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February 15

Embedding Flash into Powerpoint

Is there anyway that I can embed a Macromedia/Adobe Flash animation into a Microsoft Powerpoint presentation? Jamesino 00:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Yessir, there are instructions here. If that fails (haven't tried it myself), there's plenty more on Google. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 00:38, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you =). Jamesino 01:10, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Sending Folders

Is there anyway I can email a folder and all it's contents to someone either through e-mail or MSN Messenger? I have over 100 seperates files in the folder, which makes sending them one by one extremely cumbersome. Thanks. Jamesino 01:10, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The easiest way is to zip the folder and send the compressed file. --cesarb 01:17, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes zip is good but BE CAREFUL! A lot of people don't realise that email still requires bandwidth. It's generally not a great idea to send more then 5MB in email especially over the internet, unless you know both the dispatch and receiver can handle it. Many email providers outright block attachments that are bigger. Unfortunately saying "100 files" doesn't mean anything, if they are small it may still mean mean <1MB, but if they are bigger it could mean >50MB, in which case it is a bad idea to send it in one shot. You could consider sending a CD. Vespine 04:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Really? Many? I've never encountered one. But on another note, you can send large files via ICQ and YahooIM, and undoubtedly other chat programs also. Anchoress 04:27, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Gmail rejects attachments over 10mb. And my ISP still only provides a measly 5mb account limit (altho I think they don't reject email past the limit however they might complain if you keep going way over the limit). I use MSN to send files, unfortunately it's a bit crappy in that it requires UPNP if you want to be directly accesible and if both? (or one) or the parties it's not it goes through the MSN server so can be a bit slow. Personally I use FTP when I need to send fair number of large files if both the sender and receiver are online 203.109.240.93 13:54, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

For even very large files, there are many free (ad-funded) transfer sites, such as rapidshare.com, yousendit.com, and mediafire.com. --TotoBaggins 15:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

For the record, emailing binary data (including zipped text) imposes a constant-factor overhead on your bandwidth; I believe that the ratio is 4/3 (see base64), but it's approximate anyway since you have text and constant overhead (like headers). --Tardis 02:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

IE 7.0 -- PLEASE HELP!

In IE 7.0, can you zoom in then, move to a different area? 68.193.147.179 02:45, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

? You can click on the zoom area in the righthand part of the bottom bar, and control how much zoom. It does seem that everytime you change the zoom you move back to the top of a page. I have to move back down to what I wanted to see larger. Shenme 02:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Can I zoom in, then, change the area that it zoomed in?? 68.193.147.179 02:57, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not really an IE user (Ubuntu FTW!), but I think zooming merely increases the text and image sizes, rather than actually "zooming". If not, I'm sure you can just use the horizonatal and vertical scroll bars to move around. --saxsux 20:12, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

RE: Printing Problem (QUESTION)

Duplicate of a section above, merged both sections. Please answer here instead. --cesarb 15:11, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Ti84+ programming

Hi! Is there a windows based program where I can write a program to load into a Ti84+ calculator? I mean I can do it on the calculator but it's a lot more fiddly. Thank You! --203.54.74.70 09:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Offhand, I would suggest you go to TiCalc, a website for information about programming. Splintercellguy 16:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

It's a lot easier to do it on the calculator once you get used to it --froth^T 21:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

If the anon is planning on writing complex assembly programs, a computer is probably necessary. Splintercellguy 06:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

cingular vm access numbers

explain what this means, access numbers, my vm access number is out of MN and i'm in IA

-- You should call Cingular to find the voicemail access number for the area where you are located. They may have an 800 number by which you can access your voicemail if you are outside of your regular calling area, or if you call the MN access number, they may consider it a local call. 12.174.151.111

Codecs?

I sometimes i download videos and it says i dont have a codec or something, i watch divx videos fine but how do i find out what codec i need for videos what dont say? Thanks... 58.160.221.11 12:58, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The codec pack ffdshow can be installed and supplies most of the codecs needed. If this doesn't work then you can download a program called g-spot which will identify the codec needed. The_Man_Stephen^talk 15:09, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Use the VLC media player. I will play pretty much anything. I haven't worried about codecs in years because of it. Oskar 16:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

A reliable ADSL modem/router?

I manage the IT for a company with several branch offices. Each office gets its internet connectivity via (BT) ADSL through a Netgear DG834G firewall/router box. Randomly, but very roughly once a month, one office or other loses its connection (the box generally reports everything is okay, but no traffic gets through); power-cycling the Netgear generally fixes things. I'd really like to replace these with a more robust solution, one that can be relied upon to work for months on end without the occasional reboot. Can y'all recommend a more reliable solution (but still only for a small office of 4-8 people with a 2Mb ADSL connection and not really much traffic)? We don't mind paying more than the very modest cost of consumer grade Linksys/Netgear equipment, if we'd get better reliability as a result. We're in the UK, incidentally. -- Freduardo Bolivar 14:35, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

One option would be to use a m0n0wall box or something similar for the firewall/router and just use the 'router' as a modem. 203.109.240.93 14:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

You can pick up these to avoid the crappy telco-provided modems. Droud 02:18, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Ahh, another m0n0wall fan, I second the recommendation. I have it running on an old PII box handling all the routing/firewall functions, as well as traffic shaping/QoS for a medium-sized home network, and could not be happier. As for robustness/reliability, my current record is 56 days straight of 100% uptime (I've only been using it since Oct 06-ish), and the only reason I had to end that, or ever restart for that matter is when I change a setting that requires it. I've never had it actually crash on me Cyraan 21:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Depleted Uranium

In your references for Depleted Uranium you failed to include my article: I will try to enclose it. Dr. Rosalie Bertell216.178.94.19 15:37, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

International Journal of Health Services, Volume 36, Number 3, Pages 503–520, 2006 © 2006, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.

Occupational Hazards of War DEPLETED URANIUM: ALL THE QUESTIONS ABOUT DU AND GULF WAR SYNDROME ARE NOT YET ANSWERED by Rosalie Bertell

There were some errors in the printing and I would be glad to provide errata (they can also be found in the next printing of the journal)

Does said Wikipedia article actually quote from or otherwise use material from your article? -- mattb @ 2007-02-15T18:17Z

Well there's nothing stopping you from including it and editing the page

Mix Lord 01:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

lost password

I have a problem on mac 10.2.3 jaguar as adimistrator I have mac,s password that was installed in the computer when I bourt it , need help to change password of find the mac passwora

Don't post the same question twice. If you have a Mac OS X install CD, you can boot from that (by putting it in and holding down C) and there is an option in the installer to reset password. Alternately, you might be able to boot into single-user mode and change it from there, but that's more complicated. --Spoon! 21:18, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Computer keyboard -> Midi

What's the easier way to record a midi file using a computer keyboard? I'm not doing anythign fancy, just a simple little jingle, nothing worth buying a special midi keyboard for. I have access to Cakewalk Sonar 4 Producer edition, but haven't had any luck finding such a "virtual keyboard" in there. --Alecmconroy 19:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I use Bome's Mouse Keyboard tool for the keyboard, and MidiYoke for the 'virtual' midi devices. Install MidiYoke first, then Bome's Mouse Keyboard. Johnnykimble 19:59, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

There are also many free trackers out there which you might look into. --24.147.86.187 03:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

lost password

I have a problem on mac10.2.3 jaguar. As the Adimistrator I have lost Mac.s password that Mac installed in the computer when I bought it Ineed help to change password or find the mac password

This article on the apple site (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=151815) may be of use. You need the installation CD to be able to change the administrator password though. I've had to do this before and it's easy enough. ny156uk 22:04, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm so does that mean that if I have the Mac OS X installation CD I can potentially acquire admin account on any Mac using OS X? Or does it have some sort of special key that makes it only work with the system that was installed from that particular CD? --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Of course. Similarly, you can trivially change passwords on Windows and Linux and most other OSs, if you have the ability to boot to a floppy or CD of your choice. (This is because when you boot an OS, it gets control over all the hardware in the computer, including the hard drive containing your passwords, so it can easily overwrite it.) There are ways to change settings in the Open Firmware of the Mac (equivalent of the BIOS in PCs) so it requires a password to boot to CDs or something, but there are ways around that too. In general, for any OS or system, it is almost always true that if you have complete physical access to a machine, you have complete control over it. --Spoon! 21:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

February 16

Webmail

I am currently a student at a Queensland State school using a government hosted Webmail for most of my emailing, and each time I try to send something I get a message from postmaster@eq.edu.au telling me that I'm over quota and it won't send. I've used the same thing for a few years and never encountered this. I'm using 6.7 MB out of a 10MB inbox and there is no limit on the total number of messages. Does anyone know what would be causing this and how to overcome it? Mix Lord 01:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing stopping a government-run service from suddenly cutting the quota, or merely crapping out. In fact, the amazing thing is that it has been working for years! You are going to have to go to the root of the problem, and penetrate the bureaucracy! I wish you luck. --Zeizmic 01:24, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

lol. Thanks

Mix Lord 03:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Is your total webspace quota different than your inbox size quota? (Sounds weird but I have seen it before.) The problem sounds to me like it can't copy the message to your Sent Mail folder correctly because of a quota problem -- you might look into whether that folder has some sort of quota. --24.147.86.187 01:34, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, if that was the case, that it can't copy the message to the Sent Mail folder, then the message would have been already sent, as the postmaster is replying. Must be a server issue. BTW: I hope your QLD government webmail is better than my shitty NSW government webmail! --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 09:35, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Well I think it's good now. Something to do with the inbox of the guy I sent the emails too having a full inbox. Thanks anyway

Mix Lord 23:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

How do I tell if a windows install is 64 bit?

How would I tell if a particular windows install is 64 (or 32) bit? I've tried the msinfo32 tool, but it will just say "Microsoft Windows XP Professional" under OS Name. It doesn't seem to say it anywhere under System either. Is there any tool or location in Windows that will state clearly "Windows XP Pro x64" or x32? The Wikipedia article on Windows XP x64 is no help in this regard. Any ideas appreciated!--inks^T 03:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Whoops, figured it out. Under system properties, the x32 version will say "Microsoft Windows XP Professional", the x64 version will say "Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition".--inks^T 03:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

It's not x32, but x86. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 09:32, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Looking for an HTML tag

Let's say I want to write an HTML tutorial on my HTML based website. I want to have the text "<b> example text </b>" on my website to show how to use the HTML language, but if I simply type this into my own HTML file for the website, it will show up as example text which is not what I want. Is there a tag to "turn off" HTML analogous to how <nowiki> turns off wiki markup? Thanks, Dar-Ape 03:38, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

PS adding something like this </html><b>bold</b><html> in the middle of a file still produces bold. Dar-Ape 03:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

You can 'escape' HTML elements by using &lt; and &gt; which produce < and > respectively: <b>not bold</b>. -- zzuuzz^(talk) 03:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you very much! Sometimes the quickness of the RD is almost scary... :-) Dar-Ape 04:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Pen drive/ Flash drive

What is the difference between Pen drive & Flash drive? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Milindnpatel (talk • contribs).

Nothing significant, they are synonyms. "Flash" denotes a specific technology, where "Pen" denotes a form. Droud 05:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Yep.. you could say that a pen drive is a type of flash drive. SubSeven 10:38, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

electrons revolve

electrons revolve why is it that electrons revolve around the nucleus? the force of an atomic nucleus is far greater than that of a single electron. if that is true, the electrons must be attracted and they must fall into the nucleus. why is it not happening?... 59.92.92.173 13:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

You will find better answers at the Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science. --cesarb 14:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

(after edit conflict):You might get a better answer from the Science desk, but if I'm not mistaken, the "orbital model" of the atom is quite (over)simplified. Even within that model, to say that "electrons orbit the nucleus like planets orbit the sun" is not necessarily to mean that the same physical mechanisms apply. –RHolton≡– 14:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Your question is framed in a way that's not entirely correct; when you write "the force of the atomic nucleus is far greater than that of a single electron," you are confusing the force exerted by the nucleus with the inertia of the electron. In fact, an object with enough momentum can orbit very close to an object that exerts a very strong force on it, which is (in the simplified model we're using here) exactly what electrons are doing.

However, the classical model of electrons orbiting doesn't hold so well, because we expect them to lose energy through bremsstrahlung and fall into the nucleus. But that doesn't happen, and it used to be a big mystery a century ago why not. It turns out to be because, according to quantum mechanics, the angular momentum of the electrons is quantized; that is, they are only allowed to "orbit" at certain "speeds" and at certain distances from the nucleus. Electrons at the lowest such distance simply aren't allowed to fall further. -- SCZenz 14:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Expanding on what SCZenz said, the Rutherford model is of an atom is with orbiting electrons. In the same way that the moon or satellites don't crash into the Earth, electrons don't crash into the nucleus. This is because to crash, the electron would have to lose energy (slow down). There's no friction, so the electron can happily sit in the orbit indefinitely.

In fact, the Rutherford model is wrong. The electron would lose energy by radiating it away (in the form of light). This is because it has an electric charge, and charges which change speed or direction (like in an orbit) will radiate in this way.

Rutherford got around this by simply stating that the radiation doesn't happen in this case (he bodged it!), and this was accepted because the model otherwise agreed with measurements of the atom.

The current model for electron behavior is using quantum mechanics to say the electron is spread out in a hollow sphere roughly where the atom should orbit (this works because quantum mechanics does not deal with actual positions, but only with the probability that it would be at a given position. It is the probability which is spread out). This model also explains the way electrons are organised in shells around the atom. See electron for amazing detail. --h2g2bob 08:49, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

ADSL Modem Connection Speed

I have an ADSL2+ modem which has both ethernet and USB connectivity.But on the ethernet connection, it connects at 100Mbps, but on USB it connects only at 10Mbps.But the maximum supported bandwidth of the ADSL is 24Mbps.So what would happen if you would connect the modem through USB at maximum connection bandwidth of 24Mbps?Since maximum speed of USB 2.0 is 480Mbps, is it possible to tweak the driver or net connection to get 100Mbps through USB???

Sign your posts with ~~~~. If you cannot get 100 Mbps from the underlying medium, how can you get it by changing to USB? Splintercellguy 16:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

It is possible that you have USB1.1, which maxes out at 12Mbps. Either way, if ethernet is faster, use it! Freedomlinux 17:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Well what I really wanted to know is if we can form a lan connection between the modem and comp at 100Mbps rather than 10Mbps as I have USB2.0 and not USB1.101:54, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Lan/ethernet connection is different from what USB version you have and have no effect on the ethernet speed. --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:02, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Guys, he's said that his modem has USB connectivity to his computer... --froth^T 02:29, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Help with Gentoo linux

I am a linux user but now a newbie in linux administration. I am using gentoo linux.I have 2 gentoo servers (one mail server and 1 gateway server).If i want add a new user, in which of the servers do I add the user.And again how do you tell which group the already existing users belong to.

I also want to set webmail in Gentoo using exim MTA.Lastly I want to set up an auto-response/reply service so that our senders of emails to our users can receive this message when they (users) aren't at their desks.

My client machines are windows. I also forgot to say that I use ADSL connection from telkom.So I have telkom router connected to my gateway server.

The problem is I'm new to Gentoo.Can someone kindly help.

thanks in advance

Derick

I know enough Linux to get me into trouble, and when I do, then Google is my best friend. You aren't going to get a short answer here. I would go back to the manuals and howto's and beef up on mailservers, and Windows connectivity. You've got about 5-10 hours of homework here. --Zeizmic 14:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Why would a user need to use the gateway server? Use group user to determine what groups a user named user is in.

Statistics generator in C

I've got three variables representing statistics: str, dex and con. I want to generate values for each one, from 1 to 20. Assume I already have a RNG function called getrand(). The easiest way to do this would be to assign, for example, str = getrand();. However, this obviously produces completely random weightings: The chances of getting 1, 1, 1 and 20, 20, 20 are equal. How can I "weight" the outcomes so that it balances out? For instance, if I roll str at 20, I'm going to want the other stats to be much lower to compensate.

If anyone could explicitly suggest an algorithm or popular process used to do this, that would be great. I've so far considered a points method in that it has a fixed number of points to spend on each stat but I can't seem to pull it off.

Personally, I would randomize the possible total, and work from there. In example, since you have three statistics with a maximum value of 20, we can say there is an average of 30 points to be split between the three statistics. Randomize a number between 30[+-5], getting a value in the 25-35 range. This will be the total amount of points to split between the statistics. When you roll a value in one of them, substract the total from the calculated value if possible. If it is not possible, use what remains if it is the last statistics, or throw a random between 1 and the amount left to see the value of the statistic. In example, suppose you get 30 points to split, if the user gets 20 str points, it leaves 10 points to split between dex and con. Throw another random, from 1 to 9, and assign it to dex, and the rest (if dex is 9, the rest is 1) and assign it to con. Note that, since 20 is the maximun, it is very likely that if the user gets a 20, one of the other statistics must be fairly low. -- ReyBrujo 15:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

As implemented, this is probably not what you want; in order for, say, con to get a large value, both of the others have to get small values, but for the first (str) to get a large value, it only needs to get a large value (once). So the distribution of excellent statistics will be badly skewed towards the front of the list of variables. What you want to do depends on what exactly you want the "compensation" to be: ReyBrujo is quite correct that a fixed (or nearly fixed) total value is a good choice, but there are others. In particular, is (20,20,20) impossible to get, or should it merely be unlikely (in which case the total can't be fixed near its average value)? For the "impossible" route, start with a total t as suggested but then also generate the statstics normally; finally normalize their sum to t. (Making the choices in the normal fashion and then using t to fix the total preserves the wholly-uncorrelated nature of the statistics as generated independently.) For the "unlikely" route, you can in general define a $P({\vec {x}})$ probability function, and then — with some relatively painful math — decompose it into a series of individual probability functions: $P(x_{1}=t)\equiv \sum _{x_{2},\ldots ,x_{n}=\ldots }^{\ldots }P(\left\langle x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n}\right\rangle )$, $P(x_{2}=u|x_{1}=t)\equiv \left.\sum _{x_{3},\ldots ,x_{n}=\ldots }^{\ldots }P(\left\langle x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n}\right\rangle )\right/P(x_{1}=t)$, etc. Then you can invert the probability functions by tabulating them and searching with a random parameter.

As an example, let us consider 3 statistics on [1,4] and suppose that we use $P({\vec {x}}):={\frac {k}{w+(\left\|{\vec {x}}\right\|_{1}-o)^{2}}}$ where k is determined by normalization, w controls the strength of the weighting, and o is the "optimum" total; take $w=1,o=7$. Then the sum of all $4^{3}$ probabilities implies $k={\frac {1105}{30248}}$. Then the probability sums for $x_{1}=\{1,2,3,4\}$ are $\{975,1105,975,726\}/3781$. (Note that these add to 1.) So roll a 3781-sided die and pick a value of 1 for all sides up to 975, etc. Let's suppose we rolled a 3000 and got "3". Then we consider the probabilities for $x_{2}$ given that $x_{1}=3$: $\{2431,2431,1989,949\}/30248$. These add to the ${\frac {975}{3781}}$ that we've already selected, so divide them by that to make them sum to 1: $\{187,187,153,73\}/600$. So roll your 600-sided die, and suppose we get 200, giving $x_{2}=2$. Finally consider the individual probabilities for $x_{3}$: $\{1105,2210,1105,442\}/60496$, which sum to the ${\frac {2431}{30248}}$ that is the product of the probabilities selected so far. Divide them by that to get $\{5,10,5,2\}/22$: roll the 22-sided die and get, say, 10, yielding $x_{3}=2$ for a total value of (3,2,2), which sums to 7 (our o) as a plurality of results will. This can be implemented most easily with floating-point math; the dice then have non-integer numbers of sides but the result is the same. Does that help? --Tardis 23:02, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

How about using two "dice" instead of one for each stat. That is, generate two random values 1-10 and then add them to get the final tally. This will center all values "around" 10, using a binomial probability, and make 2,2,2 (you couldn't get a 1 with my scheme, all though the second dice could be 0-10 instead) and 20,20,20 exceedingly unlikely, and it would prevent the possible skewing of values that is quite possible in ReyBrujos suggestion. Oskar 15:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Or hey, why not do both? Generate a total like ReyBrujo suggests, but generate the values to subtract using my way. That way there won't be much skewing, the values will still be pretty random, and all users will have a fair total. I think that's an excellent solution Oskar 16:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The chances of getting 1,1,1 and 20,20,20 are equal however the odds that non-homogenous choices are chosen are much higher than extremes at any end of the spectrum. Just pointing that out. It is true that the odds of getting 0,0,0,0,0 in a truly random sequence is the same as getting any other sequence, however the odds of getting a more "mixed" sequence is much, much higher than getting one of all the same numbers, to state it another way. --24.147.86.187 14:59, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

While you are correct, it is also true that there is a high probability that the total will be skewed from user to user (that is, it is unlikely that, say, 10 users will have the same, or almost the same total score) Oskar 19:11, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Homepage click-through rates

A well-known voluntary organisation with several hundred pages on its website discovers from traffic logs that only half the people who visit its homepage go on to look at any other pages on the site. Is that a good or bad click-through rate, or have I not given you enough information to give a meaningful answer? --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 17:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I suppose a lot depends on the content. If all the other pages require payment, then 50% clickthrough is outstanding! If you're wondering whether clickthrough can be improved, perhaps mention the website for comments? —EncMstr 17:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I can't name the actual site I'm referring to, I'm afraid. None of the other pages require payment, though. As an example of a site with a similar depth of content, have a look at The Children's Society. --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 18:11, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't say 50% is bad. --froth^T 19:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that's pretty good, infact Oskar 19:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Is the glass half full. Or is the glass half empty. It depends on the way you look at it as well as the type of content. A news site would have a different follow-through rate than say, Microsoft, because the purpose of the homepage is different. Harryboyles 10:57, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Digital Audio Workstation question

Hello,

I've done searches, and I can't find the answer to this question...

When looking at the computer screen in a digital audio workstation such as Pro Tools or Audacity, there is a visual representation of the recorded sound over time. What does this image actually represent - is it volume, intensity, frequency, or some other quality or mix of these qualities? In other words, what does that actual visual graph of the audio have as its axes?

Thanks!

Eliza

Likely amplitude against time (amplitude on y, time on x). If you zoom in close enough you'll see the individual peaks and troughs - the closer these are, the higher the frequency. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 20:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The vertical (Y) axis is amplitude; the horizontal (X) is time, so it is the somewhat-hard-to-understand "total waveform". Zoom in very, very closely, so the timescale across the screen width is 0.1 second or less. For normal sounds, you'll see the waves-on-an-ocean aspect of sound. The amplitude alternates both positive and negative. Many tools also will perform a frequency analysis: in Audacity's case, it summarizes the selected sample as the maximum amplitude as a function of frequency. —EncMstr 20:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the responses! Eliza

Laughing

Put whoever you want in there, it works. Beat that. --Darkest Hour 21:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• See Here. Thats why I laugh.

As I've told you, that's no different than your example before. You're still not entering text in the box directly as a comment. --froth^T 17:59, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

February 17

how to re-install soundMax at home

Hi there, I accidently removed soundmax program from my laptop..I was removing unnecessary programs by using Add/Remove properity in Control Panel. This caused no audio device in my laptop. So is there any way that can undo that by using OS CD's to bring the sound back.

If your computer was bought from a manufacturer like PC World or Dell you will most likely have a Driver disc that will contain the soundmax program. If you don't have this disc then the options are either search on google for Soundmax and download the program, open up your system properties (right click on my computer) and press the device manager button. Right click on the Audio Device that is showing an error and click update driver. Windows will then find the driver. The_Man_Stephen^talk 01:41, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

HTML Resizing

I'm a noob making a webpage. I've got things sized the way I want on my screen, but apparently there's more than one size of screen and more than one screen resolution. That blew me away. Anyway, how do I get things to resize to fit other screens? Black Carrot 02:32, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Use percentages for your width and give up control over the exact layout of every little letter on your page. The web is not print media. Don't treat it as such. If you want some content to take up half the width of the screen, tell it to have a width of 50%. On a skinny screen, it will be very tall because the content inside it will wrap a lot. On a wide screen, it will be very short because there won't be as much wrapping. As far as images go, you need to remember that they will be much larger on a low-resolution screen and much smaller on a high-resolution screen. You can use CSS and size your images relative to the font-width using ems, such as "width:3em;" to make an image be 3 ems wide. Once you get used to the fluid layout of the web, you can start using all kinds of tricks to stretch and move things around so it looks good on pretty much all resoltions. --Kainaw ^(talk) 05:39, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

And you have to have a little tolerance for the fact that your webpage will look differently on different screens. You can't get around that, and so one of the real tricks to HTML design is to come up with designs that will be somewhat flexible. You also have to have a little faith in the reader — people will often have their own custom settings (making the font the size they find most readable) and will view your page in the way they want to, and that's ok. --24.147.86.187 14:57, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I think I've got it. Thanks. Black Carrot 06:05, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Fan connector

I'm not sure if this goes here or Misc... but anyways. What is the name of the connector for fans in computers? The ones that normally have 3 pins. I looked around on google, but there's no mention of what they're called. Can anyone help? --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 05:23, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I've tried to find out the same thing and "3-pin connector" is the best I've come up with :( --h2g2bob 08:04, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Molex connector suggests that it's "Molex KK". Using Google, that name seems to refer to the pin/connector style, not a specific usage for fans nor a specific number of pins. So, the most specific that you'll get is to call fan connectors 3 pin Molex KK fan connectors. Considering that Molex is a registered trademark, it makes sense that the word is usually dropped. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 08:15, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Err, it probably gets more specific than that, considering that KKs are available with a variety of pin sizes, spacings, and formats. Just call it a "3-pin fan connector" or anything similar, and everyone will know what you're talking about. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 08:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, guess it might be hard to get 4 pin Molex KKs then, which are what I'm looking for. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 08:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Try 4 pin molex or 4 pin fan connector. No one gets specific with the molex brands. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 08:23, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I need to be specific, so I know how to make traces for a PCB. But I do see sites now with what I need. I just hope they have specifications before I order some. Thanks all. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 08:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Aren't they pretty standard in electronics? They have 0.1 inch pitch and is called "Header Terminal Strip" in Jaycar or "Dual-in-lines/Jumpers" for the 2 row ones. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:34, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

So they are the same thing as Headers? I've been trying to see if those were the same things but I had been unable to find pictures on any site that sells them. I've been looking at the Molex site, and the ones I want are more or less like the Mini-Latch or Mini-Locks, which are what Molex calls them. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 08:47, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I googled "4 pin header" images and they came out to be fan connections etc, so looks like they are the same thing. Thanks again. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 08:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I think they are the same as headers, at least they physically and electrically fit. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

ADSL modem to comp Connection speed

As the ADSL modem to comp through ethernet connects at 100Mbps, I wanted to know if we can form a lan connection through USB between the ADSL modem and comp at 100Mbps rather than 10Mbps as I have USB2.0 and not USB1.1 .Is it possible to tweak the modem driver or registry setting to do this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.241.48 (talk • contribs)

Please do not post duplicate questions. Your question is here: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing#ADSL_Modem_Connection_Speed. Splintercellguy 08:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I feel that the previous questions may not have been specific enough to address the real doubt.I hope this is elaborate enough.This may even circumvent the need to use an ethernet port..

I have an ADSL2+ modem which has both ethernet and USB connectivity.But on the ethernet connection, it connects at 100Mbps(computer to modem), but on USB it connects only at 10Mbps(computer to modem).But the maximum supported bandwidth of the ADSL2 modem from server to modem is 24Mbps.So what would happen if you would connect the modem through USB at maximum server modem connection bandwidth of 24Mbps?Since maximum speed of USB 2.0 is 480Mbps, is it possible to tweak the driver or connection to get (computer to modem) 100Mbps or more speed through USB?59.92.248.92 14:47, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Probably not. Your best bet is Ethernet. Splintercellguy 17:14, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

PCI interface USBcard speed

Any idea how an 133MBps PCI interface can support 5 USB 2.0 hi speed ports(480Mbps) through a PCI card??59.92.248.92 15:03, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I believe you may be confusing megabit (Mb) with megabyte (MB) (that blasted lower or upper case B makes a big difference). There are 8 bits in 1 byte, so 480 megabits per second works out to about 60 megabytes per second, which is still below the maximum PCI bus speed of 133 megabytes per second, or about 1,064 megabits per second. Also, I don't think there are any USB devices that can actually hit the full transfer speed of 480Mbps. Cyraan 20:30, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Also, I might be incorrect, but I believe that that is the maximum speed of a serial bus. That is, only one device can talk at the same time -- it isn't parallel. --Mdwyer 18:25, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Download some complex SWF files for offline viewing

For example, the New York Times provides some SWF files

• Think Small by Bethany Lyttle
• Think Small SWF Dispatcher <-- This SWF!

How do I download an SWF slideshow that requests another remote SWF file? -- Toytoy 18:03, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I doubt it's possible in this case --froth^T 19:35, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

You would need to download and decompile the flash files. Fosnez 05:00, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

JPEGs are 01 to 16, using Wireshark. --h2g2bob 17:53, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

apt-get through proxy / at least SSH help

I'm running Ubuntu Edgy Server on a school computer that I hope to make headless.. but of course I need it running an SSH server. Unfortunately, I'm behind a proxy (that requires authentication) and I can't get apt-get to work (to download the ssh packages). I've set the http_proxy environment variable and added proxy configuration lines to /etc/apt/apt.conf but it doesn't help- when I do apt-get update it IGNores every repository and I have no package information. I'm using the http://username:password@domain.tld:port syntax so I don't think it's getting 403 errors. I have no GUI so I can't use synaptic.

So is there any way to:

• Get it to work through the proxy, or at least
• Get it to tell me why specifically it's IGNoring each repository

Also, the "ssh" command is set up and working (so I can connect as a client to other ssh servers); could that mean that the ssh server stuff is installed? I tried SSHing to it through PuTTY from my laptop but it didn't reply so how would I start the server on the offchance that it's preinstalled? There's nothing SSH running as a service

Thanks --froth^T 18:15, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

never mind, I changed all of the repo URLs to ftp, which is open to the world (don't have to mess with proxy at all) --froth^T 21:06, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

ssh is preinstalled, but IIRC only the client. --cesarb 13:39, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Darwin and Mac OSX

Are they backwards compatible? Can you run Mac software on a Darwin OS? What is the difference between Darwin vanilla and OpenDarwin? --Russoc4 18:45, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

No, most things depend on proprietary Apple libraries like the stuff for the GUI and stuff, which are not free. OpenDarwin is a project to make an independent version of Darwin, but work on it has stopped. --Spoon! 21:03, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah, well, I just tried installing Darwin 8.0.1 (Mac OSX 10.4) on my Dell Inspiron 9300. It didn't even make it through the boot process to the install screen. I got an "SAM Multimedia: READ or WRITE failed" error. The Google suggests that its a problem with the CD.--Russoc4 22:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Update. I tried reburning the disc at a lower speed. No luck. I'm not terribly upset though. The whole point was to see if Darwin can run software that is built for Mac OSX. I should've known better. --Russoc4 00:31, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Russoc4, check that your CD drive is hooked up as primary slave. Else install in VMware. Splintercellguy 05:37, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

How do i check to see if it is the "primary slave". I was able to boot from the CD. It started loading the kernel and whatever else was necessary to get to the installation process, but halted before it could finish due to this I/O error. --Russoc4 19:55, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

IR keyboard driver

Hey, I'm having a spot of bother. I've got a Pocketop IR keyboard for my Dell Axim X51, but I don't have the driver, and it seems Pocketop have gone bust or something and are not supplying drives! Anyone got any ideas where I can get a driver from? Many thanks!!! --86.137.233.160 21:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I found my way here: http://pocketop.radiant.net/drivers.shtml --Seans Potato Business 03:17, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Web Software

What are all the products by Microsoft to build a web site? 68.193.147.179 22:52, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Microsoft FrontPage is one. Jamesino 00:18, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget IIS and Windows 2003 Server --froth^T 01:29, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Notepad :) --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 09:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Also Microsoft SQL Server for databases. By the way, why Microsoft rather than LAMP? --h2g2bob 17:44, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Microsoft Expression Web is their new web design product (and replaces FrontPage) — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 21:15, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

February 18

What happens during reformat that makes data retrieval difficult?

I recently copied all the files from a drive (or so I thought), reformatted to Ext3 using gparted, then went back into Windows to find that my hidden folder and contents was not copied. I went back into gparted (using liveCD version) and converted back to NTFS so that I might use a recovery program. The data lost isn't majorly important. It's a bit annoying and will hopefully serve to remind me not to be so careless in the future, but what I want to know is, since I read that data is not altered in reformatting (only the file system), how can it be that my recovery program has found none of the file-types that I told it to look for (it's been searching for 110 hours (yes, nearly five continuous days!) and is now near the end. If the data wasn't over written, it should be finding things right? I suppose fragmentation of a file would confuse the program so it wouldn't find fragmented files but what about files that aren't fragmented?

For future reference is re-reformating to NTFS (back from ext3) likely to make it worse? --Seans Potato Business 03:11, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Imagine that instead of using a dewey decimal, a library used a first come, first served procedure. As in books were added to the shelves as they were published / bought. The location of all the books were stored in an index of some sought, and when you wanted a book you looked in the index and found what shelf the book was on. This is similar to NTFS and FAT.

In formatting the drive, you have basically gone and removed the index, now the program is going through each book on every shelf and looking at the first paragraph to find out what type of book it was. The titles (filenames) were all stored in the index and are not written on the front of the books.

Your retrieval will take time, and is not guaranteed to work. Fosnez 04:59, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

It was probably a bad idea to format it back to ntfs in the first place. You probably have a good chance of at least partially recovering your data though --froth^T 09:45, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but I still havn't learned anything new. I understood the function of the index and the simple removal of the index would lead me to believe that all files were retrievable, given enough time. Since none have been retrieved, it cannot be this simple. You, Fosnez say it's not guaranteed to work and you, Froth, say "chance of ... partially recovering data", so I ask what other factors are leading to data being lost? It is not fully explained by the library analogy. --Seans Potato Business 11:40, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

It's possible that one of the conversions has completely blanked the data area (if one of them took a somewhat long time to complete, it was that one; ext3, for instance, has a mode where it destructively scans for bad blocks, but I don't know if gparted uses it). And yes, converting back to NTFS probably made the problem much worse (ext3 and NTFS place their metadata on different places; the conversion to ext3, if it didn't use a destructive scan, would not have completely overwritten the NTFS metadata, but the conversion back to NTFS would). If your recovery program is searching for file types, I guess it's similar to PhotoRec, so it should find the unfragmented files easily (and it shouldn't take five days! Is your disk that slow? The recovery program should do a linear scan, which is the fastest way to read the whold disk...). If you aren't using PhotoRec, try it; it might help. --cesarb 13:35, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Both times I formatted, it took only a couple of minutes so I don't think the drive was blanked. Thanks for the info regarding different placment of metadata. It really is taking five days but I'm not sure how much of that is attributable to interuption by GoogleDesktop. The drive is 150 GB and I think the quick format recovery option was to take about 30 hours while the full one it's on now about 120 hours. --Seans Potato Business 15:39, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

A disk containing a filesystem is a multi-level structure. The disk contains a partition table specifying multiple internal partitions or sub-disks. Each partition contains a filesystem. Each filesystem contains pointers to its root directory, and to its freelist(s). The root directory contains pointers to files, and to other directories. Each file contains a last-modification time, other metainformation, and a list of the file's blocks. Finally, those blocks contain the file's actual data. Depending on the filesystem, the information associated with a file may or may not include the file's name; if not, it's likely that the directory contains the name along with a pointer to the structure containing the rest of the file's information.

The reason that undeletion can work is that much of a file's information is not lost, and is pretty easily recoverable, when the file is deleted. For one thing, the blocks containing the file's data are not erased, but are merely returned to the free list or pool, meaning that the data is not overwritten until those blocks are allocated to another file. But that's not all.

Generally, when a file is detached from its directory, the structure that ties together the rest of the file's information (the "inode", in Unix parlance) isn't deleted, either. This makes it hugely easier to undelete a file, because if you can find that structure, it will tell you which data blocks made up the file and in which order. Without that important clue, trying to recreate a file from its component blocks potentially scattered anywhere on a hundreds-of-gigabytes partition is a real needle-in-a-haystack proposition.

It's true, neither deleting a file nor reformatting a partition generally erases everything. But resizing or reformatting a partition is quite likely to erase some of the key information which otherwise makes undeletion easy. For example, at least on a Unix-like filesystem, besides the list or pool of free blocks, there's a list or pool of free inode structures. It's through that list of free inodes that an undeletion program first looks. If that list has been damaged -- or even just if the pointer to it has been lost -- the undeletion program may not have anything to work with. And although a filesystem-level reformat does not generally erase everything, it does obviously involve rewriting the header information at the beginning of the partition, containing pointers to the root directory and free lists and such. So it's pretty easy to see why an accidental filesystem reformat, even if it doesn't erase everything, makes an undeletion utility's job much more difficult than does a simple accidental deletion. —Steve Summit (talk) 16:52, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

stupid crackers

I use Firestarter as a firewall on my GNU/Linux system. However, my router is configured to block (or, not forward) everything except for stuff that I allow. When I enable DMZ to my computer, I'm getting hundreds of random connections. I've never experienced having a PC compromised before, so is this normal?

--wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 03:52, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's normal. Most of them will just be sweeps from Windows-based worms. Some will be script kiddies scanning around for possible targets. Very few of them will be serious break-in attempts. If you're up on your updates and don't have anything insecure open to the world, you'll probably be fine. Setting up port forwarding from your router instead of using the DMZ would give you an extra layer of security and keep out many obnoxious scans, but if you have everything configured correctly I doubt you would be any more secure. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 03:58, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's just the normal Internet background noise. Most people don't even notice it. You will see random undirected attacks (like trying an old IIS exploit on every IP address in the world without even checking if it runs a webserver), portscans (for instance, looking for open proxies), backscatter, local network noise (ARP queries are the most common, but Windows boxes like to spew NetBIOS stuff all over the wire), and even the odd misdirected packet (sometimes from buggy nodes, sometimes from things like bit flips in transit). --cesarb 13:21, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies... I often get requests in my Apache logs with people trying to run a non-existent CMD.EXE... --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 07:45, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

More memory and hard disk space

how do i clean files and add meemory on my laptop

Well you can try running the Disk Cleanup wizard- somewhere in Accessories I think. Delete all of your temporary internet files and TEMP files. That should give you a couple hundred megabytes. Next go to Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel and remove large applications that you don't use anymore (hint: anything in the hundreds of MB or in the GB is large enough to be worth removing) --froth^T 09:43, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

You may also want to copy files you no longer modify to a CD or DVD then delete it from the laptop. - Akamad 10:29, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Increasing memory for laptops is quite difficult, unless you are technically astute and willing to dissect your laptop. Splintercellguy 00:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Job change from Services based company to a Product based company?

Hello,

Currently I am working as a software engineer at a Services based company. But frankly speaking I am not getting to do much of the coding stuff. I am really interested in coding and tech stuff. So would changing to a Product based software company be a wise decision to take? Can someone share some insights into this?

Well if you're currently fielding support for products then you're definately going to get more coding work in developing products --froth^T 09:41, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Windows apps similar to Delicious Library.

right|200px There's a terrific app for Mac OS X called Delicious Library that keeps track of your movies, TV boxsets, games, books and albums in a very aesthetically appealing way, while showing data from Amazon. Is there any app similar to this for Windows XP? It doesn't need to have the barcode feature, just the aesthetic appeal. Things like DVD Profiler are too ugly. Cheers. Pesapluvo 13:00, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Portscan

I recently saw a message like this:

Intrusion attempt blocked Intrusion:Portscan Intruder:218.xx.xxx.xxx(xserver(6000))

Can someone say what was being attempted here. Thanks87.102.13.148 13:03, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

It means that the computer (or other device) at IP address 218.xxx.xxx.xxx (I assume the software gave you that actual IP, which you've blanked here) attempted to connect to your PC on port 6000. According to the msg above, and List of TCP and UDP port numbers, Port 6000 is used by X11 for connections between an X-client and X-server (note that an X-client is the PC on which the application runs, not the PC on which it is displayed as you might expect). This could be for a number of reasons:

• You have attemped to run an X11 application on a remote computer, with the display on yours, but have not configured your firewall to allow it. If you don't know what this means, then this isn't the cause :-)
• Someone is attempting to exploit a security hole by connecting to your PC on this port, but your firewall has prevented this
• Your computer's IP address is dynamically allocated (see DHCP) by your ISP (a quick WHOIS shows that your IP is in the "Karoo ADSL pools") it is possible that until recently the same address was allocated to a different PC, a remote computer was attempting to connect to this other PC at what is now your address, this is still an unwanted connection (as above), but without malicious intent

In short, if its the first one, then you'll know, as something you expected to work won't; if its the 2nd or 3rd, there's no need to worry, as your firewall has prevented it. Davidprior 15:21, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

I'll second most of what Davidprior said, with one additional note. The format of the message you received looks like it was from Norton Internet Security or Norton Person Firewall. NIS/NPF have port scan thresholds that will trigger if enough connection attempts are made within a certain period of time. It's very unlikely that simply running an X-client/server session would trigger this, that just happens to be the last port hit before NIS/NPF said "now wait a minute...". Like Davidprior said, you're not in any danger because you have the firewall, and it's just telling you that it's doing its job. Machines connected directly to the internet are under constant attacks like this, so keep your AV and OS patched appropriately and don't run any strange programs you get in email and whatnot, and you should probably be fine. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 15:47, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Imaging software recommendation asked

Would someone recomend an imaging software for a WindowsMe OS? I need to make some maps. I need an easy one as I have never done this before and am not very swift technically. Thanks! Mattisse 13:38, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I hate to be a troll about it, but Windows ME is no longer supported by Microsoft and is the worst Windows release ever. Windows 2000 or Windows XP are vastly superior. That said, if you can get .NET to install, try out Paint.net - its great. 68.15.208.73 14:41, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

For mapping-specific software, see List of GIS software - i don't know enough about this specific type of software, but a quick look at the GRASS GIS article suggests it means business. For general-purpose image editors see [1] and [2] - without knowing how complex your needs are, its hard to make a specific recommendation, but if I had to, I'd go with Inkscape. Hope this is of some help, Davidprior 14:53, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! That was very helpful. Plus I am very unhappy with WindowsMe and wish my computer would die! Thanks again. Mattisse 16:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Bootable Linux setup

I have a specific Linux question. The idea is that someone who is a bit of a technophobe sits down at a PC, attaches a USB key and places a CD/DVD in the drive, then reboots. The computer boots off the CD/DVD, and loads the configuration files on the USB drive automatically. They are then after everything is loaded presented with a screen where ideally they don't have to login, rather they now have a working computer connected to the Wi-Fi router nearby and are online. They then either click on the Linux equivalent of Start/Programs/Mozilla Firefox/Firefox or type "Firefox" at the prompt which is visible with no user intervention.

Now they have a fresh copy of Firefox running, with no history, cache, cookies etc.

So the question is: is this technically possible? Linux would have to look for the configuration files by itself, do bootable distributions do this? The bootable CD/DVD would be considered "fresh", ie has had no fiddling with it, it is your standard image downloadable from the usual distribution sites.

Also, how long would it take for someone to actually set this up? I suppose the Wi-Fi would be the hardest to do. I intend to pay someone to do this, and I'm curious about the cost. So, the big question is is it possible? Thanks. Mjm1964 14:46, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I have a friend at a private school who has to do this to teach Linux, since MS is a sponsor, and all the computers must be windows. They are now using 4 Gb flash sticks, with the whole Linux development system. There's no need for a cd! --Zeizmic 15:34, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I think Knoppix can save its configuration to a flash drive (as it can to a disk partition), but I do not know if it looks for it automatically. You might want to take a look. --cesarb 17:26, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I know its possible, the BSD-based distro I use for a router runs only using a livecd, and a floppy to store configuration data (in XML fomat), the next version (currently in beta) will support using USB drives to store config data. Cyraan 20:08, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Live distro May have some more information. Vespine 22:57, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Online Poll

If I wanted to set up an online poll, where I ask questions and gather the anonymous responses, how would a noob like me go about doing it? I have the webspace, just not the knowledge of what code to use. --Russoc4 19:45, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

What you're wanting requires you to write HTML form, for displaying the poll choices, and a CGI script to process the incoming data of the form. If you're wanting a premade solution, try looking here: CGI poll script—Mitaphane _?|! 22:32, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

phpbb is online forum which has inbuilt poll capability, it is primarily a forum do the poll part is pretty light weight, just like what you'd see in a forum, but if that's all you need might be the easiest way to do it. Vespine 00:19, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

You'll also need a website to put the poll on. --Kainaw ^(talk) 00:26, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I have the webspace to put my .htmls on. I'll see what I can code. Thanks. --Russoc4 04:19, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Check to see your webspace allows CGIs or not though, because many don't, for security reasons. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 07:58, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

You don't really have to do it yourself. There are various free online polling services: [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] --TotoBaggins 16:15, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

hmmm.. maybe I'll use one of those^. Poll monkey looks interesting. THanks! --Russoc4 17:17, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

February 19

WiFi card for Linux (ubuntu)

I've reached the brink of insanity trying to get my Wifi card to work under Ubuntu. Now I'd just like to buy a card that is known to work well on a PC running Ubuntu. Can you recommend a card or chipset that will be the most straightforward to get working? ike9898 00:49, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I use a Linksys WMP54G and found it easy to set up in Ubuntu. All you should need to do is Enable the card, unless you have a static IP in which case you just have to supply the correct numbers, which isn't too complicated. Either way it's no hassle to get set up. --Kiltman67 05:01, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I use ndiswrapper and then use whatever network card I feel like using. It wraps the Windows network device driver, allowing it to work in Linux. --Kainaw ^(talk) 06:12, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Anecdote about the 'Apple calculator construction kit'

I read a great webpage a little while ago telling the tale of the development of Apple's calculator's UI for the very first Macintosh (?), and about how it morphed into a 'calculator construction kit' because the lead developer was unhappy with any of his underlings' offerings, so he had to make the UI himself. However, googling for some terms I was fairly sure were in the article yields either far too many irrelevant results ("apple calculator 'construction kit' interface grey" - try it for yourself!) or miss out the article I wanted (""calculator construction kit" apple" - ditto). Does anyone know what I'm talking about, and have the capacity to point me in the correct direction? 88.111.210.179 01:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The story rings vague bells, I'd be surprised if it's not one of the anecdotes here: http://www.folklore.org/index.py Provider uk 02:22, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Here you go: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Calculator_Construction_Set.txt It was a "set" not a "kit", guess this would be why you couldn't track it down Provider uk 02:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Scrammbled text????

When I look at pages for your site much of the text like quotations, etc., appear to be scrammbled like

24.18.95.190 02:03, 19 February 2007 (UTC)qwvufg"qh"wu"dq{u.talic text

Colleen Stewart <e-mail removed>

Your internet browser's website encoding settings may be misconfigured. Ensure that the setting is set to Western European.

--Greenday121 02:21, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I have taken the courtesy of removing your e-mail address to avoid spam. Wikipedia is a highly indexed website. Splintercellguy 03:14, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

How to type in Japanese or Korean characters?

Hey there I was just wondering if anyone knows where I can download a program that lets me type in Japanese or Korean characters (and quickly switch back to Roman letters)? --Candy-Panda 04:08, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Most programs/operating systems have an IME for entering CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) characters. --Kainaw ^(talk) 04:36, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

If you are on Mac OS X just load System Preferences, click on international, and follow it. [Mαc Δαvιs] X (How's my driving?) ❖ 08:01, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but I have a follow-up question, how do I turn on and use the IME? --Candy-Panda 09:29, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

If you are using Windows, What is an IME (Input Method Editor) and how do I use it? and related pages on microsoft.com may help you. --Kusunose 06:16, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

• Thank you Kusunose! --Candy-Panda 07:53, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Un-sending e-mail?

I (think I) heard a while back that a certain e-mail service could un-send your e-mail under certain conditions; if the recipient hadn't read the e-mail yet, you would be able to take it back. Is this possible, and if so, what service might do that?--the ninth bright shiner ^talk 15:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

You can't take back good old fashioned e-mail on the Internet, it is dust scattered in the wind. Any system that does, is either a closed corporate system, or some sort of web-mail thing. I haven't really heard of this taking off because of all the security implications. --Zeizmic 16:23, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The only sort of service that could do this would have to be a service used by the recipient, not the sender of the mail. There is no service that can cause an arbitrary email recipient's mail program to delete an already-received mail. --TotoBaggins 16:34, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I could've sworn I saw it once on AOL or something...--the ninth bright shiner ^talk 16:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

At some companies where I've worked, and where I used something other than the official or popular mail client, I would regularly get boilerplate messages saying things like "Joe Blow wishes to recall the message 'I am an idiot'". The implications here are that (1) Joe had a button he could press that automatically sent out this "recall" message, and (2) there was some software somewhere -- perhaps in the official email client -- which would act on the recall messages. I think this was a Microsoft Exchange or Outlook thing, but never having used either of those directly, I'm not sure. —Steve Summit (talk) 16:48, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that was (is?) the Microsoft Email system. We used to laugh when those arrived long after the damage was done.

Atlant 20:58, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, AOL does it[8]; but of course only for emails from one AOL account to another AOL account, and only if it has not been read. But, again, AOL is a closed proprietary email system. Anything actually sent over the Internet cannot be undone. --Spoon! 22:05, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Outlook/Exchange allows you to do this as long as the recipient is an account on the same Exchange server. -lethe ^{talk +} 16:52, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

GIF pictures

how can i pause a gif picture at some scene and resume it again ? and thanks in advance..

Any program that lets you edit animated gif images (such as The Gimp or Photoshop) will let you do this. --TotoBaggins 16:28, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

thank you Toto.. I did it.. with photoshop..

UTF-8 .. I think ?

I just spent long hours preparing a web page on freewebspace ( its free ) , and - gradually - the text - which was originally written in Arabic - Began to look like scribbles !! I assume the problem is related to encoding and multilingual support , but I don't know if this problem can be resolved somehow without losing all the informaton I've saved ... Please help me anyone ?! 212.138.47.17 16:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

It's probably an encoding issue. Providing a link to a page with the affected text would probably be helpful. -- mattb @ 2007-02-20T15:06Z

AMD Question

Why is it that AMD stock has been on a horrible skid recently, at least the past year? Don't they make highly demanded chips, and have good future prospects? Thanks, 128.112.149.76 18:08, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

It's my understanding that the ultra-competitive price war with Intel has really hurt their margins, and thus, their profits. The market doesn't like that. SubSeven 19:08, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

CSS Float question

I am trying to figure out how I can make the background color of a sidebar, which is assigned float left, expand the whole length of the container div. For example, look at [9]. If I apply a background-color attribute to either "leftnav" or "rightnav", the color stops right under the padding of the text. What I want to do is have the background-color extend all the way to the footer. Am I going to have to do this with an image placed in the container div?-Andrew c 18:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

You can't, unless you have a fixed height. Otherwise you will need a faux background applied to the parent element to do the effect. --antilived^{T | C | G} 03:24, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

• Are you trying to make something like with a floating box colored like this as a result? If the color stops under the text, you either added the code to the "#leftnav p" or "#rightnav p" bit or it is a issue with your browser not properly showing what it is supposed to. If you go to my userpage and email me the code, I will take a look at it. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Oldest web site

What is the oldest web site still in continuous operation? Edison 20:36, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, here is a list of the 100 oldest dot coms. Going through the list you can go see which are still up. Vespine 21:42, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The first web page was a test page; ISOC has it in their archives somewhere --froth^T 21:59, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I found the somewhere! From http://www.w3.org/History.html the oldest website was http://nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html however this URL no longer works - an archived version is here http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/Link.html . I'd say that this would make CERN's website at http://www.cern.ch the oldest (unsurprising, given that Tim Berners-Lee was an employee of theirs). Cheers, Davidprior 23:19, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Windows Vista

Can you tell me what software works with Vista

Scoping your question would help very much. Splintercellguy 22:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Try namespaces for all of your scope resolution needs:

using namespace Windows_Vista
Can you tell me what software works with Vista

--froth^T 05:58, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

If your loking for games try Games for Windows A lot of companys will start putting small vista logos on the side of there boxes Partnershope this helps --Nerdd 16:11, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

AVG v Windows Firewall

Which do you all think is better? The comparison articles on wiki are absolutely useless for anyone who isn't a majore computer guy. Thanks, 66.234.239.238 22:21, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree that our articles simply can't go down to the necessary level, and still be something that anybody would want to write! However, I've always found that one needs to do a little homework, in order to ask a question that anybody would want to answer. For example, your question is comparing apples and oranges. I can't answer it, without missing the target, and perhaps nobody can... --Zeizmic 22:27, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

What? AVG is an Antivirus, Windows Firewall is a firewall. --froth^T 23:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

And even if they were able to be compared, it wouldn't be encyclopedic to say that one was better than the other - although references of the opinion that one may be better than the other might be plausible to be added. x42bn6 Talk 23:16, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

What comparison article? If you send us to it we might be able to translate. --24.147.86.187 23:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

AVG won't help you if a hacker tries to take over your system and Windows firewall won't help you if you get sent an email with a virus in it. If I could ONLT choose one, i'd run the firewall. If you are very safe in your browsing and email habits you can reduce your chance of getting a virus, but no amount of anti virus software will stop hackers stuffing up your computer. Vespine 01:01, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Unless they are talking about the version of AVG that has its own firewall, as the AVG article describes. --24.147.86.187 02:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

What I mean is that AVG 7.5 complete or whatever comes with its own firewall. It says, upon installation, that either the Windows firewall or the AVG one can run, not both. Which, I was wondering, works better? Also, unrelated, you can't be affected by a viral email you dont open, right? Do you have to download anything from the email to get the virus? Doesn't gmail protect against most viruses? Sorry for the lack of clarification earlier on. And what I mean by the comparison article is that there are articles comparing various firewalls that are just a series of technical charts--completely obstruse stuff. This is the same for the media player comparison sites and other stuff. I expect that the majority of people who need to turn to wikipedia for information on firewalls and media players etc aren't knowledgable enough about computers to know a quarter of what those charts are quantifying. Thanks, at any rate, for all your help, and if any of my clarifications help you answer the original question, I'd love to have a better picture of whether I should keep Windows firewall or go with AVG. Thanks, everybody, 66.234.239.238 03:47, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

You are far better off buying a separate firewall-router for the firewall portion. Then you can use AVG for virus checking, and turn off the MS firewall. --Zeizmic 13:26, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Also, if you are behind a router, chances are pretty good you don't need a software firewall. If you are plugged straight into a DSL/Cable modem however, then a software firewall would be a good idea. Cyraan 18:20, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

The AVG firewall will likely have more features, but both will provide essentially the same protection vs network attacks. The AVG firewall might (or might not, its not of significant enough importance for me to check right now...) employ fingerprint-based scanning for suspicious network traffic, but in all honesty either will serve your purposes adequately. If you have purchased AVG complete package, you may as well use the AVG firewall included. For most users, a software firewall actually is of benefit even if protected by a hardware router, as it will allow you to block outbound connections as well as inbound, giving you some protection against your personal data being sent out by malicious programs that have not been picked up by the virus scanner. Provider uk 23:44, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I haven't seen anything which compares the two or discusses differences in their features/abilities/etc. If you have something of that nature, it would be useful to post. As it is I don't see anything to believe one is better than the other. --24.147.86.187 02:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, says the same guy actually logged in on a computer with a different IP address. And does anybody have an answer to the second question I snuck in there? This one: "Also, unrelated, you can't be affected by a viral email you dont open, right? Do you have to download anything from the email to get the virus? Doesn't gmail protect against most viruses?" Thanks for any further answers. Sashafklein 05:39, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

adobe photoshop

can i get adobe photoshop anywhere for free?

Not legally, no. --h2g2bob 23:26, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

You can get a trial version at http://www.adobe.com/downloads/. It probably has some limitations, like not being able to save or only being usable for a limited amount of time. You can also get, for free, The GIMP, which can do much of what Photoshop does. --24.147.86.187 23:33, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

well what i am trying to do is make a lightsaber. i know how, i just need adobe photoshop. will GIMP work too?

Yes, you can easily do that kind of thing with the Gimp. It's my opinion that while the Gimp is not really a suitable Photoshop replacement for a graphics professional, it is more than enough for anyone *but* a professional. The book Grokking the Gimp is really excellent. --TotoBaggins 05:03, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd say go illegal. They charge too much anyway.

yeah thats funny, but i really want serious help for this. don't post dumb comments. i don't know how to get it illegaly anyway.

you can get adobe photoshop starter edition for free from adobe's website, they email you an unlock code it Jackacon 10:26, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I read it that you don't want to retouch photos, but want to create original artwork. If you create the lightsaber in Gimp, you'll be using the airbrush, and you'll need something like a Wacom tablet. I would create it 3D in Art of illusion. I do all my technical illustrations for articles with that. --Zeizmic 13:04, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

There are different ways to make lightsabers in Photoshop -- some of them will be easily translateable to the GIMP, some of them will not (i.e. ones which use the Lighting Effects tool of Photoshop, which I don't think exists for the GIMP). You might have to adjust your way of doing it. Anyway these are basically your options -- there's nothing other than the GIMP which is free and has quite similar capabilities as Photoshop in this regard. --24.147.86.187 02:21, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Sure there's lighting effects for GIMP, they might not be default filters though. I'd been a happy Photoshopper since 3.0, until I realized that GIMP was doing everything most power-users require of Photoshop for free. The logo may not be nearly as pretty as Photoshop's (which I think is a huge oversight), but I've never really looked back. 61.25.248.86 06:22, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Is GIMP for windows? because every time i try to download it somewhere it says that it failed. Can someone give me a link or something? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.157.9.230 (talk • contribs)

[10]. Follow the instructions; you need GIMP and one of the two GTK packages; only use the lower one if you have old version of Windows 98, ME, or NT. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 02:59, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Using GIMP to make lightsabers. Easy. I've done it tons of times. Click for width and length, path to selection, and run it. -Wooty Woot? contribs 03:52, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

February 20

Request for assistance

Hello. I am an 84 year old man who has recently acquired a computer. I am currently having some trouble with it and thought I'd ask some of you young people who seem to have a lot of knowledge on computers and the Internet.

Yesterday, I talked to my grandson on the phone, and he told me that I could create a free e-mail address for myself by visiting the Web site "hotmales.com". However, when I do this, homosexual pornography is displayed on my computer. I have two questions: 1. Is there something I must do differently in order to create the free e-mail address? 2. If creating a free e-mail address is not possible, is there some way I can have heterosexual pornography displayed instead of the homosexual one?

I am looking forward to your help. Cargodemonstration 00:10, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Your question is so amusing I'm wondering if it's a set-up, but I'll play straight man and say: the site you want is http://hotmail.com. (Too bad Gilda Radner isn't with us any more; this'd make a great Emily Litella sketch.) There are lots of free e-mail sites besides hotmail; another one that's quite popular with the "young people" is http://gmail.com. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:40, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Hehe, what a troll --froth^T 00:41, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

It is hotmail.com. it is easy to use and has enough space to use.

It is a mistake you only make once :-) For whatever kind of porn you like, you can try Google. Interestingly, only 1% of web pages contain porn. Wikipedia has encyclopedic information on these topics at Portal:Pornography and Portal:Sexuality. --h2g2bob 13:33, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I would like to thank everyone for the help. After quite a few tries, I have now managed to successfully set up an e-mail address at hotmail.com. I also asked my neighbours' teenage son about the pornography issue, and he showed me some Websites I could use for that purpose. This means that both of my problems have been solved. These computers are really a most useful resource. Cargodemonstration 23:33, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Hah this is rich --froth^T 03:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Limewire driving me nuts

This is not conclusively computery enough for this section, but whatever. Looking up anything on LimeWire brings up lots of things including 'Steven Spielberg gets a hilarious prank phone call', 'Britney_Spears_gets_pranked', 'Track 9', '01 Track 1', etc. All of these have the comment 'not related to: (whatever I searched for)'. I know these are likely to be maleficent, but what exactly are they? I should probably use something else... Vitriol 00:41, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't use limewire. Period. The centralized tracker makes it incredibly easy to get busted --froth^T 02:53, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Limewire sucks real bad. try switching to imesh instead.

Or just use bittorrent files or something else instead

• The same thing goes on on YouTube. Only in LimeWire there's no central authority to complain to. You can either deal with it or switch programs. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:13, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Alternative to VNC

I have been using VNC for remote connections. The only problem I faced with this is that if a user knows the VNC password of a remote machine, he can connect to that without the local user of the machine having to accept the session. Of course, there is an option to Prompt local user to accept incoming session but this can be changed either by the local user or the remote user. Is there a way in which this can be disabled? (The local user should ALWAYS be prompted). Alternatively, is there any other software which does the work of VNC but ALWAYS prompts the local user? -- WikiCheng | Talk 05:36, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Try Remote Desktop which you can find in XP at C:\WINDOWS\system32\mstsc.exe Sandman30s 09:15, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

But remote desktop will log off the local user! I was looking for something like VNC -- WikiCheng | Talk 14:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I didn't think it did without the -console command line option? Cheers, Davidprior 22:01, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

What operating system are you using? --h2g2bob 13:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

A mix of Win2k (prof / server) and XP -- WikiCheng | Talk 14:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

VNC should be able to do what you need, see here: http://www.realvnc.com/faq.html#hide "Unless the user is logged in with administrator privilages, there is no need to take an additional preventative action to enforce this access control. If the user does have administrator privilages, then these facilities can be disabled using the DisableClose and DisableOptions settings, respectively. See the VNC Server for Windows documentation for more details." Should be fairly straightforward, and the forums there are probably a as good a place here if you get stuck. If your environment becomes all Windows XP, you could consider using Remote Assistance, a feature of Windows XP, which can either be enabled via group policy or requested as needed by the user depending on your environment.Provider uk 20:32, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

At work, I use SMS 2003 Remote Assistance [11] which would do the job, but it is slow Cheers, Davidprior 21:56, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Provider uk's solution seems to work for me. I added a REG_DWORD with the name 'DisableOptions' with the value 1 and it disabled the 'options' menu in VNC. My users are no so very familiar with windows to change the registry values. Now I can just enable 'prompt local user' and disable the options so that it can't be changed. Thanks a lot everyone :-) -- WikiCheng | Talk 05:35, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Members Section

I'd like to add a paid section to my site, that requires a username and password to enter. What kind of software does that? Or is it something I could type in myself? Also, what would be the easiest way to link that up with the usernames and passwords in a forum system like phpBB? Black Carrot 06:13, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

• Where is your website hosted? If you Google for "password protected" and related search terms on Google you will find multiple ways of doing this, which mostly rely on what your website provider allows. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:12, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

It's hosted by Globat.com. I've tried to contact their help department, but I haven't heard back yet. Black Carrot 18:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Update: Success. Thanks for the help. Black Carrot 19:37, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Playstation 2 connection to TV (UK)

Hi, i want to buy a PS2, but the TV i want to use it with only has a UK aeriel socket i.e. 1/2-inch diameter round hole with one pin in the middle. will i be able to connect a PS2 to this tv by way of some sort of adapter or would it be a total waste of money? thank you, --194.176.105.39 08:53, 20 February 2007 (UTC) if you have a PS1 you can use the TV lead from that Jackacon 10:23, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

really? oh that is good news. is the socket in the back of the ps2 the same as that in the ps1 then? many thanks for your answer --194.176.105.39 10:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

yes it is Jackacon 14:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

spoofed

My registered domain name (call it mydomain.com) allows me to receive e-mail with any prefix, e.g. info@mydomain.com. Recently I've been receiving a large number of failed delivery notifications addressed to random addresses, for example, idfgu@mydomain.com. Obviously some spammer is creating FROM: addresses by generating fake e-mail addresses using mydomain.com. If the e-mail then sent can't be delivered, the notification comes back to me.

How might this have happened? Is there anything I can do about it now?

Thanks for your advice. --Halcatalyst 15:40, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

You can set the FROM header in emails to whatever you want to, and there's really nothing you can do to stop spammers from using addresses with your domain name in them. -- mattb @ 2007-02-20T16:35Z

I assume, then, that the mail does not actually go through the server on which my domain name is hosted? So the domain name is not getting any black marks? --Halcatalyst 16:40, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Not really, except that the majority of spam recipients will logically assume that the spammer has something to do with your domain. You're not legally liable or anything like that, though. Again, this is unavoidable. -- mattb @ 2007-02-20T16:45Z

Sender Policy Framework and Domainkeys are add-ons to smtp that attempt to prevent this. Diletante 17:09, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I've owned several domains for quite a few years now and I also thought it was cool that you could tell your friends to send emails to anything@mydomain.com, but quickly discovered that it is definitely more trouble then it is worth. You get so much random spam and junk, I disabled it after only a couple of months, now I only ever set up intentional redirections. Vespine 21:56, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

This is called backscatter by the way. Same thing basically also happens with packets during a DDOS attack Oskar 03:03, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

net working

When USB and ethernet ports of a PC is used for ADSL-Broadband and local intranet repectrively,(when both lan are enabled)

Explorer trying for a internet site times out. Why? Any solution ?

Maybe IE is trying to use the interface not hooked up to the Internet? Splintercellguy 23:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah that sounds likely, have you set up "internet connection sharing" on the PC? even if you are not actually sharing the internet to the other computers on the network you may need to run the set up for the PC to realise that the two conenctions are different. Vespine 00:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Markov Chain in C

The following code picks a letter from char value[] based on the probability weightings in int probability[], which as you can see total to 100. I beleive this is what is known as a 0th-Order Markov Chain. I would like to expand the probability matrix to two dimensions so that I could have a 1st-Order chain. Could anyone provide some way to expand the code to achieve this, or provide suggestions on how I can perhaps generalise / improve the current code even further?

The RNG is simple but adequate enough for my needs (i.e. the weightings are pretty balanced).

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>

float getrand(void);

int main(void)
{
    srand(time(NULL));

    int probability[3] = {25, 25, 50};

    char value[3] = {'A', 'B', 'C'};
    int count[3] = {0, 0, 0};
    char b;
    int r;

    while(getch() != 'q')
    {
        r = (int)getrand();

        printf("Random number: %i\n", r);

        if (r < probability[0])
        {
            b = value[0];
            ++count[0];
        }

        else if (r >= probability[1] && r < probability[2])
        {
            b = value[1];
            ++count[1];
        }

        else
        {
            b = value[2];
            ++count[2];
        }

        printf("Value: %c\n", b);
    }

    printf("\nDistribution: %i %i %i\n", count[0], count[1], count[2]);

    return 0;
}

// getrand() returns a random number float between 0 and 100

float getrand(void)
{
    int i;
    float rnum;

    for (i = 0; i < 20; ++i)
        rnum = (float)rand() / RAND_MAX * 100;

    return(rnum);
}

The simplest thing to do would be to declare

   int probability[3][3] = {{25, 25, 50}, {0, 0, 100}, {100, 0, 0}};  //look, a nice loop!

and then do

   int *current_probability=probability[b];

where b has been redefined as

   int b=0;  //index into `value'

because it's easier to deal with the integer internally and just use the characters for output. (Note that for a 1st-order chain, you need an initial condition, so I initialized b to something. You might want to use one step of a 0th-order chain to do that in reality.) Then you use current_probability, which is a slice of your overall array, where you now use probability to check r (by the way, you really want to use a loop for this: just test for r<current_probability[i] for increasing i). Then, since b is an integer now, you don't say

   b=value[...];
   //...
   printf(...,b);

but rather

   b=...;
   //...
   printf(...,value[b]);

Does that help? --Tardis 00:07, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki non-appearing images driving me crazy

I'm trying to get a number of images appearing in the following page but no matter what combination (of upper/lower case), which for the image name is case-sensitive, they don't seem to appear:

• http://treekee.com/tervuren/en/wiki/Draft:The_Art_of_Cooking page with problem
• http://treekee.com/tervuren/en/wiki/Special:Newimages images which ARE there

Any help would be appreciated (I'm sorry, but you will need to create a login to see the wiki code behind the page).

Thanks for any help! 80.200.139.245 17:16, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

You have "%E2%80%8E" in front of some of the links in the HTML code. 0xE2 0x80 0x8E, in UTF-8, is the Unicode Character 'LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK' (U+200E). You'll have to delete any occurences of that character. --Kjoonlee 19:06, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

In fact, that problem has recently been fixed on MediaWiki; it will silently strip these characters to avoid that kind of problem (and a related but more annoying problem, which is pages with these characters on the title). The change was made on r18513. --cesarb 21:17, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I noticed the characters get deleted with [[Image:]] syntax, but not when you use <gallery>. --Kjoonlee 19:26, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

That was it! Invisible characters in the image name!! When I clicked "delete" on the place between the ":" and the image name, the cursor did not move (hey, suspicious, if I'd thought to do that). Thanks a lot for your help. I would NEVER have sorted this out without you. 80.201.175.225 20:18, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Windows Media Player data

Windows Media Player stores various pieces of information about the music you listen to, such has the play count and the most recent play date. Is there any way to get at this data (preferably in a format which can be manipulated in such a way as to use it in a spreadsheet or database)? I've tried typing it in manually from Media Player, but I've got well over 500 songs, which would take far too long to copy by hand. Laïka 17:18, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Try using plugins. Maybe one of these plugins fit exactly what you're looking for. I don't use WMP, so I can't recommend you one of those, so you might have to look through that list yourself. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 03:16, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

They're the sort of thing I'm looking for, but unfortunately neither of the right ones (the middle two) seem to work properly with Media Player 11; the unofficial one crashes, and the Microsoft one works, but won't let me choose which columns to export. Thanks anyway! Laïka 16:01, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Crazy Linux Tilde Files

I saved a text file on my USB key using Ubuntu (Linux). The file is called ubuntu.txt and is 5kB in size. Why is there also a 3kB file called ubuntu.txt~ ? I think it has something to do with backing stuff up. Why does Linux need to do this? --Seans Potato Business 19:23, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

That file was most likely created by a text editor and not linux itself. It is indeed a backup. -- Diletante 19:27, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

If you were using gedit, you can disable it by going to Edit->Preferences, choosing the "Editor" tab and unchecking the option to create a backup file before saving. grendel|khan 19:30, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

The same for kate/kedit. They save the original with a ~ when saving files. This is not a Linux thing. It is a text editor thing. --Kainaw ^(talk) 19:32, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

emacs also creates a backup files by default. The emacs variable make-backup-files determines whether it saves a backup file. --Spoon! 20:24, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, it's not a backup: it's the previous version. Most users likely appreciate having a fallback copy of edited text, just in case the new revision is worse than the last one. This was more important in the old days before multi-level "undo", but it's still possible to exit without knowing you biffed a file, particularly when using an editor like vi or emacs. If you're using a simpler editor, then you may well never want the previous version. —EncMstr 20:28, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Well thank you all, for the insight and tips :) --Seans Potato Business 21:30, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Vista UAC

I was wondering what the difference between UAC and sudo is. I hear a lot of complaining about UAC, but I'm not sure how it differs from sudo. For example, with both Vista and Kubuntu, the user is prompted for a password to change the time. So why the complaints about UAC? By the way, I have never used Vista, only read about it. Thanks - Akamad 21:22, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I used the evaluation version of Vista (until it died - I did blame the software but subsequent events suggest an HDD failure) and now use Ubuntu. I can see 3 problems with UAC which don't exist with sudo:

• UAC provides no protection against someone with physical access to your PC making malicious changes, as it doesn't ask for a passwd
• You often get a UAC confirmation dialogue after you've already answered yes to an "are you sure" question - this is annoying
• Scheduled tasks ask for confirmation (not sure if its part of UAC or another security feature) each time - this led to my AVG ant-virus software not updating nightly at 2am, but waiting till I got up and clicked "Yes"

Cheers, Davidprior 21:54, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

IIRC, UAC only doesn't ask for a password if you insist in running as Administrator. If you run as a non-Administrator user (as you should), it will ask for the password, so in that aspect it's still like sudo. --cesarb 22:04, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) 7 steps to delete a shortcut. (I know this doesn't happen on the final release, but UAC had already gotten (in)famous enough by then.) --cesarb 21:56, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if this is in the final, but RC2 asks you six times (four confirmation dialogs, two privilege-escalation dialogs) if you try to change the extension of a file in the root level of the hard drive. --Carnildo 23:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Just turn it off... --froth^T 03:04, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

BTW, the waaay better HIPS programs are good at preventing viruses and spyware. Try System Safety Monitor (I used a trial of it, it is very good. Until they finished the beta testing :( ). For example, it asks you when something tries to inject a DLL into another process, and so on... not sure if they'll work on Vista, this was ages ago. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 10:07, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

UAC is a method of making sure you want to use your admin privileges when you already have them. sudo is for elevating your privileges, where you don't already have them. For example, if your anti-virus software wants to use admin privileges to run a virus scan, Windows will pop up with a dialog, asking you if that program should proceed (which is obviously stupid). In sudo, when a non-admin process requests to start an admin process, sudo will ask you for your password. Anything that admin process does is now allowed. No more popups. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 10:12, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

If you're running as not an administrator (as you technically shouldn't be) then you actually have to type the admin password to elevate your privileges. I never understood running as sub-root though.. you shouldn't be running any code that you don't trust anyway. I can understand daemons like apache running as nobody in case of a security breach but just take CWD out of your path and make sure you know what you're running and you shouldn't have a problem. --froth^T 19:45, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

This seems to boil down to one of those imponderable personal choice issues, like Coke vs. Pepsi, or Ford vs. Chevy, or whatever. Some users just can't even imagine not giving themselves access to all the power available on what is, after all, their own computer. They think it's insane to run as an underprivileged user some of the time, and to have to jump through hoops (such as su'ing to root) to do "important" things. Other users, on the other hand, think that what's insane and unimaginable is to log in and run as root all the time; this seems impossibly foolish and accident-prone (since accidents as root can be arbitrarily destructive). —Steve Summit (talk) 04:56, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Even very trustworthy programs - like Firefox - can sometimes get hacked. Running as non-root prevents the bad-ness spreading to your system files. It also makes sure you're not about to do something unutterably stupid - like delete libc - without realising. --h2g2bob 23:32, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I just found a link to a The Register article on Slashdot, which explains a bit better what's the problem with UAC. It seems that Vista creates the first user account as an administrator account by default (it shouldn't), and that administrator accounts with UAC tend to get annoying popups all the time (I'd guess normal user accounts would get a permission denied instead of the UAC dialog). --cesarb 15:04, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Pages wont load, when I sign in

This started yesterday. I can sign in, but after that, Wikipedia's pages wont load completely anymore: they get stuck somewhere in the middle. I can see that the login was successful, when I hit stop, but that's about all I can see. I tried signing in as a non-abusive sockpuppet, and also tried accounts on other wikipedias. Same result. I'm using an iBook G4, Mac OS X, and Internet Explorer. What could this be, and what can I do? (Please bear in mind, that I don't know very much about my (or any) computer). ---84.75.111.138 23:33, 20 February 2007 (UTC) (Sluzzelin)

And when you donn't sign in? Vespine 00:07, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, that's what I've been doing, everything works just fine when I'm not signed in. (Except I can't look at my watchlist, can't edit semi-protected pages, and have to confirm I'm not a bot when adding external links.) ---84.75.111.138 01:03, 21 February 2007 (UTC)(Sluzzelin

Well, then it sounds like some sort of scripting or security issue. You are on OSX and using Internet Explorer? As in: "Microsoft Internet Explorer"?? Would you be willing to try Firefox? Or, what's the default one? Opera? Vespine 04:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Safari is the name, and please please PLEASE stop using IE for Mac, it's outdated, and quite a hassel to fix websites for the few of you guys. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:27, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Okee, thanks :-) ---84.75.111.138 06:48, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Web development roles and titles? usability expert? or?

Correct me if I'm wrong...

The Web programmer or Web developer does the PHP, ASP, RoR and database work to make a dynamic website work the way the client wants it.

The Web designer makes the outside look good, graphics, fonts, layout, etc. Is it also the designer who does the basic HTML and CSS?

Then there's the writer, who writes the content. The entrepreneur is the visionary who wants to launch a website for a specific purpose. Even if it's non-profit service, is she still called entrepreneur?

What's the name for a Web specialist who excels at the world of ideas, i.e. the person who can take an existing website and rewrite the content to make it much more clear and succinct and suggest how to reorganize the way it functions from the user's point of view and interface to make it more intuitive and friendly? Is that a "usability specialist" or something like that? It's almost the opposite of the web programmer, because the programmer makes the back-end work, but this person makes the front-end make sense to a human and the most intuitive way a human would want to find the information they need or use it. Would I say "writer and usability expert" or is there a more common term for this kind of conceptual role?

--Sonjaaa 23:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

User Interface specialist is a term that gets used, often though, it is not the opposite of the programmer A programmer or web designer who is also a user interface specialist is an asset, a user interface specialist who is not a designer or programmer may not be a very valuable asset, there are a LOT of people who would like to claim they are user interface specialists. Vespine 00:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

The person who specializes in teh world of the ideas is known generically as a "consultant". It is a catch-all term but often used in this way. --24.147.86.187 02:14, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Gigantic websites like microsoft's have teams for graphic design and for layout, but usually it's the same person --froth^T 03:02, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Who usually writes the spec document? The person who thinks of how everything should function in a usable way and explains exactly how it will work and interact, detail by detail, page by page. explaining it all in english. but then passes it on to the web programmer to do the actual coding and backend.--Sonjaaa 03:13, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

That is usually done by the Web designer, i have 'web designer' friends that do this. The sections in the linked article are pretty relevant to what you are discussing, near the top of the article in the 'website design' and 'issues' sections. Vespine 04:46, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I thought the web designer was more of a graphic artist who excels at making things look good and doing fancy graphics, rather than thinking logically how things should work exactly from the user's perspective and how to word things? --Sonjaaa 18:00, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, you aren't wrong but I don't totally agree. there are quite subtle distinctions in definitions. In a small website, a web designer can do all of those things. "How to word things" is a different matter entirely because a lot of the time, 'written content' will actually be provided by the business rather then the website design team, unless the business and website is large enough for the website to be a project of the business it self. As a site gets bigger and more complex, certain roles start getting assigned out to separate people. Programmer is probably one of the first, graphic artist at some stage a little later, but definitely sooner then "making things look good" and "thinking logically how things should work". Those things would only need to be separated into different roles on large websites. Vespine 23:21, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

February 21

Ethernet Plug Cable?

Hi there,

I was researching, and adding a "Broadband Telephone" onto my computer. I was required to find the boardband ethernet cable from the computer? Where is it? What is the colour of the plug? How many plugs down from the top of the CPU?

 Smcafirst | Chit-Chat  posted at 03:09, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Ethernet cable (click image for bigger) --h2g2bob 23:18, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

It really depends on your computer, there isn't really anything that's specifically a "broadband ethernet", just a mis match of terms, what you are looking for is your ethernet or simply network port. Technically, it's called an Rj45 socket, kinda looks like a phone plug, the little type not the big type, and it should have 2 tiny lights above the hole, but when they are not illuminated they might not obviously look like little lights. Vespine 03:58, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Also, the color does not matter at all. Freebytes

Virus Search Problem

So in doing an AVG virus search on my Windows XP computer, I was presented, after a few minutes of searching, with a menu that said "Unwanted Program While opening file: C:\\WINDOWS\Downloaded Program Files\pinstall.dll Adware.LookMe" (The "Adware.LookMe" was on the next line of the message; whether this is because it was separated by a space or because it wouldn't have fit on the line above - which was the case - I don't know.) At any rate. It asks me if I want to Ignore the "Unwanted Program", Move to Vault, or Add to Exceptions (meaning they wont bother me about it in searches to come.) I have no idea what I should do. I know dll files can be important, and I generally keep out of the WINDOWS folder, but otherwise I'm pretty clueless here. What should I do? Thanks, 70.108.199.130 05:09, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

It's an Adware, which doesn't qualify for virus but you still don't want it on your computer. I would move it to vault (or delete it manually). --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:25, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot.

Encyclopedia software

Would anyone know of any sort of encyclopedia software (Preferably freeware, naturally) that is similar to and can be used in a similar fashion to Wikipedia and other wikis (For example; articles, internal-linking, search functionality and the like) but is chiefly offline and only for personal use? Thanks, --Knyght27 10:28, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

If you're comfortable with web servers, databases and the like (or are willing to learn), you could always install MediaWiki (the software that Wikipedia runs on) on your own computer. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 10:55, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Some people also like JSPWiki. (I don't; at least in the version that I'm saddled with using, it's not nearly as feature-rich as MediaWiki and its markup differs just enough to always leave me typing the wrong stuff.)

Atlant 12:34, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Personal_wiki and Comparison_of_wiki_software may be useful. -- Diletante 23:14, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Tracing IPs

I asked a question on the Wikipedia-help desk regarding tracking down the location of an IP address and was told:

If you go to an IP's talk page with messages on (it doesn't work if the talk page is a redlink) and click on WHOIS at the bottom of the page, it will tell you information about the IP. Sometimes it can be traced down to an individual school, city, or organisation, sometimes you don't get any more information than which contintent the IP's located on.

My next question is, what causes the variability in the available information? --Seans Potato Business 10:57, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

When an IP address is allocated, it may be allocated to a school, an organization, a company, a city, a country... anything. All you can see is who the IP address is allocated to. It is like trying to see who is living in a specific apartment in New York. If you go by the official records, you might get the management company that owns the apartment, you might get the landlord, you might get the guy who pays the rent but sublets it out... --Kainaw ^(talk) 13:18, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

It's not as dire as that, as you will get the ISP's location and not your location. Schools and educational institutes are a bit different, as I think a lot of them get special deals for their internet, and I think they sometimes do some peering too. You can't really trust the information to be accurate, except perhaps for the country - for example my DNS says I'm at Bath, but I'm really at Exeter. --h2g2bob 23:04, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Representing | in BNF

Since the | is used to separate statements in BNF, how do you represent a | in BNF for something like the standard boolean "or" in most programming languages? --Kainaw ^(talk) 13:15, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Usually literals in the grammar are set off in some fashion — with quotes, or italics, etc. — so that you can write any character in them without confusion. This can be used for whitespace, |, or whatever. (Consider Python's grammar with its indent tokens, and the example BNF grammar for BNF.) --Tardis 17:12, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I hadn't used quotes for any other literals because I use angle brackets for all non-literals. I just put quotes around the | and added a note a the bottom. --Kainaw ^(talk) 18:29, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

IF you are using the | in more than one place, it's better to add a new production

 <or>::= "|"

and then use <or> everywhere. If your formal BNF allows comments (e.g., if you are using yacc) put the comment in this one place.-Arch dude 01:03, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Windows Operating System

In what programming language is Windows OS written 219.65.190.120 14:34, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Most of it is C++, I'd say. yandman 14:42, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

C++ and C#, I believe. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 15:28, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Generally speaking, the kernel is in assembly language, DLLs are in C, and higher-level functionality is in C++. —LestatdeLioncourt 16:32, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Not quite so. [12] [13]. The NT kernel (NT, 2k, XP, Vista; sources talk about earlier NTs, but it likely hasn't changed much) is mostly C, some C++, and a little assembly where it's needed. Most drivers and other important bits are probably in C, with the other stuff being mostly C++, but I can't be certain (i.e. can't find a source). Vista might use a little C#; they were originally playing up the idea that large swathes of the OS would be redone with C# code, but didn't go through with it. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 18:36, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I thought that a lot of efficiency-important drivers in Windows were done in pure asm --froth^T 19:39, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Since most device drivers are limited by the I/O bandwidth, I doubt it; the cost of maintaining assembly code is too great for the small speed increase. --cesarb 22:01, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Assembly language is not intrinsically faster nor smaller than C, etc. Poorly performing code and bloatware can be written in any language. Mostly, assembly language attracts programmers who obsess about the size and speed dimensions of engineering, and the choice of programmer has much more to do with the effectiveness of any solution than the language.

The overriding concern for most development is portability: That's why Windows NT, Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, and C compilers are all written in C, which provides an effective programmer the means to write portable, efficient (speed + size), and comprehensible code. Development time is also a significant concern, but portably-written code addresses that nicely—the first time the code is retargeted.

One nit: while I wish I could agree with you, the overriding concern in most projects (commercial ones, at least) is, sadly, not portability; it's not even in the top three. The overriding concern (driven by management) is time-to-market; #2 (driven by programmers) is doing as little work as possible; #3 is actually getting the code to work right; #4 might be maintainability. Maybe down at around #5 do a few dedicated programmers start worrying about portability...

(I'm not arguing with you to suggest that portability shouldn't be important; it certainly is important to me. But unforttunately large swaths of the rest of the industry do not agree with us.) —Steve Summit (talk) 04:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Only a few bits of NT are likely to be assembly: the handlers for dealing with specifics of the CPU, like page faults, CPU type detection (80386 vs. 80686), maybe select portions of interrupt handlers, and a few odds and ends dealing with the FPU and quirks of the CPU, like the page-edge-fault bug of the 80386. —EncMstr 22:52, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

The only area of intense assembly language program that I've seen anytime in the last few years is in 3D engines for video games. I remember a quote from John Carmack that went something like: Anyone can learn some ray tracing and opengl and pump out a 3D engine. When you wonder why yours gets 40FPS and the Quake engine is getting 80FPS, you'll have to learn assembly. --Kainaw ^(talk) 22:58, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

The Demoscene still makes use of it for purposes of size optimization, though that's pretty fringe programming. Check out some of the demos at [14] if you're bored enough. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 23:23, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Well screw portability and the end user; ASM is tiny and fast and I like it >:{ --froth^T 05:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Fast.

waste_time:
push ecx
mov ecx, 1234567
do_the_wasting:
loop do_the_wasting
pop ecx
ret

global _start
_start:
call waste_time
mov edx, msglen
call waste_time
mov ecx, msg
call waste_time
mov ebx, 1
call waste_time
mov eax, 4
call waste_time
int 0x80
call waste_time

mov ebx, 0
call waste_time
mov eax, 1
int 0x80

jmp $
call waste_time
int 3
int 3
call waste_time
xor eax, eax
not eax
int eax

section .data
msg db "hello", 0xa
msglen equ $- msg

--wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 08:48, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't look lik eit actually does anything.. --froth^T 19:36, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

It's his counter-example. Splintercellguy 22:05, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

IPOD

Is it possible to bypass the feature on my Nano IPod and download or upload songs without having to delete everything first?

There are certain programmes, such as copypod, which allow you to copy the current files to your computer.... This would mean not losing files if you move to a new computer... However, I do not know of any other such programmes. Asics talk ^{Editor review!} 21:46, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Yamipod (google it) is a good free one, if I understand what you are asking. Which I'm not sure I do, because I don't really get what you mean by itunes deleting everything. Perhaps the answer has something to do with your itunes settings. I don't know about the nano specifically, but my experience with other ipods is that your itunes comes with all sorts of funny settings that make it automatically upload and delete etc. If you go into Itunes preferences, you should be able to cancel automatic upload, which might solve the problem. You need another program, however, (Yamipod's the one I use) to download from the ipod to the computer. Itunes doesn't let you do this because they don't want to deal with all the copyright crap that might result from lots of people easily moving music or whatever from their ipod to someone else's computer. 70.108.199.130 06:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Windows installer

The Windows installer on my computer is giving me a lot of trouble. Whenever I try to run Microsoft software, the installer launches and tells me it cannot locate the pro11.msi file. I know that this is because I manually deleted my Office 2003 folder from my Program Files folder after installing Office 2007 (for some reason, the Office 2003 uninstaller refused to run). How do I make this stop? —LestatdeLioncourt 16:20, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Look around for the file on google (unlikely if its part of an office install or something) or check your office/widows CDs to see if any of them have the file, and if you find it, use browse and point the prompt at it. It's probably not going to shut up about it until you give it the file, or get tired of the prompt and format. Cyraan 18:01, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

A suggestion: Instead of deleting the program folder, use the Windows Add/Remove programs. Click Start, then Settings, then Control Panel. You will find an icon labled "Add/Remove Programs" and you should be able to find the program that you want. Deleting the program file folder will cause errors and difficulty installing if the program puts itself into the Windows registry. user:zylstra555

The Add/Remove programs panel invokes the uninstaller for Office 2003, which as I mentioned, refused ro run. I tried pointing the installer at the file it was asking for (I have it on the installation CD), but it still wouldn't shut up. Maybe I'll try cleaning up the registry... though I've had highly unpleasant experiences with that before. I think somehow the Office 2007 installer screwed up my machine, because I tried to install Office 2007 on my laptop, but then I found out that it needed at least XP SP2 (I have SP1), and now I can't run Office at all on my laptop (I also get the same prompt when launching any Microsoft product). Windows can be such a headache at times... —LestatdeLioncourt 20:09, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Windows XP suxxorz

I accidentally clicked on my bottom menu (the one with the start menu, etc) and mistakenly dragged it to the right (dorsal) side of my screen. I can't get it back on the bottom. I once knew how to fix it... crap. Help meem! 69.81.50.3 18:21, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Right-click it (make sure it's an "empty" part - ie not on one of the buttons or icons) and make sure 'Lock the Taskbar' is unchecked. Then click and drag it back to the bottom. Again, make sure you click on an empty bit before you drag. It's called the taskbar, by the way. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 18:27, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

.rep

I've probably posted the question some time ago, but forgot how to watch the downloaded replays in StarCraft. Namely after throwing the .rep files to the maps folder I select Multiplayer, then Direct Cable Connection, then Create game, but see no such files. Suggestions? --Brand спойт 21:16, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

You have to find the file; for downloaded replays (from other players) they're in "Download" (oddly enough); ones you save from your own games should go in "Replays". Note that these are subdirectories of the "maps" directory; you may need to go "Up One Level" first if it starts you in, say, "BroodWar". --Tardis 00:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Default font in Notepad

What is the default font in Notepad? 68.193.147.179 22:35, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Fixedsys. Anchoress 22:44, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Update: Not for every version though. Lucida Console is used for some versions of Windows; read the Fixedsys or Notepad article for more info. Anchoress 22:47, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

It's "System" on my Windows 98 SE. Check (or change) yours with Edit, Set Font. --h2g2bob 22:45, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Was going to say it is Lucida Console on my XP machine but I clicked the wrong button on an edit conflict. I'm wondering it is clear to the op about ascii and notepad and how it does not save any formatting information? So default font is pretty irrelevant. Vespine 22:57, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Well I'm running NT4.0 and my print test had Fixedsys printing as Courier New, and when I changed the font to Arial it printed as WYSIWYG. Anchoress 23:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Vista uses Consolas ;)! JoshHolloway 22:32, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

February 22

WiFi for Linux

I hope I placed this question right, feel free to move it around.
I just started using Ubuntu linux, and have come across a bit of a problem: WiFi. I tried using LinuxAnt DriverLoader, it didnt work, I tried NDIS Wrapper, it didnt work. I tried just using what linux had to configure, it didnt work either. I am either doing something wrong, or need to find another way to add this. How can I get WiFi to work Linux? I have the latest kernal, and I have a USB WiFi Adapter. Zylstra555 05:03, 22 February 2007 (UTC) --user:Zylstra555 9:02PM Feb 2007

The best place to ask your question for this would be at http://www.ubuntuforums.com/ or alteratively #ubuntu on irc.freenode.net. 61.25.248.86 00:26, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Stability of Firefox + Add-ons

If all the add-ons for Firefox are coded by third-party amatures, aren't they likely to conflict with each other and other components of any given computer system and likely cause more problems compared to Opera where the entire thing is coded by a single development team and subject to more rigerous testing? --Seans Potato Business 00:37, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

What type of add-ons are you talking about? Firefox without extension is a fully functional web browser. Few extensions have major issues, and the popular ones are generally rock solid. I typically use Unplug, Adblock Plus, and Greasemonkey, and I have had no stability issues. I'm not sure that you can say that Firefox extensions receive less testing either, or that the creators are necessarily amateurs. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 00:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Add-ons generally do not conflict with each other - although that is a possibility. Keep to the addons.mozilla.org extensions which are checked by volunteers before being made available to the public. I've looked at the code for some of the popular ones and they've all looked well-coded to me. I've only had problems with plug-ins (Java and Flash) which are coded by professionals! --h2g2bob 02:54, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

There are a number of addons that are famous for screwing up the browser. See Mozilla's Problematic Extensions. Oskar 16:30, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Sharing Single Copy of Program by Two Linux OSs?

In a situtation where Ubuntu and OpenSUSE are installed on the same computer, is it advisable or even necessary that application are installed separately for each or can they be installed once, perhaps on a third partition and used by both operating systems (that way, additions to an OpenOffice dictionary under one OS wont leave the other dictionary without those additons plus loads of other divergent settings that would occur. --Seans Potato Business 02:44, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

SUSE uses rpm, Ubuntu uses deb. They have different package systems and even if you really really really want to do it by sharing some of the key directories between them, what would be the point then for having two systems?--antilived^{T | C | G} 04:20, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

This seems unnecessary (applications aren't that big, OpenOffice is still only about 100 MiBs), but what you could do is a third partition for all of the stuff that does take up room, ie data. You can put your music and movies and what-have-you there. And, as already stated, it would be a bad idea to share software since they use different package managers (I thought openSUSE used YaST, btw?) Oskar 16:26, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

You're looking at a more or less irreconcilable linking/depedency mess. What you could potentially do is share the /home filesystem so that settings are kept, but sharing the actual binaries (especially if they're dynamically linked) isn't really feasible. While it may be possible in certain (mostly statically linked) cases, it will be a big headache and waste of time on the whole. -- mattb @ 2007-02-22T18:53Z

iTunes

Hi. I think I've managed to burn an MP3 Disc in iTunes before but in folders for each individual album. Does anyone know how to do this? I'm sure it's easier with Nero but I can't get it to work.

If you are running Windows XP, you may want to just drag and copy the music onto the burning drive. When asked, select "Make Audio CD" to make a 80 Minute CD that can be played in all Compaq Disk Audio CD Players. If you are not using Windows XP, I would suggest searching through the iTunes help files.

If I'm understanding your question right, the folders you are referring to are playlists. So to make a cd out of them using itunes directly, select your music (all the songs at once) and in the file menu at the top left select to "Create Playlist from Selection" (I think that's the wording). Then the playlist will be created as a folder in that left tab thingy. So you just click on the playlist, insert your blank cd, and click the burn cd icon in the upper right. Hope that answers the question. The above mentioned suggestion should work perfectly fine too, but it requires you to locate the songs on your hard drive. 70.108.199.130 06:27, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Vista issue

Just got a upgrade version of Vista home basic but because i just got a new hardrive i had to bypass entering the product key because my XP system was not detected. Therefore when i try to activate windows using the upgrade product key it says it can not use the key because of it being an upgrade key. i have basic on my drive right now but i need to figure out if there are any sites where i can purchase a new product key to activate my copy or to find out when new product keys will be avalible. Any help would be good.--Biggie 08:31, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

From what I've read, Vista has tons of 'trip wires' to stop anything they don't like. The upgrade must have a perfectly happy copy of XP existing prior, even though it eventually wipes everything out anyway. There is apparently a way to install Vista twice to fool it, but I don't know the details. --Zeizmic 12:31, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

You can Get a New Product Key by Calling (800) MICROSOFT (642-7676) or you can go out to the store and buy a copy off the shelf but since you already have the disk then you might as well call for a new key. ( to get human Press 0 at each prompt, ignoring messages. ) --Nerdd 15:54, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice i'll try the number

Just install Vista again over the already installed copy of Vista as an upgrade, and enter your product key at that time. kmccoy (talk) 20:21, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

IntrAnet naming customs?

Are there any naming conventions for intranets? for example, if it's the intranet for company XYZ, would "Intra XYZ" or "XYZ Intranet" or "Inside XYZ" or "XYZnet" or whatever be appropriate? I realize you can name a site whatever you want, but maybe there is a popular convention that is especially clear or considered good usability.--Sonjaaa 18:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Dosbox or Wine

Is this hypothetical situation possible? I am browsing files on my Linux computer as usual, and I find a .exe file. When I click it, or type it's name in terminal, either Dosbox or Wine is automatically launched (without me needing to specify which one). Is this a realistic dream? Duomillia 20:13, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

It should be possible. --Carnildo 21:17, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

It's certainly possible when you are browsing around in your favorite file manager. In Nautilus, right click on the .exe file, choose properties, then Open with and you can choose Wine Windows Emulator (which is kinda strange, since Wine Is Not an Emulator). That will open the file in wine any time you double click on it. From the command line it is harder, you can simply just change the permissions of the file and run it, that won't work. There might be a way, I'm not skilled enough in linux to be able to tell you for certain (well, there is certainly some way), but by far the easiest thing will be just to simply type in "wine " ahead of the file. It's five characters, fer chrissakes, deal with the pain! :) Oskar 22:40, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Email Viruses

How do they work? Do they only work if an attachment is downloaded? If the download is executed? If the email is opened? I don't get how a virus sent by email would work if you didn't download something specific. Thanks, 70.108.199.130 21:34, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

E-mail viruses typically either entice the user to open the payload, or exploit a bug in mail programs like Outlook Splintercellguy 22:03, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

The classic example is an outlook bug which allowed emails to contain unrestricted scripting which activated as soon as you opened the email. That is, when you opened it, a program would run that would infect your computer and send itself copies to every one in your address book. This system was created before people (well, Microsoft) had realized just how important Internet Security really is Oskar 22:57, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

This is a very good question. According to one school of thought, an email virus should be practically impossible. No one, so the theory goes, would ever think of designing an email program that would run arbitrary, unchecked, untrustworthy code received in unsolicited mail from an unknown, untrustworthy recipient. Doing so is the "safe computing" equivalent of rolling around naked having sex with perfect strangers in a garbage- and needle-strewn alley behind a crack house with bad plumbing.

However, the previously-described school of thought had not reckoned on one thing: Microsoft. For the longest time, Microsoft thought that running arbitrary, unchecked, untrustworthy code received from any unknown, untrustworthy recipient was just dandy. After all, if an attachment is a .JPG, you hand it to an image-viewing program to display it, and if an attachment is an .MPG, you hand it to a movie-playing program to play it, so if an attachment is a .EXE, why not just hand it to the CPU to run it? And the computing landscape was changed forever. Not all unchecked, untrustworthy code is malicious; in fact an environment in which unchecked, untrustworthy code is routinely executed makes certain nondestructive actions very convenient. And by now the computing industry (at least, that part of it dominated by Microsoft) has become so dependent on that convenience that the "obvious" solution to the email virus problem, namely utterly disallowing the easy execution of untrustworthy externally-received code, is widely held to be impossible. So instead we all (er, well, most of you all) have to put up with (imperfect) third-party virus protection, and UAC, and stuff.

As Oskar mentioned, the executable-attachment problem isn't even the only problem. At various times, Outlook and certain other email clients have suffered various egregious bugs under which they were willing to run the untrustworthy, unchecked code all by themselves. So while the classic email virus depends on your clicking on or otherwise opening an attachment in order for it to be executed, at times there have been viruses which infected your machine when all you did was view the message, or even when all you did was have the message's header display in your inbox. In particular, Outlook Express was for years a virus-writer's best friend, although I gather it's been mostly fixed by now.

Another sad aspect of the email virus problem is that, too often, we end up blaming the victim. How often have you heard someone say, "The problem wouldn't be so bad if only there weren't so many stupid users clicking on obviously bogus attachments"? But to me, rigging up email clients so they execute an executable attachment with one click, and then attempting to prevent a worldwide computer virus epidemic by asking users to remember not to click on the wrong kind of attachments, is sort of like equipping all cars with ejection seats, with the "eject" button right in the middle of the steering wheel next to the horn, and trying to solve the resulting accidental-ejection epidemic by putting up conspicuous billboards along busy highways reminding people to be careful in finding the horn button if they need to honk. But what do I know. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:47, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Your argument doesn't take the user into account. The scenario is more accurately described as:

Microsoft: Here's an email program. You can only view text. If you want to see the attachments, you have to save them to your disk and open them with another program.

User: I'm too stupid to save a file to a disk. Let me just open it with a program.

Microsoft: OK. You don't have to save it to a disk now. You can open it directly from the email.

User: I'm too stupid to select a program. Just open it for me.

Microsoft; OK. You don't have to select a program now. Just say you want to open it and it will open with the most common program for the file type.

User: I'm too stupid to ask it to open a file. Open it for me.

Microsoft: OK. It opens all the attachments without asking you now.

User: I got a virus! Why did Microsoft do this to me!?!?

So, now Microsoft is the bad guy because users have spend the last 10 years complaining that they simply too stupid to use computers. In my opinion, they should have kept it the way it started and told the users to use their brain just a little. It wouldn't kill them. --Kainaw ^(talk) 03:27, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

But there's a middle ground, which for some reason is never pursued. I'm with you -- really with you -- on those attachments and the lazy users, and on the appropriateness of near-automatically opening the data attachments in the associated viewing apps. But where is it written that the thing to do with an executable attachment is to give it raw, unfettered access to the entire CPU, i.e. to just run it, i.e. to treat it not as data to be handed to a program, but as a program itself? That's the wickedly unsafe thing, and I don't think those lazy/naive/stupid users you're speaking of would have clamored for this easy executability of code. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:39, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Change Date/Time Field in GMail

Is there a way to change the date/time field in emails sent from GMail, so that email appears to have been sent from whatever date you specify? If not, is this possible in any email client? Thanks. Daniel (‽) 22:19, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

This is currently not possible in GMail, nor any client I know of. However, if you were to custom-code an email script in, say, PHP, this *may* be possible by changing the headers. This is complicated stuff and unless you're really determined you won't get very far! JoshHolloway 22:31, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

The orig-date is a required header (or so RFC822 tells me), so in theory you could absolutely change it. If it will have any effect, I don't know, the date displayed might very well be the date that your email-server received it or when your client downloads it (although that would not be very smart). You'd have to run some experiments with various email-servers and clients to find out if you really could send your friends emails from the future ("The future, Conan?", cue "In the year 2000" music). Oskar 22:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit conflict]

In my experience, custom-coding email is neither complicated nor particularly difficult, though I suppose it's not for the faint of heart. On most Unix and Linux systems, at least, you can construct a raw email message (typically with at least To: and Subject: headers, a blank line, and the body of the message), and pipe it into /usr/lib/sendmail -t, and off it goes. Now, the man page for sendmail says that it "is not intended as a user interface routine; other programs provide user-friendly front ends; sendmail is used only to deliver pre-formatted messages". Maybe I'm crazy, but I find manually preformatting messages so easy that I do it that way all the time. (Telnetting to port 25 and doing SMTP by hand, as TotoBaggins demonstrates below, that's a little trickier! :-) )

Besides the To:, Subject:, and Cc: headers you supply, certain other headers, such as From, Date:, and Message-ID, will be automatically added, although if you supply your own, they're accepted. So as long as you get your own Date: line in one of the formats stipulated by RFC822, you can set any date you want, and in my experience the date you so set is the date that's presented to the recipient. (If anybody wants me to, send me your email address and I'll be happy to demonstrate.)

Beware, though, that a Date: line more than a few hours in the past or future is for some reason a hallmark of spam, and many spam filters will give such messages a very high spam score, so they're pretty unlikely to get through to an arbitrary recipient after all.

Also, before someone scolds me, I suppose I should say that just because you technically can forge just about any part of an email header you want to, doesn't mean that you should. Forgery with intent to deceive is Wrong. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:57, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

You can easily tell the mail server the wrong date, and most receiving clients will happily display it, probably on the grounds that the sending mail client knows better what time the message was sent than any MTA along the way. The following SMTP session produced a mail that did indeed display as coming from the future. --TotoBaggins 00:38, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

$ telnet bag-end 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to bag-end.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 bag-end ESMTP Postfix (Ubuntu)
HELO sean-desktop
250 sean-desktop
MAIL FROM:<gollum@oz>
250 2.1.0 Ok
RCPT TO:<toto@bag-end>
250 2.1.5 Ok
DATA
354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
Subject: Bad Date Test
Date: Thu Feb 22 19:22:22 EST 2017
To: toto@bag-end

Hello from 2017!
.
250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as A760B1C564
QUIT

Turning off Norton Pop up Blocker

I have a new computer and when I open up a certain window in this site for my work it will only allow me to do so the first time. After I save and exit I try to go to the next link it won't allow me to open any links again instead it gives me a sound and says "a pop-up window was blocked." Sometimes if I try long enough and I exit that site and re-enter it will let me or open a pop up window but then it won't let me again. I also tried going through the other way turning down the security level and clicking off the check mark it still won't allow me to open up pop-up windows from that site. Also a side note is that my computer allows pop up windows on other sites. I believe it is Norton Virus program, so how can I turn it off temporarily, or at least the pop up blocker for that program?

Some googling turns up this site (clearly in danger of exceeding URL length specifications) which gives you a short little instruction on how to do it. Does that work? Oskar 22:54, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

February 23

Appleworks

Here are the troubles: When I try to open an appleworks file i recieve a message saying "An unexpected error ocurred (error code -600)." Appleworks is permanently open for unknown reason(s). It resists my Force Quit attempts. Clicking on Appleworks on the dock does nothing. Any solutions? Thank you in advance 63.231.243.111 02:10, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried rebooting? --24.147.86.187 02:56, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Typecasting char array to floating point in C

I'm writing data acquisition software in C on a PIC 18F2680 microcontroller. I have a serial stream in, which is double precision floating point, in IEEE 754. The stream is read by the chip one byte at a time (the buffer is only one byte wide). Thus, I have an array of 8 bytes, which I want to manipulate as it's value instead of as an array of bytes. Eventually, I want to typecast it to floating point, to cut the data size. How do I make the micro recognize the data as a double instead of as an array of characters? anonymous6494 03:24, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

*IF* your microcontroller also uses IEEE 754, that is, if its internal floating-point format is exactly the same as (bit-for-bit compatible with) the external data you're trying to read, you can sidestep all sorts of messy bit-twiddling conversions and "pun" the types, with a typecast as you've already suggested. The recipe might look like

char chardata[8];

double realdata;

...read in the chardata array...

realdata = *(double *)chardata;

You might also have to worry about alignment. If so, we can explain that, too. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:34, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Choosing a type of linux

Which would you guys say is the most semi-competent-windows-user-friendly Linux-based OS? I'm feeling like giving one a try. Is there one that can still run most windows-friendly programs, like Adobe stuff, realplayer, word, rosettastone, firefox, itunes, daemontools and many others? Thanks, 70.108.199.130 04:21, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Ubuntu or Kubuntu. And you won't be able to run the Windows-specific programs you mentioned without WINE (daemontools won't run at all, though you can generally mount ISOs without any extra tool [15]). There is a Linux version of Firefox as well as free alternatives to most of those. Do you know what you're getting into? You most likely can't use your existing partitions in Linux; you'll have to resize or reformat them, the latter of which kills all of the data contained within. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 04:29, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by partitions?

Sections of the hard drive; see the article on Disk partitioning. The file systems won't be compatible with Linux, and you'll likely want an extra partition or two for the bootloader and swap. If you install Linux and go through with the default settings, you'll completely reformat your existing partition, meaning any data in Windows goes down the drain. Ubuntu does allow you to simply resize your Windows partition(s) to free up room, but you have to be certain that you don't select the wrong option. If all of your data is backed up somewhere else, then there's naught to fear. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 04:47, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Damn. I think I'll wait till I get a new computer

Does Kazaa give a lot of problems?

Does anybody here use kazaa? does it give any problems with your computer?04:39, 23 February 2007 (UTC)shindo9hikaru

Does my dream laptop exist?

I've been searching with no success. I figured if anybody could help me, it'd be you guys. I'm looking for (and I may be getting the techincal names here slightly off, but hopefully it's somewhat clear) a ~15inch non-Apple laptop with a Core Duo ~2Ghz processor, a hard drive of 150+ gigs at a high clock speed (hopefully 7200ish), good resolution, great internal speakers, 2 gb of memory, a DVD burner, a battery that can last ~3-4 or more hours, and nice, sleek (as in simple, like Macbooks or the Voodoo Envy, not fancy gamer-looking like Alienware or the Dell XPS.) I couldn't care less about graphics cards or gaming potential. I just want a computer that can deal very well and quickly with lots of non-game stuff and multimedia and is very portable. Not a Mac. Hopefully for $3000 or less. Impossible, right? Is there anything that comes to any of your minds, or anything that comes close? If I wait half a year, are my odds of finding something this good going to increase? 70.108.199.130 04:40, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Copyrighting a programming language

Is this legally kosher? For example, if I wanted to create my own free implementation of a programming language which was claimed to be copyrighted, would I be violating copyright?