Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

March 2

Learning languages

Do people usually learn computer languages and programming languages by themselves or in a class? --The Dark Side 01:54, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Depends on the person, but it's probably best to learn the principles of computer programming and at least one language in a class, allowing you to more easily teach yourself other languages from books or the internet. --Canley 10:12, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

It probably also depends on the language in question. It is relatively easy to teach yourself something like VBScript, which is only a few steps removed from common, everyday language in certain forms. For things which require a bit more abstract thought about how computers work (memory management, ports, etc.) it becomes a lot harder to wander in unguided (not impossible, mind you, but you are probably going to have to have a lot of commitment to get much out of it). --140.247.251.81 17:36, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Mass un-capitilization

Hi is there any way to turn all the filename of a large group (100) of files into all lowercase characters on a Windows machine? For example: "Something.jpg" into "something.jpg". I am asking because I'm hosting a website on a Linux sever, and apparently the capilization is important when establishing links.

As well, when I'm backing up files from a hard drive to a USB drive, I have the same files on both drives, but the filenames of the files on my harddrive is all lowercase and when i replace the files on my USB with my lowercased files on my harddrive, the USB files still remain capitalized. Any way to fix this? Thanks. Jamesino 02:05, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

For the first issue, a Google search: file + renamer + capitalization. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 04:26, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm well-aware that this is a very heavy-handed solution, but if you do a lot of "advanced" manipulation of files of any sort you might find it useful: Emacs. I just threw together a tiny bit of Emacs Lisp that does precisely what you want:

 (mapcar (lambda (f) (rename-file f (downcase f))) (directory-files "." nil "[^.]"))

...obviously "downcase" can become "upcase" or, with a bit more work, "abbreviate to 12 characters", or whatever else; you could also make it only affect ".jpg" files, or make it recursive (an entire directory tree at a time). Anyway, enough evangelizing; it's just an answer to many questions so I thought it worthwhile. As for the second thing, delete the files on the USB drive and then copy the HDD's files again. --Tardis 06:06, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

If you have a Unix-like system, tr can easily do this. If you have Perl, Python, or other similar langauges, a few moments of programming using one regular expression will allow you to make a tool that can do this.

Atlant 13:49, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

D-FileMU will do what you want and much more. A great program for renaming files. http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/downloads/index.cfm?categoryID=1474&itemID=29329 GooPC 20:07, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

OCR Software

Is it possible to get OCR software that reads hand-writing?

Yes, though as I understand it, they're not as good as OCRs that do printed text. As for specific, I don't have. Splintercellguy 04:18, (UTC)

Windows XP has a built in ocr for text User:Nerdd 07:45,2 March 2007 (Utc)

See also Graffiti (Palm OS) and Apple Newton. Many graphics tablet also include or offer software that can read printing (but usually not script). It's a much simpler problem to read handwriting "on the fly" (as it is written) than it is to read (for example) a scan of some handwriting ex-post facto; capturing the dynamics of the moving hand offers a lot of clues as to what you're actually writing.

Atlant 14:22, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Note that Palm's graffiti (at least the version I used) isn't exactly the same as regular script, I remeber 'k' in particular being very different, almost like a truncated 'infinity' sign. The main problem is the high degree of variance with handwriting as compared to printed typefonts. Even if you could get it to recognise, there may be so many errors it might not be worth it. OCR itself is prone to mistakes, let alone OCR on an irregular medium. Wintermut3 21:33, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Windows XP - is it possible to make your 'C: drive' spin down?

Is it possible to configure Windows XP so that it leaves the main hard drive alone for more than 3 minutes in a row? I would like to use the 'turn off hard disks' feature in Power Management to - yup - turn of the hard disk, but even on the shortest timeout (3 minutes), the main hard drive (where Windows, the pagefile and hibernate file live) never gets to stop, however little the machine is doing. Any details of exactly what services/processes might be bothering my drive would be welcome, but I'd also like to know has it ever been done?. Thanks. -84.69.45.120 04:37, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Someplace I thought I read somewhere that the NTFS file $LogFile has a header which is updated every few seconds with a new sequence number or timestamp. I thought it was described here, but I don't see it. Anyway, just because "the system" isn't doing much, doesn't mean that the internals aren't busy! Various programs check the windows registry every so often, program execute code or access data sporadically, which might cause a hard page fault. Also, windows prefetchs data it predicts is about to be accessed as part of a caching scheme under certain conditions. Turning off all of this seems akin to asking someone not to exhale for a couple hours. —EncMstr 05:35, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Even if you could, you don't want to do that. Spinning up and down often will harm the hard disk. – b_jonas 08:34, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Inverted screen

One of the computers in our college digital library is having an inverted screen(I dont know how it got into that condition).How can I revert it back to it's original position of straight screen.

Check video card/display settings for Windows? Splintercellguy 06:07, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

If it's the same as the ones we used to have, hit Ctrl+Alt+(up arrow). — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 09:37, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for you'r lovely help. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 218.248.2.51 (talk) 05:05, 5 March 2007 (UTC).

Running as arbitrary ring

Is there any built-in way to get Windows or Linux to assign a particular running program Ring 0 priviliges? I realize that this is very bad form but I like having control over my computer and this seems like something that's important to know. --froth^T 07:01, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

You can setuid 'nix programs to run with root privileges, but you can't do this once the program has already started running. If I understand correctly, ring 0 is essentially kernel space, and no operating system worth its salt will let you run a program in kernel space.

Yeah I don't mean root, I mean actual kernel space. If I wanted to test a program from within Linux.. a program that needs the direct hardware control that Ring 0 provides, how would I make this happen? Since linux is open-source it shouldn't be too much of an issue to add this functionality to your own kernel revision or something. --froth^T 15:00, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Write a loadable [virtual] device driver. See here. —EncMstr 17:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

You don't need ring 0 to have direct hardware control. You just have to do the same thing the X server does: iopl(3) or ioperm() to get access to the I/O ports, and mmap() of /dev/mem to get access to the memory-mapped registers. Of course, you still can conflict with the kernel's handling of the hardware (this has been an issue with the X server in the past; someday the relevant parts of the graphics driver will end up in the kernel instead), and you cannot handle interrupts (there is a "user-mode driver" patch floating to allow you to handle interrupts in user mode, with only a small stub in the kernel to acknowledge the interrupt). That said, unless the hardware you want to control is like USB (which can safely be managed from userspace with something like libusb), I'd recommend you write a full kernel-mode device driver (it's not that hard; I've done it recently). --cesarb 01:00, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Firefox search thing

I have two computers. Both have firefox. One of them's firefox 1.5, and the other's firefox 2.0. On the 1.5 one, when i type seperate words, not adresses, into the address bar (not the search bar), it would automatically load a page related to it. I think it may have basically been using google's feeling lucky thing that opens the search found to be the most popular. it was really nice, because i could type, say, "amazon no sun in venice" and be taken to the amazon.com site specific to that modern jazz quartet cd. this doesn't happen on the computer with 2.0. I don't know if this has always been the case. I just started using the computer again after a while of only using my laptop (with 1.5). But I was hoping one of you knew how I might be able to make my firefox 2.0 do that. i really liked it. thanks, sasha

Here you go --froth^T 07:07, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Danke

Statistical distribution of bits

Has anyone ever done a study of the statistical distribution of 1s and 0s in registers as various programs run? What would you think would be seen more often, 1s or 0s? --froth^T 07:03, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

That's going to vary widely depending on the particular register(s), their function, the program, and the alignment of Venus with Mars. Without any further information, I'd guess that the pmf converges upon a uniform distribution as time goes on. -- mattb @ 2007-03-02T07:19Z

It will vary widely, but you have to consider that most of the numbers stored in registers will be (much) smaller than the register's maximum value, especially on 64b platforms. This is a direct result of architecture (nobody has fully populated RAM, so pointers won't get the most significant bits set, ever), and would lead to more 0's than 1's, I believe. Droud 13:27, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

0 will be seen more often. Not only is zero a commonly used number, but also small positive numbers (which have a lot of zero bits) are very common. --cesarb 14:32, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, ASCII (commonly used for text) is mostly 7-bit (extended ASCII is rare compared to normal ASCII). The 8th bit is normally a 0. --Kainaw ^(talk) 17:21, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Photoshop JPEG color downsampling.

At what quality settings does Photoshop CS2 apply 4:4:4, 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 color sampling? --24.249.108.133 19:33, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Graphics card - what does this mean?

I'm looking at the specs for the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. The specs say this "NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB of GDDR2 SDRAM (1 x single-link DVI / 1 x dual-link DVI)". So does that mean that it will support two monitors from the one card, i.e. one monitor on the single link connector and one on the dual link connector? Or does it mean that it will support one monitor with either a single or dual link connector? Dismas|^(talk) 20:29, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind, I found out. One place said "(single-link DVI /dual-link DVI)" which led me to believe it was one connector which would work with both. Another place said "(1 x single-link DVI / 1 x dual-link DVI)" which made me think it was one of each on the same card. Rooting around more I found "making it capable of simultaneously supporting one 23-inch and one 30-inch Apple Cinema Display." So, I have my answer. Dismas|^(talk) 20:35, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Reset a Dell Dimension 4600

How do you reset a Dell Dimension 4600 to its original settings? 68.193.147.179 21:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Assuming you mean you want to reset the BIOS settings so you can get to the menu where you can configure boot devices, etc.? Disconnect power and pull out the little battery on the motherboard for a few minutes. It's not sufficient to use the unit's power switch as some power is still applied and might maintain the CMOS memory. If that doesn't do it, it might be necessary identify and operate a reset jumper on the motherboard. —EncMstr 21:55, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I mean is there an easy way to restore the factory defaults (like reseting the "C:" drive)? 68.193.147.179 22:05, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Did your Dell Dimension come with a recovery CD? That's what you would use to restore to out-of-box install. Splintercellguy 22:07, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I think I only have a WinXP Home reintall CD-ROM. 68.193.147.179 22:11, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Is this like a stand-alone Windows setup CD? Or is it a CD that re-creates the partition from out-of-box? If you do perform the recovery/reinstall, be sure to back up! Splintercellguy 01:03, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

It is a CD-ROM that is a "stand-alone Windows setup CD". 68.193.147.179 03:11, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

In that case, start up Windows setup, format in setup, then install? You might lose the bundled stuff though so BACK UP! Splintercellguy 03:39, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I f I drop files into D: Drive will that save it? 68.193.147.179 03:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

it depends what D: is, if D: is an external drive of sufficient size, then yes, if it's a mass storage device then yes, if it's a recovery partition then defiantly not. Either way, make sure to create a recovery disc before you reformat, unless you have a separate disk somewhere with all your drivers on it--VectorPotential^Talk 16:50, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Trouble converting LaTeX PDF to SVG via pstoedit and skconvert.

I'm using beton.sty and euler.sty in a LaTeX file. I intend to replace AMS_Euler_sample.png with an SVG. I get this when trying to convert the file.

$ pstoedit -dt -psarg "-r9600x9600"  euler.pdf -f sk euler.sk
pstoedit: version 3.42 / DLL interface 108 (build Jan 19 2006 - release build) : Copyright (C) 1993 - 2005 Wolfgang Glunz
Warning: image operation ignored due to restriction of target format or driver (repeated 12 times)
$ skconvert euler.sk euler.svg
$

In the resultant SVG, the "sin" and "cos" operators don't print (they were in Concrete Roman to match the math symbols). I'm thinking there's something wrong with the beton package (if I remove beton, the operators appear, albeit in Computer Modern), in that the fonts it inserts won't convert with pstoedit... but what? And how can I fix it?

 $ pdflatex euler.tex
 This is pdfeTeX, Version 3.141592-1.21a-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.4)
 entering extended mode
 (./euler.tex
 LaTeX2e <2003/12/01>
 Babel <v3.8d> and hyphenation patterns for american, french, german, ngerman, b
 ahasa, basque, bulgarian, catalan, croatian, czech, danish, dutch, esperanto, e
 stonian, finnish, greek, icelandic, irish, italian, latin, magyar, norsk, polis
 h, portuges, romanian, russian, serbian, slovak, slovene, spanish, swedish, tur
 kish, ukrainian, nohyphenation, loaded.
 (/usr/share/texmf-tetex/tex/latex/base/article.cls
 Document Class: article 2004/02/16 v1.4f Standard LaTeX document class
 (/usr/share/texmf-tetex/tex/latex/base/size12.clo))
 (/usr/share/texmf-tetex/tex/latex/beton/beton.sty
 Package: `beton' v1.3 <1995/03/05> (FJ)
 ) (/usr/share/texmf-tetex/tex/latex/euler/euler.sty
 Package: `euler' v2.5 <1995/03/05> (FJ and FMi)
 
 LaTeX Font Warning: Encoding `OML' has changed to `U' for symbol font
 (Font)              `letters' in the math version `normal' on input line 35.
 
 
 LaTeX Font Warning: Encoding `OML' has changed to `U' for symbol font
 (Font)              `letters' in the math version `bold' on input line 35.
 
 ) (./euler.aux) (/usr/share/texmf-tetex/tex/latex/concmath/ot1ccr.fd)
 (/usr/share/texmf-tetex/tex/latex/amsfonts/ueur.fd)
 (/usr/share/texmf-tetex/tex/latex/amsfonts/ueuf.fd)
 (/usr/share/texmf-tetex/tex/latex/amsfonts/ueus.fd)
 (/usr/share/texmf-tetex/tex/latex/amsfonts/ueuex.fd) [1{/var/lib/texmf/fonts/ma
 p/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map}] (./euler.aux) )</usr/share/texmf-tetex/fonts/type1
 /bluesky/cm/cmsy10.pfb> </var/cache/fonts/pk/ljfour/public/concrete/ccr10.720pk
 ></usr/share/texmf-tetex/fonts/type1/bluesky/euler/eufm7.pfb></usr/share/texmf-
 tetex/fonts/type1/bluesky/cm/cmex10.pfb></usr/share/texmf-tetex/fonts/type1/blu
 esky/euler/eufm10.pfb></usr/share/texmf-tetex/fonts/type1/bluesky/euler/eurm7.p
 fb></usr/share/texmf-tetex/fonts/type1/bluesky/euler/euex10.pfb></usr/share/tex
 mf-tetex/fonts/type1/bluesky/euler/eurm10.pfb>
 Output written on euler.pdf (1 page, 26806 bytes).
 Transcript written on euler.log.

Here's hoping someone has experienced similar troubles and found a way around them. grendel|khan 21:52, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, mentioning this, you informed me of a copyright violation (thanks!). When I originally uploaded the image, I added the source as well -- but it's written in plain TeX. Perhaps plain TeX that source, ps2pdf it, then try whatever juju you're doing to get it to a PDF. While you're at it, you might want to change the 3 in that integral to a t, remove the C, and change every x on the right hand side to a t (my bad): so it reads

$\int _{0}^{t}9x^{2}+2x+4\,dx=3t^{3}+t^{2}+4t$

Dysprosia 23:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

No dice; same error. (Though I did figure out that to suppress page numbering in that example of yours, I just had to do a \def\rightheadline{\relax}.) I wonder which mailing list I should take this to--whose fault is it, really? grendel|khan 07:50, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

TeXing it works fine for me, perhaps there's something wrong with your installation? I don't have pstoedit so I can't test further, sorry. Dysprosia 13:05, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

TeXing works fine for me too; the problem is converting to SVG. Something about the Concrete Roman font doesn't like being converted through pstoedit, but I can't imagine why it would fail--and I don't know who to ask about it. I'll file a bug with pstoedit, I guess. grendel|khan 15:07, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

March 3

Exact (clone) CD Copies

I have two computers which I wish to install and run a game on. Both are my computers. The game is The Sims 2 Seasons
I need to make an exact duplicate of the Sims 2 CD, using a program that will make a functional disk. I tried "Clone CD" and it did not work.
Does anyone know of any programs that will completely allow me to make a duplicate, that will be exactly the same as the original disk? Zylstra555 21:27, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a mac or a windows computer?--Ryan 02:34, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm assuming Windows. Alcohol 120% is another tool, though I'm not sure why CloneCD wouldn't work. You do know that even with 1:1 many drives have a hard time reading the bad sectors characteristic of SafeDisc? Might need DAEMON Tools too. Splintercellguy 05:34, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I am using Windows. I will try Alcohol 120%. I am not sure I understand the second part of your answer, but if you mean that the disk may have issues, its a brand new disk. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.112.144.247 (talk) 08:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC).

I'm assuming that Sims 2 uses SafeDisc. Now, the way that SafeDisc works is that it creates a block of "bad sectors" on the CD. When someone tries to copy the disc and burn, those sectors aren't "bad" anymore, and SafeDisc fails the disc. Splintercellguy 21:32, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I know what this user is trying to do and it won't work. You need to seperate copies and CD keys to play multiplayer.--Dacium 05:24, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

You could also use Alcohol to make a virtual disk on one computer and eliminate the need for (complicated) duplication of the original CD. Of course, you can not play multiplayer with both computers if you have only 1 serial number. Shinhan 18:33, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Test

What do I need to do with my CSS to make the FA star show up in Classic? --hydnjo talk 01:50, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

You may think the computing desk has failed your test, but (after half an hour of searching - I know nothing about these things) here it is: add the following (note this produces the star at the very top right of the screen, at least on my browser, which may not be where you want it):

div.topicon {
 position:absolute; 
 z-index:100; 
 top:10px;
 display: block !important;
}

Algebraist 21:00, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Reset C: Drive on Dell Dimension 4600?

Is there a way to Reset C: Drive on Dell Dimension 4600? 68.193.147.179 03:24, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

No need to post your question twice, I will answer it. Splintercellguy 03:38, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I f I drop files into D: Drive will that save it? 68.193.147.179 03:44, 3 March 2007 (UT

Back up all data onto a CD or DVD(s), then follow these instructions. -Wooty Woot? contribs 22:01, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

IBM Thinkpads

What is so good about IBM Thinkpads? Are they mroe reliable, more sturdy? 64.230.85.203 03:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I have had the same one for 3 years. Mine never broke down, but my friend's did. He said that the service was excellent, and it was fixed quickly (same day).

What about performance wise? For example, for graphics, web design? 64.230.85.203 03:49, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Web design you just need the most basic, internet ready computer, and graphics unless you are doing huge ones (like 4000+px per side), you don't need anything special other than more ram than average. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:55, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

This is purely anecdotal, but a friend of mine who repairs notebooks has always said that the Thinkpad T series have some of the best construction. Another insight he once offered that has proved valuable to me; no matter what brand of laptop you are after, always buy the "business" line rather than the "home" model. The former is almost always of higher build quality than the latter and will prove to be more durable. As for performance, as long as you're not aiming to play serious videogames on your laptop (please don't get this notion into your head; you'll have to sacrifice a lot in terms of portability, durability, battery life, and cash), Intel's current generation mobile platform will serve most purposes well. My last two laptops have been Thinkpads and have reliably and almost exclusively served my PC needs. -- mattb @ 2007-03-03T07:29Z

They are well designed. The keyboards are excellent. There are small features that make life easier (eg, keyboard light, hard disk accellerometers, fingerprint readers), plus other design considerations to add to durability. As to gaming, I use an ATI-enabled ThinkPad and it handles quite fine -- if you're after graphics performance on Windows look for one with an ATI chipset inside (I believe all the Thinkpads have either Intel graphics or ATI discrete chipsets), though this will cost you in battery life. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.49.242.20 (talk • contribs) 14:21, 3 March 2007

I have a thinkpad T60 and I will never buy anything that's not ThinkPad again. It is far and away the highest quality product of all laptops. It's perfect. And mattb, I can play every game that's out right now with my Radeon x1400 and I still get fine battery life. --69.175.17.5 00:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

my briefcase

I will be very grateful to you if you explain how to use "my briefcase" to update files? I tried. But It sayes the files are orphans. pl. help me thank you124.43.243.237 11:19, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Careful what you do with that thing, or you could mess things up. After creating a briefcase on the portable storage medium of your choosing (e.g. a floppy disk, a CD-RW or thumb drive), you drag the files you want in the briefcase, onto the briefcase icon and then release the mouse button. This creates copies of the files onto the storage medium, in this virtual briefcase. Now, after editing a file, either the copy in the briefcase, or the original on your computer, you can update the other version provided that it hasn't also been edited. If you edit both files, the briefcase wont dare to overwrite either because if it did, the changes to one of those would be lost. If you go and move the original files on the computer, to a different location on your harddrive(s), this confuses the briefcase, and the files in it are left "orphaned", separated from their orginals. If you delete the orginal on your harddrive, the briefcase, when updated, will also delete the copy, so if that's not what you want, do be careful! --Seans Potato Business 06:54, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

PSU prblems

I recently burned a PSU and it took out my motherboard as well.

I then bought a new motherboard, took out the graphics card, ram, hdd etc (so just left the cpu and cpu fan) but the new PSU burnt within 30 seconds. What could be causing the problem? THe CPU is a core2duo and the PSU was an ez-cool 400W, could a faulty CPU do this or is it possible that the PSU I received was faulty?

It could be that your PSU is not powerful enough for all the hardware you put on it, it could be that your PSU is defective, or it could be that your _power_ is unclean (too high voltage, too low voltage, frequency out of spec, or several other problems). I'd check the incoming power first; are you using a UPS? --cesarb 14:49, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

30 seconds is very quick! That sounds like a pretty dire problem. The first things I'd check for would be (1) some kind of wiring problem causing a short circuit between the power supply and (or on) the motherboard, and (2) the 120/240V input voltage switch on the power supply, if it has one. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:24, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Plug nothign into the PSU except a harddrive. Short the green wire to any black wires (on the plug that normally goes into the motherboard). Tthis is the power on button. This is the way to check if the PSU is broken or not. When you get a new PSU do this. Something in your case must be shorting power somewhere this would mean its likly either a visiable spark that you should see or it should get really hot. It would take many amps to blow the PSU.--Dacium 05:18, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

BBC Micro

In my Physics Text book, there is some code to run on a BBC Micro to make the qwerty keyboard into a mucsical keyboard. Is there any software I can down load to run this simple code in XP? MHDIV ɪŋglɪʃnɜː(r)d(Suggestion?|wanna chat?) 13:59, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Have a dig around in the Google results for BBC Micro emulator — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 14:08, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Name change

Under Windows XP how do you change a username name from "Stupid Teachers Aide" to "John Stern" without deleting the offending user's account and then replacing it with a new one? Nocternal 14:29, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Control Panel -> User Accounts -> "pick an account to change" -> the name of the user -> Change My Name -> Type in new name -> press enter. JoshHolloway 14:58, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay this worked to change the username, Now is there anyway to change the "Stupid Teachers Aide" folder name found as c:\Documents and Settings\Stupid Teachers Aide\...? After several popups that say it will no longer be shared after it is renamed a popup occurs that says the name can not be changed because it is a system folder in use by Windows. Nocternal 15:19, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

You need to log in as a different (admin) user to the one whose folder you're renaming. See [1]. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 17:23, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay this worked but first I had to create a new admistrator account and then reboot and log on to it instead of just switching users. Thanks. Nocternal 18:05, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Red Alert ore fields

Dear Wikipedians:

While playing Red Alert and Red Alert 2 I noticed a corkscrew like structure in the middle of ore fields. It looks old and crummy and kind of run-down. The corkscrew drills into the ground every once in a while and some gold-dust puffs up. So it seems that these corkscrews have something to do with the ores. I wonder what the corkscrew is. Also I never see these corkscrew structures in the middle of the more precious gem fields.

70.50.141.29 18:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

As I see it, the corkscrew it like a drill which brings precious ore from deep below the ground. The ore it produces spawns to the side of it, for your miners to collect. The more precious ore is ore that is naturally on the surface. Unlike the normal yellow/gold ore, this doesn't respawn as it's collected by ore miners. Once it's gone, it's gone. The fact that the corkscrews (drills) are "crummy and kind of run-down" is merely because the graphics aren't amazing, nothing else. JoshHolloway 19:50, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much, I understand now. So for yellow/gold ore without a corkscrew in the middle, they're also gone when the miner harvests all of it? 70.50.141.29 20:35, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. The corkscrews are pretty much like the tiberium blossom trees in the other C&C games. Tiberium can spawn more tiberium on its own though, ore can't (because it's just a bunch of rocks). -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:05, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

March 4

Best Laptop

Hi, I'm looking to purchase a PC (Windows) laptop. What is the best <$4000 laptop I can buy in North America in terms of performance, reliability and durability? I will be using it for heavy graphics design, video editting and gaming. And how does this laptop compare to a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro? Thanks Jamesino 01:03, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

For everything you described besides gaming (though this could possibly be remedied by dual-booting windows), the macbook is considered excellent for. Do you have a preferred manufacturer such as Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc? Some quick narrowing down on newegg yielded this (however it is out of stock at the moment), may be a good start though. If you don't mind paying a hefty premium just for the name, Alienware may be a good choice as well. Cyraan 02:54, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm mainly looking for a performance oriented laptop. One that has attracted my attention is the IBM Lenovo's Thinkpad series. As well, what is the Toshiba Satellite series? I've seen it many times before but the name is curious to me, does it have some sort of satellite linkage? Thanks. Jamesino 04:38, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

It's just the name of one of Toshiba's laptop product lines. Ill do some checking on Lenovo's site a little later & see what their offerings are. Cyraan 04:53, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

No, it's just a line of low-end laptops. Don't buy toshiba. I highly recommend ThinkPad though. Highly --froth^T 05:24, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems there are no Lenovo laptops that I could see that pack a high-end gaming quality GPU, you may be stuck with a Dell, or perhaps Alienware. Cyraan 19:08, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Lenovo laptops can sport ATI 128M Mobility Radeon X1400 processors or 256M FireGL processors. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.49.242.20 (talk) 08:54, 5 March 2007 (UTC).

I got my notebook from Hypersonic PC, which basically customizes and resells Clevo notebooks. There are a number of these smaller niche notebook makers, you might check out a place like this site. When I got my notebook last fall, it was one of the best available 17" notebooks that I could find, and it was in the low to mid $3000's. kmccoy (talk) 01:10, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Reboots from openSUSE but not from WinXP

My problem is that when I restart the computer from WinXP, upon rebooting I get stuck at the 'initializing floppy controller' stage (I know this from the diagnostic lights feature of my mobo). If I press the reset button, the computer begins to boot normally. If I restart the computer from Suse (10.2), the computer begins to boot normally. I've had this problem for a long time and reinstalling WinXP hasn't fixed it. What could be the difference between a warm reboot with WinXP vs openSUSE? They should surely leave the PC in the same state by the time it's booting up again?

• Win XP Pro / openSUSE 10.2
• MSI K8N Neo4 SLI Platinum (model MS-7100) / 64-bit Athlon 3200+
• 2x1024 Mb Corsair Value RAM PC3200
• Leadtek 128Mb 6600GT PCIe Graphics Card / Integrated 24-bit SoundBlaster Sound Card --Seans Potato Business 06:44, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

This sounds like a BIOS problem. first try turning on the "Memory hole" setting in the BIOS. If that doesn't work, turn off the Floppy in BIOS, Reboot, then go back and turn the Floppy back on. This resets the register in the BIOS, in case it got corrupted some how. You might also have a conflict in the Device Manager, such as an IRQ conflict. Check the Device Manager for flagged errors. If none of that works, then you may need to look for a bad memory board, or bad floppy cable or a bad floppy drive, or you may need to update your BIOS version as a last resort (save all your files to CD-ROM or network drive before attempting this!) --Britcom 20:34, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Maybe Windows leaves some weird stuff in memory or something just before it reboots? I mean, it would be stupid to zero out the contents of memory just before rebooting --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 06:30, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Windows Live Messenger

Does Windows Live Messenger replace Windows Messenger 4.7 completely? If so, is it compatible with Microsoft Outlook? The Updater 10:12, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you will find it only replaces MSN Messenger but will work with outlook.--Dacium 05:13, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Firefox 2 extension check

According to the release notes of Firefox 2, it is possible not all extensions work immediately. Is there some extension or program I can use to check their availability before upgrading without checking each extension website separately? - Mgm|^(talk) 11:07, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

It will do it after the installation of Firefox 2 before first startup. Otherwise, I haven't heard of one. Although almost all plugins supports Firefox 2 now days. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:08, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

C and C++

What's the difference between the C and C++ programming languages, and which one is best to learn? Thanks, --Fadders 12:13, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

See the articles C (programming language) and C++. As to which is best: the one you intend to use. Or learn both. Since C++ is mostly a superset of C, I'd start with the much simpler C, then learn the additional C++ features. Weregerbil 13:55, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

The biggest and most important difference is that unlike C, C++ is object.oriented. Oskar 16:44, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

See also the comp.lang.c FAQ list. —Steve Summit (talk) 02:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

As to the "Which to learn first?" question, there are two diametrically opposed schools of thought. Some point out that C++ is a much more complicated language than C, and that it's therefore easier to learn C first, as a stepping-stone to C++. Others argue that if you really want to learn OOP, you must learn C++ first, because otherwise you'll end up writing C in C++, not making full use of the OOP paradigm. —Steve Summit (talk) 02:20, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Note that C++ is a superset of C, therefore knowing C++ implies you have learned C. Personally, I began with C++, however you should begin with C if you have never programmed, or if you don't have experience with procedural languages (Turbo Pascal is usually the language most used to begin with). -- ReyBrujo 02:54, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

As others have indicated, the answer is "it depends". If you just want to learn how to program, it's best to learn a language that doesn't sacrifice so much clarity and simplicity for performance. Java, Perl, Python, or Haskell would all be better choices than C or C++. If you're required to learn one or the other of C or C++, then C++ would allow you some measure of the abstraction and simplicity of the languages listed above. For example, to mush two sentences together in C++ (using some sort of string class), you can usually say something like:

string joined_sentence = sentence1 + sentence2;

, while in C, you must often do something like:

char *joined_sentence = (char*)malloc(strlen(sentence1) + strlen(sentence2) + 1);
if (!joined_sentence) {
  perror("malloc");
  exit(1);
}
sprintf(joined_sentence, "%s%s", sentence1, sentence2);

You'll eventually need to learn the ugliness above for either language, but at least you can don't have to do so right out of the gate with C++. --TotoBaggins 05:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Using sprintf like that isn't really desirable. You can use snprintf for better security, but it isn't as portable as strncat, for example. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.49.242.20 (talk) 08:52, 5 March 2007 (UTC).

Where's the security problem? joined_sentence was just allocated to have enough space, so there can't be an overrun, so I don't see it. --TotoBaggins 02:14, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

If the length of sentence1 was so big that adding the length of sentence2 would "wrap" the int around... --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 06:26, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Ouch, yes, I see what you mean. --TotoBaggins 11:40, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Mac Mini vs. iMac

How much difference in performance would you notice between a Mac Mini and 20in iMac, assuming you aren't doing much photo/video editting?

Well the 20" iMac has a 2.16ghz processor (MacMini 1.83ghz), 4mb cache (2mb on MM), 1gb RAM (512mb standard on MM), 250gb hard-drive (80gb MM), 128mb ATI Radeon (64mb graphics processor on mm). Overally the 20"Mac is higher-spec at every point compared to the high-spec Mac Mini. Whether or not you need this power depends on your computer's main use. I have a 1.33ghz, 768mb ram iBook G4 and it serves me perfectly for everything I do. The iMac has the benefit of coming with a 20-inch screen which price-wise would probably be quite expensive. I personally am waiting for Apple to get round to releasing their new OS (Leopard) before I contemplate upgrading. I understand that is released in the next few months. ny156uk 18:00, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Phone videos

I'm trying to get Videos from my phone (a Sony Ericsson k750i) onto YouTube, however when i put them on my computer they play with no sound. I use VLC media player to play them. Can anyone help?Ken 14:51, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

• I recommend you try VLC forums. The people there have seen all the possible problems that may cause this and are therefore better equiped to help you. - Mgm|^(talk) 15:15, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I have a K800i and I can play my video files in Quicktime player. They are the format ".3pg", and you can convert them to AVI by looking at this page (half way down). Your .avi can then be uploaded to YouTube :). JoshHolloway 15:19, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Digital Storage Mediums

Hi, i'm currently in my last year of 6th form studying physics. Part of the coursework is to research a topic of your choice. Mine is digital storage mediums.

Could you list some storage mediums for me to research. I've found a few but i'm sure there are far more. Could you also tell me if any of these are the same, ie use the same type of storage, and what the proper name of the storage is.

Flash Memory, Cache Memory, RAM, ROM, CD, DVD, Hard Disk, SIM, Floppy

Thanks for any help, apologies if this sounds simple to you.

88.105.65.0 16:56, 4 March 2007 (UTC)Pete

digital storage is your best place to start. Principally speaking I understand they all work on the same basis - storage of 0s and 1s. Above that level optical-drives like CD/DVD work along the same principles and you could add in Blue-Ray/HD-DVD, Mini-disc to that list. Floppys work on magnetic discs and I think Hard-drives are somewhat similar. You are best starting by looking at their respective wikipedia-articles and looking for similarities. Hope this helped a little ny156uk 18:06, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Cache memory is a specific application of random access memory (RAM) and not a memory hardware technology in and of itself.

Atlant 13:54, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Game name

Hey, this is driving me nuts. There's a little logic game I've enjoyed in various incarnations over the years but I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. I was reminded of it recently when looking at games to play with MAME; there was a Japanese arcade release of it called Prologic -- an odd game for an arcade game, but a lot of Japanese arcade games are weird, by US standards anyway. Game works like this: You're presented with a grid and some numbers, about like this:

         1  4     2
         3  2  1  4
         __________
    1 2 |x  x  x  x
      4 |x  x  x  x ...
    2 1 |x  x  x  x
    1 2 |x  x  x  x
        ...

The rest is kinda like minesweeper; the numbers represent runs of non-bombs, so in the first row, we know there's a single non-bomb and then two non-bombs, with an indeterminate number of bombs between them. The goal is to use logic to determine where all the safe spaces are.

Anyone have any idea what I'm talking about? --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 17:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

This is the puzzle that I know as Griddler on Nonogram, but apparently on Wikipedia it's Paint by numbers. Algebraist 18:02, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! That's exactly it. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 18:25, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Here's an online Flash version of the game I particularly liked: [2] (pick "PLAY THIS GAME!" at the linked page). StuRat 20:44, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

iMac display dimensions

What are the actual dimensions of the 17in and 20in displays found on the current range of iMacs, in mm preferable. Thanks, --Fadders 17:41, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Easiest way to find is to look at the 'technical spec' on the apple site (http://www.apple.com/imac/specs.html)...For info the 17inch is 43cm X 42.6cm and the 20-inch is 47.2cm X 49.3cm. The viewable area will be smaller. Hope this helps ny156uk 17:54, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much! --Fadders 22:05, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Google Earth?

Is there something like Google Earth that has updated photos? 68.193.147.179 17:45, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure about alternatives that are more up-to-date, but google-earth does update its images regularly (http://earth.google.com/faq.html). I think Yahoo do a similar map but i've never used it. ny156uk 17:49, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

For some reason Microsoft's arguably better version of the satellite style mapping tool, local.live.com, is largely unknown. It may have more up-to-date photos. Also check out their 'Bird's eye' facility, which provides a much closer view of an area, presumably taken from a low flying plane. Johnnykimble 18:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I Don't see how theres is better in anyway at all? As for more up-to-date all the ones I saw looked at were many years old. I know building that are up for about 5 years that aren't on live but are on google earth.--Dacium 05:09, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I find it better when it comes to using it as a proper map. Their road view includes more roads in my area, and it is much more detailed than Google Earth. From purely a toy perspective, Microsoft's version also offers the better application for my area, with Bird's Eye photos available. A lot depends on where you are looking at, but I do think Microsoft's version offers more in the way of detailed road mapping. Johnnykimble 14:27, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Google Earth does update its imagery. Its just that nice, cloud-free, reasonably high-resolution, orthorectified, quality-controlled imagery takes time to make. There is near-realtime satellite imagery available on the web, like Modis Rapid Response [3]. It is interesting to see what raw satellite imagery looks like compared to the nice stuff you see on Google Earth. Most obviously -- there are lots of clouds. Pfly 03:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

My First Edit

I hope I did this correct:

1. I looked at the orphaned Dynamic Software listing. 2. no knowledge of this company. 3. Very aware of Dynamic Software the NJ base company. 4. Added an entry for the NJ company. 5. DId I do this right or was a suppose to create a new entry? 6. Could you point me to how to add a new article or post?

thanks

Al —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Akc9000 (talk • contribs) 18:48, 4 March 2007 (UTC).

To create a new article, type the article name in the search box and hit 'go'. If they page does not exist, you will see a red link, allowing you to start the page.

Since you were writing about a different company, a separate article is warranted.

I should advise however, that the information you added (and that which already existed) is of questionable notability. You need to make clear in the article, what is special about the company that makes it worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia. Take a look at this page, for more info >> Wikipedia:Notability

Another tip that you might find useful, is that, as you may have noticed, typing a list with one line after the other in the manner that you have done, leads to the all items being included on one line. An alternative method is to use the # symbol. The code:

#I looked at the orphaned Dynamic Software listing. #no knowledge of this company. #Very aware of Dynamic Software the NJ base company.

creates the list:

1. I looked at the orphaned Dynamic Software listing.
2. no knowledge of this company.
3. Very aware of Dynamic Software the NJ base company.

If you need more help, you might consider posting at the Wikipedia:Help_desk (this is the computing reference desk, intended for questions about computing, rather than computing-articles, which is slightly different) but feel free to continue asking questions on the same topic here. --Seans Potato Business 19:13, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Remote install of ImageMagick to enable thumbnailing on my wiki

I only have FTP access to my web host and I'm trying to install ImageMagick on my server so I can enable thumbnailing on my wiki. I use Go Daddy as my hosting provider and I haven't seen any mention of them allowing me to use it. If anyone knows anyway to do a remote instal of ImageMagick, I would appreciate the help. Thanks. eyeRmonkey 19:30, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Upload, make sure your executable has execute permissions --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 07:41, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Minimising Use Of Dialup

I want to set up my Grandmother's computer so that she can send and receive email easily from her gmail account. The problem is, it's difficult to explain things to her and she's liable to walk away from the computer, leaving it connected to the dial up internet connection and wasting her money. I would like to know if I've anyway of setting up an email client to connect, download, disconnect, connect, upload, disconnect, so as to minimise charges incurred? --Seans Potato Business 21:55, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not aware of anything but i'm sure someone more in the known will tell you for sure. Meanwhile the easiest thing to ask her to remember perhaps may be to disconnect the modem from the phoneline. Hardly ideal but if you tell her to unplug the modem each time she doesn't have to worry about remembering how to disconnect on-screen. You've probably already thought of that but I think it's the most simple policy. ny156uk 23:30, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I was advised not to do that for the potential of damaging the modem if it's active. Not sure whether it is actually risk or not. The other thing is that since the line is low down, near the ground, she'd have to stuggle to access it, which isn't suitable either, though thanks for the suggestion :) --Seans Potato Business 23:57, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

You could set up a Scheduled task to dialup every 6 hours, then the email program to run every 6 hrs + 5 minutes and check email, then run another scheduled task to disconnect. I used to do this when I was on dialup. I can't remember the commands offhand, but you can dialup and disconnect form the command line as a scheduled task. --Worm 23:47, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

But then wont the computer need to stay on for a prolonged period of time? It would ideally only be on whilst she's using it (half an hour or less per day). Thank you too, for the suggestion --Seans Potato Business 23:57, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

This seems to be the ticket! [4] --Zeizmic 02:04, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I set up my mother with a Linux machine so that she could browse the web and do email and such, with no risk of viruses or inadvertently misconfiguring it (she didn't have the root password :) ), and so I could administer it remotely via ssh. I had a similar thing for her, which was basically just a script that would start up every 5 minutes, and determine (using sar) when the last network activity was, and turn off the PPP process if it had been longer than some threshold. --TotoBaggins 05:18, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

There were some ISP's, like Juno, which would only send email this way (you wrote the e-mail offline, then when you picked "SEND" it would jump online, send the e-mail, then jump back off). I don't know if any ISPs still work this way. Their reason was more to limit the cost for free ISPs than to avoid tying up your phone line, but it did have that side benefit, nonetheless. StuRat 20:35, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

You can set up the computer such that it would hang up if the network connection is inactive for some period. – b_jonas 17:13, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

USB mini-B -> AC Power adaptor

Does anyone know of a cable/adaptor that allows a device that uses a Mini-B USB connection to charge from an AC outlet? This is so that when I travel long distances without a PC I have a way of recharging my mp3 player (an RCA Lyra H100, for reference) -- I won't have a computer in front of me all the time.

--E Liquere 22:00, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah definitely, BlackBerry is one device that uses them and I know you can get separate 'travel chargers', but buying a BB branded charger may not be the cheapest option. Computer markets or swap meets if you have them near your area are the best places to source this kind of stuff. Vespine 03:58, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

My cellphone charges from AC through the mini-B. However, the charger doesn't work when I put it to my mp3 player. You might want to try a generic charger on ebay maid for the Lyra over a generic other charger. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 06:15, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

You could easily build such a thing yourself if you wanted to do a little wire splicing and/or soldering. USB power is 5 V, maximum 500 mA. -- mattb @ 2007-03-05T06:27Z

Your cellphone charger is probably Enhanced mini USB or CEA-936-A, and is probably designed to not do anything when plugged into normal USB devices. It also probably gives you more than the USB maximum of 500mA (probably 1A or more), allowing you to recharge your phone faster. --cesarb 12:43, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Right, there's usually no harm in using a power supply that is capable of delivering more power than necessary (unless the device consuming the energy is very poorly designed). I wouldn't risk using a supply that cannot deliver at least 500 mA of current, however. I'd also be a little wary of the typical wall wart; the cheap ones often leave a significant amount of AC signal in their output. This may disagree with the charging system on your MP3 player (probably not, but play it safe), which could have been designed with a much cleaner DC USB supply in mind. -- mattb @ 2007-03-05T22:50Z

March 5

Sound Editing

Let's say i have two .wav sound files; they are exactly the same, except that one of them has one more instrument on it than the other one. Is it possible, with a wave editor or any software, to do a substraction between the two files, in order to extract the additional instrument? Thanks!! -- Max —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.190.170.143 (talk) 03:45, 5 March 2007 (UTC).

Yeah, a program I used to use called gold wave could use a tool called inverse on the wav with the missing instrument, then you paste mix with the full wav and I'm pretty sure that's the same as subtracting. Never tried it that directly tho, the two wavs would have to be sample identical for it to work well. Vespine 03:55, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that is a normal capability. Note that actually doing this is much more difficult than it might seem. 1) Use the "Invert filter" on one of the tracks. 2) Adjust the timing relationship exactly. This might be complicated by independent speed variations due to playback, editing, compression, companding, etc., etc. Unless they were both recorded at the same time and went through the same sort of processing. 3) Adjust the gain of one to exactly match the other. 4) Then play them mixed together. You'll probably have to repeat 2 and 3 several times, if not dozens. —EncMstr 04:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Desktop settings on vista

i can not seem to figure out how to stretch or center a desktop backround picture with the vista OS. I can not find the option on the display menu like i was able to with XP. Is there a new way to do it now.--logger 04:23, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

right-click the desktop -> Personalize (or Control Panel -> Personalization) -> Desktop Background --Spoon! 08:27, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh thats how it goes. Thanks for the info it works.--logger 09:09, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Need a Bot (or something)

I need a Bot (or something) to detect and undo a certain specific kind of vandalism on the article for Florida. A certain vandal (or vandals) with changing IP addresses keep vandalizing the page using one specific inappropriate word. S/he comes back every couple of days to re-vandalize the page with the same word: "penis". I can't think of any reason that this word should ever appear in the article, so I think it should be automatically blocked/reverted. Can this be done, and if yes, can someone add it to the Florida article? Semi-protection has been tried several times, and the vandal just waits for the SP to be removed and then continues vandalizing in the same way, but always using the same word. --Britcom 05:14, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe you should report at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism, though of course you should do the customary warnings and stuff. Splintercellguy 06:24, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Possibly, report to WP:ANI, and we may be able to slap a longish block on the user. If vandalism is obvious, we do have bots to spot it, though I doubt that "penis" is a revert word, and this sort of thing can't be set article by article. The best thing is to carry on reverting, warning and reporting. Martinp23 21:23, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Fire Fox Seach hot keys???

Whenever I type ` or \ sometimes the seach at the bottom pops up. Then on another sessions this will never happen. Then it comes back again. Can't find any option for it and I am very confused to how I am enabling/disabling it.--Dacium 05:27, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Look for "Find As You Type Link" and "Find As You Type Text" at this site (or click Help→Help Contents and search for "Keyboard Shortcuts" and then look for the same phrases. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 09:40, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

FTP

I have no problem accessing FTP sites from the command line in Windows XP and did not have any problems previously accessing FTP sites using Internet Explorer but now since about six weeks ago no matter what I try all I get from IE when I try to access an FTP site is an IE screen message that says: "...IE can not display the webpage." What is going on and how can I restore FTP access under IE? Nocternal 07:40, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

The only thing I can think of is maybe proxy settings under the connections tab of the internet options? Usually the settings should just be automatic but you may need to look up your ISP to make sure. Failing that, reinstalling IE wouldn't hurt and isn't really that hard. Vespine 03:38, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Umm, reinstalling IE will only reinstall the shortcuts. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 06:24, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

iPod and Vista

Hi I got a new SONY laptop with windows vista preloaded into it, and since I cant gain access to my music files is there a way if I can take the songs out of my iPod and put them into my laptop? Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 219.78.44.150 (talk) 09:05, 5 March 2007 (UTC).

yeah, if you open My Computer (or whatever its called in Vista now...) and open up your iPod, then go to tools, folder options then show hidden files and folders. All your music is in the folder called iPod control then music. If you do a ctrl + F for all music files on your iPod it will(should) show them all. They'll all have odd four letter file names though, but iTunes will open with them with all the right names and artwork etc. Jackacon 22:36, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

SNMP OIDs of HP printers

We are trying to develop a simple SNMP application which will query the HP printers in our network about the status of paper, toner etc and display it on screen. Can anyone help me with the list of MIB object IDs for HP (HP 4300 series) printers (like which OID gets changed when the toner goes low, which OID changes when the tray runs out of paper etc)? I downloaded the MIBs from the HP site but it does not give what I want. (for example, it does not tell me which OID to look for, to find the status of paper in tray 1, or which OID gets changed when the paper is jammed) -- WikiCheng | Talk 10:11, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Amps

I was wondering, is there any possible way to plug a guitar amp into a TV? I don't know whether TVs have a plug-in big enough for the chord required but it'd be nice...Jk31213 16:23, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

It is possible, but first got to ask, why do you want to? --Kiltman67 16:47, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to plug the amp in because they're better than speakers. Amps are BUILT to withstand noise. Speakers are just for volume generally. Don't assume, by the way, that i'll have a guitar plugged into it. I just want the amp only. Think about it, you could increase bass, treble all in knobs!! And the chord would be normal for wut u would normally plug into a guitar, only a tv. I cant believe no one's ever thought of this before!!!Jk31213 19:37, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Ahhh, so you want to plug the TV into the amp. I thought you wanted to plug the amp into your TV and use the TV as a poweramp. It is all technically possible but the one problem you may find is that your TV may not have an audio output. I know I've just bought a new LCD TV and, while it has a multitude of connections, it lacks an audio output. There's no guarantee you'll be satisfied with the sound quality anyway, while I suppose it would be nice to have the kind of control over the tone that an amp would give you, bare in mind that guitar amps are designed with guitars in mind and there's a big difference between the tone of a guitar and the vast array of sounds that come out of your TV. The better option might be to get a proper sound system, or at least run the audio through a Hi Fi. --Kiltman67 20:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

That's exploiting it a bit isn't it? but anyway the plug for a guitar amp should just be the same as a 6.5mm mono headphone cord so you'd just need to get a cord running from your tv headphone out into the amp, with maybe a few size adaptors and stuff. If your tv doesn't have headphone out you should be able to do through a vcr, with an AV to headphone adaptor.

Mix Lord 00:34, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

If the guitar amp is has line level inputs, then you could run a cord from RCA outs on the TV, or even headphone out. I haven't messed around with too many guitar amps, i'd keep the volume and gain down and adjust everything gradually. By the way, stereophonic sound and flat response from 40 Hz (or so) to 20 khz is best.172.131.169.29 12:38, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

MSN

I signed my brother up for an MSN account on my laptop, to get it done quickly. I then decided to start using MSN myself again, and signed him out and me in. The problem now is that every time I start up my laptop, or select the MSN icon, it automatically signs me in as him, meaning I have to sign out (hoping that none of his friends are online and spotting me!) and sign back in. I've tried deleting my cookies, I never selected to automatically sign in, nothing I've tried has stopped it automatically signing his account in. It doesn't even ask for his password, and I can't find a setting to make it! What to do?

Oh, I'm running a very basic version of MSN,(4.7.3001) the one that came with my copy of Windows XP. I'm running XP on a laptop. I don't know what else would be useful. Please help! Thanks.

Skittle 17:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Lazy me suggests an update to the latest MSN Messenger. Splintercellguy 20:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Try removing the Passport details from your Windows account — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 20:44, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Fantastic! Thanks Matt, that was exactly it. Personally, if I were writing software I'd have a 'don't sign me in automatically' option in the usual MSN box, but what do I know? Thanks again. You're a star. Skittle 00:11, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Pleasure :) You're completely right, it's a really convoluted way of doing something that should be really simple. It's extra-annoying that it decides to blindly sign in with whatever credentials it has stored. Ho hum. You might want to check out Windows Live Messenger, the newest version of MSN Messenger. Much nicer, IMO (and prettier, too). — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 00:22, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

My problem with the prettier MSN is that it doesn't make such a clear colour distinction between signed in/signed out, which I like so I can quickly determine whether it's worth staying signed in or not. I don't really use the newer functions, and it's annoying to download the new version every time I have to wipe my harddrive (stupid viruses). Plus, the newer stuff tends to try to do more when you first sign in, opening more stuff which I have to close. I like simple :-) Thanks though. Skittle 21:47, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Compatible video formats?

I always try to put compatible formats for video on my PSP.I tried a compatible format on my PSP and when it is on my PSP, it always counts the compatible format as Corruptible Data. Will someone help? LongGoneVista 18:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Which formats are you using? And how are you doing it? How were the files created? Mix Lord 00:29, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Couldn't use their blasted Flash site to find the specs, but I've seen MPEG-4 files marked as "PSP compatable", so I guess it's compatible with at least some parts of the MPEG-4 specifications. The wikipedia article suggests (without giving sources) that it is also compatible with the H.263 codec. I'd suggest an MPEG container, with MP4, MP3 or mpga as the audio codec, and then try H.263 and MPEG-4 as the video codecs. You can convert between different video formats using File, Wizard on VLC media player. --h2g2bob

Audio Extracting Software Feature Not Listed

I've very good at ripping music onto my computer, but some music is out of my reach, because it is impossible to find a way to silence other background noises while recording the music. I've researched Google many times, and have found many Audio Software products, but none of them list information about features that allow a user to rip music without sound FX; thus I've hesitated to purchase them. What I NEED is an Audio Software that can provide some way to turn off specific audio material, (such as speech, sound FX, narrating, etc.), and record the music only. Since some Video Games, and most DVDs don't have audio options, the audio software must be able to rip/extract pure music by simply reading the DVD or Video Game Disc. If somebody could provide [and guarantee] me information about software that can do this, it would make my life! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 160.32.2.1 (talk) 19:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC).

I don't know of any software, but suggest turning off the sound effects then recording the music coming out of the speakers (or better yet, use an audio output jack as input to your recording device). If you can't turn the sound effects off, perhaps there is a place in the game you can stand where no sound effects occur (a store where you buy upgrades, for example). StuRat 22:50, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I have played around with audio production for a few years and am pretty sure what you are after does not exist. A human voice for example is multi harmonic and can span frequencies between 85Hz and 5000Hz which also just happens to be where a lot of musical instruments also happen to reside, it is impossible for a piece of software to differentiate between a human voice and an instrument, especially since the human voice is frequently used as an instrument. There are some tricks which are used to separate vocals out of music but they are usually dependant on the fact that voices are usually mixed perfectly in the centre of a track while instruments are mixed slightly to the sides, but I doubt that is the case in video games. It may work with DVDs, dialogue usually only comes out of the centre speaker so you can probably extract the music by excluding the centre track, sound effects thought may be a different matter. This would require you to rip audio channels separately. These are techniques which software would not do automatically for you, you would need to learn how to do it. Vespine 23:34, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

The voice cancellers, i think, use the fact that the vocals are often monoaural and the instruments have phase differences (not just level) between the channels. So you bypass the low bass, bypass the high treble, and apply some cancellation on the middle band. Then sum the 3 bands. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.131.169.29 (talk) 12:48, 7 March 2007 (UTC).

A good open-source audio program is audacity it has a tool that lets you remove any noise that is under a certin number of Decibels (such as static), along with a bunch of other stuff. I found it on sourceforge.com. Foil Fencer --)----------- 19:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Unicode in Microsoft Word, OpenOffice.org

How do you use Unicode in Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org? - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)|HISTORY} 21:58, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

You might be interested in Alt codes. --TotoBaggins 02:34, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Bash

How do I, in Bash and using cat and date, do the following:

Read stdin and write it to a file whose name is the output from date?

Even better, how do I do this but also have the name of the file have some text (e.g. "Please read: ") stuck before or after the date?

Thanks —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.194.21.177 (talk) 22:02, 5 March 2007 (UTC).

OK, I actually just figured this out - am doing:

cat > "Please read: `date`"

So another question: how do I do the same thing but have the output from date plus an extra newline at the top of the file? I can do it now by doing:

date > "Please read: `date`" && cat >> Ple*

But that's cheating - referring back to the file using *. How should I be doing this?

Thanks. --87.194.21.177 22:34, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

How about

(date && cat) > "Please read: `date`"

-- Spoon! 23:24, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

You can give also date a format (see man date) that will make it nicer-looking and easier to do shell-scripting on without having to monkey with spaces and such. A style like the one below has the advantage that an alphanumeric sort is also a chronological sort. --TotoBaggins 02:26, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

$ date +Please-read-%Y.%m.%d-%H.%M.%S
Please-read-2007.03.05-21.23.16

Thanks guys. Sorry to split hairs, but does

(date && cat) > "Please read: `date`"

in fact run date twice? So I could in theory get a file called WHATEVERTIME whose firstline is WHATEVERTIME+SOMEVERYSMALLTIME? How do I get round this? Thanks again. --87.194.21.177 09:02, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it runs it twice. You want

now=`date`  # or use bash's nicer $(date) syntax
{ echo $now; cat } > "Please read: $now"

(If using braces doesn't work, change them to parentheses. I believe they'll work and be slightly more efficient.) Does that help? --Tardis 14:10, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone that replied. I now have it doing exactly what I want. Thanks again. --87.194.21.177 08:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

March 6

Microsoft Word 2007 [Trial]

A pop-up comes up every time I open "Microsoft Word 2007 [Trial]". It reads, "Please run Setup then click Repair." Does anyone know where "Microsoft Word" Setup is or how to fix this problem? 68.193.147.179 00:52, 6 March 2007 (UTC)If

Go to Start -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -> Then find Office 2007 and select "Change". If you're in Vista it won't be called Add or Remove Programs it'll be called Programs and Features. --froth^T 01:11, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I tried that but, it doesn't work, do you know anything else to do? 68.192.10.128 21:51, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Winzip

please privide me a brief definition of winzip.what can i do with it and how i can operate it—202.70.64.41 02:31, 6 March 2007 (UTC)rameshbista2003.

Did you read winzip? --TotoBaggins 02:37, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

It's really easy. You can open a zip archive, see its contents, and extract them -- just what you'd expect. (I think it has a bunch of other features, too, but I've never used them.) Was there some particular aspect you were having problems with, or wondering about? —Steve Summit (talk) 03:15, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

WinZip allows you to open or create .zip files. Zip files contain other files and folders. It groups them together and makes them smaller (compresses them), which makes them handy for transfering files between different computers. You can then extract them - using WinZip - to get the original files back. I prefer FilZip, which does exactly the same as WinZip. --h2g2bob 07:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I like 7zip; its pretty fast, and has vastly better compression than any other program of similar speed except WinRAR, which isn't free and still is often worse than 7zip. 7zip also has very fast decompression when using LZMA. Of course if you want really good compression you have to use PAQ8K ;) —Dark•Shikari^[T] 19:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Playstation 1 games on Playstation 2

I just got some PS1 games and tried them on my PS2. They work fine except the games don't seem to recognize that there is a memory card in the slot. Is there a way overcome this so I can save games? ike9898 02:32, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, looking at google, you can't. See this forum thread. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 03:11, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

As the thread says, you can use a memory card; it just has to be a PS1 memory card (they fit in the same slot). I have two cards of each kind for exactly this reason. --Tardis 14:05, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

you also can't use the PS1 cards with more than the standard 15 blocks for some reason... I had one I bought from Game that just went haywire. Jackacon 22:29, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Old DOS game

I remember an old DOS space-combat game I used to play when I was younger. All I remember was that there were a bunch of weapons (i believe they were unlocked throughout the missions), one of them was Photon Torpedoes (and it wasn't a star trek game, I think you pressed 3 or 5 to use them), and the final mission had you fly inside a giant core ship with barely-get-the-ship-through openings (it wasn't like the Death Star II, it was completely open but had small openings). I thought it was something called Space Quest or something but that's a completely different game. It may have had roman numerals. It came in a software pack I got, maybe around 1995-1999 (thinking around '96, cause my first FPS was Chex Quest :) )Anyone know what game I'm talking about, and the name? -Wooty Woot? contribs 03:34, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Is it a vertical/horizontal scroller, or 3D? It'd help narrow it down. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 06:53, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

3d. You were in the "cockpit". -Wooty Woot? contribs 08:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

It wasn't Wing Commander or Descent, was it? --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 08:23, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Nope. I think my best bet at this point is to find any space sim with a level described like the one I did, and go from there. I have a feeling it's not very well-known, and that's why I can't find it. EDIT: I'm not sure, but I think it might have had wingman support, and on the last mission you had to blow up the core of the giant station as well. -Wooty Woot? contribs 09:23, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Did the level you describe involve having to move the spacecraft vertically up and down to get through the openings? And were the openings all in a straight line? I have a faint recollection of a game similar to that on the Amstrad CPC 464, but unfortunately don't know the name of it. However, if it was available on the 464, it should be easier to find by a process of elimiatation by going through a list on a site like this and seeing if any of those ring any bells. Johnnykimble 11:11, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe the openings were in a straight line (weren't haphazardly placed), but of course they were all the way around the ball-shaped structure. Think of a chain link/chainmail sphere. -Wooty Woot? contribs 21:20, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Shadows and rounded corners using CSS

Can someone explain to me how to put rounded corners around div tags using css? I'd like to get something that looks like this:

Thanks in advance ^^ Mango Sango 03:44, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe it's just images. It´s in the CSS3 draft and firefox supports it (using -moz extensions) but neither of which are standard at the moment. --antilived^{T | C | G} 03:50, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

It's done with images indeed. -- mattb @ 2007-03-06T04:06Z

How do you align the images though? Do you you a position;relative and then set the parent to the main column? Mango Sango 17:23, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Why not look at the source? — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 17:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

DHT

Asked this awhile ago but didn't get a good answer. When you're downloading from the bittorrent DHT network with a compliant client (say utorrent) on a fresh install of the client, how does it find the very first node? Supposedly if you know the address of one node you can route to any other node in the network, but how does it find that very first node? Is there an uber-populated DHT node run by the bittorrent people that everyone running utorrent connects to at least once to populate their own hash tables? Doesn't that defeat the decentralization? --froth^T 06:30, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I've always wondered about that too. Maybe trackers count as uber-populated DHT nodes, but then you're still right, it defeats decentralization for the most part. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 06:47, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe DHT nodes are discovered via peers and seeds discovered via tracker, or via DHT information in the torrent file. Splintercellguy 07:53, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Newly installed clients have no node table saved and do indeed get initial information from the torrent file. See the protocol draft sections "BitTorrent Protocol Extension" and "Torrent File Extensions". Note that you don't necessarily need to have the address of a node with peer information for the torrent you're interested in, you merely need to know the address of a node with a populated routing table. In my experience maintaining tracker software, DHT is a kludge and a generally evil thing. Then again, so is the rest of the ill-defined BitTorrent "protocol". -- mattb @ 2007-03-06T15:13Z

Ill-defined maybe, but clients and trackers seem to do a good job compromising on a specific protocol. Thanks guys this is definately a satisfactory answer --froth^T 17:37, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Try writing a tracker that attempts to keep precise track of byte transfer statistics. You'll find just how fun a a loosely-defined protocol can be. -- mattb @ 2007-03-06T21:35Z

Well aren't piece negotiations and "byte transfers" supposed to be P2P anyway? The tracker doesn't really need to know what's going on between peers --froth^T 20:59, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Dual Display on iMacs

Can the new iMacs handles dual display? With extended desktop, not mirroring? THanks, --Fadders 07:48, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes all current iMacs support dual extended display (not mirroring). In fact you can make old iMacs support dual monitor spanning with an Applescript like Screen Spanning Doctor. --24.249.108.133 21:27, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Digital Image Resolution

I cannot work out why an image downloaded from a digital camera will have a resolution of 300dpi when examined under "properties" on the desktop of a PC, yet, when opened with Adobe Photoshop, the image resolution sets it at 72dpi. If the image resolution in Photoshop is lifted to 300dpi, the picture is huge and unworkable. Why and how does this happen? What does it mean? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Giaccirillo (talk • contribs) 08:55, 6 March 2007 (UTC).

It sounds to me like the image is just too large at that resolution (too many pixels) for that version of Adobe Photoshop to handle properly on your computer, so it lowers the resolution to something it can handle. They should really pop up a message when they do something like that (perhaps they did once a long time ago, and you picked "Don't show me this message again"). StuRat 14:26, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I have a feeling that photoshop ignored the 300dpi (if it's there at all) and reverted to 72dpi for internal purposes. Note that these numbers mean nothing when it comes to viewing or working with the image, only when printing it on paper, for which you typically have a set size in mind. At that point any previous DPI information is scrapped anyway as the image is mapped to the printout. Typical --66.195.232.121 16:33, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

DPI can be a very misleading setting -- in the end pure pixel dimensions are all that really counts. DPI is used for printing and sometimes for displaying. My guess is that your camera does not properly indicate that the files should be 300 dpi so Photoshop is just assuming they are 72 dpi. But if the pixel dimensions are the same then there is no difference in the file itself spare the resolution setting. --140.247.251.81 17:21, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

ASP on Apache

I have been running MS Personal Web Server with ASP and connection to a MS Access database. Here is an example of the code:

default.asp
<html>
<body>
<%
dim ansl
set ansl = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
ansl.ConnectionString = "DRIVER={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ=" & Server.MapPath("bokrec.mdb")
ansl.Open
dim databas
set databas = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")
databas.Open "Sorterabok",ansl
do while not databas.EOF
Response.Write databas("Titel")
Response.Write databas("Genre")
databas.MoveNext
Loop
databas.Close
set databas = Nothing
ansl.Close
set ansl = Nothing
%>
</body>
</html>

add.asp
<!-- #include virtual=/adovbs.inc -->
<%
dim ansl
set ansl = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
ansl.ConnectionString = "DRIVER={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ=" & Server.MapPath("bokrec.mdb")
ansl.Open
dim databas
set databas = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")
databas.Open "Bokrecensioner",ansl,,adLockOptimistic,adCmdTable
databas.AddNew
databas("titel") = Request.Form("titel")
databas("genre") = Request.Form("genre")
databas.Update
databas.Close
set databas = Nothing
ansl.Close
set ansl = Nothing
Response.Redirect "default.asp"
%>

Can I switch to Apache? Jacob Lundberg 13:21, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so — at least not easily. ASP is not something Apache will natively understand, so you'd at least have to install some third-party software to interpret it. Even then you'd have to make sure that said software could properly instantiate database objects, which seems slim. If you had something like this then you could probably do it easily, but that presumes both the ability to install things onto the server and also some money for the software. Sounds like an expensive hassle to me.

Now, it would not be too hard to re-write your code in PHP and to try and use Access via and ODBC connection (though I've never tried it -- it would be easier to just import your Access data into a MySQL database in my opinion). But as for just dropping your code into an Apache framework, it would be pretty tough, unless someone out there knows something I don't. --140.247.251.81 17:30, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Trivial. Easy. Use the Apache::ASP module --froth^T 17:34, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Did you read their FAQ? They don't support VBScript (which he uses) and their database support is quite minimal (ODBC with Perl, certainly not ADODB). --140.247.251.81 17:37, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

So the real problem is that there is nothing free that interprets VBScript for ASP on Apache. Searching the Internet, I came across ModVB, which does that, but is in alpha development and has not released any files. --Spoon! 21:32, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems that I will have to learn how to write PHP and use MySQL. Thanks anyway, everybody! Jacob Lundberg 18:22, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Computerised control

What ways are there of computerised control for other computer systems? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.97.199.237 (talk) 14:46, 6 March 2007 (UTC).

I don't think you have expressed this question well enough for us to be able to tell what you are really looking for. Have you seen our articles about Computer-aided manufacturing? or maybe CNC? They might have something to do with the information you are looking for. If not, try to reword your question and give it another shot. Vespine 02:32, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Long-term laptop care

I just replaced a laptop after only 2.5 years of service and I was quite unhappy with how quickly it ran into hardware problems (I have been using the same desktop for almost a decade now). My thought is that there must have been something I was doing with it that caused it to have a very rough and short life. I've Googled around for "laptop care" instructions and all of them are obvious and useless (don't spill things on it, don't drop things on it). Are there any other strategies to promote longevity in a laptop? Cases that reduce their ability to be bumped around in transit? Better ways to carry it or set it down to avoid anything getting loose or coming into any strain? I'd like this one to last a bit longer -- any way to encourage that? (Obviously buying an extended warranty will be useful, too.) --140.247.251.81 17:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

To tell you the truth, I don't think it's worth doing much more then the obvious. Don't knock it around and get a good laptop carry bag, one with a metal frame, not a completely soft one. Apart from that, I think it is important realise and understand what a laptop is and why it fails like it does. I work in IT and the most common fault I see with laptops is hard disk failure, so I can't stress enough: back up important data! It's almost inevitable that you will lose data at some stage if you don't back up. The second most important thing is, like you mentioned, extended warranty! With all computers, it is quite common for something to fail at some stage, but in a laptop, unlike a desktop, if any one single component fails it usually means replacing the entire main board because it is so tightly integrated to everything in the system, which makes any repairs usually very expensive. Vespine 21:28, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Did it feel hot after you used it ? If so, this heat may have shortened it's life. Some strategies to cool it off are:

1) Point a fan at it when one is available, and leave it on until after the computer has cooled.

2) Place it on a stand so air can circulate under it, or alternatively place it on a thermally conductive surface, like metal.

3) Remove the battery when plugged in and using the computer. Then, after the computer cools down, replace the battery and allow it to charge. This will allow air to circulate into the battery compartment and will also avoid combining the heat from charging the battery with the heat from the computer itself. Beware, however, that this method will mean you have no battery backup in case of a power failure, so be sure you have an uninterruptable power supply.

4) Set the power management settings to shut down the computer quickly when not used.

Also, don't allow people to smoke around the computer, as the tar from smoke can gum up the components. If you need to use the laptop in particularly harsh environments, you might also consider a rugged laptop: [5]. StuRat 13:33, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Good PHP user management system

I'm looking for a good PHP/MySQL user management system that is 1. free, and 2. works pretty well and will not be a bear to integrate with any existing code. I'm going to be setting up a user-editable database and would like to be able to do things like create new accounts, let people edit their accounts, and give people varieties of permissions, and it occurred to me that rather than re-invent the wheel here there should be easy systems already put together for this. Googling "PHP user management" or "PHP user login" came up with a few results; does anyone have experience with any of them? I'd prefer not to have to experiment with 10 of them if there is one which is known to be good and relatively easy to use.... Thanks! --140.247.251.81 17:46, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

This sort of thing is likely to be very application-specific (permissions to what? what can the users modify about their accounts?). I'm inclined to believe you'd be better off writing what you need yourself. -- mattb @ 2007-03-06T21:30Z

I find that highly unlikely. All you would need is a set of classes that would let you retrieve the permissions settings and then the application itself could figure out what to do with it. It would be much easier to modify existing code in this respects (if it were well written and modular) than it would be to write an entire user system from scratch (which also would involve all sorts of messing with cookies and passwords and etc.) --24.147.86.187 01:14, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

You're overestimating how much code goes into a PHP "user system with cookies and passwords", but others are welcome to comment. I still think you'll be best off writing the solution that fits your site best. Otherwise, I would look for some kind of pre-fab ACL system (if anyone has bothered to write such a thing). -- mattb @ 2007-03-07T01:34Z

There are many pre-fab systems available, as I wrote above, I was asking if anyone had any experience with them to distinguish between them. And in my own experience getting a decent user system set up correctly has been more hassle than I'd like it to be at this stage of the project. --24.147.86.187 13:50, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Making a good user management backend is a one day project- one of those prefab things for which developers practically have the entire code memorized. It's really not that big of a deal, do it yourself --froth^T 20:49, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

djvu

I just downloaded a library of files with the extension .djvu. I want to open them but don't know how! I have Roxio Deja Vu installed on my computer, but I have no idea how to open the files with that. Can somebody help? [Mαc Δαvιs] X (How's my driving?) ❖ 21:41, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

A quick googling suggests Roxio Deja Vu is unrelated; appears to be backup software? The little DjVu viewing I do I use WinDjView; google for it or there is a link at DjVu. There's also MacDjView if the Mac in your name means that Mac :-) Weregerbil 10:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Printing in Internet Explorer 7.0

In Internet Explorer 7.0 [Running on WinXPHome], there is a zoom button on the top of the screen (it says: "Shrink to Fit, 100%, 95%, etc...). Is there a way after zooming in to 150% to move to a different spot on the page to print? 68.192.10.128 21:50, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? Are you wanting to print out a section of a zoomed in page in IE? If that's the case, the print command with just print out the whole page. However, if you hit Alt+Print Screen while using IE with a zoomed in page it will copy the image of your web browser into the windows clipboard. From there you can paste the image into a simple image editing utility, like paint, and print it out. —Mitaphane _?|! 05:05, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Would 'Print selection' accomplish what you want? Anchoress 05:30, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

When I click "Shrink to Fit" and change it to "150%", it automatically enlarges the top-left corner; is there a way to change the are you want to enlarge? 68.193.147.179 20:28, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

You mean something like rasterbate? --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 21:50, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

No, when I click zoom in to 150%, it automatically prints the top-left corner. Is there a way to change the area that I want to print (ex: the center of the page). 68.193.147.179 21:48, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia

Do you know how Wikipedia's web page dynamically scales as you widen your browser? Most sites have a static size. thank you.

JakeV —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.198.77.150 (talk) 22:23, 6 March 2007 (UTC).

If by static size you mean these sites which force the whole content in a small 800 pixel column (while your browser window is twice as wide, leaving a huge amount of white space), Wikipedia doesn't have to do anything; the default on the web is to dynamically scale, and you have to add special instructions to prevent it. Why these sites restrict the content width is a mistery. --cesarb 22:58, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

For effect. And, previously, people typically only had screen widths between 800 and 1280 so it wasn't really a big deal to force it to be 800 pixels. On the other hand, quite a lot of pages look really bad when stretched to 100%, say, on monitors at resolutions 1600x1200 - unless it has a lot of content, i.e. Wikipedia. But yeah, Wikipedia uses percentages for scaling - as it should always be unless you are forcing sizes for images and stuff. x42bn6 Talk 23:19, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

In other words, Wikipedia demonstrates proper web design. Most web pages are designed by print media people who stay awake at nights worrying about the specific height of the letter "i" in the logo text on the top of the page. Images, also, should be set using percentages or em-height. If you absolutely have to have an image take up half the screen, set it to 50% and let it take up half the screen. Don't force me to look at an itsy-bitsy little page scrunched up in the upper left corner of my browser. --Kainaw ^(talk) 00:04, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, before CSS was popular, you made fixed sized layouts. I had to when I used to work as a web designer. Maybe the habit for some people stayed. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 05:35, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Couldn't you use percentage as the width of a table block before CSS? --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:17, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Images have always had percent widths/heights. Tables always had percent widths. Never has HTML required fix-width layouts. The practice of doing fix-width layouts came from ignorance of HTML. The main reason that it bothers me so much is because I am tasked with dealing with print media idiots all the time who will never ever understand the concept of percentage-based layout. I wish that a requirement for being a web designer is that you can never, under any circumstances, ever have had any experience in print media. --Kainaw ^(talk) 13:08, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

March 7

How do I insert the image I have uploaded

Do I have to have my account for a certain number of days before I can use the image I uploaded?

The articl went through with no problem, but I am having trouble getting my uploaded image in the article. Help —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Blakoutmagazine (talk • contribs) 01:54, 7 March 2007 (UTC).

• Generally it's not a great idea to write an article about yourself or your friends, acquaintances, etc, see WP:NOTABILITY.--VectorPotential^Talk 01:58, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

• Supposing that you were writing about a notable subject, all you'd have to do is replace [[Image:Example.jpg]] with [[Image:Soulfood3.jpg]] as I've demonstrated above by correcting your defunct media link--VectorPotential^Talk 02:00, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Editor tools on Wikipedia and different than the ones on Mediawiki?

I would like to know where I can get the extra tools I see in the editing toolbar. I have searched high and low for some sore tof extension but to no avail.

Please advise.

--Eccentric67 10:28, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

XP registry monitor

I have installed XP newly on my system. Is there any good free tool (tried and tested by you guys) available which runs in the background and lets me know if an application tries to modify the registry? -- WikiCheng | Talk 12:09, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe Spybot - Search & Destroy has this feature. I use it in Windows 98 SE, where it appears to have a problem with the fonts on the pop-up panel that warns of a registry change, but otherwise works. I can't attest to how it runs under Windows XP. StuRat 13:21, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure if Spybot looks for changes in the registry -- WikiCheng | Talk 14:18, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

It does, and prompts you if you want to allow each. If you don't answer yes in a few seconds, it assumes the answer is no and blocks them. StuRat 14:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

You might also want to checkout RegMon from SysInternals (whose utilities are now available direct from Microsoft), although I don't think this runs in the background Johnnykimble 19:55, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, RegMon is an excellent program ("tried and tested" by me) and seems to be what you want, although it's supposedly been superceded by process monitor. Never used process monitor though --froth^T 20:56, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll try Spybot. Thanks for your help! -- WikiCheng | Talk 07:25, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

GMake

I have a project I'm trying to build from source for which the instructions say to use the command 'gmake ...'. At the command line of my Mac, it says that it doesn't understand 'gmake'. First of all, when I search Google, I only get hits for GNUMake

1. Are gmake and GNU Make the same thing?

Then, when looking for the program, I can only find links to the source code

2. Are there any compiled versions of gmake/GNU Make for macs? Or is building it from source easy to do?

Thanks for any help! -Mary

Googling for gmake mac brings up this, which says:

"Eventually you'll encounter build instructions that include the gmake command. As delivered, OS X doesn't support gmake. But it's the same thing as make, which is supported in the Developer Tools. Here are the steps to make the link for gmake:

which make
cd /usr/bin
sudo ln -s make gmake
exit

As always, your mileage may vary, but not by much. Once done, any build scripts that include the gmake command will run the command just fine. I include this here because it fits in perfectly with the living mystery novel one lives when attempting to build stuff on OS X, or any other unix operating system for that matter. Applications assume that certain things are installed, including gmake. It's a reasonable expectation, but someone has to hunt down those things, and that person will be you."

— Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 16:25, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thanks! -Mary —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.96.110.73 (talk) 20:23, 7 March 2007 (UTC).

The GNU people put extensions in everything, and then people use them thinking that they're portable standard features. People do not know how to write portable code/files. Mac OS X is a BSD system and Linux is a GNU system, and they sadly have different make programs.

Page Cannot Be Displayed

I have a Dell laptop , and for the past week I havent been able to connect to the net through it . It says wireless network connected but no numbers next to the WINS server ( if that has any thing to do with it ) . I've connected it to a wire and it still gives the same error page . I have a Dell desktop and its working fine with the same network .. Oh , when open Explorer I get a page saying : page cannot be displayed ...etc. I dont get the window that asks for user name and password .. any ideas how to solve this at home ? Thanks 212.138.113.25 20:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Your router is incorrectly set up. -Wooty Woot? contribs 02:14, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

ok .... so how can I fix that ? 212.138.113.25 02:42, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

March 8

Windows XP - Windows Explorer

Windows XP Operating System.

  Windows Explorer - What, if anything, can I do to fix this problem?

Windows Explorer fails to run for more than an instance, even when re-instated using the ctrl-alt-delete box (Run Command). I've tried restoring Windows' settings back to a previously working date/configuration, attempted to De-bug Windows, and I have yet to use the Windows Restore Disk (because there are files I'd like to keep and have as of yet, not had the chance to back up.)

Is there anything else I can attempt before using the Restore Disk?

216.229.196.31 01:08, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

J.Williams

What error do you get when you try to run a second instance ? StuRat 03:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the OP means "an instant in time" rather then a second instance. You could get a hold of a live distro and use it to back up the data off the hard disk... Vespine 03:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Tiscali/AppleMac/Safari

Is any reader using the combination of System X on an AppleMac G4, Safari browser, and using Tiscali co.uk as ISP? If so, are you having trouble with using their new 'Mail' system and have you managed to solve it, if so I would be grateful for your help please.

My difficulty is that I only get the headers when I click on 'New' mail and have to click on 'Print' or 'Forward' to be able to read the body of the message. Furthermore I am unable to compose a new email since I am only presented with the 'To' and 'BCC' lines on the page; nothing else. "Resetting" Safari makes no difference, I do have "Private Browsing" ticked, would that make any difference?

Tiscali seen unable or unwilling to help and the only reply I get relates to PC's and not Macs and they don't seem to care. I am reluctant to telephone the help line as, with all great respect to the Indian call centre, I have grave doubts that they would understand or be willing to help.--88.110.207.121 01:12, 8 March 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.110.207.121 (talk) 01:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

Tool to get visual basic code from exe?

I complied my Visual basic6.0 code with native compilation rather p-code compilation. I got native code with the help of vb decompiler,

Now i want to get Visual basic code i had written. Is there any third party tool that will give me VB code. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Avneet83 (talk • contribs) 03:11, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

I believe not. Decompilers are still in their infancy, and source recovery is something which people pay lots of money for, I believe? Splintercellguy 03:16, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Best Note-Taking Program

Is there a note-taking program (ex Microsoft's OneNote) that can include internal hyperlinks. Like maybe I could creat a table of contents and I could just click on a term and go to it. Or on a date list, if I clicked an event next to a date, it would go to wherever I linked that date to in my notes? That'd be really nice. Also, in general, which one of the several notetaking programs is generally considered the best? Regardless of price. Thanks, Sasha

avchd

hi I am student of computer science. i am going to give seminar on 'Advanced video codec high defination' topic. i have searched power point presentation(ppt) on this topic but i didn't get so much material on this topic.please tell me some links on ppt and more information about this subject.

You should probably do research on the subject and create a power point presentation from that. Else, it'd be plagiarism. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 06:55, 8 March 2007 (UTC)