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November 9

User-Friendly guide

Published by CyberBooks Publishing House First Edition ISBN 971-93171-0-8

Please answer as soon as possible

Programming/tech books can geto outdated quicky. First, call your favorite ordinary bookstore and ask if they have it. If not, try looking on froogle.google.com or www.ebay.com . Failing both of those, call used bookstores in your area. 48v 03:10, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

lulu.com - [1] I found this by googling the ISBN number and finding a pdf preview on this website. Mishatx 03:52, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reverse karaoke effect

I use Audacity and it has a karaoke effect that can remove the part of a stereo track that is panned to the center. Is there a way I can instead remove everything that is panned away from center, leaving only the lead vocal (and whatever else happens to be centered in the track)? I'd like to do this using Audacity, or some other open source Linux program (sox, etc.). Philbert^2.71828 05:08, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

After you get the center part, invert its amplitude, and mix-paste it with the original. That should cancel out the center part. --Kjoonlee 05:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some alternatives: no Linux binaries, but includes source:

--Kjoonlee 05:19, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I'll take a look at the Winamp plugin. Maybe I can port it to XMMS. Philbert^2.71828 15:32, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've done this a few times, never with great results, but often with 'good enough' results. I use the inverse mix paste method, but find most times, if not all, the drums and base are mixed in the center too, so it's a lot of fiddling with filters to get them out. Base is easy because it's always below voice register but the hardest is snare, hi hat and cymbals, because they contain a lot of white noise. I've used over compression pretty effectively. You always end up with something that sounds pretty terrible if you listen to it clean, but I always end up mixing the vocals I've extracted with my own music and then it's not so bad. Vespine 21:41, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Finding the syntax and code generation algorithms for programming languages

Hello, I am wondering if anybody can help me find resources that will explicitly tell me the grammar (preferably in some sort of visual form) of any programming languages. I'd also like to know if there are any good resources that will explain to me how assembly (or machine) code is generated from a language after code has been parsed.

Thanks in advance,

Robin

There is a C grammar in Backus-Naur form in The C Programming Language, for instance, and I think the GNU Compiler Collection uses a parser generator to generate its parsers, so you can have a look at the grammar as implemented.

As far as code generation goes, you might try one of the various incarnations of the Dragon book. --Robert Merkel 12:52, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Technology/IT

Hello, my name is sam and i was wondering 'what is a virtual reality programmer' in other words 'what do they do?' I would also like to know 'how their working conditions are?'

thanks alot for your time and i hope i can get a response.

sam

A VR programmer is a programmer for VR systems. There are many areas of programming in VR. There are the graphics people who program the environment. There are the physics programmers who program how objects in VR act. There are the core programmers who program how the environment is represented in the computer and how it is converted quickly for display. There are the drivers programmers who program how the computer talks to the input/output devices. You also have engineers who develop the devices, which often includes programming test models. I used to be a programmer/engineer at Virtual Reality South. As the project manager for many VR projects, I took part in all of the different areas (being a programmer and electronic engineer, I could actually take part and not just oversee). The working conditions are like any other field - boring. The non-working conditions were fun. We'd spend hours after work playing VR Quake against each other or playing tag in VR Carmageddon. There is a side problem there. When driving home at 2:00am after playing VR carmageddon for 8 hours, you have to keep reminding yourself that the sidewalks aren't for driving on. --Kainaw ^(talk) 15:30, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Video cameras

I am a student in school. I am facing a big problem with attathcing a video camera to my laptop. I dont have PCI slots or anything of that sort. I have a USB cable only and I need to connect it to the Laptop. When I connect the video camera, it asks for a driver. I need to somehow download it from the net. My model is a JVC, model no.- GR-D53AS. Could anyone please tell me a site from where to download? Please! Its really urgent. Thanks.

Contact JVC, or their representative, in your country and ask them. That's what product support is for. --Robert Merkel 12:58, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just had a look on JVC's website. Would any of this be of use to you? --Saxsux 18:48, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Converting cassettes into digital format

I have some old language tapes which I would like to convert to digital format so I could play them on an mp3 player or on my computer and share with my friends because it's not very convenient to play it back on a tape. I have tried Nero Soundtrax but the quality of the product doesn't seem to be that satisfactory. When I play the tapes on a cassette player, the quality is generally quite good, at least I don't hear buzzing sounds like I do on the digitalised version, so I wonder if there was anything I did wrong which didn't produce the right result or are the buzzing sounds to be expected if I convert a tape? Are there any other softwares or even hardwares available on the market which I could try? Thanks a lot! Shane Shingrila 10:03, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're bound to get some noise if you do analogue recording. Raise the volume as high as you can without making the input clip (i.e., don't let the volume meter go red when you do the recording), use a high bit-depth (16- or 24-bit samples should be nice), and use a high sampling rate, such as 44.1 kHz. This will give you big files, but the filesize shouldn't be a big problem if you plan to compress them. --Kjoonlee 11:47, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Use a quality encoder, such as oggenc or lame 3.9x. --Kjoonlee 11:47, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I've been careful not to let the volume meter go red but still, there is a lot of noise even though when i listen to the tape at the same time of the recording through audio monitoring, it sounds perfectly fine. The Nero Soundtrax software offers the option of de-noising and de-rumbling, which I'm really not sure what they can do, except I know it'll decrease the noise level, but it's never been quite satisfactory and I dunno how much to de-noise or de-rumble it. And by the way, I don't quite understand what a high bit-depth or a high sampling rate is, is there anywhere I can read more about it? Cos i'm planning to make a website on the Teochew language which is definitely going to include audio files. What could I read to learn more about how to handle audio files? Thanks Shingrila 17:55, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I don't have much experience with noise, so I'm stumped. It might help a little if you open your mixer (by double-clicking the speaker icon in your system tray, next to your clock) and mute everything you don't use. If you go into the mixer's options and properties, you can hide/unhide entries in your mixer. Aux and Line In should definitely be muted.

If you want to learn more about digital audio, the first two sections of Graham Mitchell's An Introduction to Compressed Audio with Ogg Vorbis should be nice. If you have questions, the people at http://hydrogenaudio.org are generally very kind and helpful.

Bit-depth and sampling rate decide how finely the sound is digitized; high bit-depth and high sampling rate means higher quality but bigger files. If you're going to upload audio samples on the web, 8 bit samples and a 16 kHz sampling rate should be enough for legibility, provided there's no noise. --Kjoonlee 02:50, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bit-depth should be 16 or 24 bit when you do the recording, if you plan to do editing. (Noise reduction, volume changes, etc.) You can down-convert it later on. --Kjoonlee 02:55, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For effects, you can just try the default setting, which should be a reasonable choice. If you're unsatisfied, you can either make the de-noise filter more aggressive or more passive. --Kjoonlee 02:58, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, what did you use to connect the cassette player with the computer? I once used a "mini-stereo audio cable" for the job. --Kjoonlee 11:53, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it was a cable, but I dunno if it was a "mini-stereo audio cable" like yours. Could it be the cable which gave such bad results? Shingrila 17:55, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not really. I just wanted to check if you had used a microphone or a cable. --Kjoonlee 02:18, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's the software that would be the problem, most likely the biggest source of quality loss is in the interface between your tape deck and your computer. What are your components and how are you connecting them? The 1st thing you need to check is where you are plugging in your tape output, probably either the mic or line input on your sound card. Try using the other one. Also, try recording with your computer without actually hitting PLAY on the tape, then try recording without the tape deck even plugged in. That will give you a good indicator of where the noise is coming from. If you record without the tape deck plugged in and there is still a hum, it could be an internal hum from your PC, I've seen it many times, cheap onboard sound cards can pick up interference from everything, hard disks, fans, power supplies. If that's the case and you don't want to spend a lot of money, find a friend with better components in their PC. Vespine 02:33, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Open Office Jumping Back to the Top

I'm a teacher in the process of producing a number of review sheets for GCSE physics, and I'm using open office to do so. The Problem that I'm having is this: most of my document is comprised of floating images and text boxes. Whenever I click off an object to deselect it, Open Office jumps back to the document forcing me to scroll back down. Is there anyway to prevent Open Office from jumping back to the top where the cursor is?

Thank you in advance for any assistance you can provide.

--CGP 15:33, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could you provide a link to a file in which the problem arises, so that we can try for ourselves? —Bromskloss 17:04, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. Any of the ones on this page. --CGP 18:48, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

At least for me (OOo 2.0.3 winXP) clicking off the object (on the waves one that I tried) doesn't jump back to the top. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:01, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can't reproduce it either. First, I click on an image to select it, then click beside it (inside our outside the textarea, it doesn't matter). The marker ends up pretty much where you'd expect – close to where I clicked – and no scrolling takes place. (OOo 2.0.2 on Linux and OOo 2.0 on Windows) —Bromskloss 19:11, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, good to know. It's either the version I'm using (The version from portable apps) or I just don't know how to use Open Office : ) --CGP 19:26, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, well I haven't used their programs, but I doubt the latter! —Bromskloss 20:13, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I attempted (with the portable USB version) and could not replicate the problem. The first document I downloaded had text but not in text boxes; maybe that's why.. are you sure the version you're running is up-to-date? --Username132 (talk) 20:44, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This sounds similar to a problem I've encountered with many programs:

1) The text cursor is flashing happily at the top of the file.

2) Instead of using the text cursor, I use the scroll bars to move down until I find what I want.

3) However, when my mouse pointer slips off the scroll bar, the program jumps back to the top, because that's where the text cursor is.

StuRat 04:19, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I had a similar issue for a completely different reason. I had an embedded math object (a bunch of formulas). The only "text" on the page was the title. There was no text after the embedded math object. So, when I clicked outside the object, it moved the cursor to the end of the only text on the document - the title. I fixed it by adding a blank line at the end of the document. --Kainaw ^(talk) 22:45, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Video Conversions

I have a compact home theater system Panasonic Sa-HT335 and the tft computer monitor phillips 170b.The dvd player has s-video,scart,and component video outputs. How can I connect it to my pc screen? do i need some special video converter or just a cable?????

Look for a <input> to VGA Adapter on Google, replacing the word "<input>" with the appropriate type of video output from your DVD player. You should find many links. —Mitaphane _talk 00:03, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To answer your question, you need a special video converter. Years ago it was not likely to cost you less then about US$100, doing a very quick search it looks like things haven't changed very much..Vespine 02:11, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bluetooth Stacks and MAC addresses (especially dodgy ones)

My bluetooth dongle has an illegal MAC address (all ones I think) - did the dodgy people in hong kong save money by doing this (I figure you must have to pay money to some MAC adddress coordinator)? Also, someone was telling me about bluetooth stacks - there's no Wikipedia article on it, so which article would tell me about whatever it was they were trying to tell me about? --Username132 (talk) 20:31, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To make sure that every network device in the world has a unique address, companies are assigned a unique encoding key.. which you do have to pay for --⁪froth^{T C} 02:41, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am looking for technical advice on connecting an old Printer to a new PC. No, really, I'm not; read the bottom paragraph - I'm thanking people for helping me earlier. READ the bottom paragraph!!

May I first apologise for reproducing the italicised passage below from an earlier entry on the miscellaneous page. Can I also apologise for the ravings of the nutcase that keeps changing my question above, I don't know what I did to upset him/her but boy, is s/he sore at me. Thanks. Regrettably, when the adapter I boasted about arrived today it didn't fix the problem I am going to have when my new PC arrives next week. My PC currently connects to my UMAX scanner vis 25 pin parallel ports, and then the scanner connects to the EPSON Stylus 600 via 36 pin parallel ports. But replacing the PC to scanner cable with the USB/parallel adapter just will not work. The printer uses a LPT1 port on the PC and the adapter supplier says it is unlikely their adapter will work with that port. I am not being a cheapskate in trying to avoid the cost of a plug and play printer/scanner for my new PC. I am just a pensioner who enjoys the web and printing photos of my grandkids and family holidays. I can buy really cheap inkjet cartridges for my current printer as its quite old, and they are not chipped. But replacement cartridges for all the new printers I have checked out are really expensive, and they are all chipped. So I wondered if one of you wizards could suggest a way of making my PC 'see' my printer via the USB/25 pin parallel adapter, or to suggest a USB printer/scanner that uses less expensive ink cartridges. Thanks in anticipation.

This is not a question - it's a big thankyou to you wonderful Wikipedians. I suspect someone will give me short shrift for NOT posing a question here; whilst it is likely that someone else will tell me this should be on the Computing Question Page - but I have chosen to say thankyou here as I think it more a miscellaneous matter. I ordered a new desktop PC today and thought I had asked all the right questions before doing so. Only afterwards did I visit the supplier's website and discover he no longer fits parallel ports, using only USBs instead. And my printer and scanner are both quite old but still working perfectly, and of course, they are fitted with the former. So the supplier invited me to invest about £150 or $300 on new kit that would be fitted with USB ports and cables. But instead, I used Wikipedia and discovered I could buy a USB - Parallel adaptor. I just ordered one online, and spent £6 or $12. You saved me a load of dosh and for that, many thanks to each. Next time I shall be more careful and ask my questions here (or on the Computing page) first. White Squirrel 22:29, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

First off, a tad long, but I thank you for your thanks. What operating system do you run? A parallel-to-USB adapter should cause the auto-detection of the printer I believe. Splintercellguy 02:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, sorry, but I disagree. Not about the 'a tad long' bit, i agree with that ;) but the rest i think is wrong. An old printer without USB in the 1st place won't be plug and play and will not be 'automatically' detected by your computer. Especially if you are using a lpt to usb adapter. You would need someone to code a usb driver specific to your printer, in other words, absolutely no way. Does your computer have PCI expansion ports? If so, what you need is a 'PCI - Parallel port card'! Here are some examples. Vespine 04:09, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but I have to disagree too :P. You definitely still need to install the necessary parallel drivers for the printer, but as my understanding goes, the OS should automatically detect the Parallel-to-USB adapter, and install one of the default USB drivers for it. Then you would Add Printer the printer if you don't already have a printer, or change the printer port to the virtual USB one. Splintercellguy 07:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think splintercellguy is probably right- a PS/2 to USB mouse adapter I have is autodetected as a USB mouse. --⁪froth^{T C} 19:14, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Folks, I will look into your suggestions and let you know the outcome. I also had a quick word with my new PC Supplier and he suggests it might be able to see my old printer/scanner so not to give up yet. Again, I will let you know next week. Brief enough??? Thanks again.195.93.21.6 13:38, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

November 10

Wikipedia's servers

Why are Wikipedia's main servers located in Florida, one of the most disaster prone states in the USA (flooding, hurricanes etc)? Battle Ape 08:16, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Data centers are usually pretty safe, with controlled humidity, raised floors and dropped ceilings, and very powerful backup generators. --⁪froth^{T C} 17:55, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, Cheyenne Mountain isn't used any more, perhaps we can move there ? StuRat 18:19, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I always thought Cheyenne was a bit of a joke. It's like building the most expensive and unbreakable server in the world and putting a giant sign on it that says "PLEASE HACK ME". I mean the pyramids are almost empty for a reason. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 12:16, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It could survive anything but a direct nuclear strike on the doors, I believe. StuRat 05:41, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's because it was exactly for that purpose. The real facility designed to shelter the highest level of government from nuclear attack was somewhere in West Virginia, if I recall, and it was kept completely secret until after the cold war. If I could only remember the name... --Jmeden2000 16:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I saw an interesting show about it (Greenbrier) on the History channel Ryan Roos 22:23, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mt Weather, VA (FEMA) http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/mt_weather.htm ; Greenbriar Inn WV, http://www.avhub.net/congressionalhideawaygreenbriar.htm ; Waynesboro, Pennsylvania url gone, seems to be Cheney's secret hiding place

Wired Computer Interfering With Wireless Connection

I keep losing my wireless network connection (after about 20 seconds) and suspect the wreck of a computer downstairs which is connected directly by ethernet. Is this possible? (I'm posting this in one of my 20 second windows). --Username132 (talk) 13:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The answer is yes... but why? --Username132 (talk) 14:10, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think we need a little more description of what your network looks like. Are you on the same router as the downstairs computer? Are there other wireless networks in your area? How is your wireless connected to the Internet? And so on. howch e ng {chat} 19:14, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is one other wireless network in the area. The router connects to a broadband modem by ethernet. The offending computer connects to the router by ethernet. My computer is connected wirelessly to the same router. I note that blocking the MAC address of the computer downstairs in the router settings, stops me from getting constantly disonnected, whereas unblocking enables it again. I've already scanned offending computer for spyware and viruses (no viruses, spyware removed) but the problem continues. --Username132 (talk) 19:41, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, so your two computers are both connected directly to the same router (I assume it's something like a wireless router with 4 ports). Do both computers get their IP addresses assigned by DHCP or are they static? If they're static, make sure the IP addresses are different on the two machines and that they don't conflict with anything else on the network (printer, XBox, TiVO). If DHCP, it may be possible (but highly unlikely) to have an IP address conflict -- get a new IP address to be safe (in Windows, open a command prompt and enter "ipconfig /renew" without the quotes -- I don't exactly remember how to do it on a Mac, but in OS9 I believe it was in the Network control panel). Report back when you have tried these steps. howch e ng {chat} 20:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I fixed IP addresses for both computers (to separate addresses) for port forwarding reasons. You assumption re: four ports in router was correct! --Username132 (talk) 21:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SSIDs

If two WAPs have the same SSID, and you ping a website, why don't both routers send individual pings? In other words, what exactly prevents multiple sending, especially since information is sent "in the air" and any device with the same SSID will pick it up and process it. --⁪froth^{T C} 17:59, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you're only connected to one network at a time. When you connect to a network, you have an IP address and a gateway. If you're using DHCP (usually the default), then only one router has your computer in its DHCP table (i.e., it assigned you an IP address and knows your MAC address). So when you run a ping (or any other network command), the other routers don't recognize your machine and don't do anything. Now if you have a static IP address, then things get a little more complicated. First, the routers would have to have the same IP address (e.g., 192.168.1.1), and thus be on the same gateway. You would also have to have a different IP address from any other machine on either network. If all of these conditions are true, well ... I guess I don't know enough about networking to know what will happen then. howch e ng {chat} 18:19, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My campus's network has WAPs all over the place, and they all show up as one network- my computer I guess somehow chooses a WAP to connect to --⁪froth^{T C} 23:23, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's because they are not seperate WAPs, they are all the same WAP. The entire network will still only have one gateway, but many wireless repeaters. Vespine 22:45, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK.. so if I have many repeaters, all picking up the signal with varying degrees of "signal strength" why doesn't the network hardware pass them on to the internet as separate requests when they were actually just one? And aren't they called separate WAPs even if they're advertising access to the same wireless network? --⁪froth^{T C}

Windows and many wireless network managers will look at all the access points, then take the ones that have the same SSID and group them into one access point. This is to limit user confusion. If you use a program like netstumbler, it will show you each access point that has the same SSID. The windows wireless network manager connects you to the access point that has the strongest signal. Unless you have more than one wireless card or a card capable of connecting to more than one AP you can not connect to more than one AP despite the fact that they have the same SSID. It is one connection to one access point, always, and this is why you will not ping something multiple times. If you move down the street you will automatically connect to the AP with that SSID that is closest to you. Also, yes they are technically separate AP's though they have the same SSID. I think part of your confusion lays with the SSID. The SSID is merely for users and to help network managers group AP's. To actually distinguish between AP's you should use the MAC address, which is the unique hardware number that all network devices have. --sish 05:59, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

powerpoint 2003 animations

I'm trying to create a presentation that have a world map. I would like to create a powerpoint that zooms in on each section, with some text that pops up for each country involved. How would I animate smoothly? Can you choose a point to zoom into for a certain picture? Thanks 130.207.180.30 18:20, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps something like Photo Story would suit this purpose better than PowerPoint. It's a free download from Microsoft (since it sounds like you like MS software), is simple to use, and would create what you describe above very easily. --jjron 14:19, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why I Can't Access A Website That Other People Can?

I was playing a game of babble on www.playbabble.com when it stopped responding to my entries, while my friend who I was Skyping at the time continued and pulled way ahead of me point-wise. I couldn't get a respnose from the website so I used tracert in the DOS prompt as recommended to me above and this was the outcome. I thought the internet worked such that if a packet couldn't get to its destination one way, it'd take another route - what has been absorbing my packets? Why didn't it go a different way? --Username132 (talk) 19:09, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It does (see routing), between backbone networks. Looking at the traceroute, I'm guessing the connection problem was between the domain's host and their ISP. I noticed the last two hops were between address with no domain name. I'm guessing that would address on playbabble's host site, not the ISP. —Mitaphane _talk 22:33, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Help

I am trying to open a game i downloaded off the internet. I keep getting the error message: dx error: please check your video card driver. Does anybody know what this is, why it's caused, and how to fix it?

Install the newest DirectX (9.0c) and update your video card drivers. --Wooty Woot? | contribs 21:49, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It would be best practice to name the game you are trying to play and the video card you have. Also, more precise help could be found on the website of the game and if it exists, the game's forum. --sish 06:02, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

how do you update a video driver?

Typically, you would go to the web site of the maker of the driver, and download a new version, which will then self-install. StuRat 22:57, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

November 11

divmod in Python language

What is the __divmod__ operator in the Python computer language? Can someone give me an example with the correct result of the operator. Thanks 211.28.120.117 01:05, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to be an integer division which returns the integer and the remainder. There is something about it on pyref.infogami.com. –Mysid ☎ 11:41, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some computer instruction sets compute both a quotient and a remainder for integer division. For example when 42 is divided by 11, the result is a quotient of 3 and a remainder of 9, because 42 = 11×3+9. In many higher-level languages it is clumsy and wasteful to write an algorithm that needs both results. A typical method would be q := n/d; r := n%d, where % is the "mod" or remainder operator. Although a smart compiler may emit a single division instruction, many will not; and divisions tend to be expensive. The idea of the divmod operator is to explicitly ask for both quotient and remainder simultaneously; it is defined to produce a Python "tuple", (q,r). --KSmrq^T 07:51, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

are you saying (q,r) = divmod(a,b) 202.168.50.40 21:05, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Which applications are necessary or recommended for maintaining a Windows XP system?

Windows XP is especially vulnerable to spyware, due to its extremely high user base and relatively poor security. Which programs would you recommend installing to keep a system clean and useful? I've got ZoneAlarm, Disktective, AVG Anti-virus and Webroot Anti-spyware. Are there any other apps I can use, either ones I don't have (such as RAM managing and disk defragmenting), or superior to the ones I do have? I'd appreciate any help.

ZoneAlarm by itself is fine. Nothing else is necessary. --Wooty Woot? | contribs 03:34, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I use McAfee and it works fantastic. Cbrown1023 03:36, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You've probably got more than you need. If you're using IE or like downloading strange executables, add Microsoft Anti-Spyware and Spybot to your anti-spyware arsenal. No spyware app is able to detect and defeat all spyware. Zonealarm is unnecessary if you have a router, and often causes more problems than it fixes; though if you don't have a router, keep it. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 03:48, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I stongly recomend using MBSA (Baseline Security Analyzer) as it will scan the service packs and fixes that could be missing in windows and in other Microsoft software, as Office, .net framework, SQL Server, etc.

And for heaven's sake make your user account a 'limited user'. At the moment, practically all spyware cannot infect a machine through a limited user account, although the scum are beginning to dumb up to it. Even then, infections are much easier to remove.Robbak 07:54, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

iTunes video on Windows Media Center

I would like to get my iTunes music and video into Windows Media Center so I can use it as, well, a media center. I downloaded 3ivx, so now I have the music in Media Center. I still can't get in the mp4 videos now. I can play them with wmp, but they don't show up in Media Center. How can I get in the videos? Thanks. QWERTY | DVORAK 05:57, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

EVM

what is evaluation module with respect to DSP processors? why is it used?

Title of WIKI

How do i remove the title of the article like the main page? What code do i use?

You cannot remove the title (and the main page is not editable anyway). –Mysid ☎ 07:31, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On my own wiki....

I believe that articles are looked up by name, so this would be no simple hack --⁪froth^{T C} 19:16, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not the Title its self..when you view it.202.172.124.197 22:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how easy it would be, but look around for the templates people attempted to create a while ago in order to fix the "problem" where all articles with lower-case first letters (e.g. iBook) are automatically capitalized. Those templates tampered directly with the title, so maybe it's not that hard to use the same code to make it disappear completely. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 12:04, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You might be able to use a script like this, by changing the "correction" variable to "", though you'd have to run it on every page. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 12:10, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You probably could remove it with the help of CSS. TERdON 14:19, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Transferring video to my laptop

I am facing a big problem with transferring videos from my video camera to my laptop. I have a USB cable only and I have connected it to the Laptop. My model is a JVC, model no.- GR-D53AS.I can transfer it but the only problem is that it is getting converted to a small screen size. If i try to do full screen the quality turns out to be very bed. somebody told me to convert it into a VCD and then play it on the T.V. Is it possible? If not, please tell me how to do so without spoiling the original quality of the video? Please! Its really urgent. Thanks.

Original quality? I doubt your video camera recorded at such a high quality for it to look good on the computer. The computer monitor generally has higher resolution, so playing something made for television will never look as good on a monitor. You can make it into a VCD, sure, or even an SVCD, but that doesn't solve the problem of the quality, since IMO VCDs are worse than normal TV images. As for the original quality, if you need it to be better, you'd need a better camera. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:42, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do you know what the resolution is that's produced by the video camera ? It might be adjustable, but, of course, a higher resolution will mean the maximum length of each video will be shorter. The maximum resolution of computer screens is typically either 1280x1024 or 1600x1200, but it's unlikely the video camera can give you that resolution, it's probably only 640x480 or 800x600. Also, is it using 32-bit color, 24-bit color, 16-bit color, or 8-bit (256 color) ? Anything below 24-bit will start to look bad on the computer screen. On the other hand, 8-bit greyscale looks pretty good, if color isn't important to you, and if your video camera supports it. Finally, what video compression method is the camera using ? Some are quite "lossy", meaning they lower the quality substantially. StuRat 23:47, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

DVD formats

Please find time to answer the following regarding DVD formats

-As can be seen there are lot of DVD formats like DVD+R, DVD-R -What is the difference? - What is the advantage of having so many formats

There is hardly any advantage. They are competing formats developed by different corporations; see DVD-R and DVD+R. –Mysid ☎ 12:49, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yahoo messenger 8.1

Hi I have windows xp installed, and i have dialup for 33kbps when i download yahoo messenger: it shuts down and restarts it crashed when it is 11% or 30% completed. Can someone help me

thanks Slmking 12:32, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're saying it stops downloading in the middle of the download? Or that it crashes when installing? --Wooty Woot? | contribs 20:57, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it stops downloading, and also shuts down the system Slmking 21:43, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What browser are you using? --Wooty Woot? | contribs 05:20, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We use Internet explorer - The latest i suppose. Slmking 08:45, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you are using dial-up, I would suggest a download manager... many are available at download.com. They let you resume interrupted downloads. Back in the day, I used GoZilla, but it seems that program is no longer free.--Mabris 22:55, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

are gmail conversations still secure?

are gmail conversations secure from any browser? Not just the page that we enter email and password, but all pages including email messages? in all browsers including opera and firefox?

Is this feature still available? Because I dont find a certificate while not on google homepage. Please help

Instead of going to http://mail.google.com go to https://mail.google.com. --Jrothwell ^(talk) 19:20, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Blog post about old games now stickied with demos and intros and cracks.

I cannot for the life of me find a blog post that I had found some time ago. It was about running an old abandonware game, which was copy-protected. The company that made it and the manual ("enter the fifth word on the third paragraph of page fifty-whatever" or the like) are long gone, so the only way it can be played is by using the l33t crack for it. The author had mused about our gaming culture only being preserved by those crackers who disabled the copy protection on these things.

Googling has been unsuccessful. (Even on "blogsearch".) I also remember that the same blogger had also written about how he was leaving Apple behind and never using a Mac again, because of the new mail program horribly mangling his forty thousand or so emails from years past that he had been keeping in (I think?) mbox format in the process of importing it. He detailed a history of getting screwed over by Apple in the name of usability. I can't find this guy's blog, I wish to hell I had bookmarked it, and I want to use it as an example in a school assignment. Help, anyone? grendel|khan 15:50, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

An addendum: the bit about mangling email was about the "emlx" format, and I think the blog had one of those short, clever names, and I don't think it was hosted on blogspot or anything like that. grendel|khan 15:53, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do you know the name of the game? Something like that would really help out a lot. --140.247.249.100 21:20, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Found it! The blog is "Dive Into Mark". It was Spyro the Dragon, and here's the bit about him leaving Apple. grendel|khan 22:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Video Card Compatibility

I am looking to buy a new Video Card, and subsequently found two that I may buy. However, I am not sure how to see if these cards will run on my computer ([Video Card One] and [Video Card Two]. So my question is this, what would I need to know to see if my computer would run either of these cards and how would I find this information out? Sorry that I cannot provide the neccercery information before hand, but I'm really not sure what I need to know and Google doesnt seem to bring up much help for it either.

--84.64.184.213 21:39, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First you need to know what your motherboard supports (AGP or PCIX
secondly do these video cards require a large amount of power (most video cards that are new require a power input from the power supply)

202.172.124.197 23:01, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On the Setup Menu via the boot screen, I can change my Main GPU (Or Something to that effect) from PCI to either PCI-E and Onboard, so I assume my motherboard supports PCIX. --84.64.184.213 12:02, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Used to be that a range of motherboards from a manufacturer would all have the same BIOS and the settings could include features which were not necessarily supported by every board in the range! It would really be necessary to look at the written specs or physically look for the component on board to verify if the functionality was there. Having said that, for your own piece of mind, it wouldn't hurt to have a look, PCIE slots are not very hard to tell apart from AGP or normal PCI slots. Vespine 03:36, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You may want to download and use a program like Sandra Lite to help explore the capabilities of your hardware. However, some questions require opening the computer case. Here's a guide to help you visually distinguish AGP from PCIe slots on a motherboard. Other physical issues include the width of the card, available cooling, and required power. Some sites that sell cards will actually talk to you, by email if not by telephone. --KSmrq^T 08:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the help, I think I'm just going to take the computer itself down to a computer store and get an upgrade there. Thanks for the help, regardless. --84.64.184.213 19:29, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say wait till the DX10 cards come out. We'll probably all get stuck using Vista at some point...--Mabris 22:52, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What happened to all the game sites?

A few years ago, you used to be able to go to zone.com, games.yahoo.com, games.com, station.sony.com and other sites and play games online against other people. Now those sites just have single player and downloadable games. What happened? Are there any good sites left? TacoDeposit 23:15, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I played web-based games on play.yahoo.com yesterday. I don't think I just imagined playing them. --Kainaw ^(talk) 23:20, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pogo.com [2] still has many two and four player games (mostly board and card games), as well as many single player games. They will try to sell you their Club Pogo membership, but free Pogo still has many good games. StuRat 23:38, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all. TacoDeposit 20:22, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

November 12

Ubuntu Questions

I am a Linux "noob" so excuse my ignorance.

Firefox 2.0 came out and I have installed it on my XP box, but the repositories have not been updated for Ubuntu. What gives? Why can't I install things like I do in XP?
In a related question, where are the programs I install scattered about the file system? In Windows everything is in C:Program Files, is there no analagous folder in Ubuntu? Why am I able to launch programs via bash when the executables are not in the working directory?

Thanks. 65.7.166.232 03:05, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To the second question: bash looks for executables in places defined in the environment variable path. Type echo $PATH and you'll see what it contains. Most executables are located in /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin. –Mysid ☎ 05:32, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can download Firefox binaries and install them under your home directory. --Kjoonlee 07:28, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can install things in Ubuntu like in Windows, it's just that it's different. Programs do not have their own folder in some program files folder, but instead their binaries are in /usr/bin, libraries in /usr/lib, shared files in /usr/share and so on. The reason you probably can't install Firefox 2.0 in Ubuntu is because you are using Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper). Ubuntu 6.10 recently came out, so you should upgrade. Ubuntu 6.10 has Firefox 2.0. About your second question, there are search paths to tell GNU/Linux where to find the programs. The default ones are probably /bin, /usr/bin, and some others. I hope that's answered your two questions. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 07:40, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, a lot of people have say that they've been installing Edgy and even though it said FF2 (beta?) was installed, the actual program was 1.5, possibly because of the weird FF2 beta, or because Ubuntu was trying to rush it into the release and they screwed something up. It seems to have rectified now though, and my last Ubuntu and Xubuntu disks both have a proper FF2 installed. Here's a good document that explains the Linux file structure. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 11:56, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't installed Edgy because I heard some people were having problems. I'm waiting for that to get settled out. Also, why should I have to upgrade to get a new version of FF? What if I didn't want to upgrade because Dapper is going to be supported for a longer time? If I install manually, won't it confuse synaptic in the future (because it won't know that I installed it myself)? 65.7.166.232 16:23, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if you install it manually, you'll probably be installing it under either $HOME or /usr/local/. Regular Ubuntu packages get installed to /usr/, not /usr/local/, so synaptic won't notice. --Kjoonlee 17:09, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. Edgy Eft is a hot-off-the-presses release, so I would say don't upgrade. It's not really necessary to, and I sure haven't. I prefer stability over cutting-edge. Cephyr 03:35, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to this wiki post [3], Ubuntu doesn't update the packages unless a critical security update is present. Hope that helps. --inky 07:10, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Immediate Access Memory

What is an Immediate Access Memory? Is it the same thing as a processor register? If not, then what's the difference between them?

User: The Anonymous One

I think by Immediate Access Memory you mean the CPU caches, which are used to store recently/frequently accessed data from memory (accessing the RAM is slower than accessing the CPU cache). Processor registers are super-fast things to store values in (more specifically, a 32-bit processor can store 32-bit numbers in its processors). No, they aren't the same. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 07:43, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Registers are very small pieces of memory embedded in the CPU that are used to hold values being operated upon at the time.. for example in many architectures register A is the accumulator and may be where the output of ADD might go for example. It's basically for holding values that the processor has to remember for a very short time - not for actually carrying out its instructions (those are inline and require no separate memory) but for "in between" instructions. Registers are sometimes used to hold a memory address just before a request to main memory. Cache is for all sorts of data, usually data structures like lists. Frequently used data is stored in cache. If you had a list of integers and you wanted to add one to each integer, a good place to put that list while you work on it would be in processor cache. See Processor_register, CPU cache, and Memory hierarchy --⁪froth^{T C} 03:24, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

how to publish a website

i have created a website in microsoft frontpage but how do you publish it on the web?Mi2n15 08:22, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mi2n15, you need to get someone/some company to host your website, because web space isn't free. Try 50Webs or something similar which has no ads. You will then have to manually upload your website's files. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 09:05, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

will yahoo/google host it if i allow them to put their ads on my siteMi2n15 09:23, 12 November 2006 (UTC) 50webs is a pay site i was looking for something free because this is my first attemptMi2n15 09:30, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

50Webs is free, just look for it. Yahoo puts ads on free plans... --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 09:38, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

will i be paid by yahooMi2n15 13:10, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Probably not, and since when was Google/Yahoo a free web host? Splintercellguy 04:11, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Consider changing plans. Microsoft FrontPage has earned a reputation for creating horrible web pages that fail to comply with numerous web standards and so cause problems for your visitors. Is that the way you want to world to perceive you? I hope not! Furthermore, it is being discontinued at the end of this year. For a cross-platform standards-compliant free alternative, try Nvu.

If this is a small personal site, chances are your ISP provides free hosting as part of your service. Otherwise, find yourself a hosting service. Note that use of FrontPage must be specially supported by the service, so limits your choices. Some sites that may help you are

Indeed, 50Webs does have a free, ad-free plan, and you might also investigate AtSpace as an alternative. TANSTAAFL applies, as always. Should you want your own domain name, and if the host does not offer it, you can try something like GoDaddy; either way there will be a small annual fee. --KSmrq^T 00:21, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Programming

Two very general questions. First, is there anything like "benchmarking" to test to efficiency of procedures? I imagine it wouldn't be very possible nor useful for complex programs, but when there's a few choices of procedure (as a very bad, general example, if vs. case, or more likely something like drawThinLine() vs. drawLine(thickness=1)), some kind of standardized speed testing would be great, wouldn't it?

Secondly, and related to the first, this scenario: A program/procedure is created that performs its function quickly, efficiently, and bug-free. A new feature is added to a different, similar program/procedure that isn't quite as well-programmed, but it works, and so now there's a choice between two different programs/functions, and someone could be justified for choosing to use either. Within the realm of open source and free programs, is there any way/are there any projects that try to get rid of this silly conflict of interests? I've heard people say often that there's no "one best program" for any problem, but if you reduce a program to its parts, isn't there? Is there really no "one best procedure" for drawing a single, non-aliased, flat-colored box in a non-accelerated environment? freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 11:36, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know there is no standard method of benchmarking procedures. For graphics we have frames per second, for instance, so I guess you could use timing for your procedures too. If you hold the timestamp of when the function was accessed as well as the timestamp for when the function was exited, then you can calculate the time that function took to process and compare it to the rest of the program to see which parts are causing the most overheads.

As for competing programs, I think that competition drives up standards. A good example of this is the Internet Explorer/Firefox/Other Browsers war. We'd still have the woefully insecure ActiveX controls all over websites if Firefox hadn't came along and blocked them all, and we'd be without tabs for a while longer if NetCaptor hadn't championed them. I don't want to sound like an anti-Microsoftist, but if it wasn't for competition then it is likely that they would have held back on the features of their software so that they could release new versions (along with new pricetags) in order to maximise profit. In the case of open-source software, where there is no money involved, it is a case of making the program easier to use, more efficient and more available. I don't know of any initiatives to stop this happening, but I wouldn't support one if there was. As for the line-drawing procedure, the best way would be to use assembly language to tell the graphics card to draw a line directly to screen, but that would take a week to program. Most programs we know which draw lines use either DirectDraw or OpenGL, both of which are quite inefficient in relative terms. RevenDS 12:44, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well yes, I admit it doesn't make much sense to apply the same standards to Microsoft, they don't reveal their methods and many don't attempt to copy them. I don't think that it would necessarily smother competition, though. In an ideal situation, one function could be easily substituted for another (optimized by a different individual), better programmed one (once it had been proved to be higher-functioning), and since two separate programs with the same major function would be using the same base of operation (and both would performing basic functions at the same speed) the focus would be moved to which project was able to keep up with next-generation advanced functions, and apply them in an efficient way. Or maybe more important would be the easy of human interaction with the program interface, something that obviously can't be accurately benchmarked.

Then again, both implementation of next-gen functions and usability could simply be extensions of the basic framework, selectable in the same way that "themes" are in many programs nowadays. It obviously doesn't seem to work very well with the current economics of programming, but maybe that's because they need to be revised as well. I am (or am becoming) quite anti-Microsoftist, but more than that I'm pro-change. I think the way Microsoft and Macintosh function right now is very anti-competition, what with DOS being used as core for MS OSes all the way to WinME, and now with vista being released with a big price tag and mostly cosmetic modifications to WindowsXP.

I'm really surprised... discouraged that there isn't any efforts to benchmark mid- and high-level functions. Maybe that's something that should be worked on in the near future. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 13:21, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not aware of any standardized benchmark.. but we can analyze code based on how we know the compiler (or processor) handles it. For example if one solution compiles to a few lines of asm and another solution compiles to a thousand lines, you know which is faster. A more accurate way of gauging it would be to be familiar with the chip's architecture- even generalizations like Intel chips are better at processing a lot of light instructions very fast and AMD chips are better at chunking through intensive instructions can be very helpful. Also knowledge of how the compiler works can help: in many languages the statement

if( false AND someGiantFunction() )

will never evaluate someGiantFunction. So in AND tests, easier boolean expressions (and expressions more likely to be false, it's a balance) should come first for greatest efficiency. I can't imagine much of this being automated; writing fast code comes of knowing what you're doing- and knowing convention since convention usually knows best --⁪froth^{T C} 03:14, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could performance analysis be what you want? --Kjoonlee 04:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, actually that does link to a lot of what I was looking for, thanks.

To Froth, if the same program was twice, once with false before AND and once with it after, a "benchmarker" should determine that the before example is faster, whether compiled or just by looking at the code. If the compiler isn't smart enough to automatically evaluate that expression, then that is a weakness, or inefficiency in the compiler, right? Compilers could be put under the same amount of efficiency benchmarking as the programs that are being put through it.

Let me give an example of a problem like the one you describe, using drawLine() and drawOtherLine(). drawLine() is fast at drawing lines in general, but for some reason drawOtherLine() is faster at drawing lines in cases where 50% of them are off the screen (and thus there is some sort of unpredictable "if", making it difficult to benchmark). Assuming both are coded very efficiently in assembly (which I think all standard procedures at this level should be), is there any reason that the extra ability of drawOtherLine() to draw quickly (presumably by ignoring) lines that are off-screen couldn't be added to drawLine(), thus making it faster in both cases? Or maybe a better example, drawLine(x1,y1,x2,y2) vs. drawLine(x1,y2,width,height), where drawLine(xyxy) can draw long lines faster than drawLine(xywh): Is there any reason that one of these methods can't be made faster then the other in all normal circumstances? If this can be done, then I don't see why any program can't be systematically optimized up to its high-level procedures. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 05:02, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your answers, I tend to confuse myself by thinking too much sometimes and I am known to be a little naïve at times : X. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 05:02, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well first fresh when I said "false" I meant a boolean expression that returns false. So in ASMish code:

0 CMP A,B
1 JNE 3
2 JMP 7
3 CMP B,C
4 JNE 6
5 JMP 7
6 The instruction if they're both true
7 The rest of the program

I'm sure there are muc better ways to do it, but this is a very simple example. If A and B are equal then it goes on to compare B and C, however if A and B are not equal, it doesn't even bother to compare B and C; it just jumps down to "address" 7, and this can speed it up considerably, especially if there are several compares in sequence. A modern compiler would probably count:

if (false && anythingelse)

as a NOP (no-operation) and not even include it in the final code, however when both operands aren't necessarily false, some human optimization is possible by analyzing the code and trying to strike a balance between which is false more often and which takes longer to evaluate. This example might be way off in left field- I only know for sure a few interpreters (PHP comes to mind) that do this, but it's probably structured this way in most compiled languages too- and it works fine as a good example of static code analysis.

As for your example about drawLine, first let me say that if the ignore functionality of drawOtherLine was added to drawLine, combining the advantages, then that would be fine, that would be progress. I'm not sure exactly what you're asking. Note however that there might be some fundamental difference in how the arguments have to be handled (unlikely in this case but common when working with different types of data) that gives one function an inherent advantage in drawing long lines, or with which it's particularly easy to implement "ignore" functionality- in which case an overloaded or separate function is very advantegous --⁪froth^{T C} 21:52, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One other comment on benchmarking: I suggest you put it in a loop, and draw maybe 1000 lines, and time how long that takes with each method. This will take care of natural variations in how long each operation takes (depending on what else the computer happens to be doing at the time). StuRat 05:39, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the explanation Froth. I'm not sure where talking about the same thing though D :. What I'm wondering is if it's possible to assume up to a certain level that procedureA is faster than procedureB in a reasonable range of likely cases, to such a degree that procedureB isn't needed at all. I can see that the ASM example you gave me can simplified with static code analysis when the input for "a" and "b" are known, or can be predicted, and I can't see why all compilers, ASM or otherwize, shouldn't be able determine that. Then it is even easier to judge the speed of the code by counting the number of operations it has to perform. For more complex operations it would make sense to repeat the procedure a number of times, as StuRat said, and find a natural average operating time. Regardless, I've strayed from my original question... which wasn't really a good question to begin with I guess. I think I'm just frustrated that all my free software operates so slowly on my borrowed POS laptop, and I wish that there was a more organized procedure for making software libraries that could insure supreme efficiency. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 01:48, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To your first question, it's very possible, through static code analysis and actual timing or bechmarking to determine that one function is more efficient than another.. so just use the more efficient function for what you need it to solve. What's the problem? You can't eliminate all inefficient algorithms.. and sometimes algorithm B may be better than algorithm A. As for your next question, it's not at all simple for compilers to "tell" which operations it has to perform. What if I had something like this:

if( isFastIfInputEqualsTrue(false) && isFastIfInputEqualsTrue(true) )

or

if( isFastIfInputEqualsTrue(false) || isFastIfInputEqualsTrue(true) )

Common sense tells us that in both cases the rightmost condition should be evaluated first.. since it's very fast and presumably half the time the rightmost condition will determine the output of the entire boolean expression. However, the compiler isn't necessarily able to tell whether the function is actually faster if input equals true. And it's not necessarily true half the time; what if instead of just putting in true/false we put in some expression that must be evaluated at run time? The compiler would have no idea of knowing what balance to strike. Now given, if we had enough resources we could carry this out to infinite complexity and then it would be possible to dissect a piece of code and figure out the best way to optimize it.. and to some degree compilers do a very good job of it today. And what you're proposing is entirely feasible- for basic structures optimize as best as possible, for complex or unrecognized structures run some kind of timing analysis (which could get infinitely complex depending on the program, so that's not always possible). But that's already being done in everyday compilers. Granted, the big stuff like traces and benchmarks are only done for big projects and are organized largely by brainpower, but it is done. One thing you should be aware of, however, is the Halting problem. In this context it means that Turing proved that user input messes everything up, and that it's impossible to prove much about execution if a program takes input. It also is the famous proof that code analysis is never complete; you can write as complex an analyzer as you can and it will never be possible to predict completely the program flow - though of course with enough analysis it can get reasonably accurate and that's all that's really needed for benchmarking. Humans tend to be better at predicting problems arising from user input than machines- we can recognize patterns in common inputs and stuff of that nature. The halting problem presents a double blind for compilers and optimization because not only do you have the uncertainty of input, you have the uncertainty of run time. At any one point in the program it's impossible to know the value of any variable unless you execute it or simulate it somehow.. even something as simple as

short int number = 5;
(++number)%=4;
//what is number? uh I think it's 2 but I had to simulate execution in my head

requires that it actually be executed. Now this isn't a problem.. except that most compilers aren't going to make you wait for half an hour while it simulates execution 5000 times to tell which is more efficient. But of course your theoretical machine could- at great computational expense. Basically it's mostly not practical but sometimes not even possible to tell which is faster without timing it (or if it's relatively simple by doing static code analysis in your head). And even if you do time it you have to simulate realistic user input, which takes a creative mind or a brute forcer that runs through every possible input. So yes, it's possible -even feasible- to build such a system.. and many debuggers and compilers provide similar functionality today. But we're still at the point in computing when the mind can do it best, and programs aren't very good at analyzing code (for various reasons- the staggering complexity of the programming model for one). It's not too hard to simulate a processor, but analysis is entirely different.

To answer your question about your free software.. try compiling it from source for your system. Various scary things like pipeline architecture, and execution models force compatibility artifacts to appear in distribution binaries.. which would be tailored right for your system if you compiled it yourself.

OK now that I've exhaustively gone over something I'm pretty sure you never asked about, I can give you the links I'm pretty sure you'd like to have :)

The big fish: Computational complexity theory .. some others: Computability theory (computer science) Recursion theory Delta Debugging NP-complete Oracle machine Rice's theorem (it's impossible to look at any code without executing it and tell what it does, although the theorem is a more general case than that) Abstract machine Context-free grammar (an interesting problem in NP-completeness) Automata theory Abstraction (computer science) Post correspondence problem (a very simple similar problem to the halting problem but is easier to understand) Kolmogorov complexity (the blue whale of impossiblility problems, and surprisingly pertinent to code analysis - it's not necessarily analyzable beyond just stating the code itself) Annnd of course the obligatory Gödel's incompleteness theorems.

By the way, software libraries in general (especially things like the Standard Template Librarys) tend to be optimized quite well - even sloppy ones are cleaned up decently by good compilers.

So kind of "in summary" it's not too hard to just do static code analysis and come up with a reasonably optimal solution. If you try to automate it you run into a hundred brick walls in theory, but you could probably make it work reasonably well... for arguably trivial gain since present tools (plus a bit of intelligence) do a pretty good job of it already. An interesting experiment "in the future" would be to make some kind of machine that optimizes its own code (so it's optimizing an optimizer).. and see how various solutions end - probably with total erasure within a small number of loops. Debugging and optimizing is a sticky field, I hope I gave an answer that helps (I know I gave an answer that's long!) --⁪froth^{T C} 06:25, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can data deleted from a mobile phone be undeleted?

I know that when a file is deleted from a computer (even when deleted from the Recycle Bin), it remains on the hard disk, and can be retrieved by an undelete program, until it is overwritten.

Do mobile phones work the same way? If an SMS or recording is deleted, can it be retrieved before it is overwritten?

I think my mobile phone model is Nokia 7250 - I'm not exactly sure, though.

The mobile phone memory and the computer hard disk most probably work similarly in this matter, even though the mobile phones usually use flash memory. Using special equipment the non-overwritten data can be retrieved. –Mysid ☎ 12:33, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you are asking if it is theoretically possible, then the answer as above is yes. If you are asking if you are likely to be able to find someone who can do it to your nokia 7250? The answer is much more likely no. I've recovered data off a hard disk and even a digital camera flash card. The 1st thing here is you would need to know where the phone stores the SMS data and you would need some way for reading that area of memory directly. Not impossible, but unless you fork out a pile of cash for one of the so called "data recovery experts", I'd be looking at other options, like building a bridge and getting over it ;) . Vespine 22:22, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Formula in Excel

I have been using some frequently used formulas which i have saved as addinns in excel.They work excellently when i use only one computer.But the problem is if i take a copy of the file and work in another computer the formula is changed i.e. it is still pointing on the same location where it was created.Is there anyway so that the formula refers to the same relative position in the new computer also? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Amrahs (talk • contribs) .

Assuming that your using a recent edition of Excel, and Windows (I'm mostly familar with Office 2000 onwards, WinXP/NT and not sure of previous versions' differences) the following may help:

If you are talking about a link between workbooks a UNC path is better for portability between computers sharing network drives. Or if the links are saved with a formula that says something like 'C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Desktop\[Book1.xls]Sheet1'!A1 you can update all the links in a workbook that point to that workbook using Edit > Links...
If you mean the absolute address of a cell (e.g. it may say $A$1 and not A1) it will always refer to cell A1 wherever the formula is dragged or pasted. Remove the $ signs (select the formula and press F4 until the $ are gone) and the formula is more generic.
If you have created macros using the macro record function, Excel often saves exact cell references, you will need to edit the VBA for the function. This can be quite complicated if you have no experience in Visual Basic.

If this doesn't help, let me know the specifics and I will try to help further. --Phydaux 23:03, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

python bluetooth code not running in Fedora Core 5

Hi everybody I m doing a project "Bluetooth chatting software" on linux(FC5). i have installed pybluez library and try to run a simple "bluetooth device search program" in python but.........it gives an error ....."No bluetooth module found". i cant understand this problem ....so plz help.

I want know how can I solve this problem...... so that python bluetooth may work easily...

Home network / Internet security

Hi, I am running a home network with (up to) three computers. Until now, I have run firewall programs (eg Norman Personal Firewall) on the computers. However, my router (Asus WL500g, wireless network) also has a firewall implementation (NAT server, SPI firewall and other menus, I am not familiar with the specifications). It also has some functionality that allows some packages to get through automatically (can't remember the name of that... upnp?). When I have this (the firewall in the router) turned on, is there any point in running a local firewall in addition? It troubles up the communication between the computers at home, and occasionally blocks programs I try to use towards the Internet (such as OpenVPN). Can I rely on the tests on the net, such as the one on Symantec.com ("Symantec Security Check") [4], to tell me if my computers are safe enough? Thanks for any help! Jørgen 17:27, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would say no (to the is there any point in running a local firewall in addition? question), I have a similar set up and only run a firewall on the router. Your network, behind the router, is only local, this means that from the internet it "looks" like only one computer, because your ISP only gives an IP address to your router. It is your router then that splits up the network traffic to your PCs using local network addresses. It is not possible (generally) to connect to a local computer from the internet (through a router) because local addresses are not broadcast to the internet. Which is what port forwarding is for, it is done by the NAT or "virtual server" settings on your router. This allows programs to communicate "through" the router and firewall by "opening" the port that the program uses, allowing the internet to "see" that port on a local computer. In short, if you configure it correctly, a router firewall is very secure, it will not however protect you from viruses. Having said that, it may be a little trickier to initially configure everything, with programs that need an open port (like OpenVPN I imagine), local PC firewalls often automatically pick up the ports that are attempted and prompt you if you want to allow it, if you answer yes it sets it up by it self, but with a router, you have to learn how to do it manually. It is really not as daunting as it looks though. Vespine 21:59, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Vespine's right- the router will provide superior security; just make sure you set it up properly. --⁪froth^{T C} 03:04, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot! I believe there is some sort of automation in the NAT server that lets some programs communicate and allocates ports automatically, and this could possibly be compromised, but I think I'll be able to live with that. )If I open a port, say, 11394, and direct it to a specific computer, what are the odds that this one port can compromise security? On a vaguely related topic, as I have only one IP address to the Internet, will it be possible to run, say, VPN clients or Internet game instances on two computers simultaneously? Jørgen 14:19, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So long as you can pick the ports you want to use (for those services that need externally visible, fixed ports), you can run quite a few things simultaneously; there are (nearly) 65536 ports on the outside of the router to divide among your machines. Unfortunately, though you can run twenty HTTP servers, only one of them can be on (the standard) port 80. (There are ways of splitting the traffic on a port among different computers, but this is usually used for load balancing rather than multiple distinct services; see, for instance, the Squid cache.) Similarly, some online gaming environments require a unique IP address for each of their users (commonly because they have a hardwired port number, which can only exist once per IP); for example, you cannot have two separate machines connect to Battle.net through the same NAT simultaneously. --Tardis 16:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"nearly 65536" is an awfully strange way of saying "exactly 65535"! (although technically port 0 is reserved) Jorgen, you might want to read TCP and UDP port and Port forwarding --⁪froth^{T C} 22:48, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

With port 0 it would be 65536, not 65535; but others are reserved too, like 225-241, 249-255, 1011-1024, 1109, 3097, 3868 (but only for UDP), and 49151. See the official assignment list. Not to mention that you should probably not be using ports below 1024 for gaming anyway, unless you're running chess over SSH or so. So, "nearly 65536" it is; I didn't feel like calculating the precise number, especially given that it's not well-defined anyway. --Tardis 23:24, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They may be "reserved" but you can still use them if you want to right? So exactly 65535. --⁪froth^{T C} 17:19, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, don't know about battle.net but my housemate and I played a lot of counterstrike and world of warcraft at simultaneously through the same router (IP Address). Vespine 00:47, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They use different ports. But forwarding from the router lets you play multiple copies of the same game on the same network --⁪froth^{T C} 06:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with the advice you have been given. The firewall of the router expects to treat communication from the outside as suspect, and communication from the inside as safe. In the absence of spyware, trojan horses, and viruses that might be acceptable; but that is not the world we live in. A good software firewall can provide better protection with minimal intrusion. Security often costs convenience; but do you leave your home unlocked so you don't have to use a key? --KSmrq^T 00:36, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So run an antivirus. But not a software firewall --⁪froth^{T C} 02:25, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Froth. Software firewalls are really only necessary when you don't have a hardware firewall already set down. Run a lot of antivirus programs, and if you're REALLY paranoid monitor your outbound connections for suspicious activity. Cephyr 03:38, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for good advice. I don't lock my bedroom door if the front door is locked, but I still occasionally check if the stove is turned on when I leave, so I guess I'll follow the last two posters here, though part of what I liked with the on-computer firewall was full control of outgoing communication (though it was tiresome to configure and "teach"). AVG is the free antivirus software of choice today, right? Thanks again! Jørgen 19:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Eh that seems to be the most popular, but it's also the most ugly. Truth is, if you know what you're doing an AV won't do anything for you except slow down file read/writes.. I and many others confidently go without antivirus. But if you have to have one, I recommend Avast because you can turn off "read" scanning, which is much better for big games (and working with big files) --⁪froth^{T C} 00:33, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

November 13

Tessellation Software

Does anyone know of any good, easy-to-use software that can be used to make complicated tessellations? (Like a graphics editor.) I want to be able to start with a basic figure (quadrilateral, triangle, hexagon) then use a lasso/cutter tool that will allow for shifting pieces with the end result of a complicated figure that can be tessellated. I plan to make tessellations by means of reflection, rotation, etc. (Perhaps even dilation -- fractals.) I tried using MS Paint, but as figures get more complicated, you must pay attention to lining up each pixel perfectly when shifting pieces of the original figure, which can be difficult. Thus, the program should preferably have a snap-to feature of some sort to ensure the figure will tessellate. Basically, I want to be able to create intricate figures that can tessellated, a la MC Escher (Example: (http://www.worldofescher.com/gallery/A30L.html [maybe not as complicated as that though]), and need a program that can assist me. Thanks for your help. Sorry if I have confused you.--Proficient 05:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tessellation? Inkscape has had "tile clones" since version 0.41. Inkscape 0.41 screenshots --Kjoonlee 07:31, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Inkscape seems to be such a program. I will definitely look into it. Thanks for the help. To others, still feel free to make suggestions. --Proficient 08:21, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(You don't mention OS, but I'm guessing some version of Windows.) If you're willing to pay a small shareware fee, Tess is dedicated to creating tessellations of many kinds. Although it does not have all the graphics sophistication of Inkscape, it can produce SVG files which can then be embellish. And because it is single purpose, it offers many conveniences for tessellating, which you may appreciate. --KSmrq^T 06:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it was Windows. Thanks for your help. I will consider Tess. --Proficient 05:15, 18 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Online Account Validation

Whenever opening a new account of whatever kind on the internet, among many different details, you are usually asked to "enter the characters you see below," and are then presented with strange looking words. I would like to know what this is. So far I've found that it prevents automated accounts being produced, but how and what is actually going on here? Gerard Khun 08:08, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's a CAPTCHA. The server generates a distorted image, which represents shapes that are very easy for the human eye, with the amazing neural-net processing power of the human brain behind it, to recognise, but which would take years for automated AI processes in computers to get a clue of. Its main purpose is, as you say, to prevent automated accounts from being produced. JIP | Talk 08:25, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One downside is that they prevent blind and visually impaired users from registering, as well. Those users can use screen readers to navigate through the web site, if they can get past the registration process. StuRat 22:06, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

DVD

any reason why cant we burn dvd format on a cd???

I'm afraid I'm not entirely sure what you mean. If you're trying to burn the information on DVD onto a CD, then there is the problem of space - a DVD holds about seven times as much data as a CD. Is this what you were asking? — QuantumEleven 13:46, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can burn a CD in the general format of a DVD. You cannot burn a DVD to CD because a DVD contains far more information than a CD does. In other words, you can put 16 ounces of coke in a 16 ounce bottle, making it look similar to a 2 liter bottle, but you cannot put 2 liters of coke in a 16 ounce bottle. Yes, you can stretch the bottle to 2 liters, but then it would be a 2 liter bottle and that isn't the point anyway. --Kainaw ^(talk) 13:48, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed you can – a miniDVD is a standard CD written with the DVD-video format.–Mysid ☎ 13:49, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I feel sure the questioner wasn't asking about the data structures associated with a DVD; instead, I suppose the question to mean "what distinctions exist between unwritten CDs and DVDs, such that a DVD writer cannot use a CD-R as a DVD-R?". I don't have a really good answer, except that perhaps the DVD's data layer is a different material that supports finer markings. Perhaps DVD or burning has the answer. --Tardis 16:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unwritten optical media has a pregroove which guides the burning laser. On a CD-R, this pregroove is wider than on a DVD-R. Also they are burned using different wavelengths; the CD-R dye won't absorb the laser used to burn a DVD-R, at least not very efficiently. –Mysid ☎ 16:44, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Retaining personal Firefox settings

My computer is about to get Windows XP, but to make it work properly, we're going to install it on a separate harddrive rather than installing it over Windows 98. What is the best way to retain my Firefox personal settings and extension information? I seem to remember a mass extension installer that worked from a txt file. Does anyone know where to find that? Any other tips? - Mgm|^(talk) 20:18, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly the easiest way to do it would be to write down a list of your extensions and search for them all over again for your fresh install. To keep your bookmarks go to Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks > File > Export... and email yourself the export (or put it on some removable media). Not sure about preferences and remembered passwords; you might want to try that Google extension but I doubt it uploads your passwords to google --⁪froth^{T C} 21:24, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Most of the stuff is in C:\Documents and Settings\[name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles. Copy everything out from the profile folder and you should be able to move it back after you re-install, although it might take some tweaking. I remember doing this to copy my profile stuff from my work computer to my home computer, but it wasn't 100% accurate. In the end, I recall not everything was transferable, but most of it went OK. howch e ng {chat} 22:46, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nice idea, but remember that I am moving towards a Windows XP system. I don't have a "Documents and Settings" directory yet. What directories are extensions and themes kept in in Windows 98 systems? - 131.211.210.14 08:26, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Unfortunately I don't remember where all those files are in Win 98. You'll have to try the good folks at http://www.mozilla.org/. howch e ng {chat} 18:27, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the profiles are in C:\WINDOWS\Profiles. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 21:32, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In Windows ME, it in a location like C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles, browse around there. I would just copy your bookmarks.html file and reinstall your extensions and themes later. --04:17, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Correct way of floating text to the top of a <td> element.

Is there a correct way of having text within a <td></td> element (and perhaps within <p></p> elements within <td></td>) conforming to CSS 2 and XHTML 1.1/2? Since tables were supposed to be used for tabular data, browsers automatically center the data within it, meaning if you've got a big image on the same row as some text in another cell, it gets floated to the middle. Since they're supposed to act in this way, I think there is not supposed to be a way of aligning text vertically within tables (since you're supposed to use <div> and <span> for positioning non-tabular information).

Using the CSS valign: top; is not valid for text (only images), this cannot be used, dispite it having the desired effect in most browsers, and will create a markup error when the page is validated.RevenDS 20:42, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that an HTML attribute too? <tr valign="top"> should work, although I'm not sure if it's "valid" anymore according to big bad W3C. HTML shouldn't be parsed by anything other than a dedicated rendering engine; all this deprecation is laughable --⁪froth^{T C} 21:28, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That appears to be acceptable for XHTML 1.0. Not sure about 1.1, but since it's valid under XHTML 1.0 Strict, it probably is. Weird though, since the W3C are very strict about HTML being used for displaying content only and not positioning it (which is CSS's job). Thanks. If someone else doesn't feel this is correct, say so! RevenDS 21:50, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You need the CSS property "vertical-align: top" for both the image and the table cell ☢ Ҡi∊ff⌇↯ 18:33, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If I understand your question correctly, then yes, vertical-align is the tool for the job. Here is the CSS specification for the property in general, and here is the specialization for table layout. Most likely you will want to set the image's property to top, and do nothing or use baseline for the text. An example:

Left-side text

Fujiyama

Right-side text
with a second line.

As always, there is the question of IE compliance, which is only partial for this property. --KSmrq^T 07:31, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see. I thought verticle-align was only for images, since W3Schools lists the property under a heading 'set the verticle alignment for an image'. I'll give that a go. Cheers. RevenDS 12:30, 19 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

google calculator

Does anyone know of a free downloadable program (can be used offline) that can parse phrases like "265 kilometers per hour in meters per second" or just in general convert between arbitrary units? Jon513 22:10, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unix systems have a program called units. Check the units article and/or google to find source code for a free version.

% units "64 lightyears per century" "kilofurlongs per nanofortnight"
   * 1.1536975
   / 0.86677831

Weregerbil 10:23, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

thank you very much, it works great, though I would rather a bit more in terms of user interface. Jon513 14:03, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It does also have an interactive mode (at least, GNU units does,) which is a bit friendlier:

$ units
2438 units, 71 prefixes, 32 nonlinear units

You have: 742 millibar
You want: mmHg
        * 556.54569
        / 0.0017967977

AJR | Talk 12:53, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

November 14

Incompatible software?

I do a lot of graphics design work using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop Elements (not full Photoshop). Recently at my volunteer work, we obtained a new computer, and I installed the two programs. On the old computer -- and on my computer at home -- they work fine together. But on the new machine, whenever I try to transfer or copy a file from one program to the other, the Elements program shuts down, and then won't re-open unless I reboot the whole computer. I installed everything the same way this time as I did the previous time. Did I do something wrong? Any idea what is causing this? Can it be fixed? — Michael J 02:16, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Does the new machine have less memory ? Perhaps it can't handle running both programs at once. Or perhaps the new computer has a lot more bloatware running all the time, like a virus scanner, ISP software, etc., so has very little memory left for applications. StuRat 05:06, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, the new computer has more memory — that's why we got it. I never even heard of the term "bloatware." I'll have to look into that. — Michael J 10:07, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Waiting for Computers

I want a really (unneccessarily) nice, compact laptop that is extremely fast and has lots of space. Are there any hardware developments expected in the fairly near future (before september) that I might want to wait for if I'm looking for a great laptop? I know intel just came out with dual somethingoranother processors, and that's supposed to be a big thing. Is there expected to be any similarly important technological breakthrough in the next few months that I should wait for? Thanks a lot, Sashafklein 04:07, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, Core 2 Duo (that somethingorother you mentioned) is the big thing for this year in consumer computing. Purchase away! Although you might want to save yourself the trouble of installing vista and get one with vista on it.. should be out by january (but I still have my doubts...) --⁪froth^{T C} 04:48, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Or, get a Mac laptop. I think they might be cheaper. And they are much better. Abeg92 10:25, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Cheap" and "Mac" are antonyms. As for "better", the person was asking about hardware, not operating system. There are many laptops with better hardware offerings than Macs. --Kainaw ^(talk) 13:51, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And of course every other laptop has better OS offerings than macs :) --⁪froth^{T C} 18:26, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IMHO the next big step in laptop performance will be completely solid state storage (no spinning hard drive). There have been several recent advances and drives are currently sold up to 32GB in size. When the cost comes down and capacity goes up in the next cycle (say 9-12 months) these will change the way we use laptops, since there will be a huge leap in speed, battery life, and durability. Just my .02 and no I don't work for Samsung --Jmeden2000 14:30, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is also the push for ubiquitous computing. Your laptop will have nearly no storage. All it will have is the ability to get on a wireless connection to the Internet. Your operating system and all your files will be on the Internet. Also, it won't matter what "laptop" you use as everything is based on your ID. So, if you login to the ubiquitous computing network from my laptop, you'll get your OS and your files, not mine. Personally, I don't like it much. But, I can see it coming. --Kainaw ^(talk) 14:36, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We'll see that dominate business before it even creeps into the consumer market. Thin clients like you describe aren't much for multimedia and are basically incapable of gaming- however for business it's perfect. If your laptop gets stolen during a trip, no corporate secrets are lost because all the data is on the server, and the systems are highly replacable. But for right now there's no reason for consumers to pay someone to do their processing when they have very cheap, powerful systems at home. --⁪froth^{T C} 18:29, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Shared hosting and torrents

Last night, I heard someone on IRC mention a concept that intrigued me. He basically had paid to rent a server (shared hosting, I assume). He could upload a .torrent file to it, and the webserver would download all the files from that torrent at a highly appealing speed, then host the files for regular HTTP/FTP download, then continue seeding the torrent until you told it to stop. Is this really possible, or did I misunderstand? What is the technical term for such a service? What companies provide it and how much would it cost? It sounds really nice to me (I can only download between 10pm and 7am so having the webserver download all day and offer me the condensed downloads at night would be great). I'd really appreciate anything anyone can tell me about it, even Wikipedia links, because I'm completely unfamiliar with this sort of thing. Thanks. 202.10.86.63 04:12, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Very interesting idea, and not very hard to set up at all. Wouldn't want to be that host, though- must be terrifying.. I'd have nightmares about the FBI knocking down my door :) But I suspect it's a specialty service and it's not widespread enough to merit its own name. Might count as some kind of fetch-transfer setup or something like that. By the way 9 hours should be enough to download even the largest torrents (well not technically the largest torrents but you know what I mean) in only a few nights, no use paying. If you're going to pay, might as well get some sweet service like rapidshare --⁪froth^{T C} 04:52, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do people really get busted for that kind of thing in the United States?

Yeah :/ --⁪froth^{T C} 18:39, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're basically just hosting a BitTorrent torrent and its associated file on a server. Splintercellguy 06:08, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Er no.. what he described is giving the server the torrent, and letting the server download the files with the wide connection that servers typically have, and then allowing the person download the downloaded file over HTTP to their home computer at high, dedicated speeds. Nothing to do with uploading or hosting --⁪froth^{T C} 18:32, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But is there some application that the webserver is running to process the torrent files? What terms do I google for to see if a server will provide this? The main appeal of it for me is that it'd be seeding the torrents forever, at a high speed. I have 20kb/s upload with 15GB/month upload limit, so it's hard for me to maintain a good ratio. 202.10.86.63 09:21, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sure.. if it's a windows server it could even be running utorrent or azureus, although that would be kind of hard to control remotely from home. I'd bet that it's a *nix server running RTorrent. Downloaded files could be retrieved using a login script running on apache, and they could also be deleted or paused or stopped easily enough through some kind of control panel, though it might be tricky to inteface with rtorrent. --⁪froth^{T C} 18:38, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Probably not for most shared accounts available. I'm no expert on how torrent files work, but I doubt it would be easy to make a script in PHP or Perl (the two most common server-side languages on Linux). You'd probably need root access in order to run programs with their own processes, which usually means you either need a VPS or dedicated server, both of which are expensive compared to shared accounts.

It's a very good idea though. RevenDS 18:56, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Webcam software with one broadcaster, many viewers

Is there any webcam software that:

Allows multiple viewers to see one broadcaster.
Does not allow the viewers to see each other, know each others identities, or indeed, even know that other viewers exist.
Has relatively-high video quality, bandwidth permitting. Audio a plus also.
Is freely downloadable-- or at least, free for viewers.
Allows the broadcaster to approve or deny individual viewers ability to see the feed.

Yahoo messenger has most of the capabilities, but its video feed is rather low quality. Skype with Festoon has most capabilities, but multiple viewers can see each other. I also should note that it does NOT have to have the capability to broadcast to more than 2-3 viewers. -Alecmconroy 11:13, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You could take a look at webcamXP: http://www.webcamxp.com. It will set up a web server on your computer and host the broadcast through that. It seems to have most of the features you're looking for. Mishatx 16:14, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

demo files

can u turn demo files into full files,is there soft ware avaiable to do this. and were would i fined it if there is soft ware to do this.

It depends on the software you are trying to steal. Some demos are full-version without a key. Some are just demos and completely lack the full version. Just Google for "warez", "hackz", or "serialz". You'll find thousands of pages full of nasty things you don't want. But, if you are lucky, you'll find something you need to steal the software you want - along with a long trail of spyware. --Kainaw ^(talk) 15:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody spells "serials" with a z (or cracks/hacks for that matter). If your program has some kind of an activation code entry, then chances are you can just paste one from off the internet. This was very popular for awhile, since it didn't require a secure download- only to give the customer a string of text upon purchase. Now the fad is to actually verify the code against an online database, which often makes it impossible to use the same code for more than a couple of installations. But since you're asking "is there soft ware available to turn demo files into full files" I assume you're not exactly an expert with computers .. and you're unlikely to be able to figure out how to defeat the more advanced protection. Just buy the software --⁪froth^{T C} 18:45, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Haha! I would not recommend the demo->full way. If you want it, just download the whole thing with a crack. X [Mac Davis] (DESK|How's my driving?) 17:27, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Superimposition

I'm trying to superimpose a head onto another body - I'm wondering if it's possible to blend the two section by selecting an area of skin of one person to use as the pallete and then telling my program (PSP) to change the colour of the skin of the other person to the nearest colour in that pallete? --Username132 (talk) 15:23, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can do it that way, but it will likely bring imprecise results. I've always found it better to manually adjust one image to match the other. The human eye is far more discerning than any software. — Michael J 17:48, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, that won't work. The colours in the other head will try to stay the same within the new palette; they won't remap to the new person's colours. I would instead suggest you try to play with the colour balance of one of the images interactively and try to match it to the other skin colouring (and then if you need a paletted image, you could try a palette conversion there). What you really need is some sort of function that will map the palette of your original head to the palette of the new head: rather than find the nearest matching colour, it should find the colour that is in the equivalent position (i.e. if you could have the skin palettes sorted by their greyscale intensities, you could probably replace one with the other with good results). - Rainwarrior 18:11, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Image data from abandonware game

I was trying to rip the image data from the PC version of one of my favourite old Amiga-era games, Captive. One image file is exactly 40,000 bytes long, which fits with the screen resolution of 320x200px at 5-bit colour depth. However, when I try and interpret the file as a sequence of 5-bit words (one for each pixel, listed row-by-row), I get this image. It's the correct image, but distorted with stripes. I tried a few other things, but then discovered that someone else has already ripped the data from the Amiga version, which looks like this. So problem solved, but I'm still wondering how I should have been interpreting the PC file in order to get that image. Any ideas? — Matt Crypto 17:08, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The stripes in your image have a repetition after 8 pixels. I suspect this has a lot to do with the fact that continually adding 5 (5-bit) in mod 8 (the usual 8-bit data stream) reaches a cycle after 8 times (5*8 mod 8 = 40 mod 8 = 0). So, I suspect you are extracting the 5 bits incorrectly. Perhaps you are forgetting to shift them over before you store them? I don't know, I'd have to know more about what you're doing at that point in the process. - Rainwarrior 17:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I found something interesting here. I was wondering if you were reading it as 5 bitplanes, or in 5 bit chunks, but I think if you were doing it the wrong way the image would look like a real mess instead of what you have. - Rainwarrior 18:05, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

LOL, yeah, I actually found that website too. I've been reading in the bytes one at a time, converting each byte to an 8-character string (e.g. "01001101"), and concatenating them all into one long string. Then I split that string up into 5-character pieces and convert them back into integers between 0 and 31. (Yup, pretty inefficient...) I agree that I might be extracting the 5 bits incorrectly, but I'm not sure what to try. One idea I had was that the bits should be taken from the least significant end of the byte first, rather than the most significant end -- getting that wrong would certainly cause a repeating, 8 column wide pattern of stripes in rows of constant colour. So I tried reversing each 8-character string (which I think would correct it) but that didn't fix the stripes, unfortunately. — Matt Crypto 19:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you had the bits backwards, that would probably introduce stripes like that, but you say you've tried that so perhaps it's something else... actually, if the AMIGA data was supposed to be read in 16 bit chunks, you could have the byte-pair reversed due to endian problems. That could possibly cause the striping... Try reading pairs and swapping them (don't reverse bits, just switch the bytes), or if that doesn't work try reading quads and reversing the byte order (if it was 32 bit). - Rainwarrior 19:23, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No joy with those either, darn! — Matt Crypto 20:17, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, are you using the bitplanes separately? (I thought it was probably not the problem, but maybe it could be? I just realized that the screen resolutions are 8:5 as well!) Or are you treating the whole 40000 bytes as one long continuous chunk? You need to take the first bit from every plane, and there are five planes each of 8000 continuous bytes. - Rainwarrior 21:24, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I took a look at the file. Yeah, it does seem that the bits are chunked rather than in separate planes. I'm not sure what's going on, really. ~~Have you noticed there's an extra 960 bytes in there?~~ (I was looking at size-on-disk by mistake.) - Rainwarrior 22:21, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(First off, your example output is 320×201; you don't just have an off-by-one error, do you?) It's possible (as a variation of the bitplane idea) that each set of 5 bytes should be interpreted as specifying the colors for 8 different pixels, with the high bit of each byte specifying one pixel, the next highest another, and so on. That is, interpret the sequence of 8-bit bytes 34 12 B5 4D 01 not as the 5-bit sequence 06 10 09 0b 0a 13 08 01 (by taking the top five bits of 34₁₆=00110100₂ to get 00110₂=06₁₆, then its bottom three bits (=100₂) and the top two of 12₁₆=00010010₂ (=00₂) to get 10000₂=10₁₆, etc.) but as the 5-bit sequence 04 02 14 1c 02 16 08 07, because 04₁₆=00100₂ indicates that the high bit is only set in the middle number (B5), 07₁₆=00111₂ indicates that the last three numbers are odd, etc. It's a sort of transposition of the bits.

[a while later, after several edit conflicts] Unfortunately, I've tried this and it doesn't seem to work: more, less intelligible, stripes result, reading the bits in either order. Maybe this will help more: the repeating pattern that generates the dark background for the logo is 84 04 02 24 24 or

It's only 5 bytes long, which makes sense: it's the first byte-multiple of 5 bits. If there were separate bit-planes, this would correspond to (wait for it) a stripe pattern, since it occurs on successive lines. But I can't see any pattern in that, other than there are 8 1s and there are supposed to be 8 (identical, dark gray) pixels generated by the sequence. Anyone have any interpretations? --Tardis 23:14, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The 5-bit color is likely using a lookup table to assign one of 32 colors (one of which might be "transparent") to each pixel. You would need access to that table or would need to recreate it, then use it to convert the table into 24-bit color or some other color depth. StuRat 23:11, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The colouration isn't actually the problem here. The palette does not appear in the file (though the amiga palette is indeed composed of 32 12-bit colours), and its recovery would have to be approached by other means. The problem is that the storage format of the image data itself (the colour indices, not the colours themselves) is unknown. - Rainwarrior 07:40, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at any particular block of 5 bytes from a section that should have, it seems that the right number of 1s and 0s are present to make a proper uniform coloured block. Maybe the bits in any particular 5 byte block are scrambled in a particular way as a form of encryption? I can't see any straightforward pattern of rearrangement. - Rainwarrior 08:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If is the case that the 5-byte blocks are scrambled in some way, whether as obfuscation or for some technical reason, it should be possible to solve it (its a transposition cipher) using a known-plaintext attack. We know where there is a sequence of pixels of the same colour, which gives us at most 32 possible candidates for the plaintext. — Matt Crypto 11:58, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here's some more 5-byte blocks representing continuous colour:

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0100001000000010101000010000001000000010
1000010000000100000000100010010000100100
0001100011011000000011001101100011011000
0011000110110001010110001001000110010001
0101101011011010101011011101101011011010
0110001100100011111100010000001100000011
1010010100100101010100100010010100100101
1101011010010110101010111011010110110110
1110011100100111111100110010011100100111
1111011110110111111110111011011110110111

Notice that if you count the number of 1s or 0s in each block, then they are a multiple of 8. This is consistent with the hypothesis that each block represents eight identical 5-bit words, just with the bits rearranged in some order. — Matt Crypto 12:47, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to create a transposition of the bits in a 5-byte block that would remove the stripes from constant sections of colour. Using the above 5-byte blocks, I came up with this:

"0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 13 14 10 11 12 22 16 15 20 21 26 18 17 24 25 29 23 19 27 28 34 30 31 32 33 37 38 39 35 36"

(Interpreted as: to form the 11th bit of the output block, use the 14th bit in the input block). This indeed eliminates the stripes from constant sections (see output), but still isn't the correct image (that is the shapes aren't correct, not just the palette). — Matt Crypto 14:44, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your basic idea is correct, however. I've shown the bit pattern below, seperated into sections:

             Original data                     Expected data for center block

0000000000 00000 000000000000000 00000 00000 000000000000000 0100001000 00001 010100001000000 10000 00010 010000100001000 1000010000 00010 000000010001001 00001 00100 100001000010000 0001100011 01100 000001100110110 00110 11000 000110001100011 0011000110 11000 101011000100100 01100 10001 001100011000110 0101101011 01101 010101101110110 10110 11010 010110101101011 0110001100 10001 111110001000000 11000 00011 011000110001100 1010010100 10010 101010010001001 01001 00101 101001010010100 1101011010 01011 010101011101101 01101 10110 110101101011010 1110011100 10011 111110011001001 11001 00111 111001110011100 1111011110 11011 111111011101101 11101 10111 111101111011110

Most are pretty straightforward (ror = ROtate Right):

First block: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Second block: 13 14 10 11 12 (ror 2)
Fourth block: 34 30 31 32 33 (ror 1)
Fifth block: 37 38 39 35 36 (ror 3)

The remaining block, however, is a bit trickier:

File contents   Expected contents
000000000000000 000000000000000
010100001000000 010000100001000
000000010001001 100001000010000
000001100110110 000110001100011
101011000100100 001100011000110
010101101110110 010110101101011
111110001000000 011000110001100
101010010001001 101001010010100
010101011101101 110101101011010
111110011001001 111001110011100
111111011101101 111101111011110

By turning this on the side, we get the following:

File contents  Expected contents
00001011011    00001011011
01000110111    01000110111
00001011011    00001011011
01000110111    00011100101
00001011011    00010100000
00011100101    00100001111
00010100000    01000110111
00100001111    00001011011
01000110111    00011100101
00011100101    00010100000
00010100000    00100001111
00100001111    01000110111
00011100101    00001011011
00010100000    00011100101
00100001111    00010100000

There are five unique bit patterns in this, with each one occuring three times - this is approriate, since we are dealing with 15 bits, all the same color.

I've created this small list to show where the bit patterns exist, and added a note where they should end up:

Pattern      Positions   Proper relative positioning
00001011011  15, 17, 19  3
00010100000  21, 25, 28  5
00011100101  20, 24, 27  4
00100001111  22, 26, 29  1
01000110111  16, 18, 23  2

This, however, poses us with a bit of a problem - we don't know which one goes where, so there will be multiple possibilities. By doing some quick calculations, you can see that for the first five bits, we have 3 options. For the next 5, there are 2, and the rest will only have one option. This means there will be 3^5*2^5 = 243*32 = 7776 different possibilities.

In order to crack this properly, we'll need at least two bit sequences where TWO colors are present - one on the left, one on the right - and where the middle area contains both of these colors. In the middle area, at least one of these bit sequences must have a single pixel of color 1 (and two pixels of color 2), and another one must have two pixels of color 1 (and a single pixel of color 2). The optimal palette indexes to use here would be 00000 and 11111, in which case two as mentioned above will be sufficient. With other palette indexes, we'll need several sequences.

Mind you, this all assumes the outer bits really are as simple as this - we cannot know that for certain just yet, and to be honest, I'm not sure this is really the case considering the peculiar way of forming the pattern in the middle block. I'll try to write a small program to help find these areas, but it might just be faster for you to find the necessary bit sequences yourself. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 18:49, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Solution of Travelling Salesman Problem using Hopfield nets

Has anyone solved the Travelling Salesman problem using Hopfield nets.If so then would you be kind enough to answer the following questions. 1.What is the probability of arriving at the shortest distance path for 5,8,10,12,15,18,20 cities? 2.Is it possible to attain 90% chance of finding the shortest path for 10 cities ? 3.How does the probability of finding the shortest path vary with the number of cities ? 4.Are there algorithms and heuristics to drastically increase the chance of finding the correct path ? 5.Is there any mathematical proof or theorem to suggest that the path lines which form the shortest path do not intersect inside the polygon formed but only at the vertices or outside the polygon.

It was difficult to find resources on these questions. If you would be kind enough to answer any one of them please e-mail me the answers at xxxxxxxxx

For your own protection I've removed your email address- believe me you don't want that sitting here (email harvesters). We also don't answer questions through email --⁪froth^{T C} 18:48, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The papers that scholar.google.com comes up for tsp "hopfield net" seem relevant. 84.239.129.42 19:20, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Easy DVD ripper/encoder

Does anyone know of a simple and effective DVD to DivX/XVid encoder. Preferably freeware, or ideally open source? What I'm looking for ideally is something like CDEX for DVDs - pretty much a 'one-click' type solution. I know that programs like that stand on shady ground, what with having to bypass the DVD encryption, surely something like that must exist? There are lots of programs that claim to do it, but most look to be dodgy spyware traps sold through even dodgier websites. I also know there are various free/open solutions avaliable, but most seem to involve fiddling with ten million settings before you can even start.

So, basically, is there any easy, non-spyware-laden DVD to DivX software avaliable, or should I just start reading up on video encoding tutorials?

Thanks :)

AutoGK (AutoGordianKnot), the automated version of Gordian Knot, is a pretty simple one-click solution. Almost, anyway - you still need to rip the .VOB files from the DVD to the hard disk (with something like DVD Decrypter. Its website is at here, and a guide to using it is here. I'm not sure if it's open source, but it's spyware/adware/malware free, and works very well.

Disclaimer: make sure you only rip DVDs that you actually own (but then, you didn't need me to tell you that, did you? :)) — QuantumEleven 10:05, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Run full-screen apps in a window

In Windows XP, is there a way to force programs which want to run in full screen inside a window? For example, I have a game that runs full screen at 1024x768, but normally I use a higher resolution. Is there a way to run that game in a 1024x768 window on my desktop? This would make it easier to switch between the game and other apps, for example. Seems like there should be a way, but I can't find the answer. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 20:28, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Most programs that automatically run in full screen mode use what is called the full screen overlay. There is generally no way to force the program to use a "windowed" mode if there are no options specifically relating to it. Some games however, such as World of Warcraft, support this as a command-line option.--Mabris 22:44, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've had several games that start up in full screen mode, but then switch to window mode if you hit escape, so try that. StuRat 22:52, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If it's directx, try this app. Check windowed under Performance --⁪froth^{T C} 02:23, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Read the docs. Often, full-screen games have a command-line option to run in windowed mode. --Kainaw ^(talk) 15:53, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Positioning a Choice box in Java

In Java, how do you position a Choice box at a particular point on the screen? I've tried setBounds() and setLocation() but neither seem to work. --Auximines 22:03, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Positioning of controls is typically the job of the LayoutManager that's attached to the control's parent (container) widget. If you want to position a control absolutely (which is very rarely a good idea, as it means your application doesn't handle different font sizes and l10n/i18n labels at all well) you can set the LayoutManager on the parent container to null, and then call setBounds or setLocation on the control itself. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:48, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much, that worked (at least, setBounds did, setLocation didn't). I'd completely forgotten about the LayoutManager, I suppose I'll have to bite the bullet and find out how it works. Thanks again. --Auximines 12:32, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

setLocation really did work, but no-one told the poor old control how big to be, so it decided to be 0x0. If memory serves a call to setLocation and setSize amounts to a call to setBounds. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

November 15

firefox 2 change

Anyone know why Firefox 2 no longer remembers passwords for the Novell BorderManager proxy login? I know that the form doesn't use that "high security" flag that banks set so that it won't remember the password. In fact it asks me "do you want to remember this password" .. and when I go to Show Passwords my login for the proxy's IP is listed- it's just not auto filling when the page loads. It's not using javascript to do this. Any ideas what else this could be? --⁪froth^{T C} 03:56, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox 2.0 buggy tabs

Hey everyone. I'm getting a very weird problem in Firefox 2.0 under SuSE Linux 10.1, where the tabs are buggy and cause pages to render incorrectly in any desktop environment except GNOME. That is, I have the problem in KDE, FVWM, Fluxbox, etcetra.

The problem arises when I select a tab. The tab sort of "shifts" down, as well as the content of the page itself. The "actual" page, however, is in its original position, and it "updates" when hyperlinks are hovered over. The position of the tab also "updates" when other windows are dragged over them. You can see an example here; the parts that have been "updated" and shifted up are the close button and the left half of the tab, whereas the middle remains in its shifted-down state.

Because of the resulting errors in page rendering, it is almost impossible for me to use Firefox in that state. The problem occurs in both the official SuSE build and the official Mozilla binary version of Firefox 2.0, but 1.5.0.7 worked fine. No-one from SuSE or Firefox has yet to give me any helpful answer, or have even suggested any possible cause of the problem or what it might be related to. I have tried many different themes for Firefox, but the problem persists under all of them.

Does anyone have any ideas? :( -- Daverocks (talk) 05:34, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox is a GTK application just like Gnome. KDE is not. I've found that Firefox locks up KDE excessively - though not as much as Gaim does. So, I use Konqueror. I'd like to use Firefox, but it isn't worth having a computer that locks up randomly throughout the day. I'm not blaming Mozilla or Firefox. I blame KDE for not supporting GTK applications well. --Kainaw ^(talk) 15:52, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I blame GNOME for gratuitously changing details in the environment's working and not giving the user the opportunity to configure them. For example, I always liked how the Gnome-Panel organised grouped windows in order of their opening. I never asked GNOME to suddenly make it organise them alphabetically. But they did it anyway, and I can't change it back. No wonder Linus Torvalds himself has been critical of GNOME lately. JIP | Talk 17:23, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Internet/Mobile advertising

In the case of mobile advertising, there is a popular type of advertising where readers are shown a advertisement, and then asked a question about it. If they ask them correctly, they are give a few credit like SMS and talktime. I just want to know whether any advertising agency provides such types of advertising in the Internet. Do you know any company that enables websites to show such advertisements where viewers are asked a question and if they answer that, they get credit.

Please name a few companies like that if you know. And, If you dont know but know any company which does that for mobile, please mention it too.

Also, can you mention some of the top mobile advertising companies?

Thankyou

computer memory related problem

can any one explan me how 32 bit wide databus can use 4k*8 static ram memory chip?if it is possible then what will be the smallest memory of that computer?

Management Information System

MIS is just about the computerization and the management of database or it is presentation of information in desired and relevant form aiding decision making and problem solving?--203.78.175.219 09:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In short MIS is the second definition - refer to Management information system. Your first one just sounds like a Database management system. --jjron 12:29, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

cd rom

i wanted to ask which irq does a cd rom use is it number 11 or does it depend to which adapter its attached to?coz i thot that it can be on the secondary ide 2.which dma channell is not free on a standard pc? is it 2 or 0?n why

Laptop docking station detection/profiles

Our department recently acquired HP Compaq NC8230 laptops for everyone, including docking stations for work at our desks. What I wanted to know is, does Windows XP detect when a laptop is docked? If so, is there an application available that can automatically change profiles and settings when the laptop is docked/undocked? Things I'd want to change:

Screen resolution. The laptop is widescreen, but when docked we will use dual 4:3 LCD monitors. The secondary display resolution is not an issue; what I'd like is to have the primary resolution automatically change from widescreen to 4:3 (whatever resolution the LCD monitor needs).
Power behaviour. When undocked, the laptop will go on standby whenever the lid is closed. When docked, I want this setting to automatically change to "do nothing" (by the way, is it okay to run a laptop with the lid closed for extended periods of time?).

If these can't be done automatically, is there a utility that can store these settings in a profile so I can change quickly from one to the other? Thanks for your time. Zunaid©^{Please rate me at Editor Review!} 13:55, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My only experience of this, from an IBM/Lenovo laptop, is that detection of the docking station (and application of the appropriate profile) was done by a system-specific IBM program, not by a generic bit of Windows. I'd think that you'd need to get the HP equivalent program. What complicates matters is that some docking stations are smart devices, which the laptop can detect, but some are just passthroughs, so the laptop can only detect the devices connect to it (the latter method being a bit harder for software to define as a "profile"). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 14:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

file.part1.zip

I recently downloaded an old abandonware game, and the download came in "parts." They're all pretty much identical zip files, containing the same information. I am able to play the game with part1, but what are the other ones for? —Akrabbim^talk 16:15, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In the old days of slow dial-up and 1.44MB floppies, zip files would be split to make transmission easier, and file sizes smaller. Modern unzip type programs will stick the files back together if you have all the parts, and you may not even notice it happened. Mishatx 17:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Chances are that the data is distributed across all of the parts, and when you open one of them your zip utility merges them all into what you see. --⁪froth^{T C} 17:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Emacs question

How do I configure GNU Emacs 21.4.1 always use spaces instead of tabs when indenting in Java mode? JIP | Talk 17:06, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See the variable indent-tabs-mode. If you want it to just take effect in Java mode, you could do something like (add-hook 'java-mode-hook (lambda () (setq indent-tabs-mode nil))). Also useful, perhaps, is the command untabify. --Tardis 17:37, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]