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December 26

PC laptop that looks as good as a MacBook Pro

I am looking for a non-Apple laptop that looks as good as a MacBook Pro and has just as good specs. Does anyone have any suggestions? --Melab±1 ☎ 04:09, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Try an ultrabook. They're lightweight, compact and (mostly) nice-looking laptops with good specs, by definition. It's a pretty new market at least here in NZ, so there's not many in existence yet. sonia♫ 04:50, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

It's difficult to be as thin as a MacBook thou. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.8.76.47 (talk) 00:25, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

HP Envy --178.208.197.58 (talk) 00:20, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

RAGE 128 PRO AGP 4X TMDS

I am working with a system having "RAGE 128 PRO AGP 4X TMDS" graphics card, according to dxdiag. I went to this page, which claims to enable Advanced OpenGL for said graphics device. When i ran it it said i have no hardware that is compatible on this machine, or something to that effect. Can i enable OpenGL on this computer or is the card simply too old? I would think if its too old there wouldnt be a website saying it can be enabled. =\

Thanks for any help

Edit: I am running windows XP Pro 5.1, by the way. 216.173.144.164 (talk) 13:12, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Reducing file size of JPG's

What's the best way of reducing file sizes of JPG's on a Windows XP computer? I have seven of my mother's Christmas party photos that she took on a Nikon digital camera. I'd like to email them to a relative on the other side of the world, but each file is about two megabytes, and sending fourteen megabytes of images by email doesn't sound like a great idea (zipping them doesn't help, but IIRC JPG's are already compressed?). Isn't two megabytes quite big for a JPG file anyway? I'm pretty good with computers, but clueless with images, since I'm totally blind. My mother can probably help me with things that require sighted assistance, but she's not very computer-literate. Thanks for any help that you can provide. Graham87 14:08, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

It depends on your software but try to right-click one of the files and see if there is an option to send to mail recipient with a choice of size. If it works and you want to send multiple files in the same mail then mark all of them first, for example with Ctrl + left-click, and then right-click one of them. You can also send an email to yourself if you want your own copy of the versions with reduced size. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:26, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Have you thought about uploading them to something like Flickr? Flickr will save the image in a variety of sizes; it'll be quick to load up, but if they want to have the full quality version (and 2MB is not large for a full quality photo JPEG) they just have to click a bit and it's theirs. You can set privacy settings on it so just your family can see them. It's what I'd do, anyway, if I wanted to distribute a bunch of photos. It's stone cold simple and doesn't require that the people on the other end do anything other than click a link. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:52, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Opening and saving the image under a new filename in MS Paint will often reduce the filesize of jpgs (but also reduce the image quality). You could try an online tool such as this which seems to work quite well. If you are comfortable installing new programs into your computer, paint.net has a very good jpg quality/size modifier tool. 82.45.62.107 (talk) 15:01, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Some thoughts:

1) Besides reducing resolution and quality, another option is cropping the image. If the subject of a photo is tiny and the background uninteresting, cutting off much of the background can be a good option. Of course, knowing what portion to crop does require a sighted person.

2) Knowing how the images will be used at the other end is also important. If they intend to print them out as 8.5" × 11" photos and frame them, then you will probably want maximum resolution. If they only intend to view them online, then a much smaller resolution is acceptable. If you can let us know what the height and width of your pictures is, in pixels, we can tell you whether that's appropriate for printed photos or viewing online. I also agree with the advice to post them online instead of mailing them, as this allows the recipient to choose the resolution. StuRat (talk) 15:30, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, guys! I right-clicked on the images in Windows explorer and found a "reduce size" option, and emailed them in 640x480 resolution. Then I re-read the messages above, thought I'd at least *try* Flickr, and found it surprisingly easy to use for screen reader users! So I uploaded the images there also, in full resolution, naturally. They were all 3648x2736, which I gather would be suitable for printing, as only fairly high-quality images on Wikipedia seem to be anywhere near that resolution. Graham87 09:48, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

300 dots per inch is typical for printing, which would make your pics print at a bit over 12 inches by 9 inches. 640×480 is a bit on the small side for viewing online, so hopefully they will use Flickr to get the full res. Incidentally, what screen reader do you use ? JAWS ? StuRat (talk) 22:13, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Yep, I use JAWS, as it says on my user page. I ended up using the Windows Flickr uploading tool to upload the images, which was fairly easy to use as well. Graham87 05:50, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, glad we could help. I'll mark this question resolved. StuRat (talk) 20:14, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

December 27

Issues with Flash Games in Firefox - help, please!

I've got the latest version of Firefox, and the latest Flash version, but I'm having issues with the mouse in certain flash games, (not all of them, but it seems pretty random). Basically, when I click in the flash window, it doesn't pick up the mouse click, unless I do loads of them, then it will eventually react. It seems like it's not registering the mouse pointer properly, but there are no other issues with my mouse. I have done a little research, but the only suggestion I found said to switch off flash hardware acceleration, which I have done, without effect. Any other suggestions? It's really annoying, as I like to play random flash games online. Snorgle (talk) 14:41, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

When requesting help with something, you should specify the exact version number, not say "I've got the latest", for various reasons, including: you may have made a mistake, people may know of a better version you could be using that isn't the latest, etc.. In the case of Flash please also specify your OS version. Alternatively, copy and paste the two fields shown in the Flash object here. ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:09, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Cheers. Flash Player version is 11.1.102.55 and Windows 7 (64-bit). Snorgle (talk) 00:22, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

The flash games may just be slowing down your computer. Try running only the window with the flash game, and nothing else. Heck froze over (talk) 20:31, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, and do this right after a reboot, to minimize what's running in the background. StuRat (talk) 21:50, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

If you notice that your computer is slowing down, you may still be able to save your windows/game/whatever. When you notice the computer is slowing, just let it sit for a few minutes. It can usually catch back up given a bit of time (when you click and move windows you tax its cpu and/or ram even more than without so leave it alone). If the computer only slows down at certain websites, it may be that said websites have viruses and/or cookies trying to get on your computer. If the site is fairly well known, there could be lots of other people accessing the same site (and thus slowing the connection on the other end). Heck froze over (talk) 14:17, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for everyone's suggestions, but it's only the flash game that is the problem, everything else is fine. Does flash usually slow down computers?Snorgle (talk) 18:06, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Not to this extent. You might try another version first. ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:01, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Mobile phone

I bought a mobile phone but my friend says that it is a low quality one. How can i check the quality of a mobile phone? I want to know Where it was made in?, Is it an assembled one or original one? and other details. Thank you.175.157.84.14 (talk) 15:33, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Do a Web search for its model number. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:39, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Short of things outright breaking or not functioning, "quality" is fairly subjective (though there are manufacturers that have better (or more enduring) reputations than others). ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:11, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Some things to check for:

1) Do the buttons "click" when you press them, or just "smoosh" ? Do you get one letter from each every time, or sometimes no letters and sometimes many ? Do you need to press some buttons harder than others ?

2) Is the display clear and bright ?

3) Is the sound good ?

4) Does the charger and/or phone get hot during charging and stay hot even after it's fully charged ? That could mean it's overcharging, which shortens the battery life ans wastes energy.

Those are quality issues. Which features it has are also important, like a camera, full keyboard, internet capability, etc. StuRat (talk) 21:46, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

iPad2 Messenger

When using my iPad2 for the first time trying to send a message to a friend on my Address Book, I got a message that the name was "Not Registered". This happens when either I click the 'Message' app or when attempting to send via the contacts address page. I don't understand this can anyone explain please and how do I 'register' my contacts? Thanks in anticipation.--85.211.148.143 (talk) 16:18, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Make sure you've spelled the name exactly right. If it's supposed to be an email address (sometimes it can be hard to tell), make sure to include the @domain.tld bit and not just the first part. You could try and get one of your friends to register you instead to possibly give yourself some clues as to what needs to be done. ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:13, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Scroll bar when there is NOT suppose to be one

When I look at certain Wikipedia articles on my 15 inch laptop, the sentences go to the right into never-never land producing at the bottom a scroll bar so I can go find the end (which is a long ways down to the right as I am looking at it). They are suppose to, of course, break at the end of the screen and drop down to continue the sentence (with no scroll bar). Another 17 inch laptop I am able to look at displays the page correctly with no scroll bar. What setting do I have wrong on my 15 inch laptop that causes the sentences not to break properly and drop down correctly? It always worked correctly before, however a couple of days ago everything went screwy. I know of nothing I changed on any steeings. What is wrong?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 16:35, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The problem only shows up where the article has in it "{{cquote". Other PCs do NOT have the problem, just mine. Perhaps I could use something else for the quote?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 16:43, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Other PCs with the same monitor size and resolution set do not have the problem? Otherwise please specify what your resolution is, and link to a page at which the issue manifests. ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:37, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

No, another laptop I am able to look at is 17 inch and it appears correctly. My PC says Resolution 1366 x 768. The 17 inch says: 1440 x 900.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otium --Doug Coldwell ^talk 19:44, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Not just you, I'd bet most people with that "narrow" a resolution would see that issue at that page. Unfortunately {{cquote}} like many other templates has been protected, so the only way to fix it (if the problem indeed stems from that template) would be to prostrate yourself to an admin. ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:53, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Turns out there was some poorly chosen CSS and some malformed HTML is all. Fixed. ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:59, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes indeed. It is fixed! Works fine now. Thanks.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 20:05, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Class design in web application

I just realised I'm facing a problem with class design at work. I'm supposed to implement a .NET web application where a WCF service running on the server decides what controls should be on the page (e.g. buttons, drop down lists, tables...) and what they should contain, and the web application on the client decides how to draw them. The client queries the server for a list of controls, which the server returns as simple objects that are only supposed to be used for data transfer, and the client generates full-blown System.Web.Controls controls out of them, to place on the rendered web page.

The problem I am having is with the inheritance design of these data transfer objects. I need different kinds of objects for different controls (buttons, drop down lists, tables...) At the moment I have an abstract base class and subclasses for different kinds of controls. I have thought of three possible options:

1. Put all the logic of creating full-blown System.Web.Controls controls into the data transfer object classes. But this ties the server code together with the UI code, when the server isn't even supposed to care about how the controls are rendered on the page. And if I decide to use third-party UI libraries for rendering the controls, these libraries are going to end on the server side too, when the server code doesn't even use them.
2. Only use one class for the data transfer objects, with an enumeration describing the kind of the control, and have the client code use a giant switch block to figure out what System.Web.Controls controls it should create. But this faces the problem that different controls use different data. For example, drop down lists have one-dimensional data, whereas tables have two-dimensional data. And buttons only need one string of text.
3. A mix-up of the two above options: Have a full inheritance hierarchy for the data transfer objects, but do all the logic of creating the System.Web.Controls controls on the web application, not the data transfer objects. But this faces the problem of how the web application is supposed to know which control it should draw from which data transfer object. Using a switch block based on the data transfer objects' classes or an enumeration seems like a hack or a kludge.

Can anyone give me information on how I should design this? JIP | Talk 19:09, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

http://webchat.freenode.net/?nick=JIP&channels=##asp.net (see topic for other .NET channels not focused on ASP specifically) ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:41, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I read the article Visitor pattern and decided to adapt it as a solution to my problem. I now have all the control rendering logic in the web application, as it should be, and there is no giant switch block deciding what kind of control to render, as each control has its own specific Visit() method. JIP | Talk 21:21, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Using HTTPS in an ASP.NET web application under IIS

It appears that an ASP.NET web application, running on Microsoft IIS, that we're delivering to a customer's servers has to use HTTPS instead of plain HTTP, because it's visible to the outside world and thus encrypting the communication between the users' browsers and the web application is required to prevent third parties from eavesdropping on the transferred data. How does one set up such a web application to use HTTPS? Is it simply a matter of application configuring in IIS or do we have to make code changes? Does our customer have to buy a certificate from some trusted certificate agency? JIP | Talk 20:10, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

December 28

I've had enough of this bullshit

Pardon the language, but right now I am typing this with the utmost frustration. My computer keeps self-hibernating/going in stand-by mode without warning ALL THE DAMN TIME. And it's becoming more and more frequent. Restarting it no longer keeps the problem at bay, I have to continuously restart the PC literally every five minutes. I have reliable anti-virus software installed, and nothing suspicious comes up, so I don't know what the fuck is going on. I'm on Windows 7, and I've never had this problem with previous PCs or operating systems, even when they were chock full of viruses at times. I'm not overtaxing the system or anything. So what is this? 76.64.255.81 (talk) 00:18, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

You may well get a nice technical answer to this question, but I had something very similar recently that had a rather simple solution. My monitor sits on top a couple of rack units, on which are a number of switches and knobs. One of these knobs lines up EXACTLY (both horizontally and vertically) with the "sleep" button on my keyboard. If the keyboard is pushed too far into the desk, *boom* – the computer goes off, no warning. I've removed the knob (I don't use it) so I no longer have this problem. matt (talk) 01:49, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Never mind, I got some tech help and the source behind the issue is so much deeper than I expected and completely unforeseen. I'm gonna have to get a new computer altogether. 76.64.255.81 (talk) 01:53, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, I'm all curious now. Hardware or software fault? HiLo48 (talk) 02:15, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Since I didn't buy the computer myself and don't know from where it was bought, I've been told that I may have gotten screwed and that the computer is running a version of Windows it isn't supposed to, and that it's a pretty old model. 76.64.255.81 (talk) 02:53, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I have several older computers running software that's no longer supported. That doesn't mean you need to toss it out. It's quite possible that your computer isn't up to running Windows 7, in which case Windows XP or Linux might be a good choice. Did they tell you exactly why your computer can't run Windows 7 ? Is it the amount of RAM, speed, or what ? (You might be able to upgrade your computer to solve some problems.) StuRat (talk) 03:05, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, one is that it doesn't have enough gigs to handle W7 (they told me that it's barely sufficient enough to run Vista), and there's the fact that it's running the Enterprise version of W7, which in itself set off red flags to the people I was explaining this to. 76.64.255.81 (talk) 03:56, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Sounds a lot like it's overheating, in which case there's no need to replace the computer. As a workaround, get a powerful fan and aim it at the guts of the computer, with the case removed. In the long run, perhaps you could replace the case fan and hard drive fan with more powerful ones. StuRat (talk) 02:29, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Powerful fan = noise. Avoid noise if you want to get work done. Barely sufficient to run Vista? I'm surprised any IT would even dare mention Vista as an option nowadays. It is/was a hog compared to Widows 7. Dmcq (talk) 10:55, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

The noise issue depends on the person - I actually find that a bit of non-specific noise (as from a fan), or ambient music helps drown out other sounds (conversations in the street outside, aircraft overhead, dogs barking) that are far more likely to distract me. Equisetum (talk | contributions) 14:50, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

The noise is far less annoying than a computer that goes down every 5 minutes. I agree that a computer than can't run Windows 7 shouldn't try to run Vista, either. Go back to Windows XP, or, better yet, Linux. StuRat (talk) 20:10, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

It must be a very old computer if it is "barely sufficient enough to run Vista". Microsoft's minimum requirements for Vista were: 800 MHz processor, 512 MB RAM and 20 GB hard drive space, though I don't think Vista would run quickly on that configuration. (I'm typing this on a one Gig machine and it runs Vista adequately. I wouldn't want to run W7 on it, even though it meets the minimum requirements.) Could you tell us the specification? If it's just a very old computer with less than a Gigabyte of RAM, then StuRat's suggestion of Linux or XP might be the answer, or possibly just add some RAM, but if there is a faulty fan or processor then you ought to replace this (or the computer). Another possibility is a faulty power supply. Dbfirs 23:04, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

We need more feedback to answer this properly. As Stu suggested it might be over heating. It is easy to take the side off and look at the heat sink on the CPU. Is it covered with fluff? If so, then this need to be removed as it will coarse the chip to overheat and shut down. On a old computer this is one the first things that ought to be checked. ---Is it covered with fluff?--Aspro (talk) 23:21, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I apologize for replying so late (hopefully you guys will still care at this point). My computer is a Lenovo ThinkPad T61 7659. I am not sure exactly how many gigs mine has, but it seems that its maximum capacity is 2-3 gigs of RAM. And apparently, they usually come pre-installed with XP, Vista Business or Linux, so it's a great mystery to me as to how one would manage to get Windows 7 installed and running on it. And I've heard some unusual noises coming from the computer, which I guess is a result of overheating, but the weird behavior started months ago (not soon after I got the computer, which is refurbished) and have gotten progressively worse. 76.64.255.81 (talk) 11:07, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm guessing that whoever put Win 7 on it also set it to overclock, causing it to overheat. Sounds like an idiot. Can you tell us how you got such a messed up computer ? StuRat (talk) 05:23, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

A friend of mine ordered it online on my behalf (the hard drive on my previous laptop gave up and died, so I was temporarily devoid of a computer), however they never told me where exactly they bought it from. I specifically requested a computer that runs Windows 7, but I obviously meant one that came preinstalled with the system. This wasn't even my computer of choice. Also, it runs without problems when I run it in Safe Mode. So hopefully, this is something that can be easily solved. Though I must ask, is it normal that system information isn't viewable in Safe Mode? 76.64.255.81 (talk) 07:13, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

No, system info should be viewable. What happens when you try ? I'm afraid the person who told you it can't handle Windows 7 was right, from looking online it seems to come with either XP or Vista. I certainly wouldn't recommend Vista, but XP should fly on that computer. So, I recommend you "downgrade" to XP Pro, Service Pack 3.

The reason it's able to run in safe mode is that so much is disabled. You might be able to run in safe mode indefinitely, however, running XP would be a lot better than running Win 7 in safe mode. BTW, Lenova might have put Win 7 on it themselves, so they could sell it. Based on this review, they seem a rather dodgy company: [1]. StuRat (talk) 22:11, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

That review response sounds like a dodgy importer of a faulty batch. I'd be worried if there were more like it. Lenovo are the second largest computer maker by volume in the world That doesn't mean that they make good machines, of course, but many people seem satisfied with the product. (Disclaimer: I've only ever used one Lenovo machine and I've no shares or interest in the company!) Dbfirs 22:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the OP may have gotten one from the same bad batch. StuRat (talk) 00:29, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Running in safe mode indefinitely isn't a viable option for the long run, as I'm rather limited in what I can do in safe mode. Anytime I try to view system info in "My Computer", it tells me that it isn't available. I at first thought it meant that my copy of Windows 7 was pirated, but then realized that can't be it since the Validation Tool recognizes it as a genuine copy. Ah well, guess my only option for now is to downgrade to XP until I can buy myself a decent computer that won't give me so many headaches like this one. Thank you for your patience and advice, everyone. 76.64.255.81 (talk) 04:37, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome, and good luck. I will mark this question resolved. StuRat (talk) 04:40, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

As a long-time user of several used Thinkpads I'd like to point out that in general T61 is still a perfectly good and usable computer. In this particular case it does sound like the hardware is faulty. Another possibility is that the seller didn't do the Windows 7 installation properly, e.g. the BIOS version may be too old to support Windows 7. Lenovo supports Windows 7 upgrades of many older models, including T61, by offering all the necessary hardware drivers and BIOS updates [for download]. There are also user guides, upgrade guides and hardware manuals on the support site. But if your hardware is faulty, it may be the best solution to offer it on ebay as a faulty unit - there are hobbyists buying even broken Thinkpads in order to build working computers from parts. 188.117.11.111 (talk) 09:33, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I thought of something else to add, too. I suggest you put Linux on it first, since that's free, and will allow you to be sure it will run OK once you stop using Win 7. If it passes the test, then you can pay for XP. If it hibernates every 5 minutes under Linux, then there is a deeper issue than just Win 7 being unsupported on it. StuRat (talk) 16:40, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I do have an actual reference for Windows 7 support on T61 (besides the fact that Windows 7 drivers for T61 are available for download): [Here] is the list of Thinkpad models which can be upgraded to Windows 7 according to Lenovo. 188.117.11.111 (talk) 10:58, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Where else is startup stuff?

At my workplace, mostly PCs, there's a local startup script that runs at each user logon, to unmount and remount the network drive, giving me an N: drive. (I think I know this because the black cmd.exe box opens and closes.) I'd like to chase down this script and look at it, but have been unable to find it. I'm thinking the script is NOT on the file server (how could I access it before it was accessible?), so it must be on my local disk -- somewhere.

• I've scanned for .bat and .txt files, and for the text string "mount", to no avail.
• There's nothing recognisable in All Users -> Programs -> Startup.
• I've dumped the registry to text and searched for "mount", which found an instance of mountvol.exe, but that doesn't seem to have any paths in it and it's part of NLS Languages something.

Can anybody volunteer other suggestions for (a) What should I look for, and/or (b) Where should I look for it? My system is WinXP sp3.

Thanx! --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 01:29, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Log on scripts I believe are usually *.vbs files. Default location for log on scripts is %SystemRoot%\System32\Repl\Import\Scripts. However if you are logging onto a domain, your computer might not have local scripts, they might instead be in Sysvol\DomainName\Scripts. Also, "mount" is not the command to map a network drive on windows, I think that is usually done with "NET USE". Lastly, I work in IT Support and advice you DO NOT to stuff around with your production log on scripts, it's probably against your IT policy to do so. If you have a problem or requirement which is not being met, talk to your IT support or manager. Vespine (talk) 05:44, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

If your system is part of a Windows domain (in other words, if your organization's system-adminstrator set up a centralized administrative server for all the Windows computers), then before your system even allows a user to log in, Windows is already running whatever the domain policy is configured to run. You can read more: Group Policy from MSDN TechNet. "Group Policy provides an infrastructure for centralized configuration management of the operating system and applications that run on the operating system." In other words, you are, in this case, entirely at the mercy of the system-administrator. Your computer might not have permission to view all of the startup scripts that the domain administrator is running for you. Nimur (talk) 20:21, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Renaming Tabs in Excel 2007

How do I do that? Cheers! KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 01:31, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

In Excel 2008, I right-click on the tab and select rename. I'd guess it probably works similarly in Excel 2007. RudolfRed (talk) 02:31, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I have Excel 2007, and that is indeed the case. Buddy431 (talk) 18:09, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Speed up XP

How to thank all who offered a variety of solutions to my question. Let it stand that I do thank them, and appreciate the time they took.

Hamish 84 Hamish84 (talk) 01:44, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

You could best thank us by telling us what suggestions you took and how much each helped to speed things up. Thanks. StuRat (talk) 02:33, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Mobile Telecommunication ( IMSI / MSISDN )

1. What happens when same MSISDN is mapped to two different IMSI in a network ? If a subscriber calls this MSISDN will the call be routed to both these IMSI's ?

Kumar.saurabh90 (talk) 10:14, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

IM contacts

Rather a newbie when it comes to talking to people online, if someone asks for my MSN or YIM contact details, would that be the same as the email address that came with my Yahoo account and my windows live email address? As in [whatever]@yahoo.com and [whatever]@live.co.uk?

Also, whiilst I'm here, is there any way of copying something from my photobucket account to upload onto, for example, youtube, if the original is saved on a different computer?

79.66.106.204 (talk) 11:58, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

When I use to use Yahoo messenger, my instant messenger name was ctjf83 and my email was ctjf83@yahoo.com. So if they are asking for the name to contact you on messenger with, I'd just tell them your screen name minus @yahoo.com or @msn.com. I can't help you on the other question. CTJF83 12:43, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Listen to cell phone/MP3 on radio

Is there such a device that I can plug into my cell phone or MP3 player's headphone jack and then play the music through the radio, wirelessly? How does it compare to the headphone jack to tape thing? CTJF83 12:29, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

They certainly exist - see e.g. this amazon search, and our article on them here. I haven't used one for a long time though (my current car stereo has an auxiliary port) and have never used a tape adaptor - so I couldn't tell you how well the ones out now work, or how they work in comparison to the tape thingy. My recollection is that they worked acceptably in my (rural) area, but weren't free from hassle (selecting a clear frequency) or interference issues. See the article for more details on limitations of these devices in large cities with lots of radio stations. You should also note that not all such devices are legal in all countries (depending on power, frequency range etc.). Equisetum (talk | contributions) 14:44, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, they are sold for car radio reception in the UK, but they work fine in country areas, using a 12v portable battery and transmitting to a cheap radio receiver perhaps 20 or 30 yards away. The transmission frequency can be adjusted to a less-crowded part of the dial, but this might be difficult in some areas. The quality is inferior to a direct connection from headphone jack to tape input because of the frequency modulation and demodulation involved, and quality can be much more seriously affected by poor reception and interference from other transmitters. Dbfirs 16:21, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, CTJF83 22:01, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Arabian hacker group

Hello. A couple days ago, I read about a group of Arabian hackers that exists to break down Arabian government restrictions on internet communication so citizens can communicate/revolutionize freely. I want to research this group for an essay, and tried googling "Arabian hackers" and couldn't find the group. Perhaps any of you know it? thanks!--SR-71 pilot (talk) 17:14, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

http://news.google.com/news?q=arab%20hackers ? ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:03, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Telecomix was what I was looking for. thank you!--SR-71 pilot (talk) 00:08, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Roger ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:22, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Kindle Restart Problem

I am using Calibre to create collections. every thing works fine. All files get uploaded as they should. As you know to get the .mobi files in their proper collections (folders) one must RESTART Kindle. But I fail to get the "RESTART" option from the Menu ( It worked well yesterday ) One has to press MENU, select "settings" and then choose RESTART but I don't get to the "restart" it does not appear when I press "Menu" the SECOND time. The whole box that contains all options including RESTART, does not appear... Please help. Jon Ascton  (talk) 21:33, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

What model of Kindle are you talking about? On mine (a Kindle Keyboard) you do not need to restart for uploaded files to appear, if they are in the right directory. It takes a moment but the Kindle finds them automatically. I'm reasonably sure the Kindle Keyboard doesn't have a "restart" option, anyway. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:51, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks 98 for your response. Yes I have the one with a keyboard. It is not registered (am in India), so "make collections" is not working . The only way here to manage folders is by using the Calibre, which I have been doing successfully till now.As I write this..I have noticed two mysterious files (hidden) in Kindle folder, out of documents...can it be some new type of virus

Re: a virus, it seems unlikely to me. Maybe if you told us the file names, though, we could be helpful... --Mr.98 (talk) 00:23, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Sum of digits of 2^1000

I'm trying to solve this problem which is to sum the digits in 2^1000. The obvious thing seems to be to just brute force it by working out 2^1000 (using big ints) and then suming the digits. However, I feel that that would be missing the point and think there may be a more clever way of doing it; perhaps based on the digits behaving in a predictable way every time they are multiplied by 2. I'd rather not get the full answer but if you could tell me whether I'm right or give me a hint otherwise. --178.208.197.58 (talk) 23:48, 28 December 2011 (UTC) UPDATE: I can see for example that every digit is doubled and then if it is greater than 10 you keep the least significant digit and add the most significant to the next one after it is doubled but then with everything you need to keep track of I feel it looks a lot similar to what would be done simply by using big ints --178.208.197.58 (talk) 23:54, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

This looks like a job for ... the Maths Desk! ;) 24.92.85.35 (talk) 00:35, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, if the poster actually asks for a reduced sum of digits, then yes, it is a rather maths question. But the simple 'sum of digits' problem seems rather to be a test of programming skills – compare Google results for 'sum of digits of 2^1000' and 'reduced sum of digits of 2^1000'. --CiaPan (talk) 17:08, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Lots of programs can do it in a millisecond but it's a big job to do by hand regardless of your algorithm. If you think there is supposed to be a "point" then are you sure the problem isn't about finding the digital root? The term digital sum is sometimes used about digital root. You wrote "sum the digits in 2^1000" and I don't see how that could be interpreted as digital root, but perhaps you paraphrased the original question? Finding the digital root by hand is quite easy with a suitable algorithm. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:19, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

"... there may be a more clever way of doing it ..."
There is indeed a more clever way: unless the problem states otherwise, sum the binary digits (and of course be sure to give your answer in binary also). Mitch Ames (talk) 08:15, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Maybe there is a clever way to do this. I'm not sure. However, I've seen this and similar questions be used as a basic test of programming ability. On platforms where there is no native support for big ints, the logic involved in exactly computing the decimal representation of 2^1000 can be seen a test of basic computational literacy. Dragons flight (talk) 08:23, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

You could calculate 2^1024 much more easily by repeated squaring, and divide by 2^24. This may not be any quicker. However, 2^1024 is a lot easier to calculate because you start with 2 and square it 9 times.

Or you could convert 1000 into binary, use this to factorise 2^1000 into a product of numbers of the form 2^(2^n), calculate the factors by repeated squaring, and multiply them all together; if you save intermediate values this will take about 14 large multiplications. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:10, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Look at the following table. (Sorry about the formatting. There must be an easier way.)

n	2^n	Sum of digits	Digital root
0	1	1	1
1	2	2	2
2	4	4	4
3	8	8	8
4	16	7	7
5	32	5	5
6	64	10	1
7	128	11	2
8	256	13	4
9	512	8	8
10	1024	7	7
11	2048	14	5
12	4096	19	1
13	8192	20	2
14	16384	22	4
15	32768	26	8
16	65536	25	7
17	131072	14	5
18	262144	19	1
19	524288	29	2
20	1048576	31	4

Does anyone know if this pattern (if I didn't make any mistakes) continues indefinitely, and if so, whether this is a well known result?

On Physics Forum the same question was asked and answered. "[For] the single digit reduced sum … work modulo 9 to get the answer (which is 7 btw)." So perhaps this is trivial.

RussAbbott (talk) 00:39, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Your last column needs to be the digital root (so you keep summing the digits until you get to just one digit), but then the pattern will continue. It's a well known result (which is mentioned in the lede of that article) that the digital root of a sum is the sum of the digital roots of the summands (ie. digroot(a+b)=digroot(a)+digroot(b)). Setting a=b gives you digroot(2a)=2*digroot(a) (you may need to sum the digits of the RHS one more time after the doubling). In your table, the first column just doubles each time so the last column also doubles each time (with the digits being summed where necessary). Since the last column cycles once, it must continue to cycle forever. This is, in fact, the fourth bullet point in this list: Digital_root#Some_properties_of_digital_roots. --Tango (talk) 00:42, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Didn't realize what "digital root" meant. RussAbbott (talk) 00:59, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

The "sum of digits" column is A001370. -- BenRG (talk) 21:39, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Hard Drive Performance Planning

I am likely to build a new high-end workstation this spring. I need significant amounts of data storage, though I would also like to see good performance. Currently I run a system with a 120 GB SSD for OS / software and a 2 TB RAID 1 for data. This is supplemented with a 6 TB NAS (RAID 5) for backups and long-term storage. I'm wondering what I should be thinking about for the next iteration. A particularly interesting possibility seems to be using an SSD cache to accelerate larger drive(s), e.g. [2], or some form of small hybrid array. I know that Intel put SSD caching into their Z68 chipset, but I am unlikely to use that platform, so I am more likely to consider third-party solutions such as those offered by OCZ or some RAID controller manufacturers. I am wondering whether people here have experience with technology like this and what people might suggest using for cost-effective high performance disk storage in the near future. Dragons flight (talk) 23:51, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Whether an SSD, or more RAM, will help performance is mostly down to the locality characteristics of your access to the data; if it's highly local it'll help, if it's random then it won't. RAID is not a backup - what's the actual size of a dataset, how valuable is it, and what have you thought about for real backup? Testovergian (talk) 00:06, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

As I mentioned, I have a NAS used to store real backups (in addition to offsite storage of the most valuable subset). This is not a question about backups, but rather about local storage performance. Like most things, some data will be accessed relatively frequently while other data is accessed rarely. The access patterns change week to week and month to month and so it is not so easy to plan for, but might respond well to caching platforms that are responsive to changing access patterns. Dragons flight (talk) 00:47, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

December 29

Is there a way to send a two-way anonymous email?

I'd like to send an anonymous email without the recipient to know who I am, but would still like to be able to get a reply from him. Will anyone suggest any service that allows this? Thanks. --70.179.174.101 (talk) 01:45, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Sign up for any of the many free web-based email services. Create an account. Send the email. Check the account to see if you get a reply. -- kainaw™ 01:53, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

See Comparison of webmail providers. If you don't want to check the account periodically for a reply then look for a provider with email forwarding (assuming you have a non-public email account you check anyway). PrimeHunter (talk) 02:04, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Once upon a time, there used to be a service that would forward encrypted e-mails in "hops" between various servers. At each hop, a level of public-key encryption would be removed. Only the final server could figure out the actual destination of the mail (and did not know where the mail originated). I am not sure whether there was any provision for the recipient to send a reply; at the moment I can't see how to do that in a way that doesn't significantly reduce the sender's protection against being identified. I also don't know whether the service still exists. --Trovatore (talk) 02:15, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I guess you could include a multi-encrypted return address that had to "hop" back to the original sender, being decrypted along the way. As long as the servers themselves are not forced to reveal anything, that seems reasonably secure, barring traffic analysis. --Trovatore (talk) 02:22, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Pseudonymous remailers are what you're looking for. As far as I know they still exist. -- BenRG (talk) 05:14, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

locate an iPod

My daughter has an ipod4 that is synced to iTunes on my computer. She can't find it, but she thinks that there is a way to locate it with the iOS app icloud, or something like that, to make it play sounds. She can't find how to do it in iTunes. Is there a way to do this? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:06, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

This page at Apple describes how to "find my iPod". RudolfRed (talk) 03:33, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

It says that it can make a sound, but it doesn't say how to use it (to make a sound). We know it is somewhere in the house. She set up icloud on my computer the other day, but she doesn't know how to access it. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:59, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

From the sound of the above link, you may not be able to push 'Find My iPod touch' so you may not be able to use that method if you didn't already install the program in the ipod touch Nil Einne (talk) 15:54, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

She got this iPod a few days ago, and (fortunately) the software was already installed on it, so she just had to log in to icloud to make it make a sound, and she found it.

Resolved

Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:35, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Project Gutenberg and google books

Hi, if a book is in the public domain, are project gutenberg and google books equally easy for downloading, or...? Since project gutenberg only has 100,000 books according to its website, and google books is huge, what does gutenberg do that googlebooks doesn't? Thank you. Richard Peterson76.218.104.120 (talk) 03:43, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Gutenberg scans and OCRs, and then has humans exhaustively proof-read - see distributed proofreaders. Google scans and OCRs, and not much else. The best one-stop-shop (for me) is the Internet Archive, which grabs all of the PD books from google, gutenberg and other places, and makes them available in a range of formats. --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:48, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

PG also makes it easy to download in text format, while Google books only supports online viewing or PDF. If you want to reformat books, read them on mobile phones etc, perform textual analysis, quote long passages, or do a search through a book's text, Gutenberg's text format may be better.

Also, Project Gutenberg has been going for about 30 years longer than Google books. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:15, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

thanks everyone. If i get an old Kindle 1, which, or all, of PG, Google, and Internet Archive will I be able to get on my kindle screen?199.33.32.40 (talk) 01:35, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Take a look at the Amazon Kindle article. The old Kindle 1 supports "unprotected Mobipocket books (MOBI, PRC), plain text files (TXT), Topaz format books (TPZ), and Amazon's format (AZW)" although third-party software can "convert PDF and other files to the first-generation Kindle's supported formats". Astronaut (talk) 02:23, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what those acronyms are or mean. Will Kindle 1 get google books , internet archive or project gutenberg?76.218.104.120 (talk) 04:50, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Gutenberg should work. Many books are downloadable as "Kindle format" directly from Gutenberg. For the rest, you download some other format like HTML and then use a program like Calibre (software) to convert to Kindle format. For Google, it might be harder. Later Kindle versions that support PDF can read Google books, though without repaginating (works best if the page size is small or you have a Kindle DX) Jørgen (talk) 08:49, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

It should be noted that if the book has just been OCRed and not edited, it will appear as a big mash of nearly unreadable text on the Kindle. It's a pain; it's usually unreadable. I find most of the Gutenberg books I've used to show up OK on the Kindle when downloaded as .MOBI files. The formatting is usually a bit off but it's usually not awful. Sometimes the formatting is really off (each sentence has physical line breaks on it which means you get all sorts of jagged paragraphs on the Kindle) but it is still readable. With Google Books I have not had good luck at all other than as PDFs, which I find nearly unreadable on the Kindle's screen (you can't really zoom in to the right level, and it requires a lot of work to navigate around a PDF page on a Kindle). So my experience is that Gutenberg is pretty good for Kindle books — not perfect, but pretty good — and Google Books is generally not at all. I imagine Google Books would be more useful if you had something like an iPad, which is a larger format and has an interface for manipulating PDFs which is better thought-out than the Kindle's. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:47, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Let me just note that Google Books now offers at least some PD books in EPUB format, which is supported by many e-readers, although not by any of the Kindles. Looie496 (talk) 16:06, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Wow, thank you everyone. This is very helpful. Rich Peterson76.218.104.120 (talk) 06:13, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Mouse audio sound missing

I have Toshiba Satellite laptop with window 7. My computer doesn't give a click sound at all when i click files and folders to open and close them. I tried everything. Laptop is in good condition and speakes work very nicely accept that volume is very low even if its 100 percent volume. But mouse click never seemed to happen on my computer. click sound works only when i go to control panel window. Doesn't matter how many changes i make but mouse doesn't give a sound :( — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.89.20.204 (talk) 04:54, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Maybe it's just too quiet to hear ? Try plugging in headphones, as that might make it louder. You can also plug in external speakers, but obviously those aren't very portable, so best to use those at home. StuRat (talk) 05:01, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't recall that file/folder open/close are events that can be assigned a sound, but I'm not near a Win 7 system right now. You can look at and modify your current sound scheme by following the instructions here. --LarryMac | Talk 15:29, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps that sound (when you click on something) needs to be set up on your computer. (I'm working on Vista so Win 7 might be different, but this is how you turn it on...) You can go to the 'Sound' applet on the control panel and pick the 'Sounds' tab; scroll down to the 'Windows explorer' group and check if there is a little speaker next to "Start navigation" and "Complete navigation"; if not, you need to add a sound from the list of sounds in the drop-down list. You can use the 'test' button to try out the sounds (perhaps to check the volume is sufficient). Astronaut (talk) 02:12, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Reusing an old wired router to get more Ethernet ports in the home network

My main wireless router (#1) for the home is running out of Ethernet ports. Since I have an unused wired router (#2) lying around, I want to know how I can use it to make a few more Ethernet ports available for wired networking. I thought about a cascade NAT configuration, but the devices on the main LAN would not be able to talk to devices behind the newly added router #2.

What is the right way to do it?

Should I connect the WAN port of router #2 to a LAN port of router #1, turn off NAT on router #2, and add a route to router #1?

Should I turn off NAT & DHCP on router #2, and connect a LAN port of router #2 to a LAN port of router #1?

Should I do something else?

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.114.98.178 (talk) 07:40, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

"Should I turn off NAT & DHCP on router #2, and connect a LAN port of router #2 to a LAN port of router #1?" Depending on the type of router, this option should work. I suggest that you try this first. 85.200.249.178 (talk) 11:20, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

spider

i,m trying to write a spider with python, but i ran the following script:

import urllib
a=urllib.urlopen("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unexplained_sounds")
for v in a:
   print v
print 'done'

and one line said "access denied" if anyone can tell me how to fix it, that would be great. thanks, Jake1993811 (talk) 10:16, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Do you have an internet proxy server between you and the web (you should be able to tell from the settings for your web browser)? You will probably have to tell perl to use the proxy; I can't remember how urllib works but there should be an option. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:17, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Using python 2.7, I tried this and also got an error. The page returned to me included:

Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem. This is probably temporary and should be fixed soon. Please <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unexplained_sounds" onclick="window.location.reload(false); return false">try again</a> in a few minutes.

<snip>

If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below.

Request: GET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unexplained_sounds, from xxx.xxx.2.237 via sq62.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE9) to ()

Error: ERR_ACCESS_DENIED, errno [No Error] at Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:20:24 GMT

If I use the same code for other websites, they produce the expected content.-gadfium 19:36, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

The error message is a lie. And I mean that not in the slangy "computer program said something that doesn't apply in context" sense, but in the more traditional "a person deliberately told something untrue to prevent you from knowing the truth" sense. It's User-Agent discrimination. Look up how to change the user agent in the urllib documentation. Set it to Mozilla/5.0 and things will be all right, at least until that moving target moves again. And please configure all your other http clients to send random, false, or non-existent User-Agent headers as a protest against the shitty behavior of server admins who do this. 68.60.252.82 (talk) 23:41, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

thank you all. i,ll try that. Jake1993811 (talk) 02:41, 30 December 2011 (UTC) p.s: thanks for fixing the code snip — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jake1993811 (talk • contribs) 04:36, 30 December 2011 (UTC) thanks, it was the User-Agent headers. and the python docs say you also can't use "uncommon browsers". urge to kill: rising... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jake1993811 (talk • contribs) 05:43, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I've certainly learned something.-gadfium 07:49, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

There's a rich API with implementations in many many languages, including Python (mwclient (docs)). Scraping and parsing the HTML rather than using the API is, in 99% of cases, the wrong thing to do. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 12:25, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Just to explain why this "error" exists... When Wikipedia started, everything was fine. Then, some kids who had more time than programming experience decided to use scripting languages like PHP and Python to spam as many pages on Wikipedia as possible with vandalism. So, Wikipedia was set to ignore requests that do not have a header that appears to be a web browser. It is't a real problem. Anyone who knows how to program will likely use something like curl to access Wikipedia anyway. It only affects those that really aren't experience in web-programming. It creates a wall: Learn how to actually fetch and parse html before you start messing with Wikipedia. Most people do not feel that this wall is a bad thing. -- kainaw™ 14:31, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

kainaw, what evidence do you have that it was kids? also, meny other sites do this also. and i can see why. Jake1993811 (talk) 23:19, 30 December 2011 (UTC) i changed the user-agent header, now it say the server severed the connection. 68.60.252.82, if you have advice, that would be great. and someone tell the server admin hes an a**hole. Jake1993811 (talk) 03:57, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

>>> import urllib, urllib2
>>> useragent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/535.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.6.872.0Safari/535.2"
>>> contenttype = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
>>> url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_ball"
>>> request = urllib2.Request(url=url, headers={"User-agent":useragent, "Content-type":contenttype})
>>> for x in urllib2.urlopen(request):
... 	print x

That works for me. What exactly did you do? →Στc. 04:22, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

getting started with paypal

So, how do I actually paypal for something I bought on the internet. Paypal itself has sent me an email with the details of how much I need to pay and what for, and a big button saying Pay Now, going to that, I had to create a paypal account, but that done, going to the email button again, it comes up with my new account, which is empty, there is no mention anywhere of the money I owe, just a series of lists with nothing on and a few blank forms. What do I do now, then, to actually send this money? Surely this was supposed to be the easier way of paying for things, it really doesn't look it from here.

The only thing I can find anywhere near resembling an opportunity to send money is a form to pay someone, for which I would need to know various details including their email address, which I don't have, and I suspect this would be sent separate to the original payment demand, leaving that not marked as paid off.

85.210.127.3 (talk) 11:09, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

You may have to send a payment to the email address. (Can you contact the person who you need to pay?) Is this for an eBay/auction sale, or to an online store, or a gift to a private person? Some online stores will have a connection with a form to the PayPal site, but often with eBay sellers and private individuals you have to send the payment to their email. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:20, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

It's on a site similar to ebay but a bit smaller, I now have the email address of the person I need to pay, so I can send the money that way, but what I want to know is, if I instruct paypal to send him the money, would it mark my payment request as sent? since they are selling lots of these, how would they know which ones had been paid for, there isn't anything I can see to link my paypal account to my particular order details 85.210.117.167 (talk) 16:48, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, so now Paypal is being even more horrible than before, apparently to pay for something, I need to verify my account by linking it not just to my card, but also to my bank account, except that where I already tried to link it to my bank when first attempting to create an account, and then found that I would have to wait some days for that to be confirmed, I gave up and went with just paying by card. What this apprently means, though, is that I cannot link and verify my account until after my other attempt is finished, that is until I manage to find out how to sign back into the half created account, which is no longer possible, and wait thosw few days for confirmation, which is longer than I have to pay this money. The alternative is to transfer funds to my paypal account, which also takes some days. What happened to the idea that this was a much quicker and easier method of paying for things?

How do I fix this? How can I get it to stop attempting to confirm my other account attempt, verify this real account and let me send this person the money? All I want to do is pay them, it should not be so hard, right? 85.210.117.167 (talk) 17:13, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, forget all that, problem solved, it turned out both times I had tried to activate the account through my email, it had not bothered, but the third time, it worked suddenly, and there it all is, fixed just like that. Thanks for your help. 85.210.117.167 (talk) 17:34, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

my pc swaps always on the hd

even if the sum of the sizes of the processes is less than the RAM amount.. any idea? thanx --192.35.17.21 (talk) 14:35, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused by your question. Are you asking why your OS swaps data out of RAM to the HDD even when there is more available then in total use by programs or why your OS has a swap (or page in the case of any Windows NT) file even when there is more available RAM then in total use by programs? For the second case, most OSes prefer to keep the swap file both to ensure there is alway enough space for it and to reduce fragmentation. As for the first case, with any OS, there's always some conflict between deciding whether to cache data which may be needed in the near future in RAM or keep program data in RAM which hasn't been used for a long time and may not be needed for a long time. I presume some OSes also preemptively copy of program data to the swap or page space while preserving it in RAM ensuring it can easily be reallocated if necessary, whether for RAM or cache data. (Remember unlike with cache data, you can't simply delete program data if you don't have a copy.) Recent versions of Windows are generally considered fairly aggressive in swapping out program data and you only have limited control. With various *nix OSes I believe you have far greater control over how aggressive the OS is. However before you get too concerned are you actually noticing problems, e.g. it's taking a long time to go back to old programs? If the only effect is in some system monitor, I suggest it's best to stop worrying about it. Nil Einne (talk) 16:16, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

The operating system can page out unused stuff even if it doesn't need memory right now, in anticipation of needing it later. Also, memory use is not simply a sum of process sizes, as memory contains other things, such as the operating system kernel and its data structures, network buffers, and (as a rather large item) cached disk data. If some part of a process hasn't been touched in a long time, it may make sense to page it out so that more file data can be cached in memory. 88.112.59.31 (talk) 16:25, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

If it is a Windows system, be sure to let Windows manage the Swap file. This is in the system settings somewhere. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:29, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

FoxTabPDF Converter

I am trying to download "FoxTabPDF converter" from www.foxtab.com. However, at the end of the installation I keep getting the message "Printer installation error 1601". How can i find out what this means and how can I successfully download this program? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ralphbrighton (talk • contribs) 18:13, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't know the program, but I'd be marginally wary of it. A Google search on it returns most of the top ten results suggesting it may be malware. Per this Mozilla support post this is not a recognised Firefox add-on, and there are a number of established PDF convertor programs; I'd be inclined to go for one of them (I mainly use Acrobat Professional myself, but have successfully used CutePDF on many occasions). --jjron (talk) 09:37, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

December 30

follow up: my pc swaps always on the hd

but is it normal that the HDD led is always on, even if I'm simply browsing the web? thanx --192.35.17.16 (talk) 10:51, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes. Lots of reading and writing happens anyway, like updating cookies. StuRat (talk) 21:56, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Transistor_count Article - Transistor count for Mux 4 input is 24?

Hello, I see that in the article – Transistor_count, Transistor count for Mux 4 input is 24. I guess we are referring to the Mux built using basic Gates (AND / OR Logic). I am not able to figure out the circuit being referred here. The link leads to a circuit which would consume more transistors then 24. Can you please help me to get hold of the circuit for 4 input Mux with the transistor count to be 24?

Thanks, Bukka — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bukka4 (talk • contribs) 11:11, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

For others' reference, the relevant articles mentioned in the question are transistor count and Multiplexer#Digital multiplexers -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 11:46, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

My basic digital design textbook, Digital Design Principles and Practices, by John F. Wakerly, shows a two-element mux with six transistors. (Two AND, a NOT, and an OR). So, we could cascade two of those into a third, and use a fourth mux to switch the selector signal for the second-tier mux... and we get a four-input mux with 24 transistors (built from four individual 2-input muxes).

I suspect this is suboptimal; we could probably reduce the circuit complexity below 24 transistors. But, throw in some level buffers and a few transistors to regulate the current, and I could see getting up to 24 transistors in an actual, synthesizable design. On the other hand, it seems more plausible that an actual, synthesizable silicon chip would exclusively use NOR logic or NAND logic; so if you wanted to work within that constraint, you'd have to build the truth-table and figure out how to build it with those gates. And, you would probably want to investigate the actual fab process to see what transistor-level implementation is used for each type of logic-gate. In a very modern chip fab process, a mux is a primitive-element, and the actual circuit layout would be selected from a library of available mask designs, based on constraints from an optimizing logic synthesizer program.

The point is, it is theoretically possible to build a 4-input mux using fewer than 24 individual transistors (... I think); it is certainly possible to use more; so whichever article told you that it requires "24" was either incorrect, or was referring to some unspecified incarnation of a MUX. Nimur (talk) 17:30, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

The 24 comes from Transistor count#Logic Functions which (rather fuzzily) says "Transistor count for generic logic functions is based on CMOS implementation" (but provides no reference). I don't know what that's supposed to mean: whether they're asserting that 24 is typical, minimal, or what. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:13, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

blender 3D modeling software

I recently downloaded the above program, and after a few minutes failing to get anything to work, managed to find tutorials online, including one that gives a detailed step by step guide to creating a 'gingerbread man' figure. It was going so well to start with, but then my computer turned itself off, (some other unrelated bug I am working on fixing) and I had to start again. Now, for some reason the program is doing different things to it was before, even though I am following the instructions carefully and have reset the program's default settings, just in case something had changed there. So, I am wondering, is there anywhere I can go to ask for advice on this from people that know the program, all I can find on their website is more tutorials.

79.66.109.0 (talk) 11:17, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Try the forums in the "support" section here. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 11:51, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I would just note also that Blender is a tough program to use — very unintuitive compared to any other programs you're used to, because the interface is very cobbled-together and unique — and there might not be an easy answer to what you're asking about. When I started using it, I was constantly making it do things that seemed unreproducible, likely because I had clicked one of its million tiny buttons without realizing it, or had pressed the wrong button on the keyboard without realizing it, and found myself constantly stuck, etc. But if you persist at it you learn to be quite disciplined about what you do, what you don't hit, how to (mostly) get out of situations you've created for yourself. It's a cool program in the sense that it produces some nice looking stuff without an excess of hardware or talent, but it's easily the most frustrating user-interface experience I've ever had with any program, ever. (Your warning that this will be the case comes from the fact that die-hard Blender users all say that they wish all programs had interfaces like this. Translation: I spent years learning how to use this damned program's interface, and those skills are totally wasted on anything else!) --Mr.98 (talk) 13:43, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I have actually been finding it reasonably easy, compared to many other programs I have tried, it all seems to make sense and the guides and tutorials are easy to read and understand. Maybe I just think in the same way as whoever designed this. Anyway, the problem seems to have fixed itself somehow, so thanks for everything, might be helpful next time something goes wrong. 79.66.109.0 (talk) 14:56, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I consider myself a bottom-rung advanced-level modeler (I can make a game-compliant fully unwrapped and textured gingerbread man in a few minutes, heh), I have handled different 3d programs usually for export/import compatibility reasons, and I have to echo Mr.98's sentiments above. Blender is the most alien of any 3d programs I have ever worked with. Compared to say, Maya, where skills can easily be carried over to other programs like 3ds Max, Modo, or Cinema4d with relatively minor differences; Blender's interface is an island and not in a good way. Be prepared to find yourself having trouble adapting to other software if you go with Blender as your native program. Admittedly though, of all open-source 3d programs, Blender is the most fully-documented with a lot of tutorials and a large user base (though you can say the same for more mainstream commercial 3d programs).

Anyway, I suggest finding out if they have IRC channels or somesuch, which would make it easier for you to directly talk with more experienced users. Open-source projects usually have those. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 15:16, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

How safe is being without antivirus software while downloading antivirus software?

McAfee insists that I uninstall Norton Antivirus before downloading their protection, which seems ridiculous. It seems that the software should be downloaded and then just not activated, after which you would uninstall the old antivirus software. I don't think I would have taken such a chance if I had known I'd still be sitting here watching the software download after two hours. I decided Wikipedia was probably safe enough to use given its lack of ads, since I didn't want to just go off and leave my computer knowing I have to be ready to act when the download is complete. As to why I'm doing this, it's cheaper and I can pay for Internet access, phone and security all at once instead of making a separate payment on a credit card I never use. And please don't tell me about free stuff as I'm afraid to trust that.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:11, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

If you're that paranoid switch to something like Linux Mint Operating System. Not only is it free but it is also (by actuality) cheaper the the that antiviral software -too boot.--Aspro (talk) 21:29, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

You can then load-down tons of free software without viruses, trojans and other nasties.--Aspro (talk) 21:33, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Be aware that Linux is completely different than anything you are used to using on Windows. Given the OP's past difficulties with plain old vanilla Windows, I don't want to be responsible for getting him up and running with Linux... I'm pretty computer savvy and I find Linux unbelievably frustrating when I've had to use it. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:10, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Different, anyways. Completely different... not really. ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:12, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes Linux is Not Window. If you try to stay with Microsoft's own version of operating systems, that only allows one to do what Microsoft allows you to do with a computer that you own then that's up to you. Is it not better to start-a-fresh and save yourself a lot of hassle in the future (editing registers, installing anti-viruses apps, and mind-boggling update, etc.) by learning a transparent and proper OS? If people had their first experience on Linux/Unix etc., then they would never bother to suss out the convolutions that Microsoft forces them though. Granted, one has to leave the Microsoft mindset behind to adopt something more flexible that doesn't constantly need tweaking and maintenance - but isn't that the whole point? --Aspro (talk) 23:50, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

That's all well and good, but doesn't answer the OPs question. It's like saying "buy a car" to someone who asks about a broken bicycle. 82.45.62.107 (talk) 00:44, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Except in this case the car is free and the bicycle is massively expensive. :) But we digress... ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:12, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Two antivirus programs running at the same time will cause problems, conflict with each other when a virus is detected, and might even crash the computer. That's the basic rationale behind McAfee telling you to uninstall Norton Antivirus first. As for how safe you will be without antivirus software; as long as you don't download any programs from dubious sources and install them you will be ok. 82.45.62.107 (talk) 22:09, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Assuming you have some sort of firewall independent of your antivirus software (Windows comes with a decent one these days), you'll be perfectly safe assuming you only download and run things from trusted sources (what you should be attempting to do regardless). A lot of antivirus programs are very virus-like themselves these days, and you really don't want two running at once (at the very least not both doing the same thing [real-time scanning, etc.]). Many Norton products, for example, instead of uninstalling when you ask them to do not actually uninstall, but instead break your entire network configuration; hence the existence of the "Norton Removal Tool". I put Avira on Windows boxes these days, it's free and has been competitively ranked for several years running. ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:22, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Download complete, no viruses detected. And no, I don't want to deal with anything strange. I only visited Wikipedia and the antivirus sites and opened the emails with links from those companies.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 03:54, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I should mention the donload took four hours. I guess my Internet is just slow. But that was the second time since it was going back from saying it was over halfway done to saying it was one-fifth done multiple times and I finally stopped it.

And just to clarify, people get virus messages all the time when they haven't done anything but go to a web site, and I stayed away from pretty much all of them in the interim. Someone claims to have gotten a trojan merely from clicking on a message board topic that has a post which contains links, which would be comparable to clicking on someone's talk page link here. I've gotten virus messages which turned out to be fake, and in the past week I've had three attack messages (something that never happened before) for which Norton dealt with the situation and no further action was required. I don't know what caused these attacks because the sites I went to were reasonably trustworthy (it could have been ads) although one appeared at the exact time a Java update message appeared. Investigating the situation showed something called a toolkit, though it wasn't in the full report once the error message was gone (an IP address for each attack was shown, and I'm not sure whether I saved those) and I forgot to save any Norton reports once I uninstalled Norton.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:33, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

December 31

"find" in firefox browsers

When I try to "find" a string, the scroll-bar ends up so positioned that the string I'm searching for is on the lowest line in the window. If a human did that, I'd consider it rude at best. Is there a way to make it appear on the middle line? Michael Hardy (talk) 00:11, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't like that either. If you do a "Previous" find, it puts the line at the top, which is a bit better. StuRat (talk) 00:17, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

First result for a search of 'firefox addon find middle': https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/find-to-center/ ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:20, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Is this fast enough to run Battlefield 3?

I am purchasing a new Dell XPS 15 laptop with the following customized specs:

• 2.2 Ghz i7 2670-QM
• 8 Gb, 1333 Mhz RAM
• nVidia GeForce GT 540M 2 gb
• Windows 7, 64-bit

This should be fast enough to run BF3 right? What kind of fps can I expect? Acceptable (talk) 01:17, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, & significantly more FPS than the human eye is physically able to distinguish. ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:19, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, that's better then me, welp. Thank god I'm getting a new video card in a couple of days. ResMar 02:33, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Helping MS SQL 2000 trying to understand how to do this

Hi,

I've got two huge tables Sales and Events containing something like things clients bought (this is not really what happens but this example matches the real situation). Events looks like:

eventid, clientid, datetime

Sales contains:

eventid, productid, price

So a Sale is one of the events that can happen to a client. To get all sales for client 12345 we're using a query like this:

select * from sales where eventid in (select eventid from event where clientid=12345)

Obviously a JOIN would be a much better solution, but translating our internal query language to SQL is much easier this way, and MS SQL seems to understand that it's actually supposed to JOIN when I look at the Estimated Execution Plan. This query is done in 30 milliseconds.

Now I want to know: at what prices did client 12345 buy product 678. What SQL seems to think is that it's much faster to find all Sales for product 678 and after that do the difficult join to find out which records apply for client 12345. Unfortunately, this a very slow (3 seconds+) strategy as nearly every client bought 678, but a normal client only bought a couple of items. It would be much faster to find the 20 or so sales for client 12345 and then filter for the product.

Is there anyway I can help SQL understand this? I've been looking into "hints", but I can't find a hint like "filter on this first". All possible indexes are there, and all statistics have been updated.

Txs! Joepnl (talk) 02:38, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Just to be clear, the slow SELECT is like this, right ?

 select price from sales 
  where productid = 678
    and eventid in 
(select eventid from event 
  where clientid = 12345)

If so, you might try reversing the order:

 select price from sales 
  where eventid in 
(select eventid from event 
  where clientid = 12345)
    and productid = 678

If that doesn't help, then an actual JOIN may be the only cure, or perhaps you could do the query without the productid WHERE clause, and put the results into a temporary table, then apply that clause to the that table. StuRat (talk) 02:47, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Flash drive

I got my first flash drive ... and promptly screwed up. The second time I copied some files to it, I yanked it out without selecting eject. All of the files and folders are gone (no permanent loss). My question is, have I damaged the drive, or can I go ahead and transfer the files again? Clarityfiend (talk) 02:00, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

You probably didn't damage it. Give it a try. StuRat (talk) 02:55, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd have thought that if there is nothing recoverable on it, and it may possibly be corrupt, reformatting it might be a good idea? What do others think? AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:10, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) Agree (with both), but I'd be a little wary. That 'eject' function is a bit of a gimmick in my experience, at least on Windows computers - it's like a safety mechanism to check that the drive isn't actually in use, but provided you have nothing open in an application, copying, saving, etc, then just yanking it out like that shouldn't do anything; it certainly shouldn't wipe everything on the drive. I'd test it out with some unimportant files for a while to make sure the drive itself isn't faulty. Also, I don't mean to sound presumptuous, but are sure you ever really had the files/folders on there in the first place? It's just that I've been using these things for many years and have seen them yanked out on hundreds of occasions without that happening. --jjron (talk) 03:14, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure. It happened the second time I transferred files over. The stuff from the first time was there. Clarityfiend (talk) 04:15, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Uh oh. I formatted it (it went extremely fast). Then, when I tried to add a new folder, it said "Could not find this item. This is no longer located in <%NULL:Optext>. Verify the item's location and try again. Lexar" Clarityfiend (talk) 04:21, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Try formatting again, but make sure you untick "Quick format" in the format dialogue box to get a full format. After that I'd personally restart the computer, and try another flash drive in it if you have access to one, just to make sure it's not just the computer. Then try this drive on a different computer (again checking if it's the drive or the computer). Then take the damn thing back to the shop and swap it over, as I personally suspect the drive is faulty (and FWIW I wouldn't get Lexar, I tend to either buy Sandisk or (previously) Kingston, but I don't mean to sound like a consumer advice service or something so I won't actually recommend any particular brand). --jjron (talk) 05:05, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm ... I rebooted, stuck it in a different slot, and got my stuff back. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:21, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

"Eject" is there because modern operating systems (for the last 20 years or so) cache disk writes. If you yank a drive out without stopping it then any unwritten cached data has nowhere to go. Actually, Windows disabled disk caching on USB devices by default some time ago because of people's tendency to yank them out without stopping them, so that probably isn't your problem. But in the future you could make your USB devices faster by enabling disk writes (it's in the device properties), as long as you remember to eject them. -- BenRG (talk) 06:13, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Enabling disk writes ? You must mean delayed writes. I don't care for that option. My goal is to make things quick and simple for me, not the computer, and having to pick eject makes it worse. StuRat (talk) 16:33, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't need that much speed, but thanks all. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:11, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Running on the battery

I bought an Asus laptop last July which came with Win7. A couple of months ago I installed Ubuntu to dual boot. I've discovered that if, while in Windows, I unplug the power supply and use battery power it says there is 98%. However, in Ubuntu when I unplug it I get a warning that there is insufficient power in the battery and the computer will hibernate. If I plug the power back in I can see that the battery has 98% power left before it shuts down. Any suggestions? CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 08:08, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

looks like a bug. try ubuntuforums.org for the specialists in this. good luck! Staticd (talk) 13:53, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 16:11, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Ad-ID

Friends- In your reporting re. Ad-ID your refer to the idea that Ad-ID is a descendant of the "International Standardized Commercial Identifier" or something close to that.

Since I (a) created ISCI in 1969,

       (b) proposed it to the AAAAs in early 1970, 
       (c) prepared its first publication for the AAAA's announcement of ISCI's "birth" in Spring 1970, 
       (d) supervised its use by the industry from ISCI's debut, 01JL1970, 
       (e) was its sole "operator" through 31JA1974 when I retired after 23 years with 
                Leo Burnett Advertising (VP-Broadcast Business) and 
       (f) continued to single-handedly operate ISCI until the end of 1992 when I sold the 
                majority (96%) of ISCI coding to the AAAA's and the National Association of Advertisers -   

perhaps you will allow me to correct your name (above) to "Industry Standard Commercial Identification".

Although I see that the AAAA's and Ad/ID (which was built upon the ISCI system) announced several years ago that ISCI was being retired, they were possibly in breach of contract unless they made it clear that they were only retiring the 96% of the ISCI codes which they owned. I did not see the announcement. I'm now 97 years of age and at that time was caring for both my bride of 69 years and my 100+ year-old-sister. I hope you will correct the name.

FYI: Incidentally, I will shortly provide Wikipedia with the details regarding "Dole Dating" - a copyrighted dating system I created in 1998 and have urged many to adopt with no fear of copyright infringement. It is the briefest possible foolproof method of expressing dates.

Alors,

David W. Dole dwdole@me.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.72.27.52 (talk) 09:11, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

mymax wireless router not turning on.

I was going to use my computer today and saw that the wireless network was not working. Tried to see what was the problem and saw that my mymax wireless router power led is off. Tried to plug it on and off again without sucess. What can be the problem?201.78.191.84 (talk) 12:35, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Start with the obvious: try plugging something else into the same power socket. Does that work? If not you need to fix the power supply. If so, you need to fix or replace the router.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 13:32, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

C won't compile

#include <stdio.h> #include <math.h> int isPrime(int x); int main(void) { ... } int isPrime(int x) { int i; for (i=2; i <= sqrt((double)x); i++) if (x % i != 0) return 0; return 1; }

So I've written this program to check whether a number is prime but it won't compile and it has someting to do with the sqrt(). I get a message saying "...: undefined reference to 'sqrt'" "collect2: ld returned 1 exit status" --178.208.197.58 (talk) 18:39, 31 December 2011 (UTC)