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December 9

Web designing software

Are there any free software like Adobe Dreamweaver that can be easily used to design web pages? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.124.190.218 (talk) 02:05, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Please see our comparison of HTML editors article. 118.96.154.36 (talk) 02:31, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

kompozer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.25 (talk) 14:23, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Free classic science fiction game?

A colleague of mine is teaching a course on science fiction to college undergraduates, and would love to include a video game of some sort in some way. He had originally thought about Deus Ex, but I pointed out to him that though the game had some interesting cyberpunk aspects, it would be a difficult one to use because 1. it takes forever to really get to the very science fiction aspects (I played it years ago and remembered it taking a few hours to get to the stage where you learn about the nanobots and genetic engineering and etc.), and 2. it wasn't free and wasn't going to be supported on many modern systems without lots of hassle. (I seem to recall installing it being a hassle even on a system of its era.)

I'd been trying to think of something that could be used in its place. Ideally it would be something that could be truly easily cross platform and currently free yet still "classic" enough that it would be indicative of its time and "deep" enough to have science fiction themes that could be discussed (e.g. in comparison with Gibson's works or whatever).

I'd hoped that the source for System Shock had been released but such is apparently not the case. I seem to recall seeing Quake 2 (whose source has been released) having been ported to play in a browser window which seems like a good solution except for the fact that Quake 2 is, if I recall, pretty shallow in terms of plot. Combing through Category:Commercial video games with freely available source code didn't turn up anything obvious that fit the bill.

Abandonware is not a permissible option (too much liability to get in trouble with the school administration). It might be possible to set up a paid-for game on a commonly accessible computer or something so that the students could play for a few hours. A boring approach might involve playing the game while students watched, or resorting to YouTube videos.

Maybe some kind of old school text parser, like Zork, but science fiction? I don't know.

Any better suggestions? --140.247.11.242 (talk) 03:13, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, if you're open to using Infocom games (and I don't know if you are since you mentioned Zork but also said no abandonware (Perhaps you could use The Lost Treasures of Infocom?)), you might try A Mind Forever Voyaging. If you want something free, you might browse [1], but such games may be less "classic" as they may be newer and/or less well-known. For very old things (Not modern interactive fiction, which can be run under Frotz or Glulx) you can use Dosbox. --NYKevin @205, i.e. 03:55, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Geez - I have a dim memory of a text-parser game where you had to figure out (first) that you were a disembodied brain controlling an entire complex of some sort, then (second) how to control all of the functions of the complex before you (in one of a number of different ways) killed everyone in the complex including yourself. I have no idea what it was called, though - it's back from the height of the Zork era. (which was before my time, really, but I've always been a bit old-school ). --Ludwigs2 04:10, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Suspended? -- BenRG (talk) 04:57, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

The white chamber is free and pretty good, but it's recent (2005) and more horror than science fiction. In interactive fiction, Adam Cadre's games are uniformly excellent, and Narcolepsy, Photopia, and Shrapnel have science fiction elements. Likewise Emily Short. Some other possibilities from the 1990s are Babel, Delusions, Erehwon, For a Change, Glowgrass, Jigsaw, and Spider and Web. I'm not sure these are quite the sort of thing you're looking for, probably because I'm not entirely sure what science fiction actually is... -- BenRG (talk) 04:57, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Here's a list of free games ordered by year from MobyGames. I don't know of any way to restrict the list to science fiction. Two games that jumped out at me are The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (computer game) (most Infocom games aren't free, but this one apparently is) and Beneath a Steel Sky (works on modern computers via ScummVM). -- BenRG (talk) 05:34, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Re H2G2: [2]. --NYKevin @847, i.e. 19:19, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I see that there's an open source remake of UFO: Enemy Unknown here: [3]. As a frequent visitor to the interactive fiction archives, I'm in a position to say that text adventures are all awfully dull and you should avoid them. 213.122.59.245 (talk) 06:04, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I'm much more bored by strategy games than text adventures. It is, unfortunately, probably true that any game will bore some fraction of the students. -- BenRG (talk) 22:21, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

To paraphrase what somebody once said about golf, an adventure game is a good story, ruined. 81.131.43.12 (talk) 23:57, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

For a pure sci-fi plot with aliens and star systems and artifacts and progenitors of our species etc... I absolutely loved the Star Control series... but check out Star Control 3. You should be able to get it for cheap because it was released in 1996. The series was fun to play, and contained a great deal of sci-fi text. It also did not take long to get into the nitty gritty of the game. In terms of pure cyberpunk I don't think there's too much (Category:Cyberpunk_video_games) but there's a new Tron (2010) available... not sure about the price though. Sandman30s (talk) 12:57, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Star Control II is free software under the name The Ur-Quan Masters, which is community-maintained and cross-platform. I think the changes from the original version are slight, and mainly about usability or cosmetics or something, but I haven't played it much, and I never played the original. (Interestingly, Adam Cadre, mentioned above considers SC II to be "perfection".) Paul (Stansifer) 16:23, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

IT jobs in 2013

what will be the job oopurtunities in IT field in the year 2013 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Josephite.m (talk • contribs) 04:14, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:NOTCRYSTAL --LarryMac | Talk 13:15, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

If you use your favorite Search engine to search for "long term job forecast", or similar search terms, you will get a hodgepodge of extended forecasts, often for individual states. In Florida, for example, it's predicted that "job gains in new information technology sectors are muted by job losses in the more established information technology sectors of this industry" (this is the forecast for through 2017). Moody's will sell you very detailed job histories and predictions for different states. Looking at their free sample (For New York, from 2003, so take the data with a huge grain of salt), it looks like the number of IT jobs (under "Internet Service Providers, Web Search Portals, & Data Processing Services") will continue to grow, though fairly slowly. If you want up to date predictions, you can by a single report for 235 USD, or a yearly subscription (with 12 issues) for 2175 USD. I would say that in general, the information technology field is a fairly safe field to go into; there's likely to be jobs available for a long time, and they tend to pay pretty well. Buddy431 (talk) 21:54, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Firefox remote functionality

I am curious about what is actually happening in the following scenario. I assume that this functionality is called "remote" because it is turned off with the option "-no-remote". The steps to produce this functionality are:

1. Login to a Linux computer (call this computer "local").
2. Run Firefox on the local computer.
3. SSH with X-tunnel to a remote Linux machine (call this computer "remote").
4. Run Firefox on the remote computer.

What I expect to see is two Firefox windows on the local machine, one running on the local machine and one running on the remote machine. What I actually see is two windows on the local machine, both running on the local machine. Instead of launching Firefox on the remote machine, it simply tells Firefox on the local machine to spawn a new window. So, how does that happen? (Please be very technical - I'm looking for the exact inter-process communications being used between the remote and local computers that allow the remote computer to know that I'm running Firefox on the local computer without asking permission to monitor processes on the local computer.) -- kainaw™ 14:17, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

As a guess, firefox uses Inter-Client Communication (ICCCM) which is part of the X-Window protocol. On start-up firefox will attempt to register itself (unless -no-remote is used), if this fails then an instance of firefox is already running. On failure, the second firefox uses ICCCM to send a message to the first firefox with the URL(s) it was asked to open, and then exits. The first firefox then opens those URL(s). As long as both firefoxes are being shown on the same display, they will interact. Neither needs to be actually running on the same machine as each other, or the display's machine. CS Miller (talk) 14:28, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

It may do it with atoms rather than ICCCM. A brief look at Firefox's X protocol traffic (with xtrace) shows it interning some atoms like this:

000:<:0007: 24: Request(16): InternAtom only-if-exists=false(0x00) name='_MOZILLA_VERSION'

000:<:0008: 24: Request(16): InternAtom only-if-exists=false(0x00) name='_MOZILLA_LOCK'

000:<:0009: 24: Request(16): InternAtom only-if-exists=false(0x00) name='_MOZILLA_COMMAND'

000:<:000a: 28: Request(16): InternAtom only-if-exists=false(0x00) name='_MOZILLA_RESPONSE'

000:<:000b: 16: Request(16): InternAtom only-if-exists=false(0x00) name='WM_STATE'

000:<:000c: 24: Request(16): InternAtom only-if-exists=false(0x00) name='_MOZILLA_USER'

000:<:000d: 24: Request(16): InternAtom only-if-exists=false(0x00) name='_MOZILLA_PROFILE'

000:<:000e: 24: Request(16): InternAtom only-if-exists=false(0x00) name='_MOZILLA_PROGRAM'

000:<:000f: 28: Request(16): InternAtom only-if-exists=false(0x00) name='_MOZILLA_COMMANDLINE'

-- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 14:48, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I didn't think ICCCM could work because it allows communication on the same X server. I am running these on two different X servers. Atoms, on the other hand, are used by the displaying X server. If I run firefox on two different remote computers without -no-remote, I see one set of -MOZILLA variables in xlsatoms. If I run them with -no-remote, I see two sets of -MOZILLA variables. So, it appears that they are sort of abusing atoms as a means of communicating with one another. -- kainaw™ 16:18, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

How are you running them on two separate X servers? Your "SSH with X-tunnel" means you're reusing the local one. --Tardis (talk) 16:52, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for not being detailed about the second experiment I did. I used ssh -X into one machine. For the other, I didn't ssh into it at all. I just exported the display from the computer itself to make it show up on another machine. I was looking for a difference. What I found is that firefox sees and communicates with every other firefox session on the computer on which it is displayed. -- kainaw™ 16:55, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

"The computer on which it is displayed" is the X server, not the one on which the executable is running. --Sean 19:46, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

It may do it with atoms rather than ICCCM. — This is meaningless. The ICCCM is a set of standards about how X clients communicate, which they do (amongst other things) by means of atoms. Marnanel (talk) 22:46, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I'll note the following: when I start Firefox through an SSH session, it's typically because I want to appear to be using the remote IP address. (For example, if I'm at home and I log in to a university computer, I have access to the subscription journal websites). But if the Firefox actuates a Remote mode, there is no proxying - I do not have access to the subscription sites. From this, I gather that Firefox is not running anything on the sshd server side. When I log in to the SSH server and start Firefox, I assume that ssh sends a command back to my local computer to run Firefox entirely locally (or open a new tab in a currently-running local Firefox). It seems that the mechanism for this is that the firefox command actually runs a shell script - which delegates to another script, run-mozilla.sh. It is this script, which executes a local command. (I'm not sure if this is a capability of SSH: can you force a command to be run on the client machine)? I am still looking up what exact procedure that involves - but I suspect it's a matter of sending the correct escape-key(s) to SSH. (Possibly ^Z). Nimur (talk) 21:06, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Though, this post indicates that Firefox actually does launch remotely, and then hacks up the X11 protocol to send an inter-process communication over to a Firefox running on the client-side. I can't confirm that behavior independently, but it seems more plausible than SSH itself allowing code to execute on the local machine. The question now becomes, "can X11 merely send a message to a firefox process already running on my local computer, or can X11 actually cause execution of arbitrary code on my local computer?" Nimur (talk) 21:20, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

The relevant communication is done by XRemoteClient::DoSendCommand in XRemoteClient.cpp, which uses XChangeProperty to manipulate MOZILLA_COMMAND_PROP, one of the atoms I mentioned above (it looks like they use MOZILLA_RESPONSE_PROP for the response). I don't know how durable this protocol would be if there were lots of users instances banging out requests and responses, but for the occasional use it actually gets, this seems fair enough. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 21:49, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

But that still doesn't explain how the a Firefox process can be started on the local machine, if it was not already running. Can X11 initiate remote code execution? Nimur (talk) 22:21, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Nobody has said that a Firefox process will be started on the local machine if one isn't already running. X will not kick off a new process just because you changed some root window properties. Marnanel (talk) 22:38, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Right, that's my understanding, and how it behaves for me when I try it out. If I have two machines local and remote, where I'm sitting at the X display on local and there's nothing but an sshd running on remote. If, at in a terminal window on local I write ssh -X remote firefox http://foo.com, what happens depends on whether I have a firefox instance already running on local. If there is a local firefox, the ssh command runs a remote firefox, it does the X atom thing above (which it can because of the X forwarding), sends the message, and closes, and http://foo.com opens (in a new tab) in the local firefox instance. If there isn't a firefox running on local, that atom procedure fails, so the remote firefox on remote runs, creates its own X window (which ssh forward back to local). In the former case the remote firefox session only runs for a fraction of a section before terminating (and exiting the ssh connection), whereas the latter case the remote firefox process persists as long as I use it (or the ssh connection survives). I don't see any remote execution beyond what you'd expect ssh to do. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 22:47, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

If all 13 root nameservers were simultaneously down

Would every attempt by a computer user using a browser to go to www.example.com (where you replace 'example' with a real website) result in a "server not found" error? Would it be crippling, or is the degree to which the caches of local nameservers who know nameservers who know where such and such website is statistically good enough that a lot of people would still be OK? 20.137.18.50 (talk) 18:06, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

It depends on your ISP's name-server caching policy. Most of them probably update their cache every few hours, and some of them might use wacky "smart" caching (i.e. if they can't get a connection to a canonical server, they might drop the record, or they might keep the old version). Now that DNS servers are running software implementations, the possibilities are pretty much infinite in terms of what they could do. But most probably, they would keep their records (because there's a critical difference between "can't connect to a canonical name-server to look up example.com" and "canonical nameserver no longer has a record for example.com"). Depending on the size of their cache, some users would never notice anything; but the "long tail effect" seems worth mentioning, and many users would immediately see DNS resolution problems (by trying to visit sites that are not in the local cache). And it would be a pretty big problem when IP/dns-name mappings started changing. You can read about BIND, a very common DNS server software. In fact, an entire book exists, DNS and BIND, published by O'Reilly, and containing several chapters about the caching algorithm(s) it uses. Particularly, note that the net-ops engineer can configure the Master / Slave relationship in any way he or she wants; and can configure DNS zones in any way they see fit; presumably, they might hand-tweak this sort of stuff, or they may run analytics and auto-generate configurations. If a specific ISP sets up a master server with a huge database, they are almost entirely independent from the root nameservers (except that they will never know about new, deleted, and changed IP/dns records). It is probable that your ISP uses BIND for its DNS server, but the only way to be sure is to ask someone in your ISP's network engineering / operations group. Nimur (talk) 19:31, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I have to add that there's a hell of a lot more than 13 nameservers. There can't be more than 13 addresses for them, but anycast means that multiple servers can share an address. In fact there are currently 243 root nameservers. All of them going down at once is rather unlikely. Marnanel (talk) 22:35, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

honestly, "all 243 servers" going down at once is about as likely as "all 13 servers" going down a once (and not because the probability is 0). 82.234.207.120 (talk) 07:38, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Samsung TVs with DLNA are being fussy with h264 media

I've tried a couple different 2010 Samsung TV's with their "allnet" DLNA media playback feature. Every single h264 .mp4/m4v refuses to play on it. I get a "Not supported file format" error. These files shared over DLNA play just fine on a PS3 and WDTV box. And the TV manuals clearly state h264 is supported up to 1080p and 10mbit/sec (which these media files are). Is there something I can do on my end to get these movies into whatever strict specification the Samsung TVs are expecting? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 20:55, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Find out the limitations of the Samsung TV's H264 support (HP level 4.1 perhaps? I believe the PS3 supports level 5) and in future make sure your H264 encodes are restricted to what you TV supports. If these are commercial encodes, look for encodes that are likely to be compatible or ask the vendor if they can release versions for your TV. Samsungs are popular TVs so it may be possible. You can of course transcode, but it seems a bit of a waste of effort when you can just encode it properly or get better versions from your vendor. According to [4] the limits are well discussed so it shouldn't be hard to find although I wonder if asking Samsung if the manual doesn't list any more details may be a better bet. [5] suggests you want to stay under 8 reference frames. Nil Einne (talk) 15:24, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Declarations and definitions

I'm fairly confident that I know what these are (having read The C Programming Language carefully), and that the article Declaration (computer science) doesn't, quite. I left a comment to this effect on its talk page back in April, but nobody reacted. I've just discovered, to my disgust, that Definition (disambiguation) links to the Declaration article, and calls a definition "A statement declaring ...". So am I being too much of a K&R fanboy, and failing to get with the modern world in which declarations and definitions are the same thing, or is this all a mess? 81.131.43.12 (talk) 23:53, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

If it says that, I'd declare the definition wrong... I'll take a look, and see if I can make any sense of it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:10, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Wait, actually, I think a couple of people have improved the article in recent months (without saying anything on the talk page) and possibly fixed it. I wonder what I should do with the disambiguation, though. A definition blatantly isn't a declaration, yet "declaration" is the right article to link to. Maybe I'll just rephrase the disambig page a bit.

...Done. (Ugh, that "and/or" is a bit ugly.) Thank you for your moral support. 81.131.43.12 (talk) 00:14, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, the Declaration (computer science) article looks about right, though it could do with clarifying the distinction between definition and initialization for variables: they aren't necessarily the same thing in some languages. The disambiguation still needs a little work, it needs to refer to functions as well as variables.

I wonder if the article should be called Declaration and definition(computer science)? I know Wikipedia practice is to avoid 'and' in article titles, but the two concepts are so closely interlinked it might make more sense that way. We'd need disambiguations for both 'declaration' and 'definition' though. Any thoughts? AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:31, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, it might be that declaration is the broader concept. The "variables" section of the article talks about languages which allow (or require) implicit declarations. This is a common phrase; so far as I know, "implicit definitions" isn't, even though, technically, this is what's being talked about in that section of the article as well. All the examples in that section are testing to see if x and y can be implicitly defined as well as implicitly declared; and most of the error messages say "x not defined", but the concept is still called "implicit declaration". Searching for that takes me to the page Undefined variable, where I read "An undefined variable in the source code of a computer program is a variable that is accessed in the code but has not been previously declared by that code." Argh! So maybe I am being overly fussy about a fine distinction. 81.131.43.12 (talk) 01:03, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I think you are right about the distinction being real enough (in most languages), but part of the problem is that different terminology is used for the same thing in different languages etc. Fortunately, I doubt many people try to learn computer programming from Wikipedia articles (at least, I hope not). AndyTheGrump (talk)

Every definition is a declaration; see WG14/N1124 section 6.7. I edited Definition (disambiguation) to agree more or less with that definition of "definition". -- BenRG (talk) 04:55, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Spyware/virus protection for mac

I had always heard in the past that macs were basically immune to viruses. I have no idea if this is true or if it was true but is not any longer. My brand new iMac should be arriving tomorrowish and I have a few questions. Does it need any virus and/or spyware protection? If so, what do you recommend? (I'd prefer free, though I am willing to pay if it's really the better route). On that front, I will be transferring all manner of files from my soon-to-be-defunct PC over the the mac. I would not be at all surprised if this computer is infected (despite having Norton running continuously for years), as I have a lot of problems that I think may be the result of a virus. But I just can't abandon my files; hundreds of pictures, videos, word docs, pdfs, and so on. If you tell me I need antivirus, will I immunize myself (for the most part) if I first install that software and and only then do the file transfer—will it scan them as they're being transferred and block the transfer of infected files? If you tell me I don't need any antivirus software, how can I protect myself to do this transfer or do I need to at all? Thanks in advance.--162.84.137.228 (talk) 23:57, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

It it not so much "immune" as in "irrelevant" to viruses. (It also helps that they aren't logged in as administrators by default, are running a pretty rigorous Unix back-end, and lack the standard Windows vectors like MS Outlook or MS Office or Internet Explorer. MS Office exists on the Mac but its scripting limitations are pretty high, and the most recent Mac versions have eliminated scripting altogether. Which is actually irritating, but whatever, in this context it is positive.) Anyway, I have been using a Mac for 6 years now without the need for any virus or malware protection. (And I monitor things pretty well and would know if something was on there that shouldn't be.) So I really wouldn't worry about it. There is just no real threat. As for the PC viruses, they won't run on a Mac, so it doesn't really matter from the standpoint of protecting the Mac. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:00, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Apple's official Mac OS X security page explains the built-in protections. The protection is almost identical to the protection that Windows offers: the operating system will ask you for permission to run any unfamiliar program. If you choose to run a program, and it turns out to have malicious intent, it doesn't matter what operating system you have. Here's a pretty decent listing of malware known to run on Mac computers. Especially take note of malware that attacks a browser or browser plugin - in this case, the malware is operating-system and hardware-agnostic. Nimur (talk) 00:07, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

That page notwithstanding — I know lots and lots of people who use Macs who I would call non-techy. None of them to my knowledge have ever had any trouble with malware. All of the people I know with PCs who are non-techy have endless malware issues. I just don't think there's enough of a community of Macs and Mac viruses to sustain any serious infections to the degree that there are on Windows machines. That could change, of course. But I don't think it's worth the performance hit of antivirus, personally, in terms of a risk tradeoff. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:48, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so I guess I won't worry about it too much. Thanks for the tips.--162.84.137.228 (talk) 01:49, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

One more question. I read the security information page Nimur linked. It seems some of the protection is geared towards using Safari. I am partial to Firefox. Am I asking for trouble by staying with it? Regarding "risk tradeoff" I have always thought of my antispyware and antivirus programs as almost viruses in and of themselves. A necessary evil but quite, quite evil; a constant system messing, crash inducing, resource robbing plague.--162.84.137.228 (talk) 01:55, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't use antivirus or antispyware software on Windows and have never had any problem. I think that the people who do get malware get it mainly from warez, stupid dancing frog animations, or visiting dodgy websites with an unpatched browser. I only download software that doesn't suck and I keep my network apps updated, and that strategy seems to work. I also use Firefox with NoScript, but I don't know if it's ever protected me from anything. -- BenRG (talk) 04:37, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I use Windows and always look out for suspicious behaviour on my laptop, and for unexpected files appearing, and, every time I've investigated, the culprit has been security software doing unauthorised and unnotified background updates! Sometimes its behaviour seems to be as bad as that of the viruses and other malware that it protects against, and it has never found anything harmful in many years of use, but I'm not quite as careful as BenRG, so I keep the annoying software just in case I make a mistake. Dbfirs 10:13, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I do not use MAC but I think that the threat of virus on MAC is clearly lower than on Windows at the moment. However if you plans to transfer files you suspect of being infected I would definitely scan them, you do not want to infect your friends computers. In order to be reliable a scan shall be done on a computer that is known to be uninfected. You could copy all the files to the new computer and then run a virus scan on them. In order to do that you do not need to install a resident anti-virus program. I do not know which virus-scanners to recommend for MAC. --Gr8xoz (talk) 11:13, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

December 10

Strings

Currently, I am taking lesson on "Strings". I couldn't run the following program. Got an alert signal on line 13:if ( strcmp ( name, "Nahid" ) == 0 ) // Equal strings

#include <iostream> // For cout
#include <iostream> // For the string functions

using namespace std;
int main()
{
    char name[50];
    char lastname[50];
    char fullname[100]; // Big enough to hold both name and lastname

    cout<<"Please enter your name: ";
    cin.getline ( name, 50 );
    if ( strcmp ( name, "Nahid" ) == 0 ) // Equal strings
       cout<<"That's my name too.\n";
    else
       cout<<"That's not my name.\n";
     // Find the length of your name
     cout<<"Your name is "<< strlen ( name ) <<" letters long\n";
     cout<<"Enter your last name: ";
     cin.getline ( lastname, 50 );
     fullname[0] = '\0';            // strcat searches for '\0' to cat after
     strcat ( full name, name );    // Copy name into full name
     strcat ( full name, " ");      // We want to separate the name by a space
     strcat ( fullname, lastname ); // Copy lastname onto the end of fullname
     cout<<"Your full name is "<< fullname <<"\n";
     cin.get();
}

How could I fix that? Thanks--NAHID 00:08, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

What alert did you get? Nimur (talk) 00:12, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Could it be that you got "undefined identifier: strcmp"? Because you didn't #include<cstring>, but iostream twice. --Tardis (talk) 00:23, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Visual C++ auto-included that header. I got an error on full name - which probably should be fullname. Nimur (talk) 00:31, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• The alert shows a square shaped red box, but it did not explain anything to me. It only disappears if the sentence is fixed. I checked and wrote that line (13) again but it seems that problem did not go away. The box is still popping up.--NAHID 10:21, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Put your mouse over the alert-box. A small arrow will appear to the right of the box; click on the arrow. A dialog box showing what the error is will be displayed. Or select View/Output (Ctrl+W, O), which will open a new window showing all the compilation errors and warnings. CS Miller (talk) 14:57, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

You may be getting a warning that strcmp is deprecated and that strncmp is recommended instead. APL (talk) 00:40, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

You do realise you have the same error ('full name' rather than 'fullname') in two consecutive lines? AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:05, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Running WCII on a CF48

Whenever I try to run Warcraft II on my laptop (an old Panasonic Toughbook), I get the opening cinematic, but when the main menu comes up, it just shows as a blank screen. Alt-tabbing nets me a screen with blue lines running down it. I have no idea why it's acting like this (and yes, I do have the CD in the drive); any ideas?

For the sake of having the most complete info, this laptop is running Windows XP Pro (SP3), has a clock speed of 896 MHz, and has a total of 256 MB RAM. —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Hyper Combo K.O.!)} 05:08, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Any ideas at all? —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Hyper Combo K.O.!)} 01:07, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Run it under DOSBox? It is, after all, an old DOS game. 118.96.154.34 (talk) 17:20, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

The issue with that is that my desktop has no problem running the game, and it, too is an XP Pro SP3 rig. —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Hyper Combo K.O.!)} 21:00, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

torrent download

i recently downlaoded a torrent file and started the download, it went smoothly for about 2 hours, and i switched off the computer and when i switched it on again, the download doesn't continue. i mean, it shows downloading under the status tab, but there's no speed under the speed tab, remaining time is infinity. it's never happened with me before... is it a bad torrent??? can i do anything about it????

thanx —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.197.240.5 (talk) 09:39, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

It could mean some of the people (or even just one person) you were downloading from also turned their computers off for a while. How many seeds and peers are showing for the download? Probably if you just leave the download going all the time it will catch when the other people reenter the swarm and start downloading again. There's nothing more you can do at your end but wait. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 10:34, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

usb ports

I plug an external hd (one partition, 250 GB): At first the pc (xp home, centrino) recognize it, after some minutes it behaves as I had unplugged it.. t.i.a. --217.194.34.103 (talk) 10:36, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Could be a number of things. Failing drive, poor connector, ... After my own experience, the first I'd try is to leave the computer untouched with the drive plugged in. Does the drive stay online longer? If yes, that could indicate that small vibrations when you type etc are jiggling the connector, giving a poor electrical connection. Try to isolate the problem: if you have several USB ports, try another; if you have several cables, try another; if you have access to another computer, try the drive there. Does accessing the drive constantly make things better or worse (I'm thinking overheating vs. the drive going to sleep mode). Once upon a time I had an external drive that was failing by overheating; making a table fan blow on it helped me rescue the files. 88.112.59.31 (talk) 18:50, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

USB cable too long or USB cable wrapped around power or other cables causing interference. Does the HD have a separate power supply or does it get the power from the USB port; if the latter, then the port may not be providing enough power; use a powered hub, use a power supply with the HD if it has a connector or use a special USB Y cable to connect it to two USB ports for more power. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:58, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Black screen

I have a Compaq Presario CQ60 that wont boot, when I turn it on the power light comes on and the HDD light at the front flickers but nothing happens. I connected it to another laptop using a VGA cable to see if it was the screen that was broken but get the same blank screen on the other laptop. Anyone any suggestions on what I could do to try to solve this thanks. Mo ainm~Talk 14:08, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

It's no use connecting 2 laptops together and expecting one to display the other's output. You should try connecting it to a monitor. --86.133.83.252 (talk) 14:36, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I tried that also and nothing but the black screen. Why would it make a difference between a monitor and another laptop? Mo ainm~Talk 14:47, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The VGA connectors on laptops are for output only, if they receive an incoming signal (like you're trying to do) they wouldn't know what to do it, hence nothing appears.  ZX81  ^talk 15:17, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that explanation wsn't aware of that. But as I say I tried it on my PC monitor and nothing appeared. Mo ainm~Talk 15:19, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

You might need to enable the external monitor. The symbol is normally a hollow box with square brackets around it. Turn of the laptop and monitor. Connect the monitor, turn the monitor on, and finally turn the laptop on. Then press the button. You might need to hold down the Fn button as well. CS Miller (talk) 16:38, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

No, think I didn't get my question across properly the problem is that the laptop is not booting and all I get is a black screen I only connected it to another monitor to check if the screen was broke on the laptop it isn't so it is some other problem and this is what I am trying to discover. Mo ainm~Talk 16:57, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

What does the machine sound like as it starts up? Do the fans start? Do they stop again? Does it do any beeping (beep codes are used to indicate problems that occur in early stages of booting)? It's probably not a screen problem, assuming that you mean that the HDD light flickers on briefly and then stops, because otherwise it be flickering constantly for a couple minutes. Paul (Stansifer) 18:09, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes the HDD is spinning and yes it is the HDD light at the front that flashes, it doesn't stay on or stay off. Mo ainm~Talk 18:21, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Then maybe it is booting properly. Start it up, wait for a while, hook up the monitor. The monitor may take a few seconds to recognize an input source. Then hit Fn+F5 (or whatever controls the VGA out status) and see if that changes anything. Paul (Stansifer) 22:42, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with the others, that this sounds more like a display problem than a failure to boot (which would normally result in some text-only error messages being displayed). However, it may not be the monitor, but the graphics card that's at fault. Unfortunately, as most laptops aren't "user serviceable", this means a trip to the repair shop is needed. One other possibility, going back to the monitor being the issue, is that the LCD back-light may not be functional. Try shining a bright light at the monitor, at a shallow angle, in an otherwise dark room, to see if you can make out any text. If so, then you know that's the problem. I had this happen with one laptop, and I had to open it up to just the right angle to get the back-light to work. StuRat (talk) 07:59, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Iterating through arrays

Instead of having to write "for n = 1 to x : j(n)=k(y): next n", which languages allow you to write something like: "iterate j()=k(y)"? Thanks 92.15.0.115 (talk) 14:58, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

See foreach. —Bkell (talk) 15:24, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

See also map (higher-order function) and the even more powerful fold (higher-order function), which are features of functional languages. In most cases, those functions are even more direct than foreach-style loops. ("foreach" is just a "map" that doesn't return anything, so you have to usher the information out of the loop by assignment statements. The equivalent "map" can be much shorter.) Paul (Stansifer) 15:53, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

See also also list comprehension and array programming. --Tardis (talk) 18:40, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

If you are using a language that lets you work with memory directly, such as memcpy in C++, you can do this. For example, mempcy takes a destination, source, and number of copies to make. So, you could memcpy with j being the destination, k(y) being the source, and x being the number of copies to make. (and I think I should note that I do not believe this is an intended use for memcpy - it is more of a hack of how it works) -- kainaw™ 18:56, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

memcpymemset(3) will only work if your element size is a byte. C++ has the more general fill() and fill_n(). --Tardis (talk) 03:01, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Are both of you are talking about memset, rather than memcpy? memcpy makes just one copy of the source; the third parameter is the size of the source. It works with any POD type, not just byte-sized types. memset can be used to zero out arrays of integers, but not to fill them with arbitrary values. -- BenRG (talk) 06:20, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, sorry: I deduced that Kainaw must have meant memset because it's filling the arbitrary-sized j(1:x) from the fixed size k(y). Then I proceeded to repeat his apparent mistake in my discussion of it. --Tardis (talk) 16:21, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Another example of a high-level language with this functionality: in php you can do something like:

$my_array = array();

array_pad($my_array, $x, $k[$y]);

Then, my_array will be filled out to size x, all with value k[y]. -- kainaw™ 19:02, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Assuming you want to replace all elements of the array, preserving the size, in Perl you can say @j = ($k[$y]) x @j;. In Python you can say j[:] = [k[y]] * len(j). In C++ you can say fill(j.begin(), j.end(), k[y]); or j.assign(j.size(), k[y]);. In Haskell you can say amap (const (k!y)) j. -- BenRG (talk) 06:20, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Twitter

Someone has, for example, 20,000 "tweets". How do you view them in chronological order from oldest to newest? There's only a "more" link at the bottom of the page which loads 10 more messages each time you click it. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 17:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi, when I'm using the most recent twitter interface in Firefox, there is no "more" button, just a continuous scroll down through a twitterers tweets. It does however go from most recent through to oldest, rather than the chronological flow that you asked about. Technically, I suppose that you could scroll the whole way down to the first tweet, and then start scrolling back up, reading chronologically from oldest to newest. I've run searches on a number of terms to try to find a tool that might list tweets as you requested, but wasn't successful, I also tried to run google searches on twitter accounts to see if google might be able to do it (a bit like a google news search where you can arrange the results by date) but this too was unsuccessful. My suggestion to go all the way to a users first tweet and then navigate through the timelie from there is the only option that I can see at this moment in time. Darigan (talk) 17:20, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Can setjmp(3) evaluate its argument more than once?

The standard says that it's a macro, and in some implementations its argument is evaluated more than once. Is that a bug in that implementation (perhaps fixed since 2005), or is that allowed behavior? I don't see anything in the standard to forbid it, but it's obviously less useful if so (for the reasons mentioned in that mailing list post) and the standard doesn't specifically allow it either (like it does for putc()). --Tardis (talk) 18:48, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Here they say:

Each of the following statements shall apply unless explicitly stated otherwise in the detailed descriptions that follow: ... Any invocation of a function that is implemented as a macro shall expand to code that evaluates each of its arguments exactly once, fully protected by parentheses where necessary, so it is generally safe to use arbitrary expressions as arguments.

Since the only places they explicitly warn about multiple evaluations are in putc() and friends, I think it's a bug for an implementation to do so with setjmp(). That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, of course. --Sean 20:47, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

That's true; I knew that (if I thought about it), and it ought to be enough. Thanks. (One could quibble that setjmp() isn't a function at all, so it isn't a "function that is implemented as a macro".) I wonder how frequent the implementations that do repeatedly evaluate are? (The one I linked to was actually sigsetjmp()/siglongjmp(), but the same principle applies.) --Tardis (talk) 21:57, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I think this clause doesn't apply to this case for the reason you just stated. It's talking about the general provision that any standard library function may optionally (for speed reasons) be shadowed by a macro. Those macros are required to be as function-like as possible. I don't think that requirement extends to things that are explicitly stated to be macros. -- BenRG (talk) 04:37, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

How to allow firefox to access the web

Resolved

How do I allow firefox to access the web? Albacore (talk) 21:19, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

One possible answer is to select File->Work Offline (remove the tick this option). A substantially different answer is that you need to pay an ISP for an internet connection. What's the nature of the problem? 213.122.23.184 (talk) 22:08, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Aye, some more info would be nice, since Firefox is, after all, a Web browser. I have a question, though: Do you have a firewall? If so, is it either (a) blocking all access to Firefox or (b) on lockdown? —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Hyper Combo K.O.!)} 22:38, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Firefox worked until it updated to a new version. Then, McAfee warned me that it was trying to connect to the internet, or something very similar. I chose "block" to block Firefox from connecting to the internet twice. Now, of course, Firefox won't load.

Based on that, I would imply that the firewall is blocking access to Firefox. Albacore (talk) 23:16, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with McAfee, but somewhere (perhaps an expert can tell you where), you will find a list of blocked software, and you just need to remove Firefox from that list. Dbfirs 00:55, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Quick to learn languages

The Short Introduction To ABC, linked from ABC (programming language) says that it can be learnt in "an hour or so or so for someone who has already programmed". Are there any other languages that could also be learnt in an hour or so? Thanks. 92.24.190.135 (talk) 22:47, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Depends what you mean by learned. Brainfuck can be learned very rapidly - a few minutes to get the way it works. But whether you would be a competent programmer in that or any other language after an hour is a different matter. Usually the simpler the syntax and the fewer the languages options the quicker to learn and the longer to be competent at using it. -- SGBailey (talk) 23:27, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't consider learning something in an hour to be a very good sign generally. Chess can be learned in less than an hour, but that doesn't mean you'll be any good at it. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:05, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I would think BASIC could be learned in an hour by somebody familiar with programming, and maybe Pascal (programming language) as well. Looie496 (talk) 02:58, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Would not Logo (programming language) and others aimed at children in the List of educational programming languages be learnable by adults with some experience of programming, within an hour or so? Micro-SiMPLE with four commands could be learnt in a few minutes. 92.28.246.75 (talk) 13:21, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

December 11

printing with low ink "harmful"?

I searched the reference desk for an answer but it doesn't seem anyone has asked this question yet, and I had trouble finding it on google too. My Canon photoprinter is rather cautious when telling me that my ink is almost finished, and just today it told me that my black ink (there are two types, I guess this was the larger black for printing text) had run out, and furthermore I would have to push the stop button for 5 seconds in order to override the "safety" mechanism and force it to print anyway, thus voiding my warranty! now i would never plan on using a printer for any extended period of time while missing a color, and this seems to be a lot of crock. are print heads really tha easily damaged, and should i worry about getting close to running out, or is this just a ploy to get people to buy more ink more frequently? for the record, I ignored the warning, and though a tiny bit faded there is still a few pages left in the cartridge. thanks! 173.183.68.27 (talk) 00:05, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Print heads can be clogged if the catridges run out of ink. These can sometimes/usually? be cleared but may require either lots of wasted ink or trying to clean them by soaking in alcohol etc (which requires they be removed). On the other hand some printers are known to report out of ink conditions with something like 25% of the ink remaining [6]. Note that printers which require you to force printing without ink will usually record in the EEPROM when you do so, therefore this will be known if you send the printer for any warranty claim. Nil Einne (talk) 11:00, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

its a scam to make you buy more of those expensive cartridges that often cost literally more than the price of that brand new printer with a full set of ink cartridges. many major printer manufacturers are selling printers at a loss just to make money off of the ink cartridges. just refill your cartridges when they are actually empty. Roberto75780 (talk) 13:34, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Another all-too-common printer money grab is the $14.99-$29.99 printer cable that has to be purchased sepperately. It does nothing differently or better than the exact same USB A-B cable sold at every dollar store for $1.00-2.00 Roberto75780 (talk) 13:42, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Great thanks! I'm past warranty anyways, so I'll make sure to (carefully) use the ink properly until there's none left! 173.183.68.27 (talk) 05:00, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I would suggest that's a bad idea. Unless you actually plan to get a new printer, it's far better to get (far) cheaper generic ink catridges or refill your ink catridges then printing until you really run out of ink and potentially cause a clog. In other words, it's better to waste some ink (even if not as much as printer manufacturers get you to waste) then try and print until you're literally out of ink and unfortunately there's no real way to know when you're genuinely out of ink just by looking, at least with Canon printers I've used (yes the sponge may still seem to have ink but it doesn't come out). BTW be wary when comparing the price of a new printer with that of ink catridges. Many new printers nowdays come with smaller 'starter' catridges with significantly less ink then the normal ones. Nil Einne (talk) 15:02, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

App development and compatibility

Why on earth has Apple made both the screen resolution, and the aspect ratio of the iPad different than the latest iPhone??? what's wrong with the sweet and simple 3:2 ratio of the iPhone? wouldn't it be way easier and way more consistent for the appearance of apps to make the two the same, so developers can focus on one resolution (or aspect ratio at least) for both? they are already surprisingly close in resolution....why not keep them the same? Roberto75780 (talk) 13:30, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Because they are more interested in having, perhaps, better size format for people to use. That could be why.General Rommel (talk) 02:30, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Network drive

If I share a hard drive across a network with another computer, are there any limitations the other computer will experience when accessing it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.25 (talk) 13:54, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Consider the limitations of throughput of the network, which the other computer will need to abide by, as well as the fact that if you make intensive use of your hard drive/system, the other computer will experience more latency - it will have to wait longer to download the files it wants from your drive over the network. Also, there is the thing that the primary computer (sharing the drive) has to be switched on in order for the second computer to be able to access it. Can't think of any others at the moment. Just a thought since nobody was answering. --Ouro (blah blah) 20:20, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

4GB instead of 8GB RAM

I have the choice of a laptop with 4 or 8 GB RAM (paying for the upgrade, of course). What's the difference for a normal user (surfing, text processing, some basic image processing, DVD films) who do not use it for the latest video-games nor video processing? 212.169.184.16 (talk) 14:08, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

4GB is way more than enough for the tasks you mentioned. you can do alot more than that and not have to worry about not enough ram. Roberto75780 (talk) 14:19, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I also work with big pdfs (>100 MB) and I find irritating when they do not react promptly. Will 8GB be significantly better here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.169.184.16 (talk) 14:22, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

No. you'd need to open about tens of those pdfs to use the extra memory.213.249.245.72 (talk) 14:58, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

(I'm the OP). I forgot to mention a not very minor detail. I plan to install and regularly run a Sun xVM virtual box, to have Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.x running at the same time. Will 8 GB make a difference here? 212.169.185.13 (talk) 03:55, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

okay, what else are you holding back? are you simultaneously working on an intensive modeling problem for NASA? actually, virtual machines are rather memory intensive, especially if you are doing all said tasks in the virtual machine (rather than the host OS). in that case you might benefit from 8 GB... but still, i have a computer with 2 gb ram and modest specs and i can do all of that with my computer without too much lag... so its definitely just a luxury to have more. and one more thing, i better mention, that 4 GB of memory is the absolute limit of useable memory for 32-bit versions of Windows (or any operating system), and the actual usable memory can be limited by other factors to 3.2-3.8 GB. so there is no point (at all) in installing 8 GB unless you are using a 64-bit edition of your operating system. Roberto75780 (talk) 08:50, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I would definitely go for more ram if you can afford it. Computer software is always getting more resource hungry, and being able to run all your programs simultaneously is great. And if you're running virtual machines you'd probably want to give them at least 1gb each 82.44.55.25 (talk) 09:23, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree. RAM gets eaten up fast on modern computers, and 4GB is really not that much if you are running virtual machines, image processing programs, browsers, etc. all at once (I have 3GB and can do maybe two or three of those things at once, but I do have to watch it sometimes). The real question for me always is, what is the price difference between 4GB and 8GB? If it is lower than it would cost to get another 4GB stick on the open market, then buy the 4GB bundled and then just buy another 4GB stick of the same kind of RAM. Often bundling places (e.g. Dell or Apple or whatever) charge a premium for RAM which is far more expensive than it costs just buying it off of dedicated RAM stores, without any real advantage. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:06, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I run two Linux VMs on my Windows 7 workstation, which are allocated a total of 11GB of RAM between them. While an Ubuntu VM can be run with just 1GB of RAM, if you're using it for anything other than test purposes, you would certainly want to give atleast 2GB of RAM. I would definitely recommend getting 8GB of RAM instead of 4GB. Rocketshiporion♫ 21:31, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Excel formula capitalization idiocy

Blah.

So I have a custom formula named, let's say, "MyFormula" in Excel 2003 (Windows XP).

I wanted to make sure it worked even if you put in something with totally incorrect case, like "MYFORmULA".

It does. But now Excel won't let me change the case to anything other than the idiotic one. I've tried deleting all instances of it. Finding and replacing. Clearing out the column and saving and re-adding it again. Yet somehow Excel has decided that the one time I wanted to spell it like a doofus, I had made up my mind and should never, ever, be allowed to change it to anything else ever again. >:-/

Anybody have any clue how to override this? It doesn't affect functionality but it looks idiotic.

Just to clarify, the function is capitalized correctly in the VBE environment. It's only in the Excel worksheet (where I have it as a cell formula, e.g. "=MYFORmULA(A5)") that it comes up wrong. No amount of changing it in the formula bar seems to have any effect any more, even though that's all I did the first time. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:13, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, I got tired of trying to fix it a rational way, and just ended up restoring from an old version of the file and pasting my new code and changes in over it. So it's OK again. But still, blah. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:24, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

can a 10 min. video be of 750 MB ?

.. recently i downloaded a movie with the help of torrent. and i got to know it was only a part of the movie (10 min. duration).. but i was astonished it's size was 750 MB... and while playing the video in a corner it was written to download a particular video player from a particular website..to play the full movie... are they just fooling me or ...... really i have some problem with my video player.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.225.96.217 (talk) 15:11, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, a 10 min video can be 750mb or any size depending on the bitrate used to encode it. But from your description it seems you downloaded a fake video, there are loads of them on the net and they all say you need special players to view them. Whatever it asks you to download is most likely going to be a virus; don't download or install it. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 15:34, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Not just the bit-rate, but also the resolution and compression, will affect the size. That size doesn't seem unreasonable for a 10 minute HD 1080p video, to me. StuRat (talk) 07:46, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

thanx for suggestion.... :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.225.96.217 (talk) 15:38, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I've seen low-quality 10-minute videos reach tens of gigabytes in size. That's what happens when you don't compress video.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 10:49, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Problem with my wiki

Hello. There is a problem with my computer on Wikia. On Wikia on my bloody computer, it does not allow me to edit at all, create a new page, or see an image at the bottom of the screen. I need some help in how this really annoying problem can be fixed. P.S., Please reply!!!! Velociraptor888 16:13, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

It's actually a problem with editing on Wikia on Internet Explorer on my computer, because it will allow me to edit on Wikia on Firefox on my Computer. So that's it "kinda" fixed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Velociraptor888 (talk • contribs) 16:22, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

So what exactly does it do when you try to edit ? StuRat (talk) 07:43, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

(JavaScript)(animation) How to display sequential images?

I have created a div element with a unique id. I then used

$('#id').html(image file);

to insert an image into the div element every 250 milliseconds.

The jQuery insertion function and a delay function are enclosed in a for loop.

There is nothing wrong with my coding. The browser shows nothing until several seconds later after the loop is completed. Rather than displaying all images for 0.25 seconds each, it only displays the last image of the sequence (i.e., image000, image 001, ... image999; only image999 is shown).

How do I make the browser display each and every image so I can create an animation? -- Toytoy (talk) 16:36, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

The browser will only update it's display when your script exits. Use the

setTimeout(fn, 1000);

function to call 'fn' after a 1000 millisecond delay. This is a once-only timer; 'fn' should call setTimeout just before it exits if 'fn' should be called again. CS Miller (talk) 17:19, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Error Message?

Does anybody recognize this? I have had this 'message' a few times over the past few days. The only options I have are to either minimize it or close it (using the buttons you see on the corner). I cannot expand it. Also, TaskManager will not open while the message is there, so I can't use that to get any information about it. TaskManager will, however, open after I have closed the message, if that is any help. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 18:19, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what it is, but here are some ideas to try to find out more about it:

• When the message appears, press Alt+Tab and see what the title of the window is.
• Try right-clicking on the title bar, choose Size, then use the arrow keys to make the window bigger.

--Bavi H (talk) 00:45, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks - I will try those next time it comes up. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 03:56, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

It might not be an error message. some installation setup files re-size command line windows to that tiny shape (perhaps to avoid rolling the script infront of the user on the screen, which may be less appealing especially to novice users) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Roberto75780 (talk • contribs) 08:55, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

how do I get out of this rut?

I've just had a sad realization. My personal philosophy in life could be summarized as: "If you don't do it, someone else will. Probably better. So, just wait around, and you'll get it better and be satisfied that you thought of it first". So far this has been true of some couple of dozen things. How do I get out of this rut? And take the challenge to do it myself, maybe worse than a million dollar company would or will... 82.234.207.120 (talk) 18:58, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I think you might get a better answer on the Miscellaneous desk than here on the Computing desk. Marnanel (talk) 19:04, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

no, everything I've mentioned (like all the ideas) are computer-science related. (i.e. specific implementations). 82.234.207.120 (talk) 19:27, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Sacré bleu! Listen very carefully, I will say this only once. Wait a while and see how another gets out of such a rut. Of course, there is that danger that you will never be able to climb out as well as they, and so perhaps, you are better off staying where you are. C'est la vie See also:Procrastination--Aspro (talk) 19:30, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Well personally I know anything I make is likely to be crap. So if someone can do it better and I can benefit from it (like free open source software) then I'm happy for them. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 19:46, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

The founder of Facebook clearly did not have that attitude. And compare Google with all the earlier search engines listed at Web search engine and now little known. You do not have to be the innovator, you are better off doing an established idea better. 92.15.28.181 (talk) 20:52, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

If you think that FOSS is the way to benefit, but you want to accomplish something, then just contribute to FOSS. --Tardis (talk) 02:15, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Just because someone else can or even will do it better, doesnt mean you shouldnt throw your hat in the ring too. there will always be users who are not happy with the biggest and best product and seek that little-known, supposedly inferior piece of software that does the job right. Roberto75780 (talk) 08:59, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I like it! And I'll tell my marketing team: "Gentlemen: we can't be the best. We might not even be the first. But I promise you this: we WILL be the loudest." Inferior it is! 82.234.207.120 (talk) 12:17, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Depending on what your goals are you might see several reasons to try anyway:

1) Even if somebody else does do it better, you might still make a lot of money from it, especially if they need to buy out your inferior product's patents.

2) You might derive some satisfaction from pointing others in the right direction, even if you don't personally benefit much. Those at Xerox who came up with the mouse and windows interface (see Xerox Alto), before Apple and later Microsoft stole it all, can be still be proud of their legacy.

3) The failures of your product may also be valuable lessons for others. As in the previous example, the Xerox Star made it obvious to others that the price needed to be lower to gain acceptance in offices. StuRat (talk) 07:35, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

LaTeX question - Change the way cross references are displayed.

Resolved

I have a rather large document with many chapter and sections and subsections. I want the sections to be labeled like "A. Section Title" and the subsections to be "A.1. Subsection Title" - note the periods. I am able to get this by putting the following in my preamble:

\def\thesection{\Alph{section}.} \def\thesubsection{\thesection\arabic{subsection}.}

Later in the document I want to reference the section in question by using the \ref{} command, but the periods need to be different. When I type "as in Secion \ref{sec:labelhere} of" , I want it to display "as in Section A of". How do I tell LaTeX to use one form for the section headings and a different form for cross-references? Thanks mislih 20:21, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I looked around the relevant sources, and it appears that these two are not intended to be user serviceable separately. Nevertheless, the following works:

\def\thesection{\Alph{section}}
\makeatletter
\def\@seccntformat#1{\csname the#1\endcsname.\quad}
\makeatother

(The original definition in tex/latex/base/latex.ltx is \def\@seccntformat#1{\csname the#1\endcsname\quad}, without the period.) No change of \thesubsection is needed.—Emil J. 15:21, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that works like a charm. mislih 23:31, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Updating Quicktime Alernative; updating Quicktime Plugin in Firefox

When I check for updates for Firefox plugins, it tells me that the Quicktime plugin 7.6.6.0 is vunerable and should be updated. When I click on the button to do this, it takes me to the QuickTime website and there I am only offered the QuickTimeInstaller.exe, which is over 37mb. I think this is a full Quicktime installation.

But I don't want a full Quicktime instalation - I've got QuickTime Alternative installed instead. QuickTime is notorious for being badly behaved and intrusive.

How do I update QuickTime Alternative (full version) please? The QTA website does not seem to say.

Is there any other way of updating the Firefox Quicktime plugin without installing all of Quicktime?

Is it possible to play all the things that QTA can play - such as .mov - by using other software, so that I dont need to use QTA or QT?

I'm using WinXP. Thanks 92.15.28.181 (talk) 20:46, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I uninstalled QTA and then installed the latest version from the QTA website, but its exactly the same as previously with ther same plugin 7.6.6.0. 92.28.249.229 (talk) 17:06, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

How much does an .is domain cost?

--J4\/4 <talk> 21:14, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

39 Euro per year (according to their tariff page.  ZX81  ^talk 21:49, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

best reader for pdf files

I realized recently how much paper I wast by printing out journal articles. I have access to free printing, and I don't keep track of the papers once I've read them. I often find myself surrounded by piles of papers in my office. I wonder what is the best device out there that would allow me to never have to print these out again. I was very impressed with my niece's Sony pocket reader, but think I'd want a bigger screen. What I'd like to be able to do is easily enter notes in the margins or in a related document, so that whenever I reopen the pdf file I have access to the notes I've written with it. Should I go for a simple reader device, or get a tablet pc? What are the best products for this purpose? Thanks mislih 22:38, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

An iPad? 118.96.157.158 (talk) 23:17, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Ha ha, very funny. mislih 01:51, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it was meant as a joke. The first hit for a Google search for "best ereader for pdfs" [7] states: "if you really want a hard-core PDF reader, then there’s only one option: the Apple iPad." From what I've read, the main consideration is a large screen (9 inch diagonal or larger). PDFs don't reflow well, so you need a large screen to read letter/A4 size PDFs without constant scrolling. (An LCD-type screen might be passable with scrolling, but due to the slow refresh time, an e-ink screen doesn't cut it.) Then there's the issue of PDF support - a bunch of the e-readers don't support PDFs, or if they do, they actually convert them to a different format first, so the layout gets messed up. This might be okay, except that some PDF conversion software doesn't handle some multi-column text well, so there is a chance that the text will be scrambled by conversion. (And forget about reading old article, stored-as-image, page-scan PDFs.) Finally, depending on what journal articles you're using, you'll probably want a color screen for the figures. -- 174.31.218.235 (talk) 04:50, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

What does e-Ink's slow refresh have to do with it? eInk is pretty much designed for reading books and documents. APL (talk) 20:00, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

While e-Ink is good for flipping pages, or jumping directly to one view to another, it isn't good at scrolling, or constantly updating the view while the document moves under it. With letter/A4 size documents and a small screen, you can't display the whole page at once without shrinking the text to illegibility. This requires repositioning the viewport each time you finish reading the visible portion. On a LCD, that's just a click-drag-scroll, but becomes more cumbersome on a slow-refresh e-Ink screen. eBook formats are set up so that there are clean page breaks, and defined order of pages. The reader knows how to flip between pages. PDFs, because they are a "display" format and not a "content" format, aren't as clean to move around in. This is doubly so as PDF support is usually an afterthought on most eBook readers, and even when they do design for PDFs, they don't usually think about multi-column scientific journal PDFs. -- 174.24.216.113 (talk) 06:48, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

if you cant get your hands on an ipad, try any other tablet pc or internet tablet, but not a mobile phone or ipod. the large screen size is the only thing that will ever compare to the ease of reading paper. E-ink screens produce unbeleivably sharp text, and are not backlit, but dont do color or motion very well at all. Roberto75780 (talk) 09:07, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, I will look at the other tablet pc's available. My initial reaction to the iPad suggestion was because, well I can't stand the idea of having to buy software from the "App Store" or whatever it's called, and also it fails for not having a usb port. I was impressed by the E-ink of the Sony Reader, and might even want it for reading novels, but I understand the point about wanting a large color screen. I will look at the current crop of tablets, anyone have a favorite? mislih 17:17, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I use an app called GoodReader on the iPad to read PDF files. It cost some token amount from the App Store - it was US$5.00 or something. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:20, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

The iPad starts at $500. If you want an alternative, there isn't much out there at this moment competing with it. You could look at the Notion Ink Adam Tablet (Starting at $375 for the normal netbook style TFT and $500 for the Pixel QI screen), but it still hasn't been officially released, and I haven't seen any hands on reviews yet. The only other tablets I can think of that can compete with the iPad on price are the Dell Inspiron Duo (convertible netbook, $550) and the nook color ($250) 206.131.39.6 (talk) 16:21, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I've never felt the slightest desire to use an ipad or other such small tablet device for this purpose. I use a full sized laptop (15" screen) and wish the screen were even bigger. The point of a tablet (as I see it) is go-everywhere portability. For use in an office, I'd use a desktop machine with a large monitor. That leaves you with the software problem of annotating PDF's. I don't know a specific answer for that but I'm sure something exists. Zotero comes to mind but I'm not sure if it can do what you are asking. 67.117.130.143 (talk) 17:35, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

All you need is Adobe Professional. You use its typewriter function (go to view → toolbars and open the typewriter toolbar) and you can directly annotate any pdf.--68.160.243.32 (talk) 04:57, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

December 12

Owning my own wireless network, how can I see what the others are surfing?

As many as 8 devices have connected to my wireless network, that I leave unpassworded for charitable purposes. But I wonder what those other devices look at through my signal, and whether they've been looking at what I look at.

So what software can I install that'll allow me to view what is seen from the other devices that use my signal? Thanks, --70.179.178.5 (talk) 00:27, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Firesheep? 118.96.157.158 (talk) 00:29, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Through your wireless router admin interface, you should be able to set up and look at usage logs. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:40, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

As a sidenote - there are risks associated with open wireless networks, you may (or may not) want to read Wireless Security Darigan (talk) 13:26, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

What should I use so that my programs can work with audio/video files?

I want to be able to perform some small changes to the audio and video of files (such as .mp4). These changes would be like setting the red value of each pixel to 0 or doubling the volume of the audio of a movie. I tried to work with ffmpeg, but I eventually gave up since there was very little documentation and examples. I understand that there is a way to do this with DirectX, but I have not really examined this yet. Does anyone know a good way of going about doing this that is well-documented and lightweight? I'm willing to work with any language (although preferably C++, C#, Java), and I only really care about a solution that works on Windows. 199.111.183.4 (talk) 00:53, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Display of leading zeroes in Excel

Is there a way in Microsoft Excel (2007 Version) to control the display of leading zeroes in a numeral? For example, let's say that I want the numeral 58 to display as three digits with a leading zero (i.e., as "058"). I know that I can change the settings in Excel to determine the number of digits after the decimal point. What I am concerned about is getting the digits before the decimal point correct. I would like a certain amount of "leading zeroes" to display, so that my numerals are all displayed with the same number of digits in them. Is this at all possible? Is there any way to make this happen in Excel 2007? Thanks! (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 01:54, 12 December 2010 (UTC))

Select the cells in question, choose "Cell Format" from the menu (or right click and choose "Cell Format"), choose "Custom," and put as many zeros as you'd like there to be leading (so 000 if you want it to be 058; 0000 if you want it to be 0058). This page explains more about what you can do with custom formats. --Mr.98 (talk) 03:45, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

You can also ask Excel to see the cell as 'Text' in which case it won't edit out any zeroes at the beginning. This may have other drawbacks, obviously. FreeMorpheme (talk) 19:22, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Or put an apostrophe before the number - e.g. '01. This shouldn't affect the calculation functions if my memory is any good (it's a very useful thing for when you want to 'show' a function but not have the whole excel spreadsheet show functions (or anything where you want it to ignore formulas). ny156uk (talk) 19:49, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

The apostrophe forces Excel to store the contents of the cell as a string (even though it looks like a number and would, by default, be stored as a number). Simple arithmetic (+,-,*,/) will still work - Excel converts the contents of the cell back into a number before processing the formula - but functions like SUM or AVERAGE will not work on such cells. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

SSH load balancing based on username?

Hi everyone, is there a FLOSS solution for my problem? I need to balance SSH logins between servers based on their usernames, so user1-user10 go to servera.example.com, user11-user20 go to serverb.example.com, etc. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 13:24, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Obvious way to do it is to use a gateway machine. On the gateway set the user's shell to a script that ssh's them into their real server. Share a key between the server and the gateway, and this is almost transparent (ssh escapes will be confusing). CS Miller (talk) 14:51, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I understand the part about the shell script, but could you please elaborate on the ssh escapes will be confusing part? -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 16:05, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

See 'ESCAPE CHARACTERS' and the -e option in the ssh man page. Basically if ssh sees a - (minus) or ~ (tilde) as the first character in a line then they will have a special meaning. The user would normally escape them to send them to the remote shell. However, as there is another ssh running, this will then receive the - or ~, and will need to have it escaped again to send it to the real shell. Tilde-escaping can be blocked by using '-e "none"' as a param to the second ssh. I'm not sure how to disable minus escaping. CS Miller (talk) 17:16, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like it's not going to be an issue in my specific case as the SSH connections are used for port forwarding / X forwarding and application calls like '/usr/bin/firefox' only. Thanks for the explanation. :-) -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 17:25, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

If both ssh processes are started with -X then X-forwarding will work. I'm not sure how to get other port forwarding to work, as the ssh's need to co-operate. CS Miller (talk) 20:48, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

SD card refuses to work in cameras

Hello, I have an 8GB SD card I used to use in my Lumix camera. I put it into a Sony HDR camcorder the other day, and it worked fine. But then the Lumix wouldn't read the card. And now the Sony won't read the cvard. There's no option to format on either of the devices, they just won't recognise it. I would just imagine that the card is broken - but it still works in the card reader in my laptop. I have tried formatting it in there, both to NTFS and FAT32, but the cameras still wont recognise it. Anyone have any ideas? FreeMorpheme (talk) 19:25, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

(Daft idea but sometimes the daft stuff is true so worth a try) - is the 'lock' switch stuck either A) half-way between or B) on 'lock' mode? It may be that your cameras are picky about that but your computer isn't. ny156uk (talk) 19:46, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Flash cards can either be formatted as

• A hard-drive, where there is a partition table; there is one partition which occupies the full space of the card.
• A floppy-drive, where there is no partition, but the disk extends over the full space of the card.

Windows will work with either method, but the normal formatting method is the former, and I'm not sure if cameras will understand both. It should be possible to use the Window's drive manager to check how the card is formatted, but I'm not sure of the details. CS Miller (talk) 20:53, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

It seems unusual that neither camera would have a format option. Try scrolling through all the options under Setup on the Lumix. What are the specific model numbers? --LarryMac | Talk 15:53, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

It's a Lumix LX3 and a Sony CX115EB. Since the laptop only recognised it I thought I'd let Windows 7 use the memory as extra - but that evening it began bluescreening under a Bad Pool Header warning. So I System Restored and took the card out - it has been languishing ever since. And no, the lock bit is firmly in the unlock position. FreeMorpheme (talk) 18:48, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Given the error message from Windows, it sounds like the card may be corrupted in some way. Be that as it may, there are definitely format options on both devices, according to the manuals I found online. If the card is corrupt, perhaps those options are not being displayed. Here's the Lumix manual. The format function is under the Setup menu, as noted on page 34. For an SDHC card, it says to use FAT32 "in compliance with the SD standard", whatever that means. And here's the Sony manual, which I think is saying that format is under the "Manage Media" menu, but it's not the best documentation I've ever seen, not least because it's attempting to cover at least four camcorder models. Both manuals say that you should only format the card using the camera in question, formatting on a PC is right out.

Merging or fusing two poor quality images

I have two different digital images of the same painting, both poor quality and different sizes. I would like to merge them together in the hope of creating a better quality image. Is there any software that can merge fuze or overlay two images automatically? By searching I have found something called "Merge" but its very difficult to get the two images to register manually. Is there any other software that can do this please? Thanks 92.28.249.229 (talk) 19:33, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps Hugin (software)? The bottom picture there is "An image merged from multiple exposures with Enfuse". Not sure what Enfuse is, but it redirects to that article, so maybe it's part of Hugin. Wait, actually that's for doing HDR, isn't it. You want something more like what these people [8] did, but with two images instead of millions. Hmm. 81.131.0.97 (talk) 20:35, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

If the lack of quality is caused by low resolution or graininess or blurriness, having just two images won't do much good. I could imagine that it would be possible to recover a sharp image from thousands of images like that, because together they'd have as much information as one sharp image, but I don't imagine that combining two images would reveal anything appreciable. Paul (Stansifer) 06:16, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I tend to agree. An exception might be if you had one grey-scale pic with excellent resolution, and one grainy, color pic. It should be possible to get the resolution from the one and the color from the other, in such a case. StuRat (talk) 07:20, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

You could try GIMP, if you are prepared to take the time to learn to use it. You can place the two versions in different layers of an image, and then there are a vast number of things you can do to manipulate them and combine them in various ways. I have doubts that it will help -- mixing two different kinds of shit mostly just gives you a larger quantity of shit -- but you can always try. Looie496 (talk) 18:02, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Securing files on my hard drive

I run Windows XP on my computer, and have an external hard drive. Can I password protect individual files or folders to keep the contents from prying eyes? (I have other files that do not need to be so protected.) Do I need third-party software to do so? Hemoroid Agastordoff (talk) 20:50, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I recommend TrueCrypt 82.44.55.25 (talk) 21:01, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

TrueCrypt is good, but it's not terribly useful if you want to encrypt individual files, separately. Basically Truecrypt creates some sort of container that's encrypted (either a large file that acts as a folder when the password is given, or else an entire partition). If you wanted to protect each file separately, you'd end up creating a small, encrypted container for each file, and putting the file in that; fairly time consuming (and a lot of passwords to remember). If you're OK protecting all of your files with the same password (or even two or three different passwords, depending on who you want to be able to access the files), then TrueCrypt will work well. Buddy431 (talk) 00:58, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I used to use PGP for this, which does encrypt individual files; but it turned into a proprietary, costly piece of software a number of years ago, so I have moved to using TrueCrypt. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:30, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

How about Gpg4win? --NYKevin @855, i.e. 19:31, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

If the drive supports NTFS, by far the simplest approach is to use Windows' own Encrypting File System. No extra software required, just right-click, Properties, General, Advanced, Encrypt... Mitch Ames (talk) 11:37, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

December 13

Freezes at 'Applying Computer Settings'

My friend's Windows XP laptop has trouble starting up. When it reaches 'Applying computer settings' (this is before logon), it stalls. The mouse still works, windows can be dragged, it just doesn't progress past that stage. After booting into safe mode and looking at event viewer, we see there's an error from netlogon, the event ID is 5719, and the reason is 'no domain controller is available for domain [school's name] because there are no logon servers able to service the logon request'. However, my computer, on the same domain, starts up fine. Does anyone know why this happens/how this can be fixed? 69.180.172.142 (talk) 01:05, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it just doesn't have a usable Intranet/Internet connection. Check that the cable is seated properly, at both ends (or do you have a wireless network ?). Also, after you boot in safe mode, try to ping the logon server. StuRat (talk) 07:16, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Try leaving it a __longggggg__ time. It may be that the DNS set up on the laptop can't resolve the name of the domain server. If it does eventually allow you to logon, you might try changing the address of the primary DNS to be the IP address of the domain controller. --Phil Holmes (talk) 14:25, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, my friend brought it to the tech department, and it suddenly started working. So yeah, I guess it's fixed. 69.180.172.142 (talk) 01:37, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't assume that. In the case where I had an intermittent connection to the back-light, it would work for a while then stop working, and then eventually stopped working for good. StuRat (talk) 02:56, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Coloring in countries and states in google maps?

Is there any way to pick and choose countries/states to color in on google maps? I can't find any way that doesn't mess around the programming and the API. --CGPGrey (talk) 13:21, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Video card in portrait mode

I intend buying a 1920x1080 monitor for use in portrait mode (using XRandR in Linux). My laptop's graphics (Intel 4500M) is rated for 2048x1536 on the VGA port (no HDMI port). Will this be able to handle the portrait mode 1080x1920 resolution? --Masatran (talk) 17:15, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

the portrait mode is still 1920x1080 (hardware) - so yes. However I know nothing about using XRandR, but the issue is a software one, and the Intel hardware is capable of the 1920x1080 resolution, so it should be doable.83.100.186.32 (talk) 22:58, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Check that the driver for your video card allows you to rotate the image - otherwise you'll have a portrait monitor but the image will be 90 degrees out. I don't use Linux, but on my Vista system I have a Display Option to rotate the image. --86.133.83.252 (talk) 11:06, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Using pen drive as computer memory

I've got a 4GB pen drive, but my computer only has 1GB of RAM. Is it possible to use the pen drive as computer memory somehow? Thanks 92.28.245.105 (talk) 17:32, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

No.

The USB bus isn't anywhere near fast enough to be a replacement for RAM, neither are the flash chips themselves.

There are products that claim to do this, but they don't. What they do is move your Page cache to your flash drive, which isn't very useful and in many cases could actually slow your PC down. 72.10.110.109 (talk) 17:53, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

What? The answer is, if you run Windows 7, yes yes yes. Windows 7 barely runs with 1 GB of RAM, it really really needs 2 GB. When I started using TurboBoost or whatever (it's an option when you right-click properties on your pen-drive, you'll see it) I saw a HUGE improvement, until I took the trouble to upgrade my RAM. So, if you're running windows 7, the answer is definitely, and someone is about to link to it below: 82.234.207.120 (talk) 18:05, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

ReadyBoost is what 82 is referring to, but it does not make your computer utilize the pen drive as RAM. See the ReadyBoost article for an explanation of why it makes some computers faster. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:28, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm using WinXP and intend to migrate to Linux Ubuntu some day. 92.28.245.105 (talk) 18:39, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Even if you could (which above comments suggest you can't), using Flash memory as RAM would use up a lot of program/erase cycles. --NYKevin @857, i.e. 19:34, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

To expand on that, flash/pen drives have a limited number of read/write cycles before they fail. If used for storing data, this normally isn't an issue, but computer memory requires that reads and writes be performed continuously, which would wear out the drive too quickly. StuRat (talk) 23:14, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Opera mobile

Each time I attempt to download it on my Android, it takes me to Google account. I don't have one, nor do I want one. Why should I have to sign into Google Account to download Opera mobile? 24.189.87.160 (talk) 17:46, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, I can't download anything without having to sign into Google account. Why is that? 24.189.87.160 (talk) 19:43, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

It's because Android Market is developed by Google and requires a Google account to use it. It is used to record any purchases you make so that you can reinstall them again in the event your phone is reset (without additional cost). If you don't want to use the Market then you'd need to locate the .apk files and install them manually, although you'll need to make sure that the install from "Unknown sources" box is checked in Settings -> Applications. I'd really recommend just getting a Google logon with your existing email address as the other advantage to using the Market is that it'll also tell you about updates to your programs (which can you either install manually or automatically).  ZX81  ^talk 19:57, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

If you get a gmail email account it automatically gives you a google account, you can redirect any mail from that account to your standard email account using the gmail settings, which may save a bit of bother.83.100.186.32 (talk) 22:50, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you both for the helpful info. 24.189.87.160 (talk) 05:44, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

php

Resolved

I have two php scripts which people here helped me with. The first lists files in a directory by their modified date (newest first). The second displays the 1st line from a text file. How could I merge the functionality of these scripts into one; so that files in a directory are listed by their modified date, and the 1st line from each file is shown along with it? The two scripts I have are as follows:

<?
$store = array();
$dir = opendir(".");
 while ($file = readdir($dir)){
  if($file{0}=='.') continue;
  $mtime = filemtime($file);
  $store[$mtime.$file] = $file;
}
krsort($store);
foreach ($store as $time=>$foo){
  echo $foo." -\t".date("Y-m-d H:i", intval($time))."<br>\n";
}
?>

<?
$text = file('example.txt');
$lines = count($text);
echo $text[1];
echo $lines . " lines in file";
?>

Thank you for your help :) 82.44.55.25 (talk) 20:02, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Copy all of the second snippet of code you typed directly after the "echo $foo..." line. Change "example.txt" to $foo. -- kainaw™ 20:22, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Awesome! Thanks 82.44.55.25 (talk) 21:12, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

December 14

"Web site interactor" sample code

There's a browser-based game that I play — simple HTTP GET and POST commands, no Flash stuff — and I'd like to write a simple bot to get some data every once in a while from the website and react appropriately. Surely there's sample code for such a thing out there which I can grab and modify for my own use? I'd like to find something in C# but wouldn't complain at having to learn Python, if anyone has any source to point at. Thanks in advance — Comet Tuttle (talk) 07:18, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

See this knowledge base article. 118.96.163.249 (talk) 08:11, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

sound cards

This is a bit of a random thought, but could it be possible to convert a computers sound card to transmit and receive data? Then connect two computers via their sound cards to form some kind of network and share files and stuff over the link? What would be the bandwidth of standard audio connectors transmitting binary data? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 10:26, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's entirely possible. What kind of audio connections are you talking about? A narrow band phone connection could, at best, historically squeeze out about 53kbps... I don't know what the full band width of the cards you're talking about can manage, but given the right programming they can theoretically come close to the physical maximum of that connection. Shadowjams (talk) 10:52, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

It isn't theoretical. It is real - if you want to use a very very very old computer. Before the popularity of disk drives, most home computers used cassette drives. You could (and I did) cross connect the cassette connectors between two computers so when one saved a file, the other could read it. To do it in modern times, you will probably just hunt for some nut who decided to write a cassette adapter for a modern sound card. Then, run that on both computers, connecting the ins to the outs. -- kainaw™ 15:56, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

A good example of the old hardware would be the Commodore Datasette, which used audio cassettes. The page said you could store around 100k per side, which I remember being quite a lot, although it was also SO SLOW. Of course, I think most hardware of that era had custom hardware to convert digital data into the sound encodings on the tape, instead of a generic sound card. The Softmodem#Software_.26_Soundcard_projects page mentions using a sound card to act as a modem, which is somewhat similar to what the OP is asking. -- JSBillings 20:44, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Changing keyboard shortcuts in Firefox

How would I change the keyboard shortcuts for 'Next Tab' and 'Previous Tab' in Firefox? If it matters, it's on a Mac with an up to date version of Firefox. I think "cmd-shift-]" is awkward and would like to change it to maybe "cmd-left/right arrow". I know it's somewhere in about:config but I don't know where or how to change it. Dismas|^(talk) 14:11, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

webupon.com/browsers/changing-firefox-3-5-and-onwards-keyboard-shortcuts-on-mac/ claims to contain the answer. Algebraist 14:39, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Speed of my new Wi Fi

My apartment building was just wired for Wi Fi. Before this I was subscribing to an internet service with an 8 GB bandwidth. How can I tell what my effective bandwidth is now with this new Wi Fi service I am now using? Ping off a website that will tell me this?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 16:17, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Find a DSL test page - there are many. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:22, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

One such test says it is "Excellent", however they all give me numbers like this that I don't understand (probably because I am NOT a computer expert): Download of 4823 KBit/s and Upload of 674 KBit/s. Result of Ping was 50 ms. What is that compared to my previous land line connection of an 8 GB bandwidth I had?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 16:58, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

That 4823 is a bit more than half of the 8192 that the old one nominally had. But some caveats: firstly, if you didn't test the old connection like this, you can't be sure that it really was 8192 (most broadband connections say you get "up to" some number, with the actual performance a function of a number of technical parameters, particularly the character of the wires between your home and the broadband provider's office). A second issue is how a shared network connection like your new one doles out the finite bandwidth it has. If some of your neighbours, at a future time, decide to engage in a high-usage activity like file sharing, the networking equipment will have to decide how much of that shared bandwidth they'll be allowed to consume. Simple systems would allow one greedy user to consume the whole thing, starving the rest of you. More sophisticated system employ traffic shaping strategies and quality of service guarantees to allocate the shared resource. You'd have to enquire of the operator of the equipment how much the total bandwidth is, and how it's distributed when it's oversubscribed. TL;DR: half as fast, but you probably don't really know how fast the old one really was; it might get slower if your neighbours do some Bittorrent. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 17:18, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Woah. Doug, the OP, said he had an 8 Gigabyte bandwidth. That's a pretty spectacular bandwidth and is probably actually a download limit. Doug - 4.8 MegaBit/s download is about OK for a DSL connection - the original type of DSL went up to 8 MBit/s and later versions go quite a bit higher, but 4 is probalby OK. 674 kBit/s upload is better than many DSL upload speeds, and, again, is probable OK for most people. --Phil Holmes (talk) 17:58, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

He just said "GB", he could have easily meant "Gb"(Gigabit). They're easily mistaken and often confused, even in literature provided by the cable company! If true, then Finlay's answer is correct. It's a reasonable guess, since, as you say, GB would be unusual, but Gb would be common. 72.10.110.109 (talk) 20:51, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

8 GBit/s broadband would be common? Where? --Phil Holmes (talk) 22:11, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Google-fu help

Hi guys! This may seem like a strange question to ask, but I do not think I can resolve it myself in reasonable time, and people here are likely to know a way out. Basically, I want to know how the staffing or employement profile (how many people at which level) of a company - any company - has changed between two years. So I am asking you for some search terms for a Google search that might help me get what I want. I have tried staffing profile, employment profile, "staffing profile changed", "changes in staffing," etc. without much luck, so I suspect I'm missing the right terminology.

I need this for raw data to demonstrate application of Operations Research to Manpower forecasting. The data we were in possession of before turned out to be not useful at all - so we are in a pinch. Any and all help will be sincerely appreciated. Thanks -- ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 17:19, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I really doubt that Google is going to help you here at all, because very few corporations (my assumption is actually "no corporations") publish their entire organization chart, let alone publishing it in a way that Google could parse in the way you want. The main reason companies don't publish their org chart is, in my experience, for fear that recruiters will just go down the list and ring up every person with a job description that sounds something like the position they're looking to fill at another company. One exception might be particularly open/transparent nonprofits, but even those probably don't want to lose their employees to recruited positions elsewhere, so those probably don't publish their org charts, either. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:33, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much! That's a very valid point you raise ... and part of the reason for the difficulty I'm facing. However, I just found this page: [9], and I'm thinking it might containt what I want. I'll look at it in detail now, hoping to find something useful! -- ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 17:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Freezing computer

I have a computer running Windows XP Home edition that used to freeze about every five minutes on a hot day and up to twenty minutes on a cold day. It was taken into the shop, and they basically erased all our programs without fixing it. The problem is partially solved by taking off the side and putting a fan next to it and a bucket of ice water behind the fan, to keep it cold. Still, this problem is getting worse. The fan in the computer works fine. I know this a hardware issue. Is this the CPU's problem, or the hard drive's? --T H F S W (T · C · E) 19:11, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Have you looked to see if the CPU heat sink is full of fluff?--Aspro (talk) 19:14, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

It's not that surprising that it freezes more easily on a cold day... ╟─TreasuryTag►pikuach nefesh─╢ 19:22, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

No, it freezes more quickly on hot days. Computers are strange things, aren't they? But I have no idea what a heat sink would look like. And is it certain this is a CPU problem? --T H F S W (T · C · E) 19:29, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Heat sink Mo ainm~Talk 19:34, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

The finned aluminium block underneath the fan is the heat sink. Just a nice coat of fluff can be enough to trip the thermal cut out. Not a definite diagnosis but most probable. By cleaning, you will be able to discount it as a cause or prove it. --Aspro (talk) 19:41, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

It's also critical that the contact between the CPU chip and the heat sink be made properly. A problem such as yours could easily be caused by carelessness in installing the CPU, especially if a processor upgrade was made at home after the computer was purchased. Looie496 (talk) 19:51, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Remove any tie or necklace etc you might be wearing. Turn the computer off, place on its right hand side, and remove the left hand panel. You can then see inside the computer. Make sure all the fans turn freely. Turn it on an carefully place the back your hand near the fans and check that they are producing air-flow. CS Miller (talk) 21:12, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I used to had a laptop with exactly the same problem. After ~10 times going to the repair place and returning unfixed, and with the insurance whatever about to run out I got angry and deliberately dripped water into it to truly **** it up because either way I was going to end up with a laptop that didn't work. It went to be repaired again and finally this time (probably because of what I did to it) they said they couldn't fix it and gave me £800 to buy a new computer. I'm not recommending you do that, I'm just sharing my experience. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 20:05, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

You-tube have some videos that walk you through the basic motions. Just picked this one at random as I don't really like most of them, but its better than nothing.How to Clean your Computer--Aspro (talk) 20:34, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to second Looie's comment. I had a problem with my PC overheating (the one I'm writing from right now). When I unfastened the fan and heat sink over the CPU, I saw that the paste that was supposed to transfer heat had gone all dry, and that the thermal contact was poor. I bought some stuff in a computer shop (it's a couple of years ago, so the details may be incorrect), I think it was a cleaning liquid and a paste. I followed the instructions that came with the package, and the problem disappeared. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:37, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

For some abstruse reason that it is unfathomable, it is call by a name you will never guess, so I'd better tell you that it can be bought as as heat sink compound.--Aspro (talk) 20:49, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

You're probably experiencing some form of thermal shutdown. I'd second Aspro's suggestion to replace the heat-transfer grease between the heat-sink and processor. Also check to make sure your graphics card isn't overheating. It could also be that you have a defective processor.Smallman12q (talk) 22:50, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

You mentioned "the fan", but many computers have at least two, one that blows air into the box and one that cools the CPU. Does your computer only have a single fan ?

Also, you said you took off "the side" of the box, but I suggest you take off both sides, or as much of the case that can be removed, including the plastic covers in the front that cover unused CD bays, etc. You also might want two big box fans, one blowing in on one side and the other blowing out on the other side. Moving the computer to a colder room (basement ?) might also help a bit. All this is in case the other suggestions don't work. StuRat (talk) 02:51, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Word 2003 line spacing

I'm editing a document originally created in some Japanese version of Word in my English version of Word 2003. Japanese Word seems to have a strange spacing problem within lines (after periods particularly), so I copied the entire original document and pasted it into an English Word document, and then cleared the formatting. This has worked for me previously, but this time I have a strange problem with line spacing. I can select single or double-spacing, but it doesn't appear to be the right size: single looks more like 1.5, and double is more like 2.5. Clearing the formatting, setting it to "nomal," and setting the Before and After values to 0 (a suggestion I found online) doesn't seem to work. Any suggestions? Exploding Boy (talk) 20:51, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Also, "clear formatting" has resulted in all the in-text footnote numbers being turned into normal numbers rather than small superscript numbers. Any easy way to change this back? Exploding Boy (talk) 20:59, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Windows Remote Desktop crashes server on loss of connection

I've been using Remote Desktop Connection on Windows 7 (both server and client) for work related purposes. I've noticed that if the server-client connection is severed unexpectedly (for example, by an unplugged network cable or dropped WiFi connection) then there is a substantial risk that the server will completely crash and reboot. This is annoying since it can lead to the loss of data on the server side. It doesn't happen every time the connection is lost, but it does happen often enough to be reproducible within a few tries. I've done some searching, but haven't been able to locate complaints of similar crashes. Most of the complaints I see online are associated with RDC crashing without ever working correctly, but my system works normally unless the connection is broken. The Event Log doesn't show anything obvious to me, other than the messages one gets if the system reboots without proper shutdown, so presumably whatever is crashing occurs abruptly enough that the system doesn't have a chance to report any errors.

Any suggestions and insights would be appreciated. Dragons flight (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 or both host and client are Windows 7? Smallman12q (talk) 22:52, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Both host and client are Windows 7, as I said. Both are the 64-bit Ultimate edition, should it matter. Dragons flight (talk) 22:56, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

This might not be the answer you want but as Microsoft software becomes increasingly more difficult to maintain, you might like to try some other operating system (like Ubuntu) which is less of a hassle and does not require you to jump through lots and lots of hoops...--Aspro (talk) 22:53, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, yes, Linux is great. I use Linux routinely, but I don't have that option in this context. Dragons flight (talk) 22:56, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you get a Blue Screen on the "server" when it crashes? If so the actual STOP message on that screen (and any driver files if shown) may be helpful in diagnosing why it's rebooting. If the blue screen vanishes too fast to read you can disable automatic restart by following the instructions here.  ZX81  ^talk 04:53, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

December 15

Firefox (v3.6.13) : How do I open a new tab right next to the currently active one?

I usually have 15 or more open tabs at a time in Firefox.
When I press <ctrl>+T then a new tab appears on the far right end of the tabbar.
I want my new (blank) tab to appear right next to the currently active tab instead.
How can I make this happen? --178.232.37.77 (talk) 01:05, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about Firefox, but in IE you can right click on the current tab, select "New tab" from the drop down menu, and the new tab will appear right next to the earlier one. --ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 08:48, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Printer Power On

Hello. How can I have my printer (HP C309g) turn on automatically when I send a print command? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 04:22, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't think you can. The user manuals doesn't suggest it supports Wake-on-LAN (I don't personally know of any printers that actually do) and likewise that'd only work with a wired connection, not wireless or USB. All it says is about the energy saving mode (which is on by default) which you can disable so that startup is quicker, but then you're using more power whilst "off" than you would otherwise. Sorry!  ZX81  ^talk 04:49, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

The way I handle it is to put the printer on the same power strip I use for the computer, so they both are turned on and off together. Yes, the printer does that annoying cleaning the printer head routine every time I boot my computer, but that's supposed to help to keep it from getting clogged. And yes, it also uses a trivial amount of power while in standby mode when I use my computer, but at least it's always ready when I want to do a print. StuRat (talk) 06:50, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

some problem seems to be occurring in the working of internet explorer and google crome web browsers on my computer. what could be the possible problem? what should i do to set it right?117.204.7.110 (talk) 09:00, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

bginfo

at first it seems to work even if I'm connected in remote desktop, but if I close the rdp connection with X button and then I reopen it with the same user, the desktop looses all the text I had added. T.I.A. --217.194.34.103 (talk) 09:02, 15 December 2010 (UTC)