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January 17

android tablets

I notice there are a zillion cheap android tablets sprouting up everywhere, whose hardware looks rather nice. They mostly run Android 2.1 and have vendor-customized UI's and applications, which I presume is like the usual dreck situation from the PC world. Is it likely to be a big problem to root the device and upgrade to a newer version of android, i.e. do they tend to depend on proprietary device drivers and that sort of thing? I'm not trying to plug a particular vendor but one device I'm looking at is here. There are also a lot of even more generic ones at the usual no-name schlock shops. Any thoughts? 67.122.209.190 (talk) 09:58, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an article about Android (operating system). The main concern for a potential customer will be whether the tablet vendor will be still around during the life of the product and we cannot predict that. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 11:45, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Given the zillionness, surely one or two come without root disabled. ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, rooting (android-speak for what iphone users call "jailbreaking") generally is not something that vendors intentionally "enable". It's a question of how thorough a job they do preventing it. Rooting per se is usually not too difficult. What I was wondering was about the difficulty of installing new versions of android completely from scratch. 67.122.209.190 (talk) 18:00, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I was semi helping someone look in to Android phones once. What I gathered was that porting a new version of Android is generally quite difficult because many/most? vendors don't release the code for their drivers. In particular, most user lead ports we came across didn't seem to get very far. More common appears to be unofficial beta releases of official lead ports. These were with relatively cheap devices and as I said with phones, so YMMV Nil Einne (talk) 20:59, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Old laptops

In an above thread someone said "It is pretty easy to scrounge old laptops these days." I was going to reply in that thread, but I didn't want to distract from the OPs question. So, is it really that easy? Where do I need to go to find old laptops for free or really cheep? And how old are we talking, Windows 95/XP? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 10:54, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Organizations have what is known as a replacement cycle. For laptops it is between 3 and 5 years. Different organizations have different disposal policies. Example You just need to ask about. A scratch-each-others-back arrangement often works -you just have to find out who's back needs scratching. Knowing how to wipe the drives might get you an intro into a little company who does not want their customer and banking details ending up in Nigeria nor China.Offer to run DBAN on it to wipe the data, and then upgrade it by installing a Linux distribution on it.--Aspro (talk) 11:19, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The OP is located in UK where there are many small shops that sell and repair PCs. They are likely to have many old laptops that customers have had replaced or hoped (probably in vain) to trade in, and which are now virtually unsaleable. Ask around. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 11:34, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Try eBay, especially searching for the area near yourself to avoid paying postal charges. Old computers are quite often given away on Freecycle or Freegle, but I've never seen any laptops and there are a lot of people keen to have them. If you think the operating system is too old then you can always replace it for free by one of the many Linux operating systems. 92.15.8.13 (talk) 13:37, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

It's also much simpler to "scrounge" up brand spanking new laptops these days, as they are significantly cheaper. You can get netbooks with everything but an optical drive for $100 (€75, though realistically probably also €100). ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:18, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

For buying cheap old laptops from strangers with actual money, try craigslist.org if you're in a reasonable sized city (they have several sites in the UK). It's basically a classified ad service for local buyers and sellers, so you get to examine the merchandise and buy it in person (avoids some scams, and avoids expensive shipping for heavy objects like laptops). But it's often possible to scrounge them for free or for some informal barter, as people are always upgrading laptops, or these days replacing them with smartphones. 67.122.209.190 (talk) 17:57, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I am fortunate to know someone who runs their own consultancy business and regularly replaces their laptop. I am also know within my family as the person to come to with computer problems. Therefore it was no surprise I was given 3 old laptops only last year:

• The oldest was a small Sony Vaio from around 2000 with 20GB drive, 128MB of memory, and a docking station containing a DVD drive, various ports and a wireless internet PC card. Windows XP and Microsoft Office were installed, but the battery was worn out and the screen hinge was damaged (but easily repairable). I reinstalled Windows using my Windows XP OEM disk and re-authenticated it over the phone. It now works well for light websurfing and using Office, but really needs more memory (a £25 upgrade).
• The second was a 15" Toshiba A10 from around 2003 with a 30GB drive and 256MB of memory. Windows XP and Microsoft Office were installed, but the hard drive was dying. The battery was also worn out and the keyboard had a couple of dead keys. I upgraded the memory and replaced the hard drive with spares (from yet another dead laptop I was given a year earlier) and reinstalled and re-authenticated Windows, though I was unable to save the Office installation. I can get a new keyboard on eBay for about £15 though a new battery is harder to find.
• The last was a HP machine from around 2006 with a 40GB drive and 256MB of memory. Again Windows XP and Microsoft Office were installed, but the previous owner had completely trashed the installation by attempting to upgrade to Vista. Unfortunately, the battery is the worst of the three but can easily be replaced for about £50. Other than that, it is a good and quite fast machine. I could have reinstalled Windows, but instead chose to install Linux for another project.

Yes, old laptops are quite easy to obtain, particularly if you have contacts, but you have to be prepared to put up with a number of issues and recognise the machine's inherent limitations (slower CPU, not the latest screen technology, no built-in wifi, etc.) You should also be comfortable with replacing parts, canibalizing other broken laptops for parts and/or spending a little to fix something. Astronaut (talk) 22:01, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm curious about you saying "I reinstalled Windows using my Windows XP OEM disk and re-authenticated it over the phone". Was that the disk that came with the Sony Vaio you were given, or was it some other computer's disk? If the later, how did you get through the asuthentification process exactly? I would have expected problems in those circumstances.

If the OP wants to tinker with second-hand computers, then I'd recommend doing it with towers or desktops rather than laptops. The parts for the former are much easier to get and to fit, as they are largely interchangeable, while I understand that laptop parts are brand-specific. When I've renovated an old computer, the only difficult thing is working out what particular memory to order to give it the most possible memory. If you replace the old operating system by a free new one, which is easy to do if you can burn a CD, then you do not have to fiddle with updating the drivers or removing the clutter of the previous user. I think upgrading the BIOS is best done in Windows though. 92.28.254.64 (talk) 23:52, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

When you buy a new laptop, it usually comes with Windows preinstalled and a Certificate of Authenticity (CoA) stuck on the bottom. If you are lucky you also get a Windows installation disk, but increasingly common is a means to burn your own installation disk (something you are encouraged to do early in your ownership). That is a normal OEM disk, but it is usually tied to a specific PC manufacturer and (supposedly) cannot be used to fix a different manufacturer's PC. Microsoft also supplies two other types of Windows installation disks: retail disks that you buy in a shop; and generic OEM disks that are supplied to smaller PC makers. These generic OEM disks are distinguished by a large hologram on one side and are not tied to a particular manufacturer. The physical disks themselves are almost worthless without the all important CoA. PC manufacturers buy CoAs and stick one to each PC they preinstall Windows on.

Because all the old laptops had no installation disks but did have valid CoAs stuck to their bottoms, I was able to pursuade my local PC parts & repair shop to sell me a copy of their generic OEM installation disk for the cost of the media and their time (ie. £5!), something that almost certainly won't work with a large retail store like PC World. So, while my Windows XP OEM disk doesn't have a large hologram on it, it is a copy of one that does. Whilst I am unsure of the legality of the repair shop selling me a copy of their installation disk, they didn't sell me a license to use Windows just a means to reinstall one for which I already have a license. Remember, it is the number on the CoA (on the bottom of the laptop) that is used to authenticate the Windows installation.

During the Windows installation, I simply read the number off the CoA that was stuck to the bottom of the laptop. When Windows Genuine Advantage leapt into life and told me I had to authenticate Windows, I simply followed the instructions on screen. Because most of the hardware was the same and the product key from the CoA was the same as the previous installation, the authentication code matched that already recorded my Microsoft. Astronaut (talk) 01:06, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

There are a lot of cheap (eg £5) brand-new Windows XP instalation disks available on eBay. As far as I recall without finding the disk, they are labelled as being for Compaq computers I think. Do you think i could do the above with them? It is also possible to find the liscencse number on the disk even if you do not have a label. Some software called "jellybean" is one of the programs that can retrieve it. However, I intend some day soon to switch to a free operating system, and thus leave all these worries behind me. 92.28.254.64 (talk) 01:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I would be very careful unless you happen to have a Compaq PC which is a close match. These are probably the normal OEM disks (ie. not the generic OEM disks with the hologram) and therefore cannot be used in the way I describe above. If I understand correctly, there are only three kinds of disk - retail, normal OEM, and generic OEM. The product key is not held on the disk and therefore cannot be read - you do need the Certificate of Authenticity. The Jellybean product you mention, reads the registry of an already installed Windows OS, and tells you the product key - useful if your CoA is missing or illegible, but it won't crack a CD and magically give you a valid product key.

If you are going to buy a used laptop, I would insist they show it working and provide you with everything they have, including the installation disks. If you are just given a laptop, you can try to refurbish it but you still might end up having to dump it. I was lucky with the three I was given, getting them all working with a mixture of spare parts I already had and being able to buy an OEM installation disk for minimal cost. But I was quite prepared to strip them all down for parts - which would have been useful had I decided to go ahead and do PC repairs in my spare time. Astronaut (talk) 02:20, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

This may be of interest: http://www.technibble.com/how-to-tell-what-type-of-windows-xp-cd-or-license-key-you-have/ The disk I have, still unused, may be Dell and may have a liscence sticker on it as far as I remember. Knowing the liscence number found by Jellybean may be of use if you want to re-install. 92.28.254.64 (talk) 03:39, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Problem with number rounding error

I've written a short program in GWBasic that involves adding up two numbers to check that they exactly match another number. If it finds a discrepancy, it stops. The program processes several sets of numbers correctly, but stops when it has to add 1210.42 and 174.65 to check if their total is the same as 1385.07. It says the numbers are different, when actually they are the same.

The two numbers both display on the screen as 1385.07, but when I subtract them and multiply the result by 100 I get a value of "-1". When I multiply by 10000 I get "2". I suppose the problem must be due to rounding errors and binary representations of decimal numbers.

What can I do to fix this problem please? Thanks 92.15.8.13 (talk) 13:28, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

In GWBasic probably not much. Can you rescale your problem so that only integer numbers appear? In your example, just multiply all numbers by 100, add up, compare. In general, if you deal with arbitrary decimal expansions, floating point is in nearly all applications the most convenient format, but in that case you must expect and learn to live with rounding errors. There are numbers with a finite decimal representation that have no finite binary representation, so that rounding is almost unavoidable. Why do you need an exact match? If its a science problem, your inputs are not constraint to arbitrary precision. If its financial, you are only interested in full cents (or whatever the smallest currency subdivision is). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:41, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Will try calculating with pence, not pounds. Is there a way of telling GWBasic that these numbers are integers only, and if I do that can I expect it to ignore any hidden fractional part? 92.15.8.13 (talk) 13:51, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

[1] You type a % after the variable name. 81.131.45.34 (talk) 14:22, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec):I'm not sure - I don't use or know GWBasic. Back when I did BASIC (of the Sinclair BASIC and Locomotive BASIC flavours), variables were untyped values were typed, and the system would use integer arithmetic on integer values, but convert automatically to floating point when necessary using only half-understood (by me) rules. Many modern programming languages allow you to declare the type of the variable. In many BASICs, int(X) will coerce X to integer, IIRC. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:31, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

According to the GWBasic documentation, single-precision floating point values are only guaranteed accurate to six significant digits. If you use double-precision, you get 17 digits of accuracy. You can make a variable double-precision by using # in its name instead of !. (I found the documentation here.) Looie496 (talk) 17:54, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

If the original poster intends to work with numbers that have two decimal places, and wants to test numbers for equality, he should avoid all forms of floating-point arithmetic. As Stephan Schulz commented above, he should convert his numbers to integers and work with those. Testing floating point numbers for equality is a well-known tarpit. Converting decimal numbers to binary (internal to the computer) and back again messes up the comparison since simple decimal fractions may have no exact counterpart in binary. Roundoff due to the binary conversion will spoil any tests for equality. See our article on floating point for background. EdJohnston (talk) 18:06, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

If you must compare floating-point numbers, do not check for exact equality. Use the following trick: (A ≈ B) → (A-B)≈0 → (A-B)²≤ ε for small epsilon. Select a suitably small one for your purposes. In other words, replace IF A=B by IF ((A-B)*(A-B))<1E-6. Nimur (talk) 21:06, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

That's a good trick. (The purpose of the squaring is to ensure the result is positive, I gather.) 81.131.47.204 (talk) 22:18, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I think it's more usual to use abs(A-B) < epsilon, so as to avoid a floating-point multiplication (though it's unlikely to make much difference unless you're doing huge numbers of comparisons). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:42, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

When using this trick, you should also be aware that it breaks transitivity. A ≈ B and B ≈ C does not imply that A ≈ C. I believe that there's no way to compare floating-point numbers for equality that doesn't cause unexpected behavior in some way. My brother once implemented an arbitrary-precision math library, which would calculate as many digits as it needed automatically. Testing for equality was not very useful, though, because if you tried to compare two numbers that were equal, it would diverge as it would keep calculating more digits forever, looking for a difference. Paul (Stansifer) 17:23, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I have changed to using pence instead of pounds, and now it works without any problems. I tried making the variables integers by putting % on the end, but that gave an overflow error. By the way, the Windows and Linux nearest equivalent to GWBasic seems to be SmallBasic. 92.28.241.29 (talk) 00:07, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

[SOLVED] Auto config messed up display

Hi all,

I have a HP w19 monitor (19") and yesterday, when I pressed the auto config button, the display shifted almost 4 inches to the right, leaving a black on on the side. I tried pressing the auto button again, but the screen remained shifted.

This is what I have attempted so far:

1. Adjusting the horizontal position using the built in monitor menu

2. Resetting the monitor to the factory settings

3. Adjusting the resolution to the lowest possible (640 x 400) and then back all the way up (1400 x 900)in Windows' display options

4. Adjusting the resolution in Nvidia Control Panel (I have a 8800 GTX, onboard is a 6150 LE)

5. Going into a game and adjusting the resolution from there

6. Unplugging the monitor and waiting for 15 seconds

7. Mashing the auto config button repeatedly with increasing frustration

8. Shouting at the monitor

Nothing has been fruitful thus far. The display seems to think that the center of the screen is 4 inches right of where it used to be and I can't convince it any differently.

If anybody has any ideas, please chip in. I'm tearing my hair out over here. 170.140.169.129 (talk) 19:45, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

(P.S. When I take a screenshot, it takes a picture of the normal display without the black bar, not what is currently being shown on the screen)

Download and install its drivers? [2] Louder shouting? Check the data cable is plugged in properly? 81.131.68.227 (talk) 20:29, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, none of that worked. Is there any software that lets you control screen position? I've tried Display Tuner and it didn't work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.140.169.129 (talk) 21:34, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Fixed the problem by plugging the screen into my roommates's laptop and cycling through the display modes. 170.140.169.129 (talk) 00:04, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Weird noise from hard-drive

Just a few moments ago, my computer made this weird whirring sound without explanation, and now it stopped. Nothing else has occurred. What the hell? 24.189.87.160 (talk) 21:17, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

When the ambient temperature is really cold, like now in the Northern Hemisphere, I've noticed my laptops make a weird murmur-like sound, like a fan that needed some oil. After they boot up (and warm up), it stops. Could this be what you're reporting? I haven't noticed any change in performance with my laptops, so if that's what it is, I wouldn't get too worried.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 22:10, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Is it possible that our questioner is referring to the case of a desktop or tower computer when mentioning the hard-drive in the heading? This is a common misunderstanding. If it is the case, the noise could simply have come from the fan in the power supply having a transient wobble. Can our questioner please clarify what he or she means by "hard drive"? HiLo48 (talk) 22:32, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I meant the hard drive in my laptop (at least that's where the noise seemed to have come from), but thanks for the info about cold weather causing it. It is freezing where I live. 24.189.87.160 (talk) 22:51, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

It is probably thermal recalibration or something else harmless. You could look at the drive's S.M.A.R.T. parameters to see if it has noticed any danger signs. One freeware Windows program that will show SMART parameters is System Information for Windows. -- BenRG (talk) 01:30, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The above comments notwithstanding, now would be a good time to ensure that you have a current backup, just in case. Mitch Ames (talk) 10:50, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Professional Website for Under 500$?

So, here's the deal. I am working with a team and we need a website. None of us have much HTML experience however, only a little. We were wondering what the best way to get a website for under 500 dollars would be. Should I be looking at website designers, finding a website builder online (akin to Website Tonight but allows us to host on our servers), or should we just buy something like Dreamweaver and suffer through the learning curve. I might be missing something that could be found in an article on Wikipedia which is why I'm asking here.

We have servers, just no design skills.--128.54.224.231 (talk) 21:47, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

If your website is reasonably straightforward, you should learn HTML, and design your website yourselves, because it is very easy to learn. A functional website need not be complicated to design; and there is no shortage of web-based information, tutorials, and instructions. Numerous pre-fabricated web content "frameworks" exist if you need more complicated features, like an online shopping cart, a forum, or a "blog" style interface. Do you need help locating technical resources for learning basic web design, or artistic/design style guidelines, or some other resource? Nimur (talk) 23:38, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

KompoZer is regarded as the best free HTML editor. 92.28.254.64 (talk) 00:12, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I can build you a web site for under $500. Just send an e-mail with exactly what you want on the web site. I usually make sites in Flash, but if you prefer pure HTML, I can do that, too.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 00:57, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Or, if you'd rather not hire a designer, you can purchase a nice template from templatemonster.com for anywhere from $50 to $80. You can then open the template in an HTML editor of your choice and customize it. I think Microsoft Expression is an easy program to use for this purpose. If you'd rather make one from scratch yourself, look at using Adobe Fireworks or Adobe Photoshop, which can both export images as HTML slices, and allow you to draw things and then move them freely across the screen -- something that cannot be done with ease in other types of site editors.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 10:15, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

General web templates are the way to go if you're not planning to have your site custom made or simply don't have the time/skill/$$$ to do so.Smallman12q (talk) 00:04, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

capacitive touch or resistive touch.....?

Hi, I am planning to buy a touchscreen cell phone. and I am really confused that i should go for a capacitive touch or a resistvie touch.. Please tell me which one is durable ... I know that capacitive is more responsive than a resistive touch and it feels good to operate a capacitive touch than a resistive. But I want to know which one have longer life capacitive or resistive as I know resistive is cheaper than capacitive.

I have selected two cell phones to buy both have same price but one with capacitive touch has 2MP camera and not having a goood look and other with resistive has 3.5MP camera with a stylish look.......please suggest me for which one I should go.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.225.96.217 (talk) 22:44, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

A capacitative touchscreen typically has a front made of glass or hard plastic and a screen protector can be placed over the top for additional protection. A resistive touchscreen has a soft surface that is physically depressed and so can't be protected in the same way. So a capacitative screen is less prone to accidental damage. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:23, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Is android worth it?

I wonder..... does android OS worth it the response it is getting and the people who are mad for it....? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.225.96.217 (talk) 23:46, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is very much worth it IMO. You can read online reviews of Android phones and find out for yourself. 24.189.87.160 (talk) 00:05, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

And IMO, iOS is better and I'd prefer that. But then that's the thing about opinions, you'll have to make up your own. Dismas|^(talk) 02:19, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Worth it compared to what? iOS? I'd say certainly if you want to be able to modify/control it more easily. There are better OSes, but they have much lower market penetration at the moment (MeeGo & others), which means fewer devices and less momentum. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:29, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Can iTunes application on Windows play purchased movies?

If I buy a movie on my iPhone and back it up to my Windows XP computer using the iTunes application that knows about my account, will I be able to watch the movie on my PC? Peter Michner (talk) 23:53, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes. I've watched movies I bought on iTunes and proceeded to watch it on my computer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by General Rommel (talk • contribs) 01:37, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

January 18

Mac folders icons?

I've had my Macbook for years now, but something still bugs me. In Windows, it's really easy to change the icon for a folder, but on my Mac, I can't seem to find out how to do this. When I dock a folder, there's an option to display the folder as a "stack", which turns the icon into the first image in the folder; but when the folder in question is not on the dock, there's no such option. Is it possible? Thanks! 69.207.132.170 (talk) 02:14, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

It's easy on a Mac, too, when you know how. Let's say you have a photo in file XYZ.jpg that you really like and would like to be the icon for a folder. First, copy the photo to the clipboard. Then: 1. Select the folder in question. 2. Go to File > Get Info (Apple+I). 3. Select the icon of the folder — actually click on the little icon of the folder at the top of the Get Info window. Now, go to Edit > Paste (Apple+V). Presto, chango! The icon is now set to the photo. (You can copy and paste icons from other files that way, too — select the icon in Get Info, then go to Copy). If you want to undo it and go back to the default, just select the icon in Get Info, and click Delete. --Mr.98 (talk) 04:41, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Filters for Ted Notepad

Please could someone explain what the filers here http://jsimlo.sk/notepad/filters.php for the Ted notepad do and how they are used? I have read the filter part of the manual here http://jsimlo.sk/notepad/manual/ , but I still do not understand. Thanks 92.28.254.64 (talk) 03:23, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The filters remove lines and words of text from the documents being imported into Ted, arrange the formats into text only (from HTML for example), or perform other operations to allow importing of information into the text window. Ted uses these filters in a similar way to the cmd prompt. For anything more than the manual entry you have quoted [3] you would need to get more information about learning programming to write program code for the filters.

For example using the dir filter you can import a list of directories on your C: drive into Ted.

launch.exe dir /b %2 %1

Chaosdruid (talk) 13:22, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Where do I type "launch.exe....." please? And why do I type "launch.exe" in particular? Is there a program somewhere named "launch.exe"? Are there other programmes or commands apart from launch.exe? Where does the output go? How is Ted involved with this? Wouldnt I type ted.exe and not launch.exe? I don't recall seeing all that lengthy text in the manual before, but I still don't get it. Thanks. 92.15.26.222 (talk) 11:08, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

You don't type it - you go to Tools>textfilters>dir and then when you click on Dir the new window asks you to put in the parameters.

The program does not work very well on Vista as the directory listing it returns is not correct. If i put in the parameter of 1% = c/c: or c:\ it simply lists the "Directory of C:\Program Files (x86)\TED Notepad" and deos not seem to change to the root directory.

The output is to the text window

I do not know why you are using the program nor what you are trying to achieve - I use Treesize pro to get directory listings, for example, which I export as excel files

23:48, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Mac Program most similar to coffeecup?

What Mac program is most similar to coffee cup?--128.54.22.172 (talk) 04:05, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

If you want to be able to access remote file-systems, and especially if you want to edit files as if they are local-files, I would recommend MacFUSE, an implementation of Filesystem in Userspace and sshfs. If you only want an HTML WYSIWYG editor, there are numerous options. Consider reading through our comparison of HTML editors, sorted by operating-system. Nimur (talk) 04:13, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

External monitor on a netbook

While I'm sure this question has been asked, I couldn't find the answer in the archives. I have an Acer Aspire with at 10 inch screen (running XP). I picked up a 17 inch LCD monitor. While I can get both monitors working, I can't get the settings to stick. When I click "apply," everything goes back to the small monitor. When I move all of my icons over to the larger monitor and click refresh, everything reverts back to the Aspire screen. Even the bar at the bottom of the Aspire screen stays there. Any suggestions? 99.250.117.26 (talk) 04:09, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Serendipity is a wonderful thing! I just figured out my own answer. Connect the monitor, set the computer to show both screens, right click the desktop, select graphics options, select output to and then click monitor. Clever me! lol 99.250.117.26 (talk) 06:13, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations? General Rommel (talk) 06:26, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Unicode assistance

Alright, so I have a PHP program that I run that I use to assist myself with deleting images marked with {{NowCommons}}, as well as a bot that does the same. However, I'm running into issues with Unicode. This is a field that has continued to baffle me; I learned about it in IT classes in college, but I don't know much about its implementation. So I'm having two issues, which are really just one issue:

1. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how the browser interprets certain characters as unicode and others as non-unicode. For example, I printed out the 8-bit characters as they came to me via stream on the Wikipedia API I use. Here is how part of the original upload log on Commons:File:MapSagaMiyaki.png appears on Commons and on my php page respectively:

   {{市町村地図画像情報(Lincun) |都道府県=佐賀県 |都道府県Latin=Saga-ken...

   {{å¸‚ç”ºæ‘åœ°å›³ç”»åƒæƒ…å ±(Lincun) |都道府県=佐賀県 |都道府県Latin=Saga-ken...

   Now obviously the second one is incorrect, but how does my browser tell the difference? If I stream it on my API, they look the same to me (I think). I want to output the text so that it's not so ugly to me. My solution thus far has been something like what I've done below.

2. I'm using a rather ugly piece of code at the moment to test for 16-bit characters; I'm not sure if it will always work; perhaps it will even throw false positives at me. It mostly goes like this:

   $chr = $str[$j];

   $nxtchr = $str[$j+1];

   $unicode = preg_match("/^[\p{L}\p{M}\p{Z}\p{S}\p{N}\p{P}\p{C}]$/u", $chr.$nxtchr);

   Is this a bad implementation? Because it seems like guess work at this point. Magog the Ogre (talk) 09:52, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Not sure if I understood the problem completely. Maybe it's got something to do with the encoding of your page. Maybe something like this: <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/> will help. 210.50.249.143 (talk) 10:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

That did it, I'm baffled. So now let me rephrase: How did I type the Japanese code above, and have Wikipedia and our browsers distinguish between the unicode Japanese and my gibberish which is the utf-8 equivalent? And how can I get a PHP string to recognize that? Magog the Ogre (talk) 14:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Hope this page would be helpful. Oda Mari (talk) 16:03, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Forget about Unicode. There are various incompatible ways of representing characters as bytes or sequences of bytes, such as Windows-1252, Shift-JIS, and UTF-8. If some program guesses incorrectly which encoding is being used, or is explicitly told to use the wrong encoding, then you will get gibberish. The <meta ... line suggested by 210.* instructs the recipient to use UTF-8, which was the actual byte encoding you were sending in this case (whether or not the recipient knew it). Wikipedia always uses UTF-8, and correctly identifies it as such. If your software is Wikipedia-specific, you can probably just use UTF-8 everywhere and forget about everything else. -- BenRG (talk) 22:02, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

See mojibake for what happens when the wrong encoding is used. CS Miller (talk) 12:40, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Counteract jpg compression artifacts

What's under my control: I'm creating a simple image with only two or three different colors (the image is actually just a snip of text). I am then uploading this image to a website. What's not under my control: The website then manipulates the image and creates a (more) compressed image of the original (jpg format). The resulting image has the artifacts you would expect (fuzzy edges on the letters, uneven color). My Question: Is there a way to create the original image in a way that will result in a smooth image after the compression? I want it to look more like a gif. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.50.249.143 (talk) 10:21, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, PNG format is lossless. Magog the Ogre (talk) 10:29, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. But the jpg compression is mandated by the service I'm using. My question is: can I make an image that will look nice AFTER compression.

What happens now: [Original] -jpg compression-> [fuzzy Original]

What I want to do is: [modified Original] -jpg compression-> [looks almost like Original] 210.50.249.143 (talk) 10:34, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

In my experience red and green colors tend to suffer from this the most, whereas black is hardly noticeable. You say the website compresses the jpg you upload, which means it actually gets compressed twice. Is there a jpg quality control on the program you use? Setting this to 100% should reduce the amount of compression taking place on your end, so that when you upload the image and the site re-compresses it, it's only compressed once from a high quality original. And you mentioned gifs; converting the jpg to 256 colors with dithering will emulate the effect of a gif and perhaps will help it survive the sites compression better. But all this is mostly just ideas from my own experience, not facts. Without knowing the site and the programs you use I can't offer any more —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.25 (talk) 10:46, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

thanks. I've tried your suggestions, but didn't get any better results. The website I'm talking about is gumtree. I want to upload a picture that stands out as a thumbnail. Black and white doesn't quite cut it for that. 210.50.249.143 (talk) 11:18, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Probably, there's no way to do it, then. It sounds like they produce jpegs with fixed, not-high, quality settings, and that's always bad for non-photographic images. Paul (Stansifer) 17:12, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry if this information is too technical; but JPEG compression is very mathematically intense and requires a bit of "unintuitive" image-processing. It is possible to design a source image that is not garbled badly, even under a high-compression (low-quality) lossy JPEG encoding. But you must design an image with certain properties - not any image can compress gracefully. You can switch to an image, or modify your existing image, so that it only contains low frequencies. (For example, you can apply a blur-filter, or just pick a different image that is already more "smooth"). That should eliminate "jaggies" (actually, they're a different form of artifact related to Gibbs effect ringing). You can also switch your image-processing program to work in YUV color-space, or (YCbCr), noting that U and V components get much more heavily compressed than Y; so select (or design) colorful images that have low dynamic-range and (most importantly) a low-variance in the U and V channels. Through iterative trial-and-error design, you can determine which of your image creations have the most graceful output when highly compressed. I know these "instructions" are not very helpful to most artistic image-designers (these instructions are barely even helpful to skilled numerically-trained image analysts); in practice, a more useful "instruction" would be "do not use highly-compressed JPG" - but that seems like it's not an option for the OP. Nimur (talk) 20:35, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

It occurs to me that straight horizontal or vertical transitions along the edge of JPEG chunks should be fine. They will probably occur every 16 pixels in the output image. In a quick informal test, it looks like there may be a lot of positions where a perfectly horizontal or vertical line could live without creating a mess. But I think that any other angle will create noise. Paul (Stansifer) 00:18, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Right. That is a special case of concentrating the energy of the 2D discrete-cosine-transform of each macroblock of your image into the first elements of the spectrum that is ordered by this zig-zag pattern, described in this section of our article. You want to compose your image so that its Y, U, and V channels are primarily a weighted superposition of the basis functions illustrated in this image with most of the coefficients exactly zero. If you can accomplish this, by keeping the rest of the non-zero coefficient values above those thresholds specified in the standard quantization table (or whatever non-standard QT is used by the JPEG codec implemented on the server) (and also, having zero-bit values when shifted by the QT thresholds), you will produce an input image that compresses exactly losslessly using the JPEG algorithm. Paul Stansifer's suggestion accomplishes a special case of this technique, by using only DC elements (the first-element of the spectrum) (and also assuming a non-pathological quantization table). The number of (parenthetical caveats) that I've had to add has become comically large here. I really don't think these instructions are practical, but maybe somebody will find them interesting). Nimur (talk) 01:08, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Nimur. (once my head [strike]starts[/strike] stops hurting from trying to understand all that) I'll try out your approach. It is probably overkill for what I need it for, but definitely interesting! Thanks again for taking the time to go through it. I'll let you know if I get anywhere with this within a useful timeframe : )

210.50.249.143 (talk) 04:53, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Resetting Default Search Engine in Firefox 3

Resolved

I very often use the address bar when searching for stuff (as opposed to the little search box on the top right). Recently, after installing AVG, my default engine got changed to Yahoo. While I can tolerate Yahoo to a certain extent, after installing something else even more recently it got changed to Bing. Is there anything I can do to change it back to Google - I have some search engine plugins for Google which I got for a reason. Thanks. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 14:50, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Click on the little down arrow next to the search bar and select "Manage search engines". Then make sure Google is at the top of the list.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 15:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks - but I am talking about searching from the address bar. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:14, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Try these instructions. 88.112.59.31 (talk) 16:23, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Excellent! That worked, thanks! --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:41, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Slim "Information Organizer" for Windows

My friend uses this really awesome program called "NotePad" by a company called Ibrium on his Mac. Its a simple turbocharged version of wordpad and it lets you jot down and organize information and notes really easily. I do alot of research and this kind of thing would be really useful. Does anyone have any idea of a similar, slim, efficient program for Windows? --Cacofonie (talk) 19:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure about slim/efficient, though there is Microsoft OneNote. The old interface reminds me of early versions of Lotus Notes. There is a relevant category at Category:Notetaking software.Smallman12q (talk) 00:01, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

My antivirus (Avast!) blocks the NotePad link webpage above as being or having a trojan horse. 92.28.241.29 (talk) 00:17, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Its not a virus, I promise! I figured onenote would be as close as possible. Its just so bloated and clunky. thanks though,--Cacofonie (talk) 01:53, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Firefox's internal default start page

Resolved

When Firefox is updated (and, I think, when non-distribution-modified versions are first started), it displays a mozilla.org page specific to the version. That page says things like "This is the latest version" or "This is old, you should update (again)". Unfortunately, I don't have a copy that needs updating at the moment; where are those pages? --Tardis (talk) 19:45, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Help/Release Notes (which gives me this page) may be what you're after. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:07, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks; I saw that too. But the next answer was the target (I wanted to see the welcome page rather than read about the release). --Tardis (talk) 01:03, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.6.12/whatsnew/ 82.44.55.25 (talk) 20:39, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

That's precisely it. Thanks! --Tardis (talk) 01:03, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Extra Windows 7 Installation

I've recently replaced my motherboard and went to reinstall Windows 7 and things went very smoothly during the installation. The problem is, it seemed to have ignored what I wanted without letting on that it was ignoring me and rearranged my drive letters, and it there also seems to be another installation of windows on the computer. When I boot up now, it asks me which OS I want to load, Windows 7 or Windows 7(the previous installation).

Does anybody know a method of finding out which is the active installation and how to remove the previous one? I'm not so worried about the drive letters, it's more a curiosity than anything else.

Thanks 142.244.35.91 (talk) 21:54, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Just try and see if it is the first or second one. To change the settings, type System Configuration into your start menu, then choose boot. F (talk) 00:01, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

You can use Control Panel>Administrative tools>Computer Management>Storage>Disk management to reassign letters to your drives.

(You can also type diskmgmt.msc into the search box after pressing the windows key on the toolbar.)

It would be difficult to remove the older installation of windows. Did you try just plugging the new board in and starting the PC or did you just assume that you would need to reinstall again ? If there were any errors it may be difficult to remove the other earlier version. Chaosdruid (talk) 13:31, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

January 19

Where i can find tutorials for Bing App Development?

I just download the Bing API 2.0 SDK yesterday but i can't find any tutorials or videos on how to develop with it, does anyone know where i can find them? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.79.129.82 (talk) 01:25, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Bing API on MSDN. What you downloaded also contained a compiled HTML help-file that you can use as a reference when you are working "offline" (though how you could develop web application code offline that interfaces to Bing is a mystery to me...) Nimur (talk) 02:11, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Swapping functions of F keys

I just got a new laptop, and, in contrast to every other one I've owned, the default behavior of pressing the F keys is NOT to input F1, F2, etc, but rather to activate the key's OTHER function - raising/lowering the brightness/volume, pressing play/stop on the DVD drive, etc. To actually use them as F keys, I have to hold down the Fn button. Having to press Alt+Fn+F4 to close programs and stuff like that is very irritating and contrary to what I'm used to. Is there some way I can just reverse these keys, and make it so the Fn button has to be held down for the OTHER functions? The computer is a Dell Inspiron running 64-bit Windows 7. I'm open to even fairly complicated solutions - I really don't like this setup. Thanks in advance. -Elmer Clark (talk) 01:50, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Chances are, your computer has a pre-installed custom keyboard driver designed by your system vendor. Can you check if that tool provides configuration options? (It will usually show up in your start menu or control panel under Keyboard Configuration). If it doesn't provide configurable options, you can try to uninstall it - Windows will fall back to the default Microsoft keyboard drivers, which usually work with minimal problems (and provide no "special features"). Nimur (talk) 02:09, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The hardware just shows up as a standard PS/2 keyboard, and no configuration options are given. I'd prefer a solution where I don't completely lose the alternative functions of those keys...they certainly make changing the brightness and volume more convenient. I just want to invert the Fn toggle, if that's possible. -Elmer Clark (talk) 02:23, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Try going into the BIOS before Windows starts to load. There's probably an option in there to choose the default state of the F keys (at least that's where I'd put the option!)  ZX81  ^talk 02:27, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Seconding this - I had an identical problem with my Dell, going into the BIOS and looking for F-key related setting will fix this the vast majority of the time. 110.175.208.144 (talk) 04:18, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

"Because the operating system has no notion of the Fn key, the key can not be remapped in software, unlike all other standard keyboard keys." Sorry about that. Wait, does that mean that "raise brightness", etc., send keycodes, and these keycodes could be remapped to swap them with the function key keycodes? ...Which is as ZX81 says probably a BIOS option. 213.122.48.63 (talk) 03:11, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The Fn key on Thinkpad keyboards can be remapped in software; I've done it. This may not be true of all laptop models' Fn keys, though. -- BenRG (talk) 08:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I've seen laptops with a "FN Lock" key, similar to a "Caps Lock" or a "Num Lock". Very annoying. If that's accidentally on that could cause this problem. APL (talk) 04:02, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Nope, this is intended behavior for some reason. But there was indeed an option in BIOS - thanks so much! I never would have thought to look there. Much better! -Elmer Clark (talk) 04:31, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

Quick question

Does this signature render properly for users who don't have the Wikipedia release of Linux Libertine O installed? Thanks in advance!

B  N ^{(talk • contribs)} 04:04, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm on WindowsXP, and cannot see your signature. I see a B, then a bunch of unicode blocks, then an N. APL (talk) 04:07, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Running Chrome 8 on Windows 7 x64, this doesn't render properly. 110.175.208.144 (talk) 04:20, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, asking here was quicker and easier than uninstalling the font, rebooting, and checking back again. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 04:22, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

All of the non-ASCII code points in that signature are in the Unicode private use area, meaning that the Unicode consortium promises never to assign them any meaning. How they render is entirely up to the font designer. -- BenRG (talk) 07:57, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The two spaces render nicely though. (IE, Vista Home Premium). Cuddlyable3 (talk) 10:56, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Just to pile on, they don't render in KDE 4's default U.S. English install under firefox. Shadowjams (talk) 11:10, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Nothing but the initials and squares in Safari 5.0.3.--Romantic Mollusk (talk) 17:22, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

It would be a handy little web service to be able to type in some unicode and see it rendered by a number of commonly-configured platforms. --Sean 17:37, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Google.com now offers a "preview image" if you hover your mouse before you click on a search query result. If you look very closely at those images, you will notice that they are not browser screenshots. (I haven't identified what is rendering them except that I know it isn't any HTML renderer I've ever seen before). Among other neat "glitches" I have seen while experimenting with the "preview popups," you can see incorrectly-rendered dynamic HTML pages; pages with scripts; and pages with unusual or multiple character encodings. (Apparently even Google can't figure out character-encoding!) Interestingly, despite the feature's advertised capability, the web preview is not what your browser will show. (Try quick-preview on the ACID3 test! It uses its own character-encoding that I believe is not UTF-8. I get a 69/100). Nimur (talk) 21:15, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Presumably they are using an in-house HTML renderer. They couldn't use your browser's renderer without cooperation from your browser, and I don't think there would be much point to it anyway. I can't figure out what you're saying about character encoding problems. When you say "It uses its own character-encoding that I believe is not UTF-8", are you referring to Google's renderer, the ACID3 test, or what? -- BenRG (talk) 08:37, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Google's in-house renderer fails to render text for foreign-language website previews. Nimur (talk) 19:27, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I checked a few Japanese, Russian and Hindi webpages and they looked fine. Possibly you are seeing a web page that misreports its own character encoding? -- BenRG (talk) 03:43, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Note that in this case I would suggests there's no need. If you are using characters in the Unicode private use area, as BenRG says there is no Unicode defined meaning so you should expect they will not work for many users Nil Einne (talk) 01:08, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

To illustrate the problem, here's what Linux Libertine assigns to U+E05F, the first character after the B in Bob's signature attempt. Here's what the DFSongStd font assigns to the same code point. Here's Linux Libertine's U+E000. The ConScript Unicode Registry assigns Tengwar characters to the same code points. The Unicode standard allows you to interpret these code points however you want, and people have done so in many incompatible ways. -- BenRG (talk) 08:37, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Woah. Looks like a party started since I left, lol. That is rather intriguing. The series of Unicode characters was actually the same as what I have displaying right now, except instead of using the

<small>

tag, I was using special small caps characters as well as the specialized "W" which appears in the Wikipedia logo. BOB THE WIKIPEDIAN ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:58, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

You can get small caps with <span style="font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN</span>.—Emil J. 11:23, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Paper jam and cheap scanners

Which is the cheaper scanner with automatic document feeder that won't get jammed (or won't get easily jammed)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.58.205.34 (talk) 11:33, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The cheapest descent scanner that I've ever used had a price of about 4500,-€. Needless to say that those cheap ones 3 in 1 packages, for 100,-€ are only for the occasional users. A first step towards buying a descent scanner is to buy a specialized machine (that means, without printer). 212.169.188.187 (talk) 11:05, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't have a lot of experience with cheap digital feeders, but I will say that I've used many an expensive one that still got jammed... --Mr.98 (talk) 19:06, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Lexmark has good scanners you can get on for $59 USD.--Cjc811 (talk) 19:01, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

From my experience, it depends more on the state of the paper than on the scanner. Quest09 (talk) 02:23, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Installing hard drive -- does it matter which way is up!

I think I've always installed hard drives with the metal cover on the top but wondered if it actually matters? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.112.180.148 (talk) 14:30, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The slot where the hard drives is mounted usually will prevent the hard drive from being mounted more than one way. Hard drives are commonly mounted sideways, so I don't believe mounting a hard drive with the label side down would matter. I haven't seen anything saying otherwise on the information sheets that come with new hard drives either. The biggest concerns are with vibration, shock, and excessive movement while the drive is running. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 17:05, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't really matter, but they are normally mounted PCB-side down. With PATA drives this matters if you also have a CD-ROM drive on the same cable, as the CD-ROM forces the orientation of the cables, and they don't twist enough to fit into an upside-down hard drive. CS Miller (talk) 23:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

(OP here) Thanks for the replies :-) --BlackberryPicking (talk) 03:25, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Verifying Windows XP copied files

I have installed a new drive (I'm the bloke who asked 'which way is up' just above) and wondered if there's some way to verify files as I copy them from one drive to another in Windows XP? Thanks --BlackberryPicking (talk) 14:55, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

If you use xcopy on a command line, the /v switch is what you want. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289483. Strike that, it seems that switch doesn't work with XP. Stand by... --LarryMac | Talk 15:14, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

There may be some third-party tools that can do this, but although I can find them using Google, I can't check them in any detail because of the firewall I'm currently behind. "XXCOPY" sounds promising; hopefully somebody else will come along with a better reply. --LarryMac | Talk 19:21, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm (still) on XP, and copy /? shows a /v flag. Yes, you have to use the command-line and full paths, as LarryMac mentioned. DaHorsesMouth (talk) 22:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, I'll try 'XXCOPY' and see if it works. BTW, from the Microsoft website "The /V switch verifies that the destination file, once written, can be read. No comparison of the files occurs." (link here). Thought I'd better mention that in case anybody else in relying on that command for verifying data. --BlackberryPicking (talk) 03:33, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

My preferred way of doing it: Copy the files normally (using copy and paste, drag and drop, Xcopy, Robocopy, etc.), then hash both the original and the copy (using tools like FCIV), then compare the hashes and store them in a safe place. This way, not only can you be sure the copied files are readable, you can also be sure both are exact matches. Additionally, you can use the saved hashes to re-verify your files at a later date if you suspect corruption. 118.96.159.107 (talk) 05:51, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The problem with verifying as you copy is that the file is likely to be hanging around in a cache somewhere, meaning that you are not comparing the actual bits written to the disk. The best way to do this is to copy all the files, then do something that's guaranteed to clear all the caches (such as rebooting or, in the case of an external drive, ejecting and reattaching it), then compare the files. WinMerge is a free Windows program that can do the comparison. Comparing hashes, as 118.* suggested, will also work. -- BenRG (talk) 07:53, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Are there any file managers that can do this, including making sure that the file has been written to disk rather than sitting in a cache? i seem to recall reading that the 7-zip file manager can do this, even for ordinary files. 92.15.25.92 (talk) 12:00, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

There's Sync from Sysinternals/Microsoft that will flush the Windows file system cache. 118.96.157.166 (talk) 00:51, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Or you can try Microsoft Synctoy [4]- it allows you to synchronise newer files (copying changed files from X to Y overwriting them), keep them matching (deletions of X will be deleted off Y and deletions off Y will be deleted on X) etc. Chaosdruid (talk) 14:39, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Retrieve data from old Macintosh and floopy disks

Came across an 2 old computers in work and I have been tasked with getting data from them one onto an external hard drive one is a Macintosh SE and the other is an Amstrad PCW8256. The Amstrad data is all stored on Amsoft CF2 floopy disks. I can access the data on the Macintosh but I'm unsure how to transfer it and on the Amstrad I am unable to get past the green screen that appears on the Amstrad any suggestions on what I can do. I have never used either of these type of machines before. 178.167.236.54 (talk) 17:22, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Do either/both have a modem? That's a technology that hasn't changed much. You could dial into a more modern machine and upload the files. The Mac's floppy drives might work, too. --Sean 17:48, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

No neither have a modem. 178.167.155.248 (talk) 18:44, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Some ideas

• You might be able to use a serial null-modem cable to allow the Mac to talk to your PC. You'll need software to get them to talk to each other - one (slightly drastic) method is to install SLIP on the MacSE - see here. This will allow your Mac to talk to a webserver, either on your PC, or on the 'net.
• Or, as Sean suggested, if its floppy drive is working, then install a DOS emulator on it, and copy the software onto floppys - Apple made one called SoftPC, but I haven't found an official download for it.
• As for the PCW, it sounds like it is not booting. Do you have a boot floppy for it? They used proprietary 3" drives, so you need to do it via a serial connection.

CS Miller (talk) 23:09, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Here's an idea for the Mac: get a USB to SCSI converter cable. Take the back off the Mac, unplug its internal hard drive's SCSI cable (but leave the power connection), connect the converter cable instead and put the USB end in a modern Mac. (This idea is based largely on optimism.) Not sure how the OP could install anything on the Mac, without a net connection. There's a suggestion here [5] for connecting an SE to another Mac (presumably also a relatively old one). So if you can find a Mac from around 1999 (with some means of getting the data off that computer), and the serial cable, that might work. I also wonder if the emulator Basilisk II might help in some way - it has drivers for talking to a classic mac over ethernet, among other things. 81.131.13.218 (talk) 23:32, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Check out Apple Legacy Products Support. Bus stop (talk) 00:54, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

You can post a question here at Support > Discussions > Older Hardware Products. Bus stop (talk) 01:03, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the PCW, just google "pcw disk transfer" and you'll find various people who can take your disks and copy them to CD. Some of them will also convert any word processor files from Locoscript format. The PCW has no hard drive so you will only be able to start it if you have the original boot disk. This will then enable you to read the data disks - if the disk drive is still working; they were never very reliable.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:30, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I also have lots of Amstrad PCW8256 wordprocessing disks that I want to transfer the contents of to a PC, and it is uneconomic to pay the £10 per disk transfer charge. The Amstrad disks are 3" and do not fit PC floppy drives. I'd be interested to hear of any means of getting an external 3" drive that can be plugged directly into a PC. I'm aware that the CP/M disk format, and the file formats, will be different. I think the same disks were used in Amstrad CPC etc computers, which were usually used for games. Thanks 92.28.255.115 (talk) 12:49, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Does the Macintosh SE say "FDHD" on the front? If so, you are in luck because it is a version of the SE that includes a 1.4MB SuperDrive. You will want to find a PC that has a 3.5" floppy drive, buy some regular 1.4MB floppy disks, format one of them on the PC, then just boot up the Mac SE and insert the PC-formatted floppy disk. It should just appear on the Mac SE's desktop and you will be able to copy files to the floppy, which will be readable by the PC. If your Mac SE does not say "FDHD", what I would do would be, as suggested above, to hook up a null modem cable between the Mac SE's modem port and an old PC's serial port, and find some terminal software (intended for use with a modem) on the Mac side and also on the PC side that implements one of the old file transfer modes like XMODEM or YMODEM or ZMODEM. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:17, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Just want to comment that I love the spelling "floopy disks". It's not how they were actually spelled, but I now realize it should have been. --Trovatore (talk) 19:20, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I haven't seen that typo in ages...=DSmallman12q (talk) 00:19, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Some of us are old enough to remember when they were floopy floppy:

AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:27, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

stylesheet

I enjoy watching videos at thedailyshow.com, but since about a month my computer no longer loads them. I just get messages like "Error loading stylesheet. RSL http://media.mtvnservices.com/global/flex/rsl/framework_3.2.0.3958.swz failed to load. Error #2046". I have tried to update flash player, and I have no problem watching videos at youtube, vimeo, etc.. What to do? --Soman (talk) 19:35, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

After a quick Bing search of that error message, I found numerous other reports of the same problem. Many forum posts seem to contain spurious (incorrect) guesses about the root cause. However, this forum seems to be the most likely answer (I have confirmed the symptom): the server is misconfigured, and is delivering some or all SWZ files as plain-text. (For example, http://media.mtvnservices.com/global/flex/rsl/framework_3.2.0.3958.swz - clicking this may hang your browser for a while, as the binary SWZ resource file, which is actually a compressed Flash Runtime Library, gets parsed by your browser as text/html. The result - garbled binary data that is uninterpretable by the Flash environment. The long and short of it is, the owner of the website at thedailyshow.com has incorrectly configured an obscure detail in the server setup, resulting in an incorrectly reported HTML content-type; and in some cases, this causes your browser's flash video-player program to break. The administrator of the server at thedailyshow.com is the only person who can fix this: and they need to edit their Apache server configuration's MIME-types by adding this line to /etc/httpd/conf/mime.types (or similar):

application/x-swz      swz rsl 

to report the correct binary format for SWZ files they deliver. (I checked, they are running Apache). We can only hope that server-admin hangs around the Reference Desk... advertising money is being lost as we speak! Nimur (talk) 21:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

You may be able to configure your browser to trust the file extension instead of the server's mime-type. For example, this Firefox extension might work (I haven't tried it). Switching browsers might also "solve" the problem. -- BenRG (talk) 10:47, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Considering this problem has apparently been ongoing for many months (from the forum post it's apparent it has been going on since August last year but if I understand a post in that forum it's had already been 6 months then) I'm not holding my breath on the server side error being solved any time soon although I did try contacting them via their website contact page including a link to the above forum post and this discussion. Nil Einne (talk) 05:42, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

thanks! I unchecked the bottom box at http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager03.html (as suggested in the forum link above) and it worked right away. I can now again enjoy political satire whilst working, :). --Soman (talk) 15:35, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

January 20

Laptop

Hello. I recently purchased a Dell D620 laptop. It is running Windows Vista Buisness 32-Bit. I want to install Ubuntu, preferably the 64-bit version. How do I know if the hardware can support a 64-bit version? --T H F S W (T · C · E) 03:17, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Download and run GRC SecurAble. 118.96.159.107 (talk) 05:31, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

See Dell Latitude#Latitude_D620. It has a 64 bit cpu but apparently some brain damage in the memory architecture. 67.122.209.190 (talk) 06:51, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I am suspicious of the article's claim of "brain damage in the memory architecture" given the lack of sources and poor grammar. It looks like it was added by a single disgruntled user whose problem could have had any number of other causes. -- BenRG (talk) 09:03, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I took out some of the info at Dell Latitude#Latitude_D620. I found this [6], which describes a Dell D620 running ubuntu (but interestingly enough, with a 3.3GB limitation possibly caused by the so-called "brain damage"). decltype (talk) 10:03, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

COMPUTER SCIENCE ENGINEERING

WHAT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF CHEMISTRY IN COMPUTER SCIENCE ENGINEERING? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.198.33.180 (talk) 11:51, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Chemistry is important in electronics. Electronics is important in computer science engineering. If you have no interest in the hardware, I strongly suggest you switch majors to something like computer information science or computer media science. -- kainaw™ 14:27, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Please also don't type in capital letters. Online, it's considered the equivalent of shouting. Chevymontecarlo 17:38, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Internet Explorer RSS feeds

Google Chrome is my main browser but I retain Internet Explorer 8 for RSS feeds as Chrome doesn't support RSS without installation of an application. Recently, when I open IE8, my RSS feeds do not display on screen; there is only a blank white screen. What is wrong with the RSS feeds? Could I export my RSS feeds to Google Chrome? What should I do? --Blue387 (talk) 12:36, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Linux calendar sync

I have three google calendars, two exchange calendars, and a droid calendar. Is there a program in Linux that can manage syncing all of the calendars to one another? It appears that exchange is the big hurdle because every solution I've found requires a working install of Outlook - which is not reasonable in Linux. -- kainaw™ 14:25, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I have not tried this, but have you looked into Sunbird? It appears to have plug-ins for all the things you mentioned. How well they work, I couldn't say. APL (talk) 15:26, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

It appears to me that Sunbird is a simple way of getting Thunderbird+Lightning. I tried Ligthning and I couldn't get it to load any events from either Google or Exchange with each of those plugins. The documentation is extremely lacking. For example, it asks for the "location" of the exchange mailbox, but gives absolutely no hint about what the format of the location should be. I tried numerous guesses based on my exchange login information and all I got was numerous empty calendars. -- kainaw™ 16:12, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

CPU examples

5 examples of central processing unit —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.220.69.6 (talk) 17:03, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Please see central processing unit. Your question appears to be homework. We will assist with concepts and ideas, but will not answer your homework questions for you. -- kainaw™ 18:03, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Have a look at Intel's processor web page. For a very boring answer to your homework assignment, you can submit the following list of five example Intel i7 steps:

Intel Core i7-860  SLBJJ(B1)
Intel Core i7-860s SLBLG(B1)
Intel Core i7-870  SLBJG(B1)
Intel Core i7-870s SLBQ7(B1)
Intel Core i7-875k SLBS2(B1)

If When your teacher complains, just say you were following the machine instructions. Did you know that there are other types of CPU besides the Intel i7 8xx series? Nimur (talk) 20:29, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Is a PDF-file in some way more portable than a ZIP-file containing .PNG images?

Is a PDF-file in some way more portable than a ZIP-file containing .PNG images? (When moving content back and forth between various platforms).
--Seren-dipper (talk) 18:44, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The images-in-PDF would be easier to view on an iPad/iPhone/iPod-touch than a zip-of-images; I think the same is true for Blackberry, but I don't know about Android in this regard. In general many devices which fancy themselves eBooks will render a PDF (well or badly), but won't know what to do with a general zip file. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 18:58, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

No, particularly not with the popularization of Comic Book Archive file readers. PDF is an awful format. :p ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:04, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Can you say specifically what's awful about it? -- BenRG (talk) 03:26, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

In lieu of a long rant about the philosophy of data portability, consider reading Technical Information from the Library of Congress's National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. If you really want to be truly platform portable, you should provide source-code for your documents, a free and open-source program that can render the document, and instructions for use.

If all you seek is portability across a few major modern operating systems, like Mac OS X, Windows XP/Vista/7, and Ubuntu, then either PDF or archived PNGs will work. All you need to do is evaluate the ease-of-use and convenience of each option. I will also comment that both PNG and ZIP technology and file formats are totally unencumbered by any proprietary IP or copyright claims; this is very good for long-term data storage. Nimur (talk) 20:01, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Patents expire in 20 years, so they don't matter as far as long-term data storage is concerned. The PDF format was published as an ISO standard in 2008, and there are free-software implementations of it. Knowing all that, do you still have an objection to the use of PDF as an archival format? -- BenRG (talk) 03:26, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

There's unfortunately more to it than that. PDF, part of an open specification or not, is controlled by Adobe, and since Adobe's reader has massive penetration and others do not, whatever their reader supports—in the spec or not—is a de facto standard that people will expect to be supported. After that we get into what happens if Adobe ever goes under or decides it doesn't like PDF. Consider what happened when Oracle bought Sun, and how now the OpenOffice, Java™, and MySQL projects are suffering, despite having been open source. ¦ Reisio (talk) 04:16, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

How exactly are those projects suffering? Oracle is releasing new versions of all of the products you mentioned and they're still very popular. As for PDF, why don't you tell us what you think will happen if Adobe doesn't like PDF? The format has seen very little change since version 1.5 in 2003, yet it's never been more popular. Many open source projects, like OpenOffice.org, have embraced PDF, too.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 05:27, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

PDF is a scalable vector format like SVG, not a raster format like PNG, though (like SVG) it supports embedded raster images. It allows selectable, searchable text to be overlaid on a raster-image background; alternatively, the text can be made invisible, allowing scanned book images to be searched and copied as plain text without altering their original appearance. Among the bitmap formats it supports are JPEG2000, which losslessly compresses photos a lot better than PNG, and JBIG2, which losslessly compresses low-color images a lot better than PNG. Zipped PNGs can't do any of these things. If all you need is a bundle of losslessly compressed raster images then a ZIP archive of PNGs is pretty portable, but it makes little sense to compare it to PDF.

Since people are talking about PDF I should mention DjVu, though I don't know which if any ebook readers support it. -- BenRG (talk) 03:26, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

You just compared ZIP'd PNGs with JPEG2000 inside PDF. My question is this: why? Actually that's rhetorical. JPEG2000 images inside a ZIP, done. Read the original question. ¦ Reisio (talk) 04:16, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Ridiculous. The file size of a bunch of PNGs would be incredible and the resources needed to zoom in on high-resolution bitmap images one at a time would make a very frustrating reading experience. (I'm assuming this is an e-book.) I've made many e-books myself from PNGs, so I'm speaking from experience. By the way, the PDF supports ZIP compression. You can choose to compress text and vectors using ZIP and images using either ZIP, JPEG, or JPEG2000.

There are also advantages when it comes to searching for text in a PDF as compared to PNGs, which can't be searched at all. You can also add bookmarks and hyperlinks to PDFs.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 05:22, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

The question was about PDF versus zipped PNGs; that's why I compared those two things specifically. I don't dislike ZIP or PNG, nor do I especially like PDF (DjVu is probably better for scanned documents, which is why I mentioned it). But I get upset when people express strong opinions about which things are good or bad despite apparently having no factual knowledge of the things themselves. There's an emotional sense that certain things are "proprietary" and other things are "open" that doesn't seem to have much connection to reality. PKWARE, the original publishers of the ZIP specification, have continued to publish revised versions adding strong encryption, Unicode filenames, and a variety of new compression methods, among other things. WinZip, which I believe is overwhelmingly the most popular utility for creating and extracting ZIP archives, supports these features, while the support in free implementations is much spottier. WinZip has also added its own extensions that aren't in the PKWARE standard, exploiting its position as market leader. This is what you said you feared would happen to PDF, and it actually has happened to ZIP. Does that make ZIP a bad archival format? -- BenRG (talk) 06:59, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Dual-boot system

I have some questions about dual booting. I can figure out how to partition the hard drive, but I can't get the second operating system to boot on the second partition (it wipes out the first). What software could I use that could help with dual-booting? --T H F S W (T · C · E) 21:20, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

GRUB: "(GNU GRand Unified Bootloader) is a boot loader package from the GNU Project." Note that some operating systems do not like to be installed on secondary-partitions. In my experience, it is easier to install Windows first (on the first primary partition) and to install Linux afterward. Allow Linux to install GRUB and overwrite the Windows-installed bootloader. GRUB will be the first thing you see when you boot up, and will let you choose which operating system to launch. If this doesn't work for you, you'll have to elaborate on your setup - you haven't even specified which operating system(s) you're installing. Nimur (talk) 21:53, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

You can get real-time help at irc://irc.freenode.net/linux ¦ Reisio (talk) 04:17, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

January 21

Web search engines that allow wildcards?

I'm looking for a phrase but I don't know part of a word. Are there still any web search engines where when searching for e.g. "Eco* establish*" will give me hits for "Economics establishes" and "Ecological establishments"? -- Jeandré, 2011-01-21t11:43z

I'm not aware of any, but an alternative solution would be to do the stemming yourself and search for the results. There would only be around 180 things to search for in your example. --Sean 16:02, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

You might have some success with onelook, though it returns no hits for your example. It searches for phrases (in obscure dictionaries and encyclopedias and some other places that aren't specified) and allows wildcards. 81.131.65.219 (talk) 16:49, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I suspect all the very big (whole web) search engines index on hash codes for performance reasons, so can't do prefix searches. Sean's suggestion sounds straightforward if a bit tedious, if you have just one or two queries like that. If you use a machine client you will probably get blocked by the search engine. 67.122.209.190 (talk) 09:01, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Interference with Browsing

Every time I open a page in my IE8 browser I get Security questions: "A website wants to open web content" that are obviously wrong. The names given rotate among DivX Plus Web Player / McAfee Anti-spam / Microsoft Search Enhancement Pack / Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment 6. U... / Adobe Flash Player. The warnings just keep coming regardless of whether I click on Allow or Don't Allow. They make it hard to read Wikipedia! (Vista Home Premium) Cuddlyable3 (talk) 13:18, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

What Anti-Virus software do you have? Have you tried using Firefox? Firefox is a better browser and should solve your problems. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 14:01, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

While I agree that Firefox is better than IE, better is somewhat subjective. And installing Firefox will not solve the problem the OP is having with IE. The OP may be on a restricted computer and cannot use Firefox, or may simply not want to use Firefox. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 22:37, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

OP here. My anti-virus is AVG free 9.0. Until this problem arose I have been satisfied with IE browser. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 11:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

ncis

can you please tell me what make & model of mobile phone sasha alexandra ie( kate ) is using in the ncis show it appears to be a black oblong flip phone or pda with the screen on the top half & keypad on the lower half.i have tried to look for this on the net but car't seem to find a model that looks like the one kate is using. is there a web site that shows the gadgets used on the show

regards r a carrington.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.2.45.163 (talk) 15:08, 21 January 2011 (UTC) 

That descriptions covers a multitude of phone models from a multitude of manufacturers — you'll likely have to have some high res shots or insider info to find out. If all you want is a phone _like_ that, just walk into a mobile phone shop, there will be plenty. ¦ Reisio (talk) 04:22, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

R.A. is apparently watching the show in reruns: the character of Kate was only in it for the first two seasons, in 2003–05. So this must be a phone that was available then, and given the rate of change in cellphone technology and fashions, it quite likely would not be available now. At least not new. --Anonymous, 05:30 UTC, January 22, 2011.

Vista - Permission to Put things in Folder I Just Made

Resolved

I have a bizarre problem on Vista. I have just made a folder on my desktop. Then I made a couple of other folders and put a few bits and pieces in them. Then I tried to put these other folders inside the first one, and I am told I need to grant permission (which is inevitably denied). I have succeeded in putting one of the folders into the first folder (granting permission which was accepted) but the other one won't be allowed in. The main folder was just made in the usual way (right click on desktop>new folder) and I haven't added any special properties to it. Can anyone help me unlock it? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:31, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

No worries - everything had been set to 'Read Only' for some reason (I have an idea of why). Unchecking that fixed the problem. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:52, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Purists might say that the desktop is not the place to put folders (but just shortcuts to folders). Like you, I occasionally break this rule, but there are a couple of minor disadvantages in some situations. Dbfirs 18:03, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Aye, well, I prefer to keep my desktop clear, but I just wanted to make a folder quickly and had nowhere else more appropriate to do it other than on my desktop, because my desktop was already 'open', as it where. Cheers, though. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 18:37, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Size of Wikipedia

Do the following two occasions occupy the same amount of Wikipedia server resources?

• A Wikipedia page has been modified 4,999 times since its creation, therefore has had 5,000 versions including the current one, and the average size of its versions is a given number of bytes.
• 5,000 Wikipedia pages have not been modified since they were created, and their average size is the same number of bytes.

To put it in another way: if one wished to calculate the total size of Wikipedia, would one get the actual answer by visiting every single history page and adding up the indicated numbers of bytes for each past and current version of each page? And could there be some estimation - even if it's a very rough one - about the (English) Wikipedia's total size? --Theurgist (talk) 16:00, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

If I understand your question correctly you're asking whether the MediaWiki software used by Wikipedia stores whole articles for each revision, or some kind of diff that would save space. The answer appears to be the former. Here is a database schema for MediaWiki. In the lower right is a table called TEXT which appears to hold complete articles for each revision. So the final answer is "yes" -- they would occupy roughly the same space (excepting the bits of metadata about revision times and so on).

As for the total size, it looks like it's around 5 TB for all revisions of all articles. Note that that doesn't include any images, which presumably take up a good chunk as well. --Sean 16:41, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Previous versions of mediawiki kept a current version and backwards deltas (diffs). This was much more compact, but it meant that if you wanted to retrieve a version 10 revisions ago, you needed to retrieve and apply 9 sets of diffs. The current schema stores the full text of each revision in the old_text column of the text table. This reflects the realities of disk pricing vs cpu pricing. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 16:57, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

But see $wgCompressRevisions, though it sounds like it doesn't compress revisions against each other. Paul (Stansifer) 17:19, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

To answer the last portion of the OP's question: a snapshot of the current-state of the English-language Wikipedia database, including all revisions of all pages, is estimated to be about 5 terabytes (see Wikipedia:Database download). To de-select all previous revisions of all pages would require a lot of database transaction (CPU time); such a service is not available from the Wikimedia Foundation's servers (so you'd have to download the full database and perform that data culling yourself). Periodically, the latest Pages/Articles are provided through this link in XHTML format. Those are a collection of BZ archives of XML, and appear to be about 10 or 20 gigabytes ("about a three or five DVDs" worth of data). The Special:Statistics page gives approximate counts of latest number of articles. Nimur (talk) 19:07, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

At the download link I gave they list pages-articles.xml.bz2, which is current pages only. About 6 GB uncompressed. --Sean 20:06, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

As a side note, version-control systems have exactly this time/space tradeoff, too, and they have quite sophisticated solutions. Here's a high-level discussion]. Paul (Stansifer) 05:51, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Command prompt

I accidentally opened a .bat script in Windows 7 which had a line instructing it to start a new instance of itself and loop, which created hundreds of command prompt windows within seconds all making new windows themselves. I couldn't stop it from task manager or process explorer with the "kill tree" command and had to shut the computer down and restart. In this situation, in case it happens again, is there any way to stop this once it starts without restarting windows? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 22:25, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

You have found yourself in a race condition with your computer; it's unlikely you'll win. What you would need to do is use Task Manager to kill the newest instance of the program before it replicates. It's possible, but unlikely, that you could do that. In some versions of Windows, tskill can be used to kill all instances of a process with a certain executable-name, so you could use the command line to execute that; but you'd still have a race condition between the two scripts. Nimur (talk) 23:03, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Depending on the script and your skills, it's best to simply reboot. Alternatively, there are programs that kill all user processes, but in unless you know what you're doing, you're not going to win against the machine=P.Smallman12q (talk) 00:17, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Either log off or better yet, if you have an unsaved document that will prevent logging off, simply try to log off, close all the batch file's windows (all of them), then cancel the log off attempt. It is possible to close all the windows when Windows is in the process of logging off or shutting down because when Windows is logging off or shutting down, no new process can be started (remember "... the window station is shutting down" error message?) 118.96.157.166 (talk) 00:37, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Personal information misuse

It seems that someone has mis-used my email address and craigslist advertisement has misused my email, AOL thinks they have resolved that issue, but now I can't connect to your system........... for example I have had calls telling me they are interested in a car I have for sale, I have never had a car for sale,,,,,,,,,,,,,do you have a phone number I can call and have you give me some assistance.......... (removed personal information) thank you ................. Roland A. Mireles —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.218.123.7 (talk) 23:43, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I've removed the personal information in the original post. Posting your email and phone number on a hugely public site like Wikipedia isn't going to help your situation at all. If you can find the Craigslist ad, you can flag it, and there is a Help link on the main page (at craigslist.org) that offers a "contact us" link, so you can write to them and request help. In the meantime, you probably should let your phone calls go to voicemail or an answering machine until the ad has run its course. --LarryMac | Talk 23:58, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

January 22

Ubuntu

How do I look at system information (CPU power, RAM, etc.) on Ubuntu? --T H F S W (T · C · E) 03:06, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

gnome-system-monitor, lshw-gtk, top, htop, cat /proc/cpuinfo, free, etc. ¦ Reisio (talk) 04:25, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you mean. Are these online or in my desktop? One other thing, anyone know of a DVD driver for Ubuntu 10.10 ('Maverick Meerkat')? --T H F S W (T · C · E) 05:20, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm guessing you type the command into a terminal window Nil Einne (talk) 05:48, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

thats right, you type that command in the command line terminal. unfortunately, with most linux distrobutions, you are still expected to do way too many simple things using the command line terminal, which most computer users nowadays have no knowledge or patience for whatsover. Roberto75780 (talk) 07:53, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

That is also some of the beauty of the GNU/Linux world, IMHO. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 11:55, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

wget -- downloading to a directory and renaming a file

I can't quite figure out how to do something with wget in OS X. I would like to be able to download the index file of a site to a specific directory and rename it with the current date. For example:

wget http://en.wikipedia.org gives me the index.html file in my home directory, but I'd like this instead: /wiki-archive/2011-01-22-wikipedia-index.html.

Any help would be much appreciated. --CGPGrey (talk) 12:28, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

"-P" or "--directory-prefix" will allow you to set the directory, and "-O" or "--output-document" allows you to set the filename. There is more info in the wget manual. To set the filename to the current date you'll have to work out how to print the data in your OS. I have never used a Mac so I don't know how to do that, but if it helps you work a solution to do it in .bat on Windows would be "%date:~-4,4%-%date:~-7,2%-%date:~0,2%-%time:~-11,2%%time:~-8,2%.html" 82.44.55.25 (talk) 12:40, 22 January 2011 (UTC)