ("I Just Need a Programmer" by CS professor Eugene Wallingford is both timely and apt. Apt! -- 16:06, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Avoid saying anything like "Here's $50. Now program something that will make me billions". You have to have a good idea of what you want. Why not study computing and write it yourself? 92.29.120.120 (talk) 18:40, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you understand how much a qualified programmer can earn in the Bay Area? More than most doctors and lawyers' starting salaries. You will really have to entice a qualified programmer to give up their career prospects by offering them a little bit more than "an idea that might be worth billions." If you're seeking an unqualified programmer, you might want to re-think your business idea. Nimur (talk) 19:31, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Though, I would note, if you're just trying to get something together that will look like it can work, you need not necessarily have a genius programmer. Facebook in its full form needs some very bright people involved to take care of the strains that come with scaling up to crazy degrees, but Facebook in its first incarnation really did not need more than a couple fairly competent programmers. Depending on the software in question, that may or may not be an option (obviously if your software involves doing something brilliant — like having exceptionally clever visual analysis algorithms — you can't do a "dumb" version). But anyway, I agree with the general sentiment that if the OP is confident that the idea is worth a billion dollars, he or she should be able to find a way to just pay the damn programmer. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:43, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

op here. geez' you guys want me to be a capitalist exploiter so bad!

My skills are as a manager. What you guys want me to do, is use the fact that I was born into better means than the Californian programmer, learned French starting at a young age, live in Paris, and so on, in short, the things that allowed me to come by some not insubstantial amount of capital, and use it to buy the product of the programmer. See, the programmer produces something, under my direction, that will be worth considerable money. We both provide labor: I, the management labor (did Napolean personally conquer North Africa), he the programming labor. The end result is worth whatever it is worth. Let's say it is worth 0.05% of what I think it will be worth. That's $500,000. You want me to be a capitalist exploiter, and take nearly all of the $500,000 produced by our joint labor, giving the poor programmer only $50,000 for his 1000 hours of time, keeping $450,000 for my time, however little it may have been? Do you think that's really fair??? I'm trying to see your point of view here, but since I don't believe in capitalist exploitation, I really can't. This is why I would like an equity-based solution, where I can contribute my management skills and the programmer can contribute his coding skills on a percentage-of-the-project basis. Is it really that hard to see? Do you really just want me to exploit someone? 82.234.207.120 (talk) 22:12, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

If you are looking for a single programer that programer is not looking for a manager. You don't need, or even want, a manager in a two man team. The "capitalist exploiter" usually provides venture capital. Taemyr (talk) 22:25, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

India is well-known by their outsourcing oriented IT industry. And believe me, if you pay these guys $1,000/month they won't be feeling exploited. I don't know that living in Paris and speaking French has to do in this discussion. Mr.K. (talk) 23:26, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

You can create a privately-held company and offer a compensation package, in the form of stock, equity, or so forth. It doesn't really matter, though. You're trying to undercut the market-value of a quality programmer by under-compensating him/her. Programmers can receive stock (equity in the company) at any small, medium, or large enterprise, on top of a salary. Nimur (talk) 00:38, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Let me also suggest, as someone who does not have a lot of money at the moment, that belief in the future success of a company does not pay the bills of today. Your scheme is actually very exploitive — you're asking for labor which is unpaid except on the condition that the company is a success, and there can be plenty of reasons that it might not be a success even if the idea is indeed a good one. You could, for example, be hit by a bus when 75% of the work is done, and then what would the poor programmer be able to do without your management skills there to guide him? --Mr.98 (talk) 01:01, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, It is very exploitative to say "Make me rich, and if and when it works I'll give you part of it." (You might as well ask the programmer to buy you lotto tickets.)

If you want to be non-exploitative about it, start a company and give the guy salary and stock. You may very well be able to find people who will take a somewhat below-market salary in exchange for stock, but you will have a very difficult time finding someone who will wager their entire salary. APL (talk) 02:04, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Indeed it's not clear whether the OP planned to give the programmer equal shares, which is seemed deserved at a minimum (given that it's still not really clear what the OP brings to the table some would question whether the OP really deserves equal shares) in this partnership. Even if the OP planned to give equal shares the OP doesn't seem to appreciate that because of their advantages, they can perhaps afford to take a risk on this project since it sounds like even if it goes south, they'll still have something or someone who they can turn to support them. Many people don't really have this luxury, quite a few won't even be able to survive that well during the time you're taking the risk and so you can't expect them to be willing to take the same risks and indeed it's likely to be offensive if you act like you are on equal footing. (Some people even have dependents and others they support so it's not even just themselves that will be in major strife.) Nil Einne (talk) 16:42, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

This letter is relevant. (Not safe for some workplaces due to occasional vulgar language and one illustration.) "If the deal goes ahead there will be some good money in it for you." Comet Tuttle (talk) 01:37, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

No, we want you to have a realistic understanding of what you bring to the table. Most programmers already have a number of ideas that they believe "could" become the Next Big Thing. If a programmer has a couple of months off to work on a project, why would they buy an idea from you? So they will place next to no value on your idea.

Next you bring "managment" to the table. That's great, but it's not really applicable in the early stages of this sort of endeavor. The programmer could hire managers if and when they become necessary. "Management" is no less a commodity than "Programming".

(Many programmers have started The Next Big Website on their own without a manager, how many managers have done so without a programmer?)

To recap: To start a zillion dollar, Next Big Thing, website you will need a programmer most, a graphic artist second, a marketing expert third, a manager/businessman fourth, and an "Idea Person" least of all. (And of course, a lot of luck.) APL (talk) 02:04, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

(P.S. If I was a soldier for Napoleon, I would expect to get paid regardless of whether or not Napoleon conquered the known world.) APL (talk) 02:06, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Java Out of Memory Error

How can I have Java use more memory for handling large ArrayLists of ArrayLists so that it doesn't give me an Out of Memory Error? --70.134.49.69 (talk) 21:08, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

If you're using the Sun/Oracle Java runtime, the -Xmx option lets you set the maximum heap size. This is a nonstandard option, so other Java runtimes may use different options. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 23:26, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

December 6

Transferring files from PC to iMac

My brand spanking new iMac will be arriving in a few days (I can't wait) (27" Intel Core i7 4gb). My piece of shit Dell Dimension 2400 has a lot of files on it I am going to want to transfer before setting it on fire. The Dell has an ethernet port and two USB ports (I think). Can anyone walk me through how and what I will need for the transfer? Any special cables? Any special adaptors for the cables the iMac will come with? I would do it all by emailing the files to myself, but first I have many video files that are too large for my free email services to attach, and anyway, it would take a huge amount of time even if the Dell worked right, but its internet connection is screwed up and its upload speed... it would take about an hour to attach even a 20 MB files (though more likely I would get an error about halfway through the upload). I know you get a lot of questions from IPs who don't bother to check back but I will be watching for responses. Thanks so much.--162.84.137.228 (talk) 05:59, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I think this is the link you want: PC to Mac Migration. If you have any questions, post them here or email me. You will be so much happier with a mac I can't even begin to tell you. congratulations!. Lugwigs, please sign, thanks, User:General Rommel

Thanks for the link. Looks perfect.--162.84.137.228 (talk) 13:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Download

For downloading millions of links in a site, what is the best program? Wget and httrack both crash past about 200,000 links. I'm on Windows 7 82.44.55.25 (talk) 12:04, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Offline Explorer Enterprise? 118.96.162.25 (talk) 14:24, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

P.S. They also have Portable Offline Browser, in case you want to download a site in a restricted computer :-) 118.96.162.25 (talk) 14:49, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

When you say "wget and httrack both crash", are you sure that you don't mean that your computer ran out of memory? If so, it won't matter what program you use; you will have to implement a staged download, where you only download a few tens of thousands of items at a time, and then start downloading the next batch. Nimur (talk) 20:42, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Surely it matters what program the original poster uses; the programs he or she mentioned might use RAM very inefficiently, while a more defensively-written program might write stuff out to hard disk a lot, minimize the use of RAM, and handle far larger websites. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:53, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Dell Studio 1555 Only sometimes start up now

I had a one-year old Dell Studio 1555 laptop with Windows 7 running.

Recently, I've been having troubles starting up the computer. Usually, I just hold the "power" button on the side for about a second and the computer starts up. But now, I could be pressing the button many times and for various lengths of time and it wouldn't start up and then, all of a sudden, I press power again and it starts up and runs as usual.

EDIT: When it won't turn on, I mean that when I press the power button, there is no reaction whatsoever from the computer, it won't even go to the BIOS or anything, screen doesn't change, makes no sounds, etc... The battery is fully charged and the power cord works.

Furthermore, recently, it's been making these really loud sounds reminiscent of a 1990's computer processing sound. It's like that tick-tick sound that the computer makes when it's processing a heavy load.

I don't think it's an overheating problem because the fan isn't stressed and I successfully de-dusted. What could be the problem? Is this likely a sign of imminent all-out failure? Could a jumper switch have been dislodged from the circuit board? If so, how difficult is it to replace it myself?Acceptable (talk) 21:53, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but is it a faulty connection at the power button? General Rommel (talk) 06:46, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Number of characters in file path limit?

The entry on filename mentions specific character length limits on individual filenames. But what are the limits (if any) on a file's entire absolute path? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 23:05, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Which OS are you interested in? The answer will vary depending on your answer. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:07, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

It's not quite standard:

• In the Windows API, MAX_PATH.
• In POSIX, PATH_MAX (which is in limits.h)
• In BSD and Solaris, MAXPATHLEN

These are all in these platforms' respective C language APIs; they may not be available (or perhaps even meaningful) in non-C wrappers of the same functionality. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 23:18, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Note that, for Windows, it's a bit more complex than just MAX_PATH. As the docs for CreateFile note, MAX_PATH is for ANSI filenames. To get Unicode filenames (which NTFS limits at 32,767 unicode chars) you need to prepend the path with a UNC "\\?\ prefix. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 00:06, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Further, posix defines a function pathconf which (if I understand what it's supposed to do) allows you to get the max path length for files on a given filesystem (as some filesystems impose very different limits). But, on my Linux system, it returns the same for every filesystem I try it on (ext3, iso9660, udf, fat32, procfs, sysfs, tmpfs), a value that's == PATH_MAX (4096). I'd be interested in what folks get on OS-X and in particular on a system with ZFS.

test program
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
#include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <limits.h> #include <unistd.h> int main(int argc, char** argv){ if(argc!=2){ fprintf(stderr, "usage:\n %s filename\n", argv[0]); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } printf ("MAX_PATH is %d\n", PATH_MAX); printf ("_PC_PATH_MAX (for %s) is %ld\n", argv[1], pathconf(argv[1], _PC_PATH_MAX)); return 0; }

-- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 23:52, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Above are the operating system's limits. As I alluded to, the relevant file system also sets limits - these are shown in a column of the table at Comparison of file systems#Limits. Many file systems have theoretically unlimited path lengths, as subdirectories are just a link, and sub-sub directories can be linked essentially forever (until the storage is exhausted). In practice you have to work with the lower of the OS' limit and the FS' limit. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 00:18, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

The NT kernel (the actual OS of modern versions of Windows) works with length-prefixed UTF-16 strings. They are limited to 32,767 UTF-16 words because the length is 16 bits and counts bytes rather than words. It's not a limit of NTFS as such, just a limit of the NT driver, though that does make it a de facto limitation of NTFS. The MAX_PATH (=260) limit comes from the user-mode Win32 library, which you aren't obliged to use (though nearly everyone does). One application/system that bypasses it is Cygwin 1.7, which lets you use path lengths up to the NT limit (and also filenames containing some of the characters that the filesystem article currently claims, incorrectly, are forbidden). -- BenRG (talk) 00:34, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

So 260 characters is the most common max limit of Windows paths. (I'm assuming most app developers stick with this to ensure compatibility with other apps?) How about Mac OS X's max limit? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 17:00, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Unlimited at the filesystem level, apparently, but the above caveats apply. --Sean 20:13, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

installation of windows98 on oracle vm virtual .box

I have windows xp and core2 due process.i have installed recently windows 98 on Oracle VM virtual box.But when I have tried to play some games on it, they donot work prperly,for example character in dave 1 moves very fast .How can i fix this problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by True path finder (talk • contribs) 23:38, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Do the games require DirectX? VirtualBox DirectX support isn't great, I suspect that is probably the problem. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 23:56, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Take a look at DOSBox and see if that fixes the problem. I tried playing X-COM on a Pentium 4 at one point and all went well except the scrolling was so fast the game was unplayable. Comet Tuttle (talk) 01:34, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

fifa 98

I have installed Fifa 1998 on windows xp .which works only when i m online .otherwise a message appears as ," insufficient memory ..............", what should be the reason. —Preceding unsigned comment added by True path finder (talk • contribs) 23:52, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Is is designed for Windows XP? If not, try to put it under compatability mode. General Rommel (talk) 21:23, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Problems with sound card in Linux: no sound

When I type lspci I get, among other things:

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)

So, the sound card is there, but it's not being used. How can I tell the computer to use it? Or what can I do to make it work? Mr.K. (talk) 23:57, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

If your distribution uses PulseAudio, open the PulseAudio Volume Control (in Ubuntu it's in the applications->sound_and_video menu; I do not mean the little sound slider in the Gnome panel beside the clock) and make sure all the volume sliders are up, and that the output for the program you're trying to play sound from (e.g. VLC) is sent to the correct audio output (so start VLC playing a movie first, so it appears in the Volume Control application). -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 00:23, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

You should seek real-time help: irc://irc.freenode.net/linux ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:39, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

December 7

Rexx versus Python

I used BASIC years ago, now I'd like to learn a more modern language. Most people say that Python is the one to go for, but I've just found out about Rexx. Rexx only has 23 instructions, so should be quick to learn.

Is there some disadvantage to Rexx that I've overlooked, that means I should spend the time learning some other language? Thanks. 92.15.18.168 (talk) 00:11, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Why are you learning it? If you want a language people actually use in real life, you want Python over Rexx. Marnanel (talk) 00:46, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

The difficulty of a language is not related to the number of instructions. PHP has hundreds of possible functions, but it is actually a very easy language to learn, because its syntax is straightforward, extensible, and one is not expected to memorize the functions. There are only a dozen or so core "control structures" in PHP, for example, and the rest of the functions you just look up when you need them. (PHP is just an example I am familiar with; I am not lobbying for it over, say, Python.)

Looking at the Rexx specs (spexx?), it strikes me that its lack of arrays and existing array functions would make a lot of things quite difficult (you'd have to develop workarounds that you would not need to in other languages), and its lack of easy ability to integrate external libraries means you'll have a harder time with code reuse (thus reinventing the wheel more than you ought to). All of this is aside from the fact that a less-used language is going to have fewer community resources (shared code, communities to ask questions of, functions developed that can do more "modern" things like interface with graphics or the web or etc.), totally non-transferrable code syntax (you're learning something that can basically only be used with itself, and cannot be a base for learning other languages), and is not very "modern" without having to use specific implementations which may or may not have their own buggy incompatibilities. Not to mention that if you did learn Rexx and its particular and peculiar ways of doing things, they would in many cases not be transferrable skills at all to other programming tasks (e.g. the way it handles "stems" is very non-standard). --Mr.98 (talk) 00:55, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

It depends which Programming paradigm you want to learn.Smallman12q (talk) 02:29, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Another example of fewer functions not making a language easier is Brainfuck. 8 commands, but, as implied, more-or-less impossible to work with. KyuubiSeal (talk) 02:30, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

If you need to chose one of them you should definitely chose Python, it has a easy syntax, good user manual/help pages/community, good development tools, a comprehensive standard library with many functions and a large set of third party libraries. So unless you going to use it in a special context were REXX is widely used/available chose Python. Python programs are easy to read yet the code are very compact so you get much done with little code to write. The main drawback is the execution speed it is about 30 times slower than a C or C++ program but I think REXX is even slower.--Gr8xoz (talk) 02:55, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Why is Rexx available for many different OSs, and be put to so many uses, if its not very good? As it says somewhere "It’s as easy as Basic Yet about as powerful as Perl". It appears to be able to manipulate other programs eg spreadsheets or the OS easily. 92.15.11.224 (talk) 13:20, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean by "good"? Nobody here has said or implied that Rexx isn't powerful. Marnanel (talk) 13:22, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Huh? You're being disingenuous? Dosnt powerful imply good for programming languages? 92.15.11.224 (talk) 13:50, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Powerful is a pretty subjective term. It usually means either "you can do a lot with a little" or "this language can be used for many different tasks." There are plenty of "powerful" languages. As for why Rexx is widely used as a macro language, it's probably just because the tools for adding a Rexx interpreter into your program are straightforward. Anyway, nobody is trying to rank the languages objectively. But if you're going to learn ONE more language other than BASIC, Rexx is a very odd choice. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:38, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Just like human languages, there are loads of reasons to learn a computer program language. Maybe you want to expand your mind or think about things differently. Maybe you want to commuicate to a community who speaks that language. Maybe you have no choice, because your work requires you to communicate this way. I would say, as a rough analogy, that learning Rexx after Basic would be like learning Faroese after English. It's neat, and has a lot of unique cultural and historical significance; and if you happen to have a job which for some reason requires you to speak Faroese, there's not much of a choice. Because of similarity, with a little extra work, you might be able to port your Faroese skills to Norwegian, or Icelandic; but not as easily as you might hope. It will be hard to find good language training resources, because few people study Faroese. And when you're done, you'll find almost nobody else will be able to communicate in the language you have just invested so much effort to learn. Most of the world doesn't even know Faroese exists. That doesn't mean it wasn't worth learning - but keep all these counterpoints in mind. If you spend a lot of effort learning Rexx, you might be able to port some of those skills to Python or Perl; you might have a specific job that requires this programming skill; but mostly, you'll be engaging in a difficult intellectual exercise, with little practical use, in a subject that interests very few people. I won't even try tell you that's a bad thing. Nimur (talk) 16:16, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Its worth learning Faroese if a) it takes 10% (or whatever) of the time to learn another language, b) it is understood by everyone (ie its got interpreters for every OS), c) you can do all sorts of things with it that you cannot easily do in other languages, d) it is more concise than flowery other languages, e) the listeners/readers (ie the interpreter) does all the hard work, not the speaker. 92.29.123.221 (talk) 13:03, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

In practical terms only, your premises b and c are false. For significant projects, you do not merely need the interpreter to understand you, but also other people to do so. Additionally, significant projects often already exist and it is much more practical to extend them in the language they are already using (which is almost certainly a mainstream language and not Rexx). Finally, because popular languages (let's say Python) have more libraries written for (or ported to) them, many useful things are trivial to do that would require a lot of effort in unpopular, less well supported languages (like Rexx). When you are just learning, none of these points seem relevant, because you aren't yet able to work on significant projects, and the programs you're writing are closer to hello world than to httpd. But unless you confine yourself to trivial work, these points will be relevant. --Tardis (talk) 15:47, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Its obvious from the question asked that the OP is not going to be doing this for a living but just some occassional hobby use now and again. I don't agree with your assertions. 92.29.113.166 (talk) 23:07, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

An excellent analogy, great job. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:08, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I would say, no, "powerful" does not just equal "good". Assembly language is very powerful, but it's the worst choice for 99% of programming tasks. I mean, I am not going to sit here and write "assembly language is not good", following that logic; but it's a poor choice, in almost all situations. Despite the macho BS from many coders about how awesome they are at it. By the way, Nimur's analogy is excellent. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:49, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I believe assembly is not at all powerful - it takes pages of code to do what one line in a higher level language would do. 92.24.176.134 (talk) 19:23, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

It depends on how you define "powerful". There are things you can do in assembly that you cannot do in higher level languages. As a real-world example, John Carmack (of Id Software) explained that the reason they got high frame rates in their 3D engines was because he went in and tweaked the assembly code after it was compiled as optimal as possible from C/C++. The adjustments made simply couldn't be done in any high level language. -- kainaw™ 14:40, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

If you compare the Rexx and the Python (programming language) articles, then Rexx wins. Because 1) it does not have all the difficult to understand clutter that the Python article has, 2) the range of use and number of interpreters is greater for Rexx than Python, 3) the number of links and lists of books are longer for Rexx than Python. Its like me saying "I'd like to wear some blue jeans" and you're saying "No, purple nylon flares are what everyone's wearing now!" If it takes 20% of the learning effort to get 80% of the functionality, then its a good deal. 92.24.176.134 (talk) 19:23, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I exhausted my verbosity above, so this will be a short response. I will never try to tell anyone that they should not program in Rexx. I will also never pay anyone to program in Rexx. Nimur (talk) 19:30, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Few will: Rexx jobs, Python jobs. --Sean 20:22, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

It's your life, do what you want with it. You asked for opinions, and you got plenty of them. It's of note, though, that your methodology is flawed. There are far more books on Python than Rexx. The fact that you can probably list every book on Rexx onto a page without it being overly cluttered is actually a sign of how relatively unimportant it is. There are at least 80 books on Python at my university library, some 40 of them published in the last 3 years alone. That's a sign of a pretty healthy language. My university library carries exactly one book devoted to Rexx, and it got it as part of a general online subscription. That's a sign of an irrelevant language. It's your choice if you want to pick the irrelevant pick, but don't be fooled by the articles into thinking Rexx is something that is isn't. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:42, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I actually know REXX and would only recommend it if you have to use it in its native environment: proprietary IBM systems. Languages have network effects which overwhelm their inherent power. --Sean 17:57, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Windows Mobile 6.5

In Windows Mobile 6.1 / 6.5 default email program, can you designate which IMAP folder names to use for "Sent" and "Deleted", so that sent and deleted messages show up in the right folders when you open your email from your computer? Right now, if your servers doesn't use those same names, you will either end up with a new folder with that name being created for Sent/Deleted items, or not have those messages at all. Can't you just "tell the program" which of your existing IMAP folders to use for placing Sent/Deleted messages in? Roberto75780 (talk) 03:09, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Not with the default client, sorry. WM email was mainly designed to work with Exchange (and in turn Outlook) and that uses the same folder names as on the device. If you're running the IMAP server on a Linux style box I've heard of people using symbolic links with the folder names as workarounds, but I've never personally tried that (I use Exchange). Sorry!  ZX81  ^talk 03:58, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Use cases

Explain how use cases can be used in construction of data flow diagrams —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.204.170.50 (talk) 07:36, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Section header added for this question. Comet Tuttle (talk) 07:40, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a homework question. Try looking at use case, then if you want to ask a specific question, rather than your homework, perhaps people can help you. Shadowjams (talk) 10:19, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Is backing up gmail important?

I'm a strong believer in backing up the data on my computer, but is backing up something like your gmail messages helpful? I assume Google backs these up itself. ike9898 (talk) 14:17, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

It all depends on how much you trust Gmail to do it for you. Also consider the possibility that someone hacks your Gmail accounts and deletes them. Not impossible. Probably not likely. But all of these kinds of considerations are a balance between the inconvenience of doing something and the possibility that it might be worthwhile to have done it. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:32, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Backups are always good, and with programs like gmail-backup very easy. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 15:07, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Is there any Hotmail backup program please? 92.15.11.224 (talk) 15:23, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

If you need to save emails to disk, my recommendation is to set up a program like Mozilla Thunderbird (which can work with Gmail, Hotmail, and any other POP- or IMAP-capable email system. Then use the Thunderbird Backup to save your settings, and Offline Folders to save your mail to disk. Nimur (talk) 17:58, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Would setting up Thunderbird require supplying it with several mysterious numbers, or does it do that sort of thing automatically? Can I use Thunderbird and use Hotmail in the same way as previously? Thanks 92.24.176.134 (talk) 19:29, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

When I tried Thunderbird a while ago it just asked for the email address, and from that it worked out all the ports and other info to use. If you mean can you still access Hotmail via the web interface after setting up Thunderbird, yes you can. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 19:46, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I had difficulty finding this earlier, but here are the official settings for Hotmail's servers. Nimur (talk) 21:48, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Nancy Drew games

can you till me how to play nancy drew games for xp on my windows 7 64bit —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.8.25.132 (talk) 15:20, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Tell us what happens when you just try to play the game normally. If that doesn't work — and I have not played any of these games — then first install the game on your hard disk, then locate the game folder, which is probably in "C:\Program Files\" and then in its own directory. Find the .exe file — that is, the file that ends in ".exe". If you don't see any, then go to Control Panel -> Folder Options -> View and uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types". Right-click that .exe file and click the Compatibility tab. There you can choose to have Windows 7 run the game in "compatibility mode", where Windows 7 tries as much as possible to pretend that it's Windows 98, or Windows 95, or whatever your game says it should be running under. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:23, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Also worth trying is right clicking on the shortcut or icon and selecting the "Run as Administrator" option. Older games often need permissions to run correctly which Windows 7 disables on normal running of applications as a security feature. Edit - obviously only do this if you are running a genuine legit copy rather than a pirate or crack. Scan the executable with antivirus first! Exxolon (talk) 20:23, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

can a windows binary do anything in between when you click "allow administrative privileges" or is it not executed at all?

So, I know this internet cafe computer was infected, and I made sure the USB I transferred nonbinary files (just text files) onto my laptop with had no autorun (put it in without autorun and checked for any autorun files but there were none). I was trying to navigate into a folder on it when, too late, I clicked on that only LOOKED like a folder (it had the folder icon) but was an executable file! I realized it was executable because Windows told me it needed admin privileges, which naturally I said no to. My question: could the virus have done anything anyway, without admin privileges? Or, does the executable not get run in any way in this situation? (ie windows knows it's an admin type .exe, and asks you first when you double-clicking, without so much as running it in any way). Thanks! 82.234.207.120 (talk) 23:02, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Which version of Windows? If you use Vista or Windows 7, the application can not even start to run unless you grant it privileges. This Microsoft TechNet article has this control-flow diagram which explains the situation well: the application terminates does not even launch if you don't grant permission. I'm still investigating whether an application could, say, put all privilege-requiring code in a DLL file; and start running as a normal, unprivileged program, and then load the DLL ... thus, not raise the Elevated Privileges prompt until it starts doing something administrative-y. But so far, that doesn't even seem possible, and if it were, it still doesn't seem like it could breach the UAC security layer. Nimur (talk) 23:27, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

User Account Control Best Practices says it also depends on your User Account Control settings. Nimur (talk) 23:38, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

whew, thanks for the quick answer! I feel relieved :). windows 7 by the way. thanks again. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 01:00, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikileaks insurance file encryption key length

There are a number of reliable sources stating that the insurance file by wikileaks is encrypted with a 256 digit key. Are they confusing 256 digit with 256 bit (key size)? Technical literacy isn't improving.Smallman12q (talk) 23:42, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

We could charitably suppose that they mean binary digits. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:45, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

PCMag and The Register both say the file is called insurance.aes256, which certainly strongly suggests it's encrypted with AES in 256 bit mode. Strictly, absent the key to decode it, there's no way to know that it's really AES-256 at all; for all we know it could be encrypted with a different cryptosystem(s) instead, and calling it aes256 could just be intended to misdirect any TLA with a team of mathematicians and a giant compute farm to run it through the wrong cracking infrastructure. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 00:01, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

It may even be gibberish, an elaborate bluff. APL (talk) 02:28, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I feel I should point out that there's no such thing as "a file encrypted with AES-256". The Advanced Encryption Standard only defines a way of encrypting 128-bit blocks, and there are many different (incompatible) ways of building on that to encrypt larger amounts of data. They might have used an encryption product that happens to (somewhat inaccurately) use the .aes256 extension. But I think it's more likely that ".aes256", like "insurance", is there simply to impress the easily impressed. That's not to say it's not a genuine encrypted file. It could be a TrueCrypt container, for example. TrueCrypt offers AES-256 in XTS mode as one of its encryption options. XTS uses two different keys, so there are actually 512 bits of key material used to encrypt the bulk of the data. Those 512 bits are stored at the beginning of the file encrypted with a different 512-bit pair of keys, which are derived from a user-entered passphrase which may be of any length. So even though one could say that the file is encrypted with AES-256 in this case, it's not accurate to say that it's encrypted with a 256-bit (or 256-digit) key. The de facto key (lock) is the passphrase of unknown length. -- BenRG (talk) 04:21, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Not to quibble, but I think that the AES standard actually does include 256 bit key implementations... Rinjidel itself was technically only 128... if I remember right. I personally use ROT13 because I think its security level is clear. Shadowjams (talk) 11:24, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

AES supports key sizes of 128, 192 and 256 bits and the block size is fixed at 128 bits. Rijndael supports other block and key sizes. When I said "128-bit" above I was talking about block size, not key size. -- BenRG (talk) 12:39, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

php.ini

Having recently installed xampp I am trying to integrate a form in a web page that will send me an email when sent. Currently I have the form but I am stumped at what to change in the php.ini file to allow me to do this. I've found the part: [mail funtion]

For Win32 only.

http://php.net/smtp

SMTP = localhost

http://php.net/smtp-port

smtp_port = 25 What do I change to enable my send button to allow the form through?

Also how do you get IE to open .php web pages rather than open or save them?

Many thanks in advance :) 93.186.31.240 (talk) 14:34, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

For windows, you need to set your smtp server and "from" email address. The settings in php.ini will look like:

SMTP = your.ip.provider.smtp.server.com

sendmail_from = your@email.com

Of course, you'll want to restart to ensure the new php.ini changes are loaded. As for loading the php page in IE, I assume you are trying to use "file - open" to open the PHP page. That will not work. You have to use IE to load the page through the webserver on your computer. So, you will load the pages with a URL like http://localhost/my_test.php. That means you have to save the files in the proper directory for your local webserver and ensure the local webserver is running. -- kainaw™ 14:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Currently I'm just running the server off my memory stick so I'm moving around with it. Is there anything I can put in the php.ini file to reflect this?

In regards to the internet provider where do I find this. (This way I can test it on my home computer) sorry I'm new at smtp 93.186.31.239 (talk) 14:58, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

What SMTP server are you using in your email program? That is the SMTP server you will want to use. An alternative is to download and run an SMTP server on your local machine. However, your ISP may block traffic from a local SMTP server since 99% of the time home-run SMTP servers are used just to send spam. -- kainaw™ 15:31, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Why is necroing forum threads a bad idea?

There were some unanswered questions / unsolved issues that I sought to solve through forum threads over 5 years ago so I made replies to seek follow-ups. Therefore, I made the first replies in over 5 years on some threads at MMORPG.com.

I got some follow-up answers and updates, and felt kinda satisfied from them. I was once even told, "Nice necro." and took it as a compliment. Then I found some kind of thrill in necromancing threads so I kept doing it to a total of 15-20 threads.

Several days later, an admin emailed me personally asking me to please stop necroing threads, and that I'd be permabanned the next time I committed a similar offense. Much to my consternation, he deleted all the threads that I necromanced. I had to copy them from the Google Cache and re-paste them onto my blogsite in order to recover some of my posting history. I only had the energy and willingness to salvage some of them, as they would altogether be too many to salvage.

So really, why is it a bad idea to necromance years-old forum threads on various forums? --129.130.33.179 (talk) 16:05, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Preemption: Yes, but why is it annoying to some? --129.130.33.179 (talk) 16:07, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if it's similar to here or not, but I will comment on why replying to Ref Desk Q's in the archives which no longer appear on the front page is a bad idea:

1) The original poster is unlikely to see the answer provided.

2) Other people who might refute an incorrect post don't notice a post in the archives, so incorrect answers can stand, as if they were correct.

3) People reading through the archives might be confused with an answer that seems out of step with the others, such as "What's the cost of a 4 Gb flash drive ?". The answers from a couple years ago might be quite different from recent answers.

Some of these issues could be addressed by bringing the archive back to the active page. StuRat (talk) 17:32, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Forum threads are basically extended discussions. While they do last longer than a normal "live" conversation, they do die after a while when nobody posts to them. After a certain amount of time (many forums will specify 6 months, a year, or even just a few weeks depending on activity), the thread might be considered dead and bringing it back up without a very good reason is considered rude. The active members of a forum also might change over time, so the original people discussing the topic very well might not be active anymore so a more productive way to bring that topic up again might be to start a new topic that will include whatever members are active at the moment. StuRat's points for wikipedia are valid for forums as well. Many forums I've been to with rules specific to thread necromancy say that the best way to bring a dead topic back is to post a new thread and refer to specific posts in the dead topic via links or quotes. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 18:04, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Join a Facebook network: confirmation email

I tried to join my new employer's Facebook network last night. You have to provide your official email address (so they can verify the domain-name) and then click the link when they send you a message. But when I got into work there was no message.

Does it usually take 24+ hours for these things to arrive? Or (plausible!) is it possible that my employer automatically filters out Facebook emails? In which case, what can I do? Thanks, ╟─TreasuryTag►inspectorate─╢ 16:56, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Confirmation emails normally go out right away, but there could be a delay if they have a problem. If the filter is the problem, use another email address. If you don't have another, you can get a free one from Google and many other sites. One possibility you haven't mentioned is that you could have written the email address down wrong when you signed up. They normally make you type it twice, to make this less likely, but some people just cut and paste the first one to the 2nd spot, thus disabling this safeguard. StuRat (talk) 17:25, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

No. You seem to have misread my question. I tried to join my new employer's Facebook network last night. You have to provide your official email address (so they can verify the domain-name) and then click the link when they send you a message. But when I got into work there was no message. Does it usually take 24+ hours for these things to arrive? Or (plausible!) is it possible that my employer automatically filters out Facebook emails? In which case, what can I do? ╟─TreasuryTag►senator─╢ 17:46, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

You can talk to the sys-admin of the company, if there is one. Or talk to your boss? These things are normally sent out immediately, but I guess there might be a possibility that there's a human factor in the chain - perhaps checking the email address is not automated? Still. Sounds like you have a problem only the firm can fix. --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:59, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Does Facebook run approval-only networks? If so, facebook might be waiting for someone (probably HR or IT) to respond to your join-request email. CS Miller (talk) 20:34, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

It's not approval only. If, say, I wanted to join the Microsoft employees' network, I'd have to prove via a email address "click-this-link-to-confirm" thingy that I had a @microsoft.com account. There's no human element in it. ╟─TreasuryTag►Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster─╢ 20:54, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Chrome notebook pilot program

Anyone know if/when Google are planning to extend their Chrome notebook pilot program outside the US (specifically, to the UK)? Or what is the best route to contact Google about this? the wub "?!" 17:15, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Assembly dereferencing using ()'s

Hi,

I'm not sure how to use parenthesis () in assembly. I heard an explanation say that parenthesis dereferences the pointer contained in a register, eg. (eax) == *eax. where the * is like a star used before a variable in c to dereference.

I'm still not sure when this would be necessary or how it is used. Could someone explain this? Thanks.