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February 4

Making a hard disk non-bootable

Hard disk upgrade time! I love this time. I've left my old Vista hard disk in my Windows PC and set up Windows 7 on the new hard disk, like I always do. I set up the new hard disk in the BIOS to have boot priority. Oddly, today when I walked up and un-slept the computer, it had apparently restarted and booted off the old Vista drive despite the boot priority. I was thinking that maybe the new drive had taken a while to spin up at boot time for some reason, so the BIOS just skipped over to the Vista drive and booted.

I would like to make the old hard disk nonbootable (but I want to keep the partition and all its files intact as I gradually move needed stuff over to the new hard disk). Googling, surprisingly, hasn't really helped with this task that I would have thought was simple — all my Google results helpfully tell me how to repair the MBR or fix problems where the computer is supposed to boot but does not. Thanks for any help. Comet Tuttle (talk) 02:16, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Can't you set it in the BIOS to not be bootable ? The other alternative, I suppose, is to delete some bits from the hard disk used in the boot process, but that might produce an error at bootup. StuRat (talk) 02:49, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, just boot order. I don't like the idea of just corrupting the boot sector; I'd like it wiped, if anything (or otherwise marked as "don't boot this disk"). Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:34, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's a "bootable?" entry in each partition record in the master boot record, and various tools can be used to manipulate it. In linux I used gparted's "manage flags" option (which I think calls fdisk to do the work), and I've done it the hard way using dd as a disk editor, to change a single byte at raw address 0x1be from 0x80 to 0x00. I don't know if Windows' disk-management plugin will let you change the "bootable" flag of a partition to off, or if it will do so for the partition you've just booted. Failing that, you can book to a linux liveCD to make the change. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 18:47, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am adventurous enough to try this and will try to go for it when I have time. Thanks! Comet Tuttle (talk) 02:26, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This might work; type msconfig at Start, go to the "boot" tab and see if Vista is listed there. If it is, select it and click delete AvrillirvA (talk) 18:57, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Vista hard disk isn't listed there, unfortunately. Comet Tuttle (talk) 02:26, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

CPU heating concern

Hello! It's my first time building a computer. I bought an Intel i5 Sandy Bridge processor and am running Ubuntu. I've been compressing a 150+ GB file with pbzip2 which is able to utilize all 4 cores. When I check the CPU temp sensor while compressing, I get concerned because all four cores are at or just below 98.0 °C, which is the listed critical value according to the Ubuntu $ sensors command. The processor seems to be throttling to not exceed that critical threshold, but could I have made a mistake in the build? Is it normal for the processor to get this hot when it is being fully utilized? I double-checked the heatsink fan (came with the processor) and it appears securely fastened above the processor. Oddly, if I put my finger close to the heatsink fan, the air is cool even when the CPU is reported to be quite hot (I was expecting it to feel more like a laptop fan vent, which seem to be habitually quite warm). Even after I kill the compression task, the CPU still reports values 93 - 94 °C 5 to 10 minutes afterward. Is this bad for the processor to be operating at such high temperatures? Thank you for any advice of insight into this problem.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 02:41, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds to me like the sensor is bad and should be replaced. StuRat (talk) 02:46, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just to update, over 40 minutes after cancelling the compression, and having done nothing since then but browse the web, the CPU is still report >90°C temperatures. When I first turned on the PC and immediately called $ sensors in Ubuntu, the temperatures were only 40-50°C. Not sure what temperatures to expect, but I guess those would be believable (but still perhaps a bit high) for startup. For reference, calling # sensors-detect in Ubuntu recognizes what it calls the "Intel digital thermal sensor" and uses the "driver 'coretemp'" to access it.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 03:20, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I know only a little about this, but those temperatures sound accurate to me, and it is getting too hot. A temp 45-50C is about typical for a motherboard. The Intel i3/5/7 are designed to run hotter than that, up to about 75C. But >90C is way too hot. Windows monitors the temp and scales back the Turbo Boost if it needs to. I don't know about the OS you are using. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:26, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unplug the computer and let it sit overnight. Then plug it in and boot it and read the temp immediately. Presumably the temp should still be around room temp then, which is typically around 22°C. If it's reading much more than that, you know the sensor is bad. (Although, if it reads right then, that doesn't necessarily mean the sensor is good, as it might only go bad at higher temps.) StuRat (talk) 03:33, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that by the time a PC has booted, the CPU is likely to be well above room temperature - I can get a temperature change of around 10 degrees C within a few seconds on my overclocked i7, just by loading an image into Paint.net (measured via Core Temp 1.0). At the moment in a distinctly chilly room, it is running at about 40 C idling, and CPU-intensive activities (i.e. games) will easily take it into the mid 60s, even with a heatsink the size of a biscuit-tin (the GPU will hit 80 C or so if pushed hard, but they are intended to run hotter). One possibility is that the heatsink hasn't been installed properly - did you use the conductive grease you are supposed to? Of course, you can really only check this by taking it off - at which point you'd need to reapply the grease anyway... AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:49, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The CPU thermal sensor is an on-die thermal diode, connected through the CPU socket to logic in the northbridge (e.g. on Socket 764 and Socket 940 it's pins THERMDA/THERMDC). Intel Xeon 5500 processors feature multiple on-die sensors per core (DTS) the values of which can be read in software over the PECI, which the northbridge uses for fan control. As these sensors are built right into the cpu die, replacing them is impossible. Neither is it likely that the relevant connections to these sensors have failed, as this would show as no reading, not as a wrong reading. A common error new builders make is misapplying the thermal interface between the cpu and the cooler - too much paste or too little, or an air bubble in the paste pad. 91.125.186.46 (talk) 04:38, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The processor's heatsink came with a thermal pad on the bottom, but I attached and removed the heatsink a couple times without thinking much of it. I didn't know that introduces air bubbles and lessens the conductivity of heat to the sink (well, at least that is what I have read about thermal compound, but perhaps the same goes for the cheap pre-applied thermal pad). I'll go out tomorrow and buy some thermal paste and apply it correctly; I'll post back afterwards.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 05:54, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you really only get one go. You need to thoroughly remove the existing thermal grease (see this video) from both the cpu and heatsink, and make sure they;re clean and dry before you apply the new layer. Make sure not to add too much either, as a thick layer will also be a problem. This process isn't really very hard, but if its your first time, or if you only build a PC every few years, its a skill you don't get much practice at. 91.125.186.46 (talk) 12:51, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with 91.125... 98 C is too hot, and yes running it at subcritical, but elevated temperatures over long periods of time can appreciably shorten the life of the processor (overclockers run into this problem occasionally). I also suspect, assuming the sensors are correct, that the problem has to do with the connection between the heat sink and your processor.

All of this goes without saying that it's quite possible to brick your processor, either by not having it cool sufficiently enough, or by getting the paste on a conductive component and shorting it out. There's a certain "expert" element to this kinda task. And as for keeping it off and starting it back up... cpus and their heat sync assemblies, even installed wrong, are remarkably conductive. I've seen videos of cpus go up in smoke within 3 seconds of removing the heat sink (most modern chips should throttle themselves or shut down, which may be why yours hasn't destroyed itself yet... I don't know the details on the i5s). By the time the CPU booted any temp differences would be indistinguishable. Shadowjams (talk) 16:33, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Update: I went to remove the heatsink to clean and apply thermal paste, and found that one of the latches wasn't touching all the way down to the board, making partial incomplete contact with the CPU (embarrassing). I took it all the way off, cleaned the heatsink and CPU with rubbing alcohol, and applied the thermal paste according to directions. Big difference: at idle, the CPU reading are 35-45°C; at full load (100% on all 4 CPUs) the readings hover between 77-81°C, occasionally reaching 82°C, but no hotter, and I've been running at full load for about 15 minutes now (factory settings, no overclocking). When I kill the task, the temps drop almost instantly by 10°C, and cool off more as more time passes. This sounds much better to me than the >90°C temps with improper heatsink installation, but I'd still like confirmation that 80°C at max load is still okay. The coretemps utility calls 80°C "high" (understandable for full load), but nowhere near 98°C, which it labels "critical." Is it still healthy for the processor to run highly-computational tasks for extended periods of time (a few hours) as long as the processor doesn't get hotter than around 80°C? Thank you for all your helpful information to have come this far.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 01:45, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that you have solved the problem. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:47, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why does images change?

why this: "||||||||||||||||" sometimes looks like green???? (And there are some images that can change perception!) (for example this (i found it on a forum) change the wole image when you change the angle of you screen? How's this? --190.158.184.192 (talk) 05:37, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/subpixel.php ¦ Reisio (talk) 11:48, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

power of a Kobo (or other e-readers)

I am curious as to how the "power" of modern e-readers (i.e. memory, speed, etc.) compare to older computers such as the old Commodore 64 (which got me through university!). While I suspect that there is no way to make a fair comparision (it's probably like comparing apples to oranges), it would be interesting to see how they do compare.

72.136.132.216 (talk) 14:28, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there are many different e-readers. According to our article Kobo eReader this thing has 1GB of memory (or around 1,000 books) plus up to 32GB on a SD card. According to Commodore 64 it had 64 kB RAM + 20 kB ROM... Von Restorff (talk) 14:44, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A C=64 had a single 8-bit MOS Technology 6510 microprocessor running at around 1 Mhz; a Kobo Vox has a single ARM Cortex-A8 (a 32 bit ARMv7 architecture) running at 800Mhz. For a lot of real applications, the richer instruction set and wider registers will mean that the modern 32 bit architecture will take a lot fewer instructions to get stuff done. So you're right, there's no way to make any kind of fair comparison, but from a "getting stuff done" perspective, we can maybe handwave at 2000 times faster. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:47, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

February 5

Chrome - "The following plug-in has crashed: Shockwave Flash"

Getting the above message frequently in Google Chrome on Windows 7. Looked for help. Found lots of less than helpful and quite outdated non-help from Google.

Anybody? HiLo48 (talk) 02:43, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If it happens rarely, ignore it. If it happens often, try a download and reinstall of Flash. StuRat (talk) 04:29, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It happens several times a day. Since your post I've reinstalled Flash, rebooted, and it's still happening. HiLo48 (talk) 15:57, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried re-installing Chrome itself? --Mr.98 (talk) 16:28, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

http://techlogon.com/2011/08/11/shockwave-flash-crashes-in-google-chrome/ Von Restorff (talk) 16:33, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for that link. I have been having the very same problem with Chrome and Flash. → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 12:23, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it helped in my case too. Has reduced the frequency of the problem a lot, but not totally eliminated it. HiLo48 (talk) 08:43, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Used copy of Spore

Hi- I just got a used copy of Spore (game) (on a Mac). It came with the manual so I've got a validation key. When I enter it, it says that my key could not be validated. I assume this is the message that you see when you're trying to use an already-used key. Is there some sort of official way that I can get EA to revalidate this key? I know their extreme DRM was partly an effort to kill the used market for Spore. Am I just out of luck then? Thanks- 24.60.54.68 (talk) 04:13, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can try [1], but you'll have to pay US$10. Nil Einne (talk) 07:50, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks- I decided to just ask EA myself. Here's the reply I got, in case anybody cares:

"Please note that as you have purchased the used copy of the game I am unable to assist you with this issue. I suggest you to please contact retailer from where you have purchased the game or you can purchase the new key. As a valuable customer of EA, please accept the 15% origin discount (W6XAC-EAPAL-GMXT4) code for your next purchase. This code is valid for one month and can not be used for pre-orders. The code can only be redeemed here: http://store.origin.com"

Yes that's the real code- I won't be using it. 24.60.54.68 (talk) 17:01, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The correct response to this kind of DRM nonsense is piracy. Von Restorff (talk) 17:13, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Von Restorff, we do not accept or tolerate piracy on the reference desk. This is part of the official policy against contributory copyright violation, and the fine folks who are allowing you to use Wikipedia free-of-charge take this policy very seriously. If you do not understand the difference between free software and stolen software, I recommend you read our article on free software. If you simply want to get video games for free, here is a list of zero-cost games. If you don't like the selection, I recommend you browse over to the website of the Free Software Foundation, and start a campaign to make "free video games for Von Restorff" part of the high-priority projects. Nimur (talk) 18:11, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wut? You must be aware of the fact my comment is piracy nor copyvio, so your response to it is a bit weird and very offtopic. Von Restorff (talk) 18:37, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with VR on this one. He wasn't participating in piracy, he just mentioned it. --Ouro (blah blah) 18:41, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It would be different if I would've said: "download a keygen here".

Von Restorff (talk) 18:46, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I too am finding Nimur's response a tad mystifying. Von Restorff is making the rather cogent point that if you penalise genuine purchasers of games with onerous DRM requirements or treat them with contempt as EA are blatantly doing so (bad show chaps!) in this case, you run the risk of angering them sufficiently that they will resort to pirated material simply because it will actually work. It's like those beastly unskippable copyright warnings and films on DVDs these days - pirated versions have them all removed, they only waste the time of genuine purchasers. It's also a symptom of the software industries attempt to destroy thousands of years of economic principles by not allowing the customer to actually own what they purchase outright, to resell or dispose of as they see fit. Taking the view that the second hand software market is an evil parasite on their business they are attempting to change the paradigm of software that you only buy a finite license to use the software under whatever ridiculous restrictions they deem correct and you cannot sell that license on once your need for the software has ended, unlike the previous model where you simply uninstalled the software and you could perfectly legally sell it on for someone else to use in their turn. It's enough to make a chap really quite miffed! Quintessential British Gentleman (talk) 01:26, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly what has happened here, is there no way the original owner can uninstall and make the key valid for reuse? That is the facility I would expect EA to support. Otherwise if it has an install limit I'm with EA here and it was up to the person who sold the game to check it had the right to. Another way round would be to require games to check on the web every so often but that has other problems. Dmcq (talk) 09:26, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is a deauthorisation tool ([2]) but I believe it requires the tool to be run on the authorised computers [3]. More importantly I believe the bigger problem is the key is permanently associated with an EA account. If the original owner had provided the EA account, then I suspect the OP will have options. However if there are multiple games associated with that account, this may not be possible for the owner. BTW, if I understand the response correctly, the $10 for a new key option is available ('or you can purchase the new key'). Even if it's not, you could just not tell them it was bought used since from the description I don't see what's stopping it. Whether this will violate the EULA and whether this term would be valid in your country, I can't say. Nil Einne (talk) 11:19, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I just had a look at the article for the game and it looks like there may not be such a tool for the Mac, only the exe for the PC. That makes a mess of the situation. I think the only right the OP has is to take it back to the person who sold it to them for a refund, but EA has caused trouble to the original buyer by selling them something they couldn't sell on without telling them. So really are they willing to spend the extra $10 or do they want a refund? Dmcq (talk) 13:40, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I only paid $1 for my copy at a library book sale, so I'm not really out that much, and I'm certainly not going to complain to the library about it. And the verification is only to access online "shared" content. So I can still play the more-or-less full game, just can't get the online stuff that is supposed to be a big feature. I don't think it's worth the $10 for me to get the online stuff. The person who really makes out here is the original owner- they can still play the full game (which doesn't require the disc in the drive) with online content, and they are free to resell with the guarantee from EA that the later owner won't usurp their registration. I guess I can install and resell it too... probably for more than $1. I'm pleased that EA called me "a valuable customer"- I am not now nor will I in the future be their customer. 24.60.54.68 (talk) 21:51, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The 'valuable customer' bit is PR lingo, and means close to nothing, but just in case they're better off believing you're on their side, so that you don't publish the letter somewhere citing bad treatment of 'customers' should they include something less cuddly and warm ;) --Ouro (blah blah) 10:43, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

fast C/C++ coroutines?

Can anyone recommend a super-fast coroutine hack or library for C or C++? It should be very simple, i.e. have a fixed sized stack area per coroutine, and simply bang the machine registers to switch coroutines, rather than copying stacks around or anything like that. I guess it will have to know about the compiler's calling conventions so that parameters can be passed in registers. The application is monstrous amounts of SAX-style XML parsing, where writing stateful event handlers is getting too tedious. For now I don't care much about portability, if it works with gcc/x86. Thanks. 64.160.39.72 (talk) 10:29, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is your concern the context switch time, or should you be more worried about keeping code and data inside the CPU cache? Hcobb (talk) 15:39, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is, on new x86 platforms, the register bank is already virtualized. (Register renaming, among other fancy tricks). In short, the x86 microarchitecture is implemented to make fast context-switching automatic, unlike a small controller where you manually swap register banks by calling a context or bank switch instruction. So, you probably will gain nothing by trying to improve register utilization - it's already optimized. In a situation like this, the first step is to profile the program to determine exactly how wall clock time is being spent. I'll second the comment above - can you try to resize your data structures and functions so that the working set remains in the lowest cache level possible? The valgrind utility can help you analyze your program at the cache and memory transaction level. Cache utilization and performance will be more rewarding than context-switch tuning on most x86 machines. As always, I'll caveat my advice: the profiler analysis of your code on your machine is the best and most canonical source of information. Nimur (talk) 17:24, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A context switch on x86 costs thousands of cycles. I'm not sure where you got the idea that it's fast. Register renaming has no relevance to context switching that I can see. -- BenRG (talk) 00:16, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Simultaneous multithreading, or hyper-threading, is essentially performing a context switch as often as every instruction. Each thread explicitly uses eight or sixteen architectural registers, but these are virtualized and translated by the microarchitecture. The actual number of registers, and the actual number of simultaneous threads in the pipeline, is one of the parameters that differentiates different chip series. The Intel architectural philosophy is to perform these optimizations at runtime; they are completely opaque to a programmer. Some explanation as it pertains to Core i7; Intel's official documentation refers to this technology specifically as both context switching and as register renaming (depending on runtime thread policy). For peak performance, follow Intel's guidelines: run your co-routine on a thread, using an operating system thead library or Intel's processor enumeration utilities. It's unlikely that any "custom" parallelism scheme can outperform the standard system thread model, which already takes advantage of the hardware implementation. Nimur (talk) 06:23, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nimur, HT is not context switching in any useful sense. It actually appears as parallel cpu's at the software level. Anyway I think you basically don't understand the original question. Coroutines are not intended as a means of implementing parallelism. They're just like subroutines except the control mechanism is different, so there's no distinction between "call" and "return", which makes some types of programs cleaner. It's pretty trivial in assembler on most machines, though it requires hackery (that PuTTY thing being an example) in stack-oriented languages like C. Yes you can simulate coroutines with threads, but it's ridiculous overkill, like replacing a C function call with interprocess communication. As for the speed, see the thread-ring benchmark from Alioth. You notice GHC, Go, Mozart, and Erlang are around an order of magnitude faster than C or C++ (except for "C++ #4" which I'll get to in a second). That's because GHC, Go, etc. manage their own concurrency without using OS threads, i.e. they use something like coroutines instead (but with an OS-like scheduler inside the language runtime, so it's still less fast than using coroutines directly). "C++ #4" if you look in the code is also (per the code comments) not using real threads, but some other thing with a pthreads-like interface. In between are languages like F# and Smalltalk, that presumably also aren't dealing with OS threads (F# uses .net fibers), but are slower than GHC/Go/Hipe because they have interpreted VM's instead of native code compiers. While researching this last night I found a good article[4] about how Lua implements coroutines, that might be of interest to you. Anyway, I'm still weighing different approaches for the program I'm writing, but using multiple threads is completely unsuitable for this purpose. On a typical 2 ghz x86 you should be able to switch coroutines at least 100 million times a second. There is no way you can do that with threads. 64.160.39.72 (talk) 06:26, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I hadn't been thinking of context switching, just single-threaded user mode coroutines that I hoped would be basically as fast as subroutines. If you're talking about using multiple OS threads, I'd expect the mutexes alone would be a big bottleneck. I don't yet have any code to profile. I'm still writing with explicit callbacks which are something of a control inversion, so I'm for now only at the stage of trying to figure out a more convenient approach. Re cache effects: the working set is already reasonably small. 64.160.39.72 (talk) 20:36, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Subroutine call overhead is so tiny that trying to migrate to coroutines will most likely be a monumental waste of effort that could've gone chasing real bottlenecks. There is no "copying stacks around" (not unless you're trying to pass kb-sized objects to a subroutine by value). In x64, either the first four or the first six parameters (depending on the compiler and the calling convention) are passed in registers. --Itinerant1 (talk) 00:01, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think you didn't read the question very carefully. The OP wants to switch to coroutines to make the code easier to understand, not to make it faster. Copying stacks around is something the coroutine library should avoid doing, not something he/she thinks the current code does. -- BenRG (talk) 00:16, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The PuTTY source code has a very simple and limited coroutine implementation in standard C using switch/case, described here. If you need something more robust (and more complicated), take a look at coroutine and fiber (computer science), which link to some libraries. -- BenRG (talk) 00:16, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Yes, BenRG understands what I'm looking for. The PuTTY page is nice and I might just use those switch macros instead of worrying about real coroutines. Their main drawbacks I can see are 1) having to put the local variables in statics (I can live with that for something this simple) and 2) probably defeating some compiler optimizations, but hopefully by not enough to matter. I'm ok with taking a few percent slowdown to help keep the code straightforward, but 1.5x or 2x would be too much. I did look at a few existing coroutine libraries and they seemed too heavyweight, and some of them did copy the call stack around (probably more robust than using static stack areas, but I think static areas are ok with not too much code and a little care). 64.160.39.72 (talk) 01:23, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The PuTTY code is "nice"? I barely got through the first example beforee coming back to try and dissuade you... but then I saw that the site itself tells you: "Of course, this trick violates every coding standard in the book. Try doing this in your company's code and you will probably be subject to a stern telling off if not disciplinary action! You have embedded unmatched braces in macros, used case within sub-blocks, and as for the crReturn macro with its terrifyingly disruptive contents . . . It's a wonder you haven't been fired on the spot for such irresponsible coding practice. You should be ashamed of yourself." Don't use this programming paradigm! It's a neat concept, from a hacker point of view; it's got aesthtetic stylings that probably give Don Knuth warm fuzzies, but it's bad code. It's hard to maintain, harder to debug, and even harder still to modify. It explicitly does the opposite of what Intel tells you is best practice for peak performance; so you've ended up with code that's bad for human-use, and even worse for machine-use. It's not portable, it's not thread-safe, it's not re-entrant. Aside from toy problems, it has no place in your programs.

Place your coroutine work in a separate thread; let your compiler and your hardware help you get your job done in the most efficient and most maintainable way. This is better practice in the long run. Nimur (talk) 06:55, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The PuTTY page was nice in the sense that it was educational and fun to read. Yes the code is an awful hack (among other things, it occurs to me that there's no way to switch out of the coroutine from within a nested function call) but what I'm doing is pretty hacky anyway. But, the handwritten state machine is even uglier and less maintainable than the Putty macro. The traditional solution would be an assembly language subroutine that does the coroutine switch by just banging the hardware stack pointer (I guess that can be done sort of portably with setcontext and I might try benchmarking that). I can guarantee you from long experience with thread programming that threads would be unacceptably slow for this. 64.160.39.72 (talk) 08:16, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

display old Mac bitmap fonts

I have a sporadic project that involves old bitmap fonts, such as the standard Macintosh set from 1984. FontForge can display them, but it only sees the smallest size in a file (or maybe it prefers 12 point), and I want to look at the biggest.

Okay, I thought: I'll get the PPC from the closet, fire up MacOS 10.4 (which purports to run old apps by emulating MacOS 9), and use Font/DA Mover or ResEdit to build a suitcase containing only the biggest sizes of all the fonts I have. To my horror, neither Mover nor ResEdit responded to a click on the File menu. I'm just about beyond caring why not; hooking up the old computer is not something I want to do more than once in a week.

Can someone point me to

a MacOS X application that can display those old fonts? or, failing that,
a successor to ResEdit, with which I can modify suitcase files? or, failing that,
advice on how to write a Python program to interpret the font resources themselves?

—Tamfang (talk) 23:49, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Can't help but think you can get FontForge to work. Have you read all of this? ¦ Reisio (talk) 03:30, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Prompted thereby, I tried File→Import (rather than Open); that doesn't recognize the files. —Tamfang (talk) 05:37, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Where can one of these fonts be found? ¦ Reisio (talk) 11:24, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Other than on CDs that I've saved since 2000? I don't know offhand. —Tamfang (talk) 22:23, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, there's ResKnife. —Tamfang (talk) 22:28, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

... which does not recognize a font file as something that it can open. —Tamfang (talk) 23:08, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If one of the font files was called foo.fnt, what does file foo.fnt (in the terminal) report? -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:28, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

empty, because all the content is in the resource fork. —Tamfang (talk) 23:08, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You might try posting your question on comp.sys.mac.system. If they don't know the answer, you might get a pointer in the right direction. RudolfRed (talk) 02:24, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My mistake. FontForge apparently imports all the sizes at once, and the View menu allows choosing among them. —Tamfang (talk) 04:57, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's a relief. When FontForge can't do something, we're all in trouble. ¦ Reisio (talk) 13:27, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

February 6

Using MIT or BSD licensed software as a part of a closed-source program

Hi! The MIT and BSD licenses allow using software licensed under it to be included in closed-source software, but they require the license text to be included with the software somehow. How to do it correctly? Should the license text be included in a readme file, or something? 88.148.251.200 (talk) 18:24, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What about bundling a licence.txt file with the package? --Ouro (blah blah) 19:31, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How about making it open source? --190.60.93.218 (talk) 19:45, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I see programs that have a readme with a section: "Parts of the source code of this program are under the following license: [bla bla]". See if your computer has such readmes in its programs directory. If the program has a GUI, another way is to put the license text in a help menu -- I am writing this using the Firefox browser, which has Help / About Firefox / Licensing Information. Captain Hindsight (talk) 21:37, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How can I close wiki-site?

I banned my wiki-site since I moved to Wikia on January 23, 2012. That's because wiki-site was spammed (meaning it often gets blocked after I load pages more than four times within a minute) and doesn't have many advanced tools and features. How can I close BlueEarth wiki-site? PlanetStar (talk | contribs) 22:47, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Where is this old wiki hosted? -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:51, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

At [5]. PlanetStar (talk | contribs) 22:32, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like you shoudl contact their support address, listed here. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:57, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

February 7

Kindle questions

Two questions related to the Amazon Kindle:

Is there a way to view customer reviews of the kindle version? That is to have it show all the reviews of a certain book but only those that reviewed the kindle version. Normally no matter which version you go to it shows reviews from all versions. And searching the reviews for "kindle" only returns reviews where the customer used the term kindle in the review
Is there somewhere where readers can report any errors/typos in the kindle version which are obviously due to problems with OCR when scanning and converting them? --TuringMachine17 (talk) 06:59, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(1) I doubt it, unless the reviewer specifically mentions they are reading it on a kindle: go to the reviews page and search (CTRL-F) for "kindle". (2) For new books, this is the responsibility of the publisher: find the contact section of their website and drop them an email. For older books (e.g. out of copyright) that have been scanned by Amazon, try clicking on "update product info" in the product details section.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:26, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

AWB?

I'm trying to find a program that I could use for editing Wikipedia where a CTRL+F feature would be involved:

It involves finding 5 prefixes at once:

fam
know
best
great
fam

but excluding "family". (If you look at my userpage, you will see that these prefixes normally lead to pov.) So what I am thinking of is something that I could either open up a page and the program/browser will tell me if any of these prefixes are located on the page. Because currently, I use Chrome and I have to use CTRL+F to do this, but I must type the prefix and then search for it, and repeat this process 4 times, for the 5 prefixes. User:John of Reading developed a regular expression:

for use for WP:AWB. Now is there a program developed by the Wikipedia community that would be better than AWB to do this? But also, would using Firefox and adding a macro bet better? I would like to use the least intrusive way of doing this, so downloading the fewest programs and skipping approval (as in AutoWikiBrowser) would be most ~~conveienet~~convenient.

User:John of Reading ~~suggest~~suggested I ask: "Is there a way to highlight all words on a web page that match a regular expression?". Thanks for your help.Curb Chain (talk) 08:57, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can use Greasemonkey and scripts based on this example to do what you want. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:47, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

in general is something like vmware secure?

if I don't give vmware guest access to the internet can i install an untrusted OS in it and then install even less trusted software under that OS? Or can software be expected to break out of vm and mess with my actual computer? I'm asking about in practice, not in theory. thanks.. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 11:26, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think software can be "expected" to do this unless it is really especially targeted to break out of virtualized environments. Such a thing is possible through exploiting vulnerabilities, but I would expect any software that had this capability to be really quite finely targeted for this purpose. I don't think your run-of-the-mill malware is going to bother trying to figure out if it should be trying to break out of a virtual environment. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:00, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I would however suggest you deny the guest all network access rather then simply internet access. (Actually if you intend to install dodgy programs in the guest, I'm not sure what the point of denying internet access is other then as good netequitte or to stop your ISP kicking you become part of a botnet or whatever. Well unless you also intend to store private information on the guest.) Or at the very least make extra sure your host is properly firewalled and protected against things it may normally regard as the LAN. Spreading across the LAN, particularly if the host OS is the same, is something malware is often designed to do. (Of course for the same reason many modern OSes no longer trust things on the LAN like they may have done so in the past, particularly over wireless LANs. And this is something you'd want to set up anyway if you have other computers in the LAN you don't entirely trust. But even if you do, there's no reason to give the VM access to anything you don't need it to have access to. And if there are other computer in the LAN which aren't under your control, simple courtesy would suggest either no network access or host only network access would be preferred.) Nil Einne (talk) 14:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you (OP here)! This is quite the useful advice... I've disabled the virtualized network card and chose to go with the less popular of VMWare or Virtual Box, just in case the author knows how to break out of the more popular one :)...and running the latest version of course. thanks for the heads-up and well-thought-out tip. 94.27.158.198 (talk) 15:56, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why programs damage images?

for example this [6] How can I get programs to exapand images like that? I want them to show each pixel, not to blurry them... --190.60.93.218 (talk) 13:52, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Your image scaling program is doing image interpolation, to try to produce a better upscaled result. That's usually a good idea with natural stuff like photos, but it's often a bad idea when manipulating drawn stuff like diagrams, for the reasons your example illustrates. So look in the settings for the image-scaling part of your graphics program, and turn interpolation off (for example, the documentation for Gimp's image scaler is here). 87.114.90.11 (talk) 14:57, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How that scaling effect is called? Without interpolation Scaling? lol --190.60.93.218 (talk) 16:11, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In Photoshop it is called nearest neighbor. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:21, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've always heard it called anti-aliasing. 86.179.114.39 (talk) 20:18, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Anti-aliasing is the opposite of what we're talking about, here. The OP was asking about how you preserve the hard edges, not blur them. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:12, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yes, I understand that... I meant that the OP wanted to avoid anti-aliasing. Sorry if unclear. 86.179.114.39 (talk) 01:25, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Right. And the scaling mode that avoids anti-aliasing is called... nearest neighbor. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:21, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I'd want the prog to take out the jaggies but keep the image black and white, like my version here:

Are there any programs that can do that ? StuRat (talk) 19:56, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are a number of algorithms that try to do similar things. See Image_scaling#Pixel_art_scaling_algorithms. They are not standard to most photo editing packages, but there are implementations for them that one can get the code for. They're most often used in video game emulators, in my experience. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:15, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you want that, you should use a vector graphics format, such as SVG. It's silly to try to get vector behavior from raster images. Looie496 (talk) 00:21, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's not always an option. For example, if I do a screen grab I get a raster image too small to print on a standard sized page. It would be nice to be able to scale it up to print out at a reasonable size, without jaggies. StuRat (talk) 00:24, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The house could be Live traced though I wanted a big 8-bit appeareance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.60.93.218 (talk) 13:37, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I get the result you want in Gimp by:

1) Image->Mode->Indexed

2) Select radio button "Use black and white (1 bit) pallete

3) Click convert

4) Scale image

-- Q Chris (talk) 16:21, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Does that smooth out the jaggies ? StuRat (talk) 20:40, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's exactly like the bottom right image in the picture. I think that smoothing edges is more than just an image processing problem, you would need to start with the assumption that its a straight-line drawing and reconstruct the figure that is most likely to gve the blocks in the original.-- Q Chris (talk) 22:21, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

According to this, somewhere there is an Interpolation option, and you can set it to "none." --Mr.98 (talk) 14:22, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Cookies in Windows 7

Hi, how do you get to view cookie lists in Windows 7 / IE 9?

One suggested method, Internet Options > General > Settings > View Files, seems to show only a very small subset of cookies for me, mostly Microsoft and Google. (Why is that?)

Another suggestion is to look in C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies. This shows some files, but only useless encrypted filenames where you cannot see where the cookies came from. Also, there do not seem to be as many files as I would expect. There is a subdirectory called "Low", which some people suggest contains the cookies, or more cookies, but I cannot access it. I get "These files can't be opened: Your internet security settings prevented one or more files from being opened." What setting would that be? I have already selected "Show hidden files" and unchecked "Hide protected files" in Windows Explorer.

I seem to remember in XP there was a way to display a user-readable list of cookies. How can this be done in Windows 7?

Regards, 86.179.114.39 (talk) 14:50, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well you can't just click the folder 'cause it's hiden, it's a hidden file even if you disable hiding hiden files. For exmaple some of my cookies are stored here: "%Homdrive%\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5" and some of them are in %temp%... you should check it. IMHO I think they are messed up on your temp files. --190.60.93.218 (talk) 16:02, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think ie cookies are just not readable, you have to use IE GUI to see them... Microsoft is evil --190.60.93.218 (talk) 16:04, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I don't mind using "IE GUI" to see them ... but how do I do that? 86.179.114.39 (talk) 18:12, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

here --190.60.93.218 (talk) 13:39, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I already did several Google searches before I came here to ask. I cannot find a procedure that works. 86.179.114.39 (talk) 14:06, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Different Divs

I have an HTML document with four different div tags for a header, a content section, a side menu, and a footer. How can I give all four of them different background colours, font styles/colours, etcetera in a CSS document? I can change the whole page if I change the "body" attribute, but either I don't know the proper names for the four or it can't be done. Inter change able|talk to me 18:53, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You have to give your divs different classes or different ids. In your case it shouldn't matter much which you choose. Multiple elements can have the same class, but ids have to be unique. Add an attribute id="someid" or class="someclass" to the div in your HTML. Then in your CSS you can use div#someid {...} or div.someclass {...}. KarlLohmann (talk) 19:36, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Typewriter effect in Windows Live Movie Maker

I'm trying to create a credit scene where the words appear on a black background, animated with the typewriter effect. I'm using the windows live movie maker that comes preinstalled with Windows 7. I can't find the option for typewriter anywhere. Can anyone help? 117.226.141.77 (talk) 19:11, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What makes you believe that such an effect is available? All the search results I'm seeing right now indicate that is specifically is NOT something included in Movie Maker. --LarryMac | Talk 19:30, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, you could create such an effect manually by adding one letter, holding for several frames, then adding the next, etc. To really make it look like a typewriter, make the letters darker in spots and lighter in others, slightly misaligned with each other, and go back and X out a mistake. Typewriter sounds would also add to the illusion (and don't forget the bell and return sound at the end of the line). However, note that people under the age of 40 may not have ever seen a typewriter.StuRat (talk) 00:19, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Movies still use green VDU characters that appear as if on a 20 baud connection; I doubt one viewer in a thousand has ever used a computer display remotely as slow as that. Wargames set a trope for how movie computers work, one immune to upgrades. Like the heart monitor flatlining when someone dies, it's a movie trope well understood by people who've no experience of heart rate monitors. The Dougie Howser/Jessica Fletcher typewriter thing will work just as well now. 87.114.127.133 (talk) 01:45, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

February 8

Joint authoring a document

Hello everyone. I live in NZ and am trying to co-author a paper with someone in the UK. We would like to both work on the same 'master' document (no forking or getting confused about which version we are working on; we especially don't want to email versions back and forth). We find 'track changes' or similar to see what the other person has added or changed useful. I use a macosx and kubuntu with openoffice, he uses windows with office. I am not sure he could cope with svn. Can any refdeskers advise? Thanks, Robinh (talk) 03:02, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Google Documents supports collaborative editing, and has some support for revisions (I haven't worked with revisions much, so I can't tell how well-implemented that's it). Paul (Stansifer) 03:06, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

thanks! Looks good to me. I didn't know googledocs had a revision history.

Resolved

Robinh (talk) 03:31, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

computer project

I want to lern about computer project .Please tell me different project nane and there fild. I am Account student in Gujarat University and i want make my own project on Account fild .I also know about managment fild project. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Niravbhavsar (talk • contribs) 05:06, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have a hard time understanding you. If you are asking about computer programs in the accounting field, then spreadsheets come to mind immediately. Follow that link to read more. StuRat (talk) 06:29, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Greater resolutions in Virtual Box

Resolved

I'm running Ubuntu 10.4 in Virtual Box. I'd like a resolution above 800x600 but I don't have any options above that. I'm running the VM on a Lenovo ThinkPad T400. How can I get a larger resolution? Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 10:41, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried assigning more memory in the display->video settings tab? Also, have you installed the VirtualBox ubuntu guest additions (I don't know about a Linux guest, but at least for a Windows guest that installs a more suitable video driver in the guest). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 11:00, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In my experience (Ubuntu and CentOS on MAcOS-X) you always need the Guest Additions for proper video support, including fullscreen mode.--Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:32, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And mine: sudo apt-get install build-essential module-assistant && sudo m-a prepare then mount guest additions (Install guest additions from VBox menu), and run the Linux installer shell script. ¦ Reisio (talk) 13:32, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You also need to ensure you actually install it, rather than running live. It's really easy to run live off the CD and think you've done an install. --Phil Holmes (talk) 16:59, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(OP here) The guest additions got it. Thanks everyone!! Dismas|^(talk) 20:11, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Google Documents Versioning

As mentioned above, Google Docs includes a versioning facility, although it works slightly differently for Google's native formats and docs saved in their own forms.
I'm trying to save a new version of an Excel spreadsheet. I've done so several times before, but now, it insists on creating a new document with the same name. Can anyone suggest why it's suddenly behaving differently?
Thanks, Rojomoke (talk) 14:12, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This suggests that true versioning is only for Google Docs format documents, and that for non-Docs documents one saves multiple versions, as it's asking you to do. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:57, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but that's what I meant by "works slightly differently for Google's native formats". For non-Docs documents, you save multiple versions, but they should appear in the file listing as a single item. I'm using "Add or Manage Versions" option to add a new version, but it's appearing as a completely separate entry. I hope that clarifies the problem. Rojomoke (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Linux command: dir <number range>

I have a big list of files with number as names. How do I get a list of files number x to number y or higher than z? 188.76.164.174 (talk) 14:14, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Are the names like 1, 27, 316, or are they like 0001, 0027, 0316 ? -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:25, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They are time stamps like 20111231134533 (meaning year, month, day, hour). Higher than x seems easy 2011* will deal with that. But I don't know how to choose a range. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.76.164.174 (talk) 14:28, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think ls will do that itself; you'd need to wrap it either with grep or with a bash script. Thinking in bash hurts my brain, so I can't help you with that (but it's surely a one-liner). I can easily give you a python script that will do it, if you like. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:02, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can include regex ranges in the arguments for ls, for example: ls -l 201112311345[30-33] Keegstr (talk) 18:13, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Server load estimate

For an auction website which has data that is regularly updated on various pages (e.g. item page, home page, users' watchlists), I would like to figure out a relation between number of users, number of pages being refreshed (or number of values?) and refresh interval such that the server does not break. Basically what I would like to know is, how often and on how many pages may I refresh for say 100 visitors to the website? Could somebody point me in the right direction? bamse (talk) 16:55, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To do this analysis I would create a mockup of the auction page so I could figure out which data, and then how much data, will be refreshed; then you can do a little math to figure out the answer. Without the mockup, any guessing may be useless. To perform this analysis quicker you might want to base the mockup on an existing auction website. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:49, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you're looking for a "mockup" of a commercial website, you don't have to start from scratch. The "canonical" example of an enterprise server software suite is the Java Enterprise Edition Pet Store, a tutorial and sample code that runs on Java EE. The sample program implements a full AJAX-enabled web front-end, a server and database system back-end, complete with load-balancing. Most of the code is free software; it runs on Apache Tomcat, (it looks like newer versions are even more tightly integrated with GlassFish), or you can run it on your own favorite Java application server. Nimur (talk) 19:48, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the replies. For the estimate does it matter whether:

N users are watching the same page (i.e. does it count N times or is it the same as if just one user watched that page)?
a page contains only one variable being refreshed or more than one (do the type of variables matter)?

bamse (talk) 16:26, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, all of these things matter - but any individual item's impact to total system performance depends entirely on your server software architecture. These systems are very complex, and usually require a lot of professional, highly-trained engineers who spend a lot of time to design and analyze them. You might start by reading Profiling an Enterprise Application in NetBeans IDE. Run through the entire tutorial. NetBeans is a very powerful, free, open-source software development environment suitable for tackling this problem. It can be used, for example, to generate graphs like this, showing CPU and Memory and other resource utilization. Nimur (talk) 19:08, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Cell-phones' OS

Which OSs do cell-phones use/d normally? (excluding the obvious, like Android, Symbian, RIM's and such). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.8.79.238 (talk) 22:33, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, but your question seems curious to me. Won't the ones "normally" used usually be the "obvious" ones? 86.179.114.39 (talk) 22:43, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I mean, not long ago, the OS was not explicitly stated by the manufacturer or re-seller. You just got a Nokia this or a Sony-Ericson that. Which OSs do or did these cell-phones had? 88.8.79.238 (talk) 23:17, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In general, such devices are called embedded systems, and are often powered by commercially-available operating systems such as μCOS, eCos, ThreadX, rtxc, QNX, linux (in many forms), or a Java ME VM system. Perhaps they were powered by a similar, but not-generally-available-for-purchase operating system, in which case this portion of the software system may not have had a marketing name. These sorts of operating systems are very familiar to embedded system programmers; they have the sorts of tools and utilities that are helpful to a programmer who is designing a cell phone; but they often do not have the sorts of things an end-consumer expects from an operating system (like a user interface). For example, on uCOS, it is not even possible to "run a program." (There's no shell, and no fork; just threads, called "Tasks"). The operating system exists only to assist the system programmer in creating a complete product: it provides facilities for management of system resources, like memory, I/O, sharing the CPU, and so on. Nimur (talk) 00:07, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(treading carefully so as not to ask a dumb question) Sooo, in the article on the Nokia 3310 why is there 'n/a' in the section 'Operating system' in the infobox? Is it just some primitive embedded software that runs the unit? --Ouro (blah blah) 07:10, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A simple(r) embedded system will typically run a micro executive, which only does a handful of basic things (threads, queues, message-exchanges, semaphores, mutexes, ISRs). That's often nothing more than a library file. That's compiled with the monolithic system software (hardware bring-up, device drivers, and the actual phone application) all to produce a single statically-located binary image (often as a Motorola S-Record or Intel Hex format) ready to be loaded onto the system's PROM. In cases like that there's no isolation (the CPU/MMU doesn't support memory protection anyway) and the "API" that "applications" call is nothing more than a header file which makes direct calls (not syscalls). Applications (like the snake game) are just compiled in with the rest of the system firmware, and changing or adding one requires recompiling the whole thing. This obviously poses low requirements on the system, but it's obviously inflexible, so mobile phones have graduated to more sophisticated systems with proper isolation, real APIs, and separate linking, that we can reasonably compare to the OSes of desktop machines. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 12:01, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

From what I've read and seen, most of the cheap Chinese phones using MediaTek chipsets use Nucleus RTOS. Both articles also suggests likewise (although it may be a specific variant of Nucleus RTOS by MediaTek called MAUI). The Nucleus RTOS article suggests some non Chinese phones also used it. [7] while coming from someone involved with the company making Nucleus RTOS has some discussion in the comments on OS usage. (Note as mentioned in the comments and our Nucleus RTOS article this can be a bit confusing because the phone may use a RTOS for the baseband processor but a different OS for the application processor.) Nil Einne (talk) 14:56, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And, of course, TRON. ¦ Reisio (talk) 14:09, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Nokia 3310 probably runs Series 30 (software platform). 67.117.145.9 (talk) 18:52, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

February 9

Help

My PC works like dream when i do stuffs like surfing , watching movie etc but whenever i play any game it restarts after 20-25 min and keeps restarting with very soft beep (teep..) untill i switch it off for 15-20 min. i have cleaned the cabinet, reinstalled windows stil the probelm persists. all of my cpu fans are working 117.224.246.44 (talk) 06:55, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Open the case carefully and clean it inside as well. Do the fans work particularly loudly? Do they usually work (as opposed to only working when the computer's under a full load)? Is the ventilation around the case sufficient?

Does the problem persist with any game, or maybe just with some of them? Do these games have a common denominator to them (to the best of your knowledge)? --Ouro (blah blah) 07:05, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

yeah one of my fan which i brought recently works a little loud but i dont think it is a heating issue because i once tried playing games with CPU cabinet open. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.224.246.44 (talk) 07:33, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That can actually make the problem worse, not better, since it won't get very good airflow that way. RudolfRed (talk) 07:53, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Cleaned the cabinet again.... Still no improvement 117.224.43.60 (talk) 08:50, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Has it always been this way? If not, can you recollect any specific event after which the situation had worsened? --Ouro (blah blah) 11:08, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This problem is occurring from last weak and i cant recall any specific event :( 117.225.24.139 (talk) 12:31, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Ouro, knowing whether or not this problem persists with any game would be helpful. For example, if your computer crashes when you play a game like Battlefield 3, but it doesn't care if you play Plants vs. Zombies or a simple flash game in your browser, then it helps narrow down the possible causes. It could be that your computer only crashes when it accesses a second stick of RAM (which it might only need to do for demanding applications) that isn't properly seated or has gone bad. It could also be that these games cause your GPU to overheat because its fan has stopped working. We really need more specific information in order to help. Lhcii (talk) 18:29, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Use one of those "system monitor" (maybe something is built into windows) utilities to check the cpu and gpu temperatures. The fan isn't the whole issue. Just a few days ago someone here had a cpu overheating because one of the heat sink clips was bent and the heat sink wasn't making good thermal contact with the cpu. You might also have something like flaky RAM. Try pulling the ram modules out of the board, cleaning the contacts with an eraser, and putting them back in, making sure to seat them firmly. 67.117.145.9 (talk) 19:46, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to install GAP in Gimp

I just downloaded the Gimp Animation Package to use with Gimp, but I can't install it. The problem is that I cannot find the folder that's supposed to launch the setup (Gimp-GAP-2.6.0-Setup2.exe.). I downloaded the file from here, btw: ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/plug-ins/v2.6/gap/ 70.29.244.213 (talk) 09:10, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

F3 --190.60.93.218 (talk) 17:09, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why is my question not appearing on the page? 70.29.244.213 (talk) 18:15, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Would this computer be ok for my purpose?

I am looking to purchase a smallish, portable laptop to take to class to take notes using, preferably the 2010 versions of, MS Word, Powerpoint and Adobe Reader. Would an old Mac with the following specs be ok? I will be transferring these notes from the PowerBook to my Windows 7 main PC laptop at home.

Apple Mac PowerBook 12" PowerPC G4, OSX 10.5.8, 1.33 GHz, 512 MB RAM, BUS Speed: 167 Mhz.

Thanks, Acceptable (talk) 09:51, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Does the 2010 version of Office work on a PPC? The 2011 version says it will only work on Intel (in the system requirements section here). In addition, laptop batteries degrade with age - my 5 year old laptop's battery now only sustains the machine for a minute or two. Replacing the battery on the mac would probably obviate the savings you're looking for in buying such an old machine. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 11:15, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 is probably the version of Office you will want. If its minimum required specification is anything like Office 2010, I doubt it will run acceptably on a 1.33 GHz, 512 MB RAM system. You can checkout the system requirements for Word 2011 and Powerpoint 2011. Astronaut (talk) 11:16, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

First requirement on the list: "A Mac computer with an Intel processor". A PowerPC G4 is not an Intel processor. It won't work. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:20, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you could make it work, but all of PPC, Mac, and hardware that old are asking for trouble. A similar vintage non-Apple computer for the same price will get you significantly more impressive hardware. ¦ Reisio (talk) 14:16, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. It also doesn't help that the newer versions of Office run like crap on even new versions of the Mac. I would recommend using the iWork Suite instead, from personal experience. You can export to MS Office formats if you need to and can read them all. Office for Mac is a buggy, crashy, slow program. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:20, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hits on webpages

thepeerage.com gives one of my pages as a reference. I suspect as a result that page gets a lot of hits. How can I tell how many, preferably using cPanelX? Kittybrewster ☎ 12:56, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You need to be able to read the access logs of the (virtual, perhaps) webserver instance that services your website. Either your hosting provider will have installed their own log analysis package or you'd download the logs and run an analyser (e.g. awstats) on them yourself. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:13, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Success. Kittybrewster ☎ 14:30, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Grabbing frames of video

Resolved

How can I gram frames of video, (no I don't need a programm that asks to specific frame) I want to have half of the frames of all frames.. I found a programm called Video to image converter, It provides me exatcly what I want. the bad thing is that It doesn't support Matroska files (mkv). (PS: I remember I had a program similar who supported mkv files, but I'm not having good results with google, I just don't type the right keywords) --190.60.93.218 (talk) 14:23, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

DVDVideoSoft's website (http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/guides/free-video-to-jpg-converter.htm) lists the video file formats that they support in the footer. This includes .mp4, so I suggest that you convert the file into .mp4 first (http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/convert_mkv_to_mp4_for_xbox_360.cfm) and then use your program on the newly converted file. Lhcii (talk) 19:42, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

ROfl it's funny you got the answer.. after Deep scanning my hard drive (because i was desesperate) I found a program called freevideotojpgconverter ohh yes! =) I'm so happy lol. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.60.93.218 (talk) 19:48, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why does the keyboard not match what it produces?

I am at a library. The key to the right of : says " above ' but produces @, and the key that says @ produces ". Also, the key that produces my signature (~) gives me ¬ instead. The key that should give me | gives me ~. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:42, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I expect the OS is configured for a different keyboard then is actually present on the computer. Perhaps a UK keyboard when it's a US one. Nil Einne (talk) 14:52, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Sounds like the keyboard defined for that PC is a UK English keyboard. Go to 'Regional and language' settings in the control panel and make sure it has the correct keyboard and language settings. Astronaut (talk) 14:54, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I talked to one of the librarians and he said they're getting new machines soon.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:27, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like a drastic solution to a 2 minute fix in Windows. Astronaut (talk) 18:04, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

_{You're computers are damaged? oh don't worry send them to me! If they're so useless for you! 190.60.93.218 (talk) 19:50, 9 February 2012 (UTC)}[reply]

Simple question I hope

Whenever I download any PDF from an online source (which is like five times a day) instead of opening it saves and I have to go find it in the download folder and open it. I could swear it used to open without this extra step. I imagine it's a settings issue but I don't know if the setting is in my computer or the browser I use or the PDF program I run. I am on a Macmini running Snow Leopard I think. I have Adobe Acrobat Professional 8 and I use Firefox. Thanks.--108.14.197.46 (talk) 19:50, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox gives you the option to always handle files of the same type the same way. At some point you must have chosen the 'Save as' option rather than the 'Run' option and also told Firefox to always save files of the same type (PDF). In order to change this setting and restore the way it handles PDF's to the default, navigate to Tools>Options in Firefox, then click the 'Applications' tab. There should be a few listings on the left side for 'Adobe Acrobat Document', you need to change the drop-down on the right to 'Use Adobe Acrobat' or 'Always ask'. Note that I am giving you these instructions from version 10.0 of Firefox on Windows XP, so there may be disparity in the instructions. Lhcii (talk) 20:10, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done. It works. Will save me lots of time (over time). Thanks!--108.14.197.46 (talk) 21:03, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 272: / Line 272: @@
 Whenever I download any PDF from an online source (which is like five times a day) instead of opening it saves and I have to go find it in the download folder and open it. I could swear it used to open without this extra step. I imagine it's a settings issue but I don't know if the setting is in my computer or the browser I use or the PDF program I run. I am on a Macmini running Snow Leopard I think. I have Adobe Acrobat Professional 8 and I use Firefox. Thanks.--[[Special:Contributions/108.14.197.46|108.14.197.46]] ([[User talk:108.14.197.46|talk]]) 19:50, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
 :Firefox gives you the option to always handle files of the same type the same way. At some point you must have chosen the 'Save as' option rather than the 'Run' option and also told Firefox to always save files of the same type (PDF). In order to change this setting and restore the way it handles PDF's to the default, navigate to Tools>Options in Firefox, then click the 'Applications' tab. There should be a few listings on the left side for 'Adobe Acrobat Document', you need to change the drop-down on the right to 'Use Adobe Acrobat' or 'Always ask'. Note that I am giving you these instructions from version 10.0 of Firefox on Windows XP, so there may be disparity in the instructions. [[User:Lhcii|Lhcii]] ([[User talk:Lhcii|talk]]) 20:10, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
+::Done. It works. Will save me lots of time (over time). Thanks!--[[Special:Contributions/108.14.197.46|108.14.197.46]] ([[User talk:108.14.197.46|talk]]) 21:03, 9 February 2012 (UTC)