Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

WP:RD/C C #eee #f5f5f5 #eee #aaa #aaa #aaa #00f #00f #000 #00f computing Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing Computing WP:RD/C

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December 7

compiling python source code to an executable file

I am a beginner python programmer and I want to compile a source code file (with extension .py) to an executable file (.exe), can anyone tell me how to do it? Thanks in advance.--George (talk) 02:23, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

If you're on Windows, use Py2exe. It emits several files, so you might want to then make an installer with NSIS which yields a single exe file. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 02:30, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

And, for reference, if you were shipping for Linux you'd package your Python code in a package (DEB, RPM) that had dependencies on the Python system and any other packages you needed. I honestly don't know what you'd do on MacOS. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 02:33, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

You can also use cx_freeze (no article yet), as mentioned on Frets on Fire. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:42, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Virus

Sir, When I scan my computer, and if it founds any virus, it has one option saying that to "move to quarantine" I just want to know that what is "quarantine" and if I move that virus to quarantine where does it go? and after then is my computer is safe from that virus? I am using Bitdefender Anti virus on my pc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arvindshivanand (talk • contribs) 06:42, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Quarantine means the infected file will be moved to a selected directory (very often within the subtree of the anti-virus application) and maybe renamed (its extension will be changed to signify that it's infected and/or to hide its real contents). Quarantine is a way of semi-protecting the PC from the virus within the file if the file is sensitive enough to care for because it contains any data important to you. Personally, I almost never choose to quarantine infected files - if they're repairable, try to repair them, if not, rather delete them if they don't contain sensitive data. Good luck! --Ouro (blah blah) 07:10, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

RTC modem - where RTC is...

Hello, dear Refdeskers! I have a quick question - in the phrase 'RTC modem', what does RTC stand for? Real time something? I am just not sure. No, a bit stumped rather ;) Thanks and cheers! --Ouro (blah blah) 07:06, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

RTC? It usually means Real Time Clock in the electronics field. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:39, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I know, I have thought of this already. But does 'real time clock modem' make sense? --Ouro (blah blah) 11:21, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Since when does marketing lingo have to make sense? Just look at "Blast Processing" or measuring power of consoles in bits. TheGreatZorko (talk) 11:41, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

And this refers to what? --Ouro (blah blah) 13:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

RTC can also stand for Real time computing or Real time control - I doubt either of those are it either. Is it perhaps just the manufacturer's name or something? SteveBaker (talk) 16:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be used extensively in Europe (I found many search results in French and Spanish), and there were many pages that seemed to be comparing it to ADSL. Perhaps a cable modem of some type, but I could not find anything definitive. I also saw the term "real time communication" in my searching, but not in a clear enough context to make the leap to "yep, that's what it stands for." My gut feeling is that it wasn't a manufacturer name, but I'm pretty sure my gut fails WP:RS. --LarryMac | Talk 17:10, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I can tell you that it's definitely not a manufacturer's name. The term is taken from an instruction manual of another device, where the RTC modem is used as a means of communication of the device with a computer terminal as opposed to a direct cable connection. The manual also suggests that this modem connection is a dial-up connection. LarryMac and SteveBaker, thanks for your input, guys... --Ouro (blah blah) 17:39, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Hunch 've just wikipedia'd over to fr.wiki where I saw that RTC can refer to fr:Réseau téléphonique commuté (and the manual was originally translated from French). Could it be that it denotes a telephone (phone-line) modem? My gut gives a slight nod. --Ouro (blah blah) 17:44, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

That fr article has an English link under "Autres langues", which points to Public switched telephone network (PSTN). In English then it should be "PSTN modem" which would be just a slightly awkward way to refer to a plain old phone line dialup modem. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 21:25, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

In my head, this fits, and Google returns a hit or two for 'PSTN modem'. Just now also I've done a search for 'RTC modem' only for French-language sites... looks promising this. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:24, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Virus

Sir, I am usinf Bit defender anto virus 2008 i my pc. It has detected 19 viruses in my computer from which 3 have been deleted, but rest of are not deleted . What should I do delete those viruses. Iwant to know how to delete them. One more thing, that, if Anti virus detects some virus it has one option "move to quarantine" . What is "quarantine" and if move the virus in quarantine , is my computer is safe from that virus?

I will be waiting for ur response.

Arvind Kumar —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.161.45.160 (talk) 07:28, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

The quarantine question had been answered above. As for the viruses that had not been deleted, the question would be easier to answer if we knew what messages are you getting from Bit defender - why isn't he removing the viruses? What kinds of viruses are they? Sometimes specific patches or programmes are required in order to delete really malicious software. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a possability that there are infected files that are currently in use, and cannot be closed. Restart the PC in Safe Mode by pressing F8 during boot, just before the first Windows loading screen appears, and chosing "safe mode" or "safe mode with networking". Run the virus scan within safe mode, and see if that removes the viruses. Before doing this however I would back up any particularly important documents just incase the virus scanner removes an important Windows file, although this is unlikely. If this fails to remove the viruses I suggest downloading a trial of Eset NOD32, which is a professional level virus scanner and generally regarded as the best virus scanner on the consumer market, and if that cannot remove your viruses then I have no idea what will.

With regards to quarantine this is incase an infected file is needed for the continued operation of software or the operating system, so it can be put back allowing the user to back up his data, even if the file is infected. TheGreatZorko (talk) 10:39, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Moving location of My Documents and the like

I recently shifted back to Windows XP after using Vista (nothing wrong with the OS, just my soundcards drivers under the OS) and had moved Documents, and Music (the Vista names for My Documents) to another drive. This was trivial and involved right clicking on the Documents icon and chosing a different location for it. Now back on XP Windows insists my My Documents folder must be located at C:/Documents and settings/<name>/My Documents, and right clicking on the folder doesn't seem to work. How do I move the location of My Documents to where they are now? (That being F:/Music and F:/Documents) TheGreatZorko (talk) 11:02, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

See [1]]. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:22, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh hey that button wasn't there before. It's exactly like Vista! Does this work with My Music as well? I'm not on my home PC at the moment and this PC doesn't have a My Music folder. Hell I'm not even sure it has a sound card.TheGreatZorko (talk) 11:36, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

It should work with the 'special' folders witin My Documents too. I always use this button as I prefer to store my files on a separate partition as it saves all the hassle of oving them every time Windoze decides it needs reinstalling. 62.249.220.179 (talk) 14:08, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Re: Unicode composition ...

This should really be a follow-on response to an existing question titled "Unicode composition ...", in which I wanted to respond to who- ever suggested that I look into "Google Code Search" by saying that doing so didn't really help me, but I couldn't figure out how to respond to existing questions on the "Reference desk" (some help on which would be greatly appreciated :-) - which probably makes me seem pretty stupid, but I should explain that I'm still quite "dim", having not fully recovered from a massive brain hemorrhage a few years ago.

So, for the same reason, my original question still stands:

If the normalization standard says, regarding composing after decomposition: "[the last starter] L is replaced by the composite L-C.then C is removed", wouldn't doing so leave me where I started, with just "L"?

Am I missing something? what, then, does the above statement actually mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.105.122.191 (talk) 12:14, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Symbain for Pc--Linux for mobiles

Any idea if there is a live boot symbian version for PC??would it be faster than windows?How about any of other free open source fully loaded OS for Mobiles?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.240.72 (talk) 13:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if it helps, but according to this article, Symbian Operating System is a proprietary (Symbian OS does not seem to be open source.) operating system that runs only on ARM processors (Symbian OS does not seem to be designed for desktop/notebook computers). Does your PC have an ARM processor? --Kushal^t 17:41, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Firefox URL bar

Suddenly the url bar is not reflecting the page I am visiting (eg http://en.wikipedia.org ). How do I re-set it to do so please? On the left end it has a google G; on the right end it has a magnifying glass. - Kittybrewster ☎ 15:07, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

That is the search engine bar, not the URL/Address bar. It shows whatever you last searched for. -- kainaw™ 15:15, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Where is my URL bar? - Kittybrewster ☎ 15:16, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

It is difficult to say. Have you tried closing Firefox and re-opening it? It is possible a javascript hid it if you didn't purposely hide it. -- kainaw™ 15:18, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Right click in the blank space of your navigation bar, choose 'Customize', look for something called 'location', drag it up to your navigation bar. --Elliskev 15:19, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Brilliant. Thank you. - Kittybrewster ☎ 15:26, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

quick and straightforward path to a small-scale ecommerce site selling PDFs?

Problem: I have a relatively small-scale e-commerce site that I started as a student at my University. I sell publications that are saved to PDF files that people can buy one at a time, or buy subscriptions and see everything on the site until their subscription expires. Unfortunately, I am no longer a student (graduated) and the rules prohibit me from using the University servers anymore, because making money off this site is no longer consistent with my educational experience as a business student (since I am technically no longer a student).

Request: I do not have a lot of money and the site doesn't really generate outrageous revenue, but I'd like to keep it going. I went to the bank got my business name setup and all that stuff, but they told me I need to give them the webserver address and site and URL with a privacy statement and a bunch of other stuff. I already have a few subscription customers, and I'd like to keep things going without disrupting their existing subscriptions.

I'm wondering, is there a pre-fab turnkey solution that will work for me? I've looked at some "small business DIY ecommerce" type sites, but all of them seem to assume the merchant is selling and shipping some kind of product. All I am selling is the right to download and print PDFs, either "one at a time" or with a timed subscription that expires at a specific duration.

TIA for any infos. NoClutter (talk) 20:02, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like what you need is a web hosting provider. They come in all shapes and sizes; I'd suggest comparing and perhaps getting quotes from several providers to see which one might fit your (current and future) needs best. Word of mouth, so conveniently available online these days, may be useful in determining which providers are the most reliable and easiest to work with, provided of course that you always take it with the grain of salt it deserves. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:15, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

December 8

Coloured text in console mode

Is there any provision for coloured text in the standard, cross-platform C libraries for console mode? What about C++? NeonMerlin 02:45, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

• The closest thing to this will be ANSI escape codes. Post back if you don't get the hang of it. -- Sean —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.144.151.247 (talk) 03:10, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

There are libraries, such as curses, that will help you with this — it's not standard in the sense that e.g. libc is, but it's fairly well established and available on pretty much any system that has a console mode at all. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:10, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

DSL 10-day warmup?

I just installed DSL in my home and the modem had an interesting sticker on it. It said, "Attention! To achieve maximum speed, leave moden connected for 10 days." Can someone explain what this is about? The thought of a computer device needing 10 days to do anything is rather astounding. --208.189.34.45 (talk) 02:48, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The modem itself certainly won't need 10 days to "warm up". The only explanation I can think of is that your ISP is, for some reason, limiting the connection speed for new installations and removing the limit after (at most) 10 days. I'm not sure why they'd do that, though, unless perhaps it's to deter users from working around some elaborate traffic shaping scheme that needs several days to decide whether your connection speed should be throttled or not. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 03:00, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The explanation I've heard is that it needs to monitor the connection to determine the speed it can handle. Since that may vary with the load, it's necessary to monitor it over a long period of time to check what speeds work at various load levels. StuRat (talk) 03:53, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Card Making Program

Is there another program besides Microsoft Publisher to make and print cards? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.121.107.55 (talk) 03:48, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Sure, see the list of desktop publishing software. Many word processors — especially presentation-oriented ones like Apple's iWork — can probably also do it to a varying degree. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:55, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Space of hard disk consume by operating system

Why operating system consume some part of hard disk which is don't shown by computer? —Preceding unsigned comment added by San sharma (talk • contribs) 04:21, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

It'd certainly be nice to have an operating system that didn't consume any disk space, but that doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon. (Although one might, perhaps, consider an OS running from a live CD to qualify, and some older computers, such as notably the Commodore Amiga, did store a significant part of their OS in ROM.) As for the space not being shown, I'm not sure why that would be the case — perhaps it's so you wouldn't be tempted to go around deleting those important files in order to "save space". —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:48, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

There are lots of ways for the OS to leach away your disk space:

• The software that makes up the operating system itself requires some disk space.
• There are overheads involved with storing files on the disk. A file that contains (say) 12,345 bytes first gets rounded up to some exact number of disk blocks (suppose a disk block was 1000 bytes, a 12,345 byte file would actually require 13,000 bytes). If you have a lot of tiny files, the disk will fill up faster than if you have a few large files.
• Each file needs a corresponding directory entry of some kind. Some file formats reserve space on the disk for these directory entries (in Linux/Unix they are called 'inodes').
• Most disk drives have some bad blocks - these are redirected off to some other places on the disk resulting in some 'lost' space.
• Space must be allocated on the disk for 'swap space' - a place to park programs that are sitting around in RAM but not running at the moment.
• Increasingly (especially with laptops) the manufacturer will partition off a section of the disk drive for a copy of the operating system so that you can restore the OS from it rather than having to carry CD's around with you.

I'm sure there are bunch more ways.

SteveBaker (talk) 17:50, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Based on an earlier question, I think the questioner is referring to the part of the hard-drive capacity that is "don't shown by computer" (i.e. an 80 gig HD showing as 74 gig where not all of this is to do with 1024 vs 1000). I think it has something to do with the filesystem --Seans Potato Business 22:42, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Then all but the first and second things on my list above. SteveBaker (talk) 01:10, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Video Encoding

Any idea wether we can combine Xvid or Divx video with M4A audio into one video file with Avi extension?? Also what are the best settings to encode a video for playback in a nokia E62??59.92.248.15 (talk)

Photoshop pixelation effect

I'm a moderately experienced Photoshop user, but I can't figure out how to make this effect. I'm looking for an arty pixelation, like the Rubik's Cube sculptures of Space Invader (as found here: [2] I want to make one of these sculptures, but I'd need a guide first. Anybody know how to do this? Thanks! -ParkerHiggins ( talk contribs ) 04:50, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

For simple pixelation just use the mosaic filter, or down size the image using bicubic interpolation and then upsample the image, using nearest-neighbour interpolation. Then you can add the grid by drawing a single grid and make that a pattern and repeat it. That's just one way of doing it.--antilived^{T | C | G} 09:30, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Is huge amount of physical RAM necessary for getting better FPS in games?

As for as today's latest games are concerned, do they really require about 2GB of memory?.I have 1GB+xfx 8600GT(256MB)+Pentium D 3.00GHz running winxp. I don't get sufficient FPS as shown in benhmark. The difference in config of theirs and mine seems to be RAM and processor. I guess cpu doesn't meddle much here as an issue. Can I get more FPS with another 1 GB RAM?. or is it time to go for high end GPU?.Thanks in advance —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 11:57, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, it depends what games you want to play, and if you have Vista or XP (Vista eats RAM). Definitely upgrade your CPU before RAM or GPU though, that's what's bottlenecking you most (even if you use Vista). Dual Cores are pretty inexpensive nowadays. · AndonicO ^Talk 12:00, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd make a general statement that Windows eats RAM. I run Win98 on a machine with 512 mb RAM - enough to have switched off the swap file altogether. Satisfied with the results. --Ouro (blah blah) 13:46, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

No - the frame rate isn't the thing that's driving RAM requirement. (Trust me, I'm a game designer!) It's to do with the amount of content in the game. If the game says it needs 2Gb on the box - then that's how much you need. There is no incentive for game designers to demand more memory than they need. As a games company, the more demands you make, the fewer people can run the game, the fewer games you'll sell and the less money you'll make - and it's definitely all about making money. So if it says you need X Gbytes- then X Gbytes is what you need. If you try to run with less than it says on the box, the game MIGHT still run - but be swapping from disk. If that happens then the game won't run smoothely at all and will in all likelyhood be almost unplayable.

The reason games need more these days is because graphics chips are getting faster at a rate that is outstripping even Moore's Law and every time the speed of the hardware doubles, you can draw twice as much stuff in the scene and therefore you need twice as much memory to store it (unless you are planning on drawing a lot of the same thing over and over - but that's getting unacceptable to games players too). Worse still, in addition to the throughput rates going up, the display resolution that people are using is increasing too - and that means that you need higher resolution textures - and higher resolution textures need more storage space. As if that were not enough, we're also being tempted by things like high definition lighting algorithms that need more of the graphical data to be stored in floating point instead of single bytes - which can double or even quadruple your storage needs at a stroke. Sadly RAM sizes are not increasing anything like as fast as Moores Law - and our needs are increasing more rapidly than Moores Law - so overall, we're being squeezed into tighter and tighter spaces and having to get more and more creative about saving RAM. There is a game-complexity/quality versus RAM-needs trade-off - and where that trade-off is set depends on another trade-off which is that if you demand too much RAM then fewer people will be able to run your game - but if you set the quality bar too low in order to use less RAM, then it won't be such a good game and you'll sell a lot less. One of the attractive things about writing games for consoles like the Wii, Xbox360 and PS3 is that you know exactly how much RAM every user has - so no more ikky trade-offs.

The CPU speed and the GPU (graphics card processor) are both critical to getting a high frame rate - if you have the required amount of RAM then either the CPU or the GPU is the bottleneck. Which it is depends on the game you are playing and the setup you have. If the GPU is the bottleneck, then it may either be the GPU's pixel draw rate or it's "vertex processing rate" that's limiting you. If it's the former, then reducing your screen resolution even by a small amount will dramatically improve your frame rate ("fps") - so it's always worth trying that to see if it solves your problem. If the game goes faster when you reduce the display resolution - then a newer, faster graphics card might be the way to spend your money. If reducing the resolution doesn't help then it's hard to say whether the CPU or the "vertex processing" stage of the GPU is limiting you. Worse still, if you have an older motherboard with an AGP graphics card slot then it's possible that the AGP performance is the limiting factor and neither CPU nor GPU upgrades will help. That's much less likely to be the case if you have PCI-express with the graphics card plugged into the 8-lane connector as it should be.

Sometimes, the feature-set of the graphics card matters a great deal. There is a feature in the game I'm working on now that works really elegantly on cards that support "full floating point" math - but has to be implemented differently for cards that only have "half float" math. The alternative implementation is a lot more complicated - and therefore runs more slowly. However, there are other games that don't need full floating point support which run just fine on either sort of card. So switching out to a more fully-featured card - even one that is a bit slower in raw performance terms - would probably speed my game up a little bit (not a whole lot - but noticably)...but with other games it might slow them down. A large fraction of my job is avoiding ikky problems like this!

As you can tell, this is a horribly complicated business.

SteveBaker (talk) 14:44, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

..Unless you're Microsoft and hardware manufacturers are paying to you exaggerate system requirements --ffroth 21:52, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry - I should have started by saying "Never, ever, buy ANYTHING from Microsoft". SteveBaker (talk) 23:35, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

You can buy their products, just don't buy the crap they spew daily --ffroth 00:05, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I wrote a more detailed explanation of games performance on my private Wiki here: http://www.sjbaker.org/wiki/index.php?title=Graphics_cards_and_Games SteveBaker (talk) 17:30, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

2D designer program

hi,

does anyone know of a free/internet downloadable 2D designing program...something like the actual program 2D designer.............?

thanks.....--84.67.229.4 (talk) 12:15, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

How about looking here for starters? --Ouro (blah blah) 13:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The standout winner is inkscape - but there are a lot to choose from. Just make sure that the artwork is stored in SVG and you can fairly easily switch from one to another until you find the one you like best. SteveBaker (talk) 14:08, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

MKV problems in Win Vista

Hello there. I'm just wondering if anyone here has the same problem, or how I can fix it. Thing is, I cannot open .MKV files on my PC (running x64 Vista). I can play them on my mac, works fine, but on the PC.. nah. I'v tried the might VLC player and a load of 3rd party codecs, with no success. Not even the Media Player Classic worked. Oh, yeah, one player did work - the one in Azureus (bittorent client). Though that one isn't the most optimised player and it can't play HD videos w/o lagg.

Vista just ain't compatibe with MKV? 90.231.145.160 (talk) 15:57, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

You need a MKV splitter to use the container format in directshow players like Classic. As for the actual media you need the different codecs that the audio and video are encoded with within the container. --ffroth 21:31, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

JPEG, web spiders and the wonderful Avril Lavigne

I wana download images from http://avril-images.net but the site is is a weird format and all the links are javascripted, meaning that normal web spiders like httrack dont work for it. It uses Coppermine Photo Gallery. I have no idea how to do this. All I really want is to download all the JPEG images from the site, not the html. Any good programs for this. Thanks xxx Hyper Girl (talk) 16:11, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Probably a bad suggestion, but cant you just use printscreen, or Snippet? 90.231.145.160 (talk) 16:13, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Completely tangentially, check their copyright status first before you download them if you intend to do anything at all with them, of course. :) ++Lar: t/c 18:20, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I have Windows XP and wget. Entering the following command at the command prompt seems to work:

for /l %n in (1,1,22474) do @wget -nc -p -A jpg http://avril-images.net/displayimage.php?pos=-%n

It takes a long time though. I gave up after around 500 files. --Bavi H (talk) 00:48, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Points for whoever can find the worst picture of her. Or do I already win? Also please tell me you realize that celebrities are never the people that they portray in their work. --ffroth 00:30, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your help everyone! I haven't been able to get wget going yet (I'm not very good at compiling source code) but I'm working on it. ffroth, I do realize that celebrities put on a certain amount of acting in their public life, but I think Avril is one of the more "real" celebrities around. Hyper Girl (talk) 10:24, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

So download a binary. --ffroth 03:53, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Hey thats great!! :) Thanks ffroth so much! Hyper Girl (talk) 13:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Shell script - Windows/DOS or Unix/Bash

I need a script (either DOS or UNIX ,I don't mind) to look through a directory and all subdirectories, if there is only one .jpg file in the directory to rename that file 'folder.jpg', while keeping it in the same directory. Simple I'm sure, but scripting is not my forte. Can anyone help? Jooler (talk) 17:20, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

• Something like this should do:

for dir in $(find -type d); do
    num_jpgs=$(find "$dir" -type f -name '*.jpg' -maxdepth 1 | wc -l)
    if [ $num_jpgs -eq 1 ]; then
      mv -i "$dir"/*.jpg "$dir"/folder.jpg
    fi
done

It's not tested, so back up your directory first! --Sean 18:14, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Thanks, but it complains that the maxdepth should occur earlier on the line and it doesn't work with directory names with spaces in. Jooler (talk) 18:49, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

This should take care of most of the weird filename problems.

find . -type d -print | while read -r dir; do
  if [ `ls -f "$dir" | grep -c '\.jpg$'` = 1 ]; then
    mv "$dir"/*.jpg "$dir"/folder.jpg
  fi
done

It'll still barf on filenames with newlines, and there's a race condition between checking for a single .jpg and expanding the glob. If I wanted to fix those problems and make it really robust, I'd switch to perl. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 21:35, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that's just the ticket. Jooler (talk) 23:04, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Installing python modules, windows

Howdy, I am working on installing python modules on a windows XP machine. I have tried to follow the instructions here, which seem to be to 1. decompress the file, 2. use the DOS commandline to navigate to the folder, and 3. use the command python setup.py install from the commandline. Each time I try this, however, I get the error "'python' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file." The python interpreter (through the IDLE Gui) runs perfectly however. Tried restarting after decompressing the file, but with no luck. Any thoughts on what I could try next? Thanks, --TeaDrinker (talk) 18:19, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Got part of this one figured out; I had to add python to the path (not part of the installation process, I guess...). Now it is a whole new problem; it builds (using python setup.py build -c mingw32), but does not install (the command python setup.py install -c mingw32 gives me the error "invalid command 'mingw32'"). Any other thoughts? Thanks, --TeaDrinker (talk) 21:20, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

It seems that you're trying to install a Python extension written in C; you'll need to get a compiler for it (like the MinGW it seems to be trying to use) so that the Python module can compile itself. However, if it manages to build, maybe you just need to pass it some other program's name (instead of "mingw32"); I'm not sure. Are there any *.c files in the module? --Tardis (talk) 16:11, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Laptop choice

Laptops

Which brand is the best in terms of performance and which package deal is considered the best?

1) Sony Viao 2) Acer 3) Hp 4) Compaq 5) Or Lenovo notebooks

Kindly let me know the rationale behind the choice of the laptops? Garb wire (talk) 18:43, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Why not consider AppleMac amongst your choices?--88.111.112.161 (talk) 19:33, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Didn't 3 buy out 4? 68.39.174.238 (talk) 20:02, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

They're now their brand, yes. I'd go with five if I didn't have the possibility of getting a nice tasty Apple. --Ouro (blah blah) 20:23, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

PC World said the fastest Vista laptop is a MacBook! See here [3] --208.189.34.45 (talk) 00:54, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

• Hate to bring up the Mac/PC deate again, but the new macs have bootcamp pre installed, meaning you can run both OSs on a fast portable system for what is ( in my mind ) a healthy price ( about £700 ) 86.154.89.103 (talk) 01:13, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh really? There's quite a few laptops for less than the Macbook's exorbitant $1099 starting price with a Core 2 Duo, a gig of RAM, and a decently sized hard drive. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 04:14, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

But you only get what you pay for!

gag --ffroth 00:40, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Why are you not considering ASUS laptops?217.168.5.7 (talk) 19:16, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Word.docx

I have received a document name.docx which I understand is Word 2007. How do I open it using word 2000? What do I need to download? - Kittybrewster ☎ 18:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Get either Word Viewer or the Office Compatibility Pack, both from Microsoft. Hope this helps! CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 19:03, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Crashing of windows explorer

My windows explorer hangs every time i open up the windows.... My computer Whats the problem i m faced with? 19:09, 8 December 2007 (UTC)~

You'll have to give us more details - like, what OS are you on, which version of IE are you using, and whether you've recently installed something that you've downloaded from the web. First things you can do that are always good are a) switch to Mozilla Firefox and b) download NOD32, a relentless anti-virus app. --Ouro (blah blah) 19:41, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The moment I open 'My computer' after a transitory period of say 5 minutes, it gets stuck.... Hangs virtually , how to avoid this from happening? 16:16, 9 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Garb wire (talk • contribs)

What software is running in the background? What operating system are you using? Did you install anything new recently, especially downloaded from the Internet (from an unknown source)? Of the more obscure, is your system in order hardware-wise? Does everything that needs a cooler have a cooler? Is the place clean and safe to operate electronic equipment? --Ouro (blah blah) 18:35, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

-General Help: This can be caused by any number of problems. To troubleshoot this, you'll have to: 1)Scan for virus' (Google AVG) 2)Scan for spyware (Google Ad-aware personal) 3)Make sure any drives that are attached to your pc are correctly installed and compatible. 4) Check any network devices and make sure they sut up properly.

When you open the 'My Computer' your system searches for all virtual and physical hardware (such as Hard drives, floppy and cd-rom drives, network folders and connections, and any removable media). If there is a problem with one of these, it will cause a hang during the resource search that windows undergoes when you open 'My Computer'.

LAN

how would i be able to establish a LAN connection between my computer and laptop so that I and a friend would be able age of empires (rise of rome) multiplayer without an internet connection. thx70.51.60.87 (talk) 20:46, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Find the ethernet ports on each computer and onnect a cross over cable between them. Then you will have to configure the network, with a fixed IP number on each. You can use 10.0.0.1 on one and 10.0.0.2 on the second. Use the same netmask (255.0.0.0). I don't know about age of empires though, what it needs. If one computer is missing an ethernet socket, you can use serial to serial port connection. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:32, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

With fairly recent PCs you can use a normal ethernet cable rather than a ethernet crossover cable, as the NICs will almost always have autosense capability. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:02, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Ipod Video Converter

What are some reliable free video converters that are available for download that can convert avi video to mp4 so they can be put onto an ipod? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.87.200.184 (talk) 22:34, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Try HandBrake, MediaCoder,Media Converter or MEncoder. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:58, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Also try iTunes itself. If it's viewable on your computer, then you can use iTunes > Advanced > Convert Selection to iPod format. --208.189.34.45 (talk) 01:00, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

iSquint does this very easily and quickly as well. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 21:52, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

December 9

svchost.exe

I am using windows xp. How can I check my svchost has not been hijacked? it seems very busy.. Kittybrewster ☎ 02:03, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, the obvious way is to run a virus and malware scanning program. Have you tried that? --24.147.86.187 (talk) 19:21, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Ipod

Whats the difference between a flash memory nano and a hard drive classic? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.154.102.58 (talk) 03:45, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

The classic iPod uses an actual hard drive with moving parts. It has higher storage, but is more vulnerable to corruption and damage. The flash memory of Nano iPods is lighter and less prone to magnetic damage. The density is less, so it can not hold as much information. However, the technology is rapidly advancing, and flash-based memory is already used in some laptops. Hope this answers your question. 76.99.111.234 (talk) 04:42, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe that also Flash Memory uses a lot less power than a conventional Hard Drive as the flash memory does not need to 'move'. Don't quote me though :P Tiddly-Tom 10:23, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

School tracking program

I heard that some schools are using programs or some way to monitor everything a user does on a network. How is this done? And if possible, are there any popular known programs that do this? Thanks, Valens Impérial Császár 93 04:32, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

On the internet? That's easy, Squid cache can log everything going through it. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:19, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Locally? If their code is running on the machines they can see whatever they want --ffroth 23:31, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, my school watches what your doing on your pc. The system is called MyPC or something. When you go up to the main desk and look at the staff PC screens you can actually see hundreds of thumbnail images of all the computer screens they are connected to. So they can see everything your doing but I don't know if they can explorer the computer or just see what you can see at that moment. Hyper Girl (talk) 12:25, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Graphics Cards

Hi, I have this computer with the NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS TurboCache with PureVideo technology graphics card. Is this sufficient for hi-end games or should I look to change it? Could anyone tell me if the motherboard could take 2 graphics cards as I have an old computer which had 2 graphics cards, I don't know how good but the other computer is but it is not very old and was pretty expensive. Also, I have 3GB of RAM - Do you know if I could stick in another 1GB and if it would be any advantage? (I am running Vista) My old computer was an Evesham Axis Dominator Plus if that helps. I couldn't easily find what graphics cards I had in my old computer, so if anyone knows it would be useful to know even if I could not put them into my new computer. Thanks, Tiddly-Tom 10:20, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

No 8400GS is a budget graphics card. Having 2 of them won't do you any good either. If you want a computer for gaming you really should be building it yourself. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:41, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I was not thinking of having two of them - but 2 of whatever is in my old PC which was sold as a gaming PC. Tiddly-Tom 10:46, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

On my mother board there is room for 4GB of RAM - is it worth taking some out of my old PC which is not used an put it in this one? Also, on my mother board there are:

• 1x PCI Express 16X.
• 1x PCI Express 1X.
• 2x PCI.

I don't know what this means, could I have 2 graphics cards? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tiddly Tom (talk • contribs) 10:56, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

The card you have has a pretty recent chipset - but it's the 'budget' version, which generally means it has slower pixel fill rates. Probably, your best bet with this card is to reduce your display resolution when playing games. Adding a second card (using the nVidia 'SLI' approach) will double your pixel fill rate and allow you to run at higher resolutions again. However, polygon rates will probably not improve any. You'd need to use both PCI-Express slots - but notice that one is a 16x slot and the other only 1x - so performance of the card in the second slot will not be good. Personally, I'd just drop my display resolution and wait until the next generation of cards appears sometime next year. But as usual, I have to point out that different games have bottlenecks in different places - if they are CPU-limited, then no amount of messing with the graphics card will help. If it's GPU/vertex limited then buying a higher end card will help, if it's GPU/fill-rate limited then adding a second card will help (and so will reducing display resolution). SteveBaker (talk) 15:13, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I wrote a more detailed explanation of games performance on my private Wiki here: http://www.sjbaker.org/wiki/index.php?title=Graphics_cards_and_Games SteveBaker (talk) 17:31, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

What CPU do you have? If it's halfway decent get a 8800GT and be happy. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 20:52, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4gHz) - Another question - Do you know if there is a noticeable difference in picture quality between HDMI and DVI? Thank you. Tiddly-Tom 07:09, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

No difference, believe it or not, except that HDMI carries audio on the same cable, so it may help if you've got a cabling mess back there. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 10:56, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The 8800GT would be a fantastic card to pair with that. It's pretty cheap and is only beaten by the 8800GTX and Ultra. Also if I recall correctly HDMI is just DVI with audio next to it.

WHOIS error

On a WHOIS what does "ERROR: IP Range Reserved by IANA.org" mean? DuncanHill (talk) 13:43, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Some IP blocks haven't been (and some won't ever be) assigned by IANA. So if you whois on 192.168.0.1 (part of a block of non-routable addresses intended for use inside intranets) you get back that the block is assigned to IANA. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:46, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I got it when doing a WHOIS for vandal 78.146.191.98. DuncanHill (talk) 13:48, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Could it be that the lookup service you used wasn't good at handing non-US registrars? dnsstuff.com is, hands the query off to RIPE, and says the IP is part of a largeish block owned by Opal Telecommunications Plc in Manchester. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:54, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

OK thanks - I just clicked on the first WHOIS thingy at the bottom of his talk page. DuncanHill (talk) 13:59, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

The WHOIS link on IP talkpages now goes through Sam Spade.org [4] instead of DNSstuff.com. Apparently, DNSstuff.com changed their business model some months ago. [5]. I'm not sure what this error means, as you can run the same IP through DNSstuff.com age get a valid return. For example; User talk:78.146.191.98 gives the error with Sam Spade [6] bur returns properly with DNSstuff [7]. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 18:18, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Pixelating SVG?

I thought the whole point of SVG images was that they didn't pixelate and look all ugly when you blew them to big sizes. So what's going on here? —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 20:55, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

You're blowing up a rasterized PNG made from the SVG. The actual PNG on the page that the page links to ([8]) is only 1024 pixels wide, but it is being displayed much wider than that. My guess is that there is a hard limit of some sort on the size of the PNGs that Wikipedia's SVG renderer is putting out. In other words, you aren't really blowing the SVG up to a large size: you're rasterizing it (using Wikipedia's internal rasterizer) as a 1024 pixel PNG and then blowing that up to 1500 pixels. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 21:45, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes - I agree with 24.* but you can download the original SVG and display it in something like Inkscape and you'll get the benefit of zero pixellation. Wikipedia probably caps the size in order to prevent denial-of-service type attacks that you could cause by tying up it's CPU's and memory by demanding a 100,000 x 100,000 pixel display or something. SteveBaker (talk) 23:28, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, cool. Thanks for your help. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 05:25, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, as far as I can tell, if you go to the Image:USA_Counties.svg page and click on the link just beneath the picture, it actually does send the SVG file to your browser if it thinks you have an SVG-compatible browser (I have Firefox - so it does). This is especially obvious if you bring it up in the Konqueror browser because it draws SVG's V-e-r-y S-l-o-w-l-y so you can be 100% certain that it's not displaying a raster image. Wikipedia appears only to produce the cruddy PNG version for the preview or if it doesn't think your browser can display the SVG version. What puzzles me is why it displays the pixellated version in your sandbox - even though my browser can handle the SVG. Perhaps it's because you forced a particular resolution by telling it you wanted 1500 pixels. Weird. SteveBaker (talk) 00:25, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I thought it automatically rasterizes unless you're accessing the actual file directly --ffroth 03:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Right. It doesn't try to guess which browsers can support SVG natively; Mediawiki outputs it as PNG whenever it displays it on a page. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 18:50, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Beep

I've been trying to make my Java program beep by outputting (char)7, but I don't hear anything. My headphones work fine, since I can listen to music, so I figure it's something in the computer. Any ideas? Black Carrot (talk) 21:53, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

The BEL character outputs to the internal speaker, not the sound card. Many newer PCs don't have a speaker. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 23:01, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, it is your terminal emulator that issues the beep when it receives that character. So your terminal emulator may not support it or has it disabled. --Spoon! (talk) 23:06, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

What should I do to make it beep audibly, then? Black Carrot (talk) 23:11, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

As Spoon! notes, what a BEL does is up to the terminal emulator. For me (on XP) the Netbeans terminal ignores BEL, but the cmd.exe one beeps. To be fairly portable, use Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().beep(); instead - that plays whatever the platform thinks an alert sound is (for me, on XP, it's a dull Bonk sound, as set by the sounds applet in the Windows Control Panel). If you want more control than that, you'll need to play a sound clip yourself using javax.sound - see http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/sound/playing.html -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:31, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! That worked perfectly. Black Carrot (talk) 23:49, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

A non-beep sound would work, too. I'm just trying to get a rough metronome-type thing set up in it. Black Carrot (talk) 23:12, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Here's a metronome that plays a WAV file every 1000 ms:

import java.io.*;
import javax.sound.sampled.*;
public class Main {
   public static void main(String[] args) {        
       try {    
           File infile = new File("C:/bip.wav");
           AudioInputStream stream = AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(infile);
           DataLine.Info mydlinfo = new DataLine.Info(Clip.class, stream.getFormat());
           Clip myclip = (Clip) AudioSystem.getLine(mydlinfo);
           myclip.open(stream);
           for(int x=0; x<20; x++) { // 20 beeps
               myclip.setFramePosition(0);
               myclip.start();
               Thread.sleep(1000); // 1000ms == 1 second
           }
       } 
       catch (Exception e){
           System.out.println(e);
       }
   }
}

I made bip.wav using Audacity's generate function (sine wave, 0.1 seconds duration, 880Hz, amplitude 0.5). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:10, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Note, though, that your code only beeps approximately once a second, not exactly. The actual period is likely to be slightly longer, due to the time spent executing the loop, though it could also be shorter if Thread.sleep() was consistently returning early. If you want the average period to be exactly one second, which might be desirable for a metronome to keep it from drifting out of sync, you'd need to make the loop something like:

long nextBeep = System.currentTimeMillis();
for (int x = 0; x < 20; x++) {  // 20 beeps
    myclip.setFramePosition(0);
    myclip.start();
    nextBeep += 1000;  // 1000ms == 1 second
    long delay = nextBeep - System.currentTimeMillis();
    if (delay > 0)
        Thread.sleep(delay);
    else
        nextBeep = System.currentTimeMillis();  // we're late, catch up!
}

You may also wish to catch and do something useful with InterruptedException, e.g. to allow the user to stop the metronome. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:03, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

THAT TAG IS AWESOME since when has wikipedia had that now?!?! --ffroth 07:42, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Tag?? Thanks, Ilmari, that's helped a lot. Black Carrot (talk) 11:40, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The source tag --03:56, 11 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Froth (talk • contribs)

b&

Is there something on IRC that can tell you which channels you've been banned from? Vitriol (talk) 22:11, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

No. Change your hostmask to evade bans. Also, nobody says b&, it's called +b --ffroth 23:29, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

PSP VIDEO PROBLEM

I have a video that is in, as it says in the properties, MPEG-4 (.mp4) format. It works on my PSP prefectly. I have another video that is in the exact same format as it says in the properties. However, this one isn;t supported by my PSP. I know that there are many different types of MPEG-4 subformats, such as part-14 and part-10, and I am under the understanding that the PSP only suports part-14. Maybe this is the problem, if the 2nd video is in part-10 or something. However, when I go to convert the 2nd video on PSP Video 9, it is not supported there, and it will not convert. What should I do, and why will it not play on my console? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.23.77.208 (talk) 23:54, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

mp4 is a container format. It's likely that the 2nd mp4 contains video in a format that your PSP cannot decompress --ffroth 00:00, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

How would I fix this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.23.77.208 (talk) 00:02, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Re-encode the video from one format to the other. What kind of computer do you have? It will affect what program will be the one you want to use. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 01:10, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

December 10

Opera = Firefox + 20+ extensions

Isn't firefox, where loads of people not working together, all make their own extensions that can be downloaded and interfere with each other, a sure fire way to end up with a crashy browser? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Seans Potato Business (talk • contribs) 00:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

That's why extensions on the official site are thoroughly tested before being made available publically. Also, I think there's some sort of namespace system in the plugin system so that plugins can't really interfere with each other. --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:35, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

And don't forget that installing plug-ins is entirely voluntary (they don't self-install) and that most (all?) of them are open-source anyway (can be fixed if broken even if the person who made them stops working on them). They're also automatically easy to install and uninstall, unlike IE's plug-ins. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 01:08, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Function keys in Mac OS X

F11 is the de facto standard way to get full-screen display of a browser. But this won't work in default Mac OS X, as the system uses this key to minimize all windows. (And this is just one example of how OS X key assignment seems to compete with software-specific key assignment.) The obvious way around this is to change the OS settings so that what was F11 is now something else, or (since there's anyway Shift-F11 for a trivially slower alternative) just to disable the function. However, while I could easily do this with my own computer [I'm not using it right now and forget the OS version number; it's the version before the present one], the option isn't available for the higher-numbered function keys in a slightly older version [the version before mine] in th' missus' computer.

Am I overlooking some other option? Is there perhaps some escape key combination that means "Please pass the next keystroke to the active application just as you'd pass a regular keystroke (letter A–Z, etc.): don't clear the desktop, reduce the volume level, show all the windows in miniaturized form, etc." -- Hoary (talk) 10:31, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

If you are asking "is there a way to disable Exposé, then yes, go to System Preferences > Dashboard and Exposé, and you can re-assign the keys that Exposé uses or you can disable them altogether. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 22:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Yup, I know that. (But thank you for trying.)

No, I want to know something rather different. To pursue the example of "Exposé", it's this: I want F9 to continue to have the Exposé function. But I also want to be able to bypass this at any time. Is there some key combination that allows me to bypass Exposé and instead feed F9 to the active application? Imaginably Control-Option-F9 might do this, or F9 immediately following Escape-Option might do it. I was surprised that my copy of Mac OS X: The Missing Manual ("Panther" edition) doesn't seem to mention this kind of thing. I tried various combinations of keys; none worked. I wonder if I'm overlooking something, or whether somebody has written a utility I could download and install to add this capability to OS X. ¶ Another approach: Is there some way to tell OS X that yes I do want Exposé on F9 except while program X, Y or Z is the active application, whereupon I want the keystroke passed to that application? -- Hoary (talk) 05:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

What you're asking for seems rather esoteric. Why not just assign Exposé to shift-F9 and be done with it? That would be a lot easier than trying to find a way to make Exposé be selectively bypassed, which is probably not possible. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 18:48, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Reasonable enough.

Well, here's the predicament. I made a set of scans of the best pictures in five rolls of film, and thought I'd burn the result to CD-Rs that I'd pass around to a dozen or so people who'd be interested. I suspect that several aren't so, um, computer-literate and I know that at least some use 'Doze and at least some use Mac OS X. So it occurred to me that I could make a slideshow using Dave Raggett's "HTML Slidy" (a combination of CSS and Javascript that's a free download from W3C and that I highly recommend). This way I could just tell people to click on index.html; their browsers -- whether MSIE, Konqueror, Shiira, Safari or whatever -- would take care of the rest. To minimize the risk that the browser either resizes the images or adds horizontal and vertical sliders, I wanted to add the instruction "I suggest that you maximize your browser and cut all the space-wasting crap from it. F11 usually does the job." But in Mac OS X (as most people leave it set up), F11 spectacularly fails to do this. (Moreover, my wife's slightly older version of Mac OS X doesn't even allow her to use F11 as she wishes.) It would have been good to say "F11 usually does the job. (Mac-users may have to hit Command-Option-F11 instead.)" or whatever. Oh well, I suppose I'll have to rephrase more laboriously.

Of course it would help if people knew that browsers could do this. But many seem oddly incurious.

Incidentally, Shiira has a particularly sleek kiosk mode. When I have to give what my audience assume is a "PowerPoint presentation", I do so with HTML Slidy and Shiira. -- Hoary (talk) 01:21, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Chess symbols in MS Word

How do you get symbols for chess pieces in Microsoft Word? Bubba73 (talk), 03:06, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I found a chess font and installed it and it works on my computer. I made an HTML file and it works. However, will the HTML file work for other people who have not installed the chess font? Bubba73 (talk), 03:53, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

No, it won't. SteveBaker (talk) 03:57, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

See Chess symbols in Unicode. --Spoon! (talk) 04:09, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

If I paste these into my Word Doc, make an HTML file, then everyone should be able to see the chess pieces, right? Or do I need to forget the Doc file and work only with the HTML file and insert the codes? Bubba73 (talk), 04:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

What you mean isn't completely clear. I think you're contemplating use of MS Word in order to make a web page. This is always a bad idea, as MS has a very screwy idea of what "web page" means.

See Chess symbols in Unicode, as recommended above. You just type in what's in the "HTML" column. For example: "&#9812; is a white king". Or you can copy and paste the character. If you do the latter, UTF-8 must be specified as the character encoding system in the HTTP header or a META tag. -- Hoary (talk) 07:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I have a Word Doc file that uses some chess piece symbols. I want to make an HTML file for the web from it, using the "save as". I'm not comfortable with using HTML directly. For instance, I don't know how to specify UTF-8 as you said. Bubba73 (talk), 18:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

If I insert one of the codes (e.g. "♚") into the HTML document in Word or my HTML editor, I get the literal strig and not the chess piece figurine. Is there a setting in Word to tell it to interpret it correctly? Bubba73 (talk), 19:26, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, changing the font to "Ariel unicode MS" and then pasting the figurine works on my computer. I'll have to see if it works for others. Bubba73 (talk), 19:37, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

No, it doesn't work when viewed on other computers. Bubba73 (talk), 19:47, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem you will certainly be up against is attempting to use a word processor as an HTML editor. As stated before, Word has a very unique concept of what a "web page" is. It is very obvious to me when I hit a Word-version of a web page. It looks very odd with weird symbols, bad spacing, and extremely tiny letters. Using an HTML editor, you can type &#9818; and it will be shown as a chess character. In the HTML, you see the ampersand, pound sign, numbers, and a semi-colon. In the web browser, you see the character. To answer your question directly, I seriously doubt that there is any setting in Word that flips HTML-code on so you can see &#9818; and then turns it off so you can see ♚. Also note that Unicode must be installed to see Unicode characters. Most computers have it now - but not all computers. -- kainaw™ 19:59, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I think you are perhaps overly-concerned about typing in HTML. If you use notepad, you can do it quite easily. If you'd like to try, I wrote a simple guide to writing HTML that'll get you going very quickly: http://www.sjbaker.org/daddy_math/html.html - my son learned to do it when he was 10 years old - and it didn't take him an hour...so I think you can manage it! SteveBaker (talk) 23:52, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Steve - ten year olds are much better at learning than most adults, and your lad (if I remember rightly) sounds like an exceptionally bright ten year old! DuncanHill (talk) 23:56, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Shhhh! I'm trying to get someone to learn HTML! SteveBaker (talk) 00:28, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

HTML is cake, even today's half-emo preteen pop diva whateverthehecktheyarethesedays kids know it for myspace customization or whatever. I also learned it at 10, it's super duper easy --ffroth 02:45, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, using an HTML editor is not a good choice for me. (1) I'd need to learn HTML, and I know little about it (2) I need wysiwyg for normal editing - I need to see what it will look like to a browser, and with Word I can format it the way I want it (mostly), and (3) I have an HTML editor but it doesn't have spell checking, which I desperately need. And if I did a spell check on the text of the HTML file it would flag a ton of HTML stuff as spelling errors. Bubba73 (talk), 03:35, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

So..

1. Learn english
2. Learn HTML

Also, what it looks like in Word is not what you'll see in a browser, though of course it's a lot closer than notepad --ffroth 03:58, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

When you're writing for the web, forget "WYSIWYG". ¶ Froth's advice to "Learn English" may be amicably intended but it does look a bit obnoxious. Of course ability in English and good spelling are very different matters. So, spelling: Although none of the text editors I now use has a spelling checker, I've used such a text editor in the past. They're probably still available (see below). If you can't find one, you can simply use the text editor in one window; a view of your page in a browser in a second; and in a third, a word processor window containing a paste of what you copied from the browser window (i.e. the text sans markup). You run the spelling checker; when it finds something it doesn't like you fix the same place in the text editor window. ¶ Incidentally, my main text editor these days is Kate, which does an excellent job of matching quotation marks and the like. This is called syntax highlighting; the article makes it sound a lot more complex than it is. (Basically you just ignore it till you wonder why you're typing in the wrong color.) And that article also says: Some editors also integrate syntax highlighting with other features, such as spell checking.... Unfortunately I can't name any; others here probably can. -- Hoary (talk) 04:51, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, when I build a web page, I do this:

• Write the document in a proper word processor with spell and grammar check, etc - ignoring layout issues and pictures and stuff...just get the raw text bashed into the machine.
• Export as ASCII text.
• Bring it into a text editor (like notepad, emacs or vi) and add the HTML tags - including pictures, etc.
• Write it out occasionally and view it in my browser to ensure I didn't screw up the HTML tags.
• If I need to tweak a stylesheet or add JavaScript or PHP - then that happens in the text editor too.
• Use the W3C HTML checker to ensure I didn't break any rules.
• Use rsync to sync it to my web site and then wget to check that all of the links actually work in-situ.
• From that point on, small changes and additions are done in HTML directly.

The really SERIOUS mistake you make by using WORD is to assume that WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG is the antithesis of what the web is about. The mantra you must chant six times a day is "Trust the Browser". If you try to force the text to come out with the precise layout that you want, you'll fail miserably. It may look good on your computer with your browser - but for someone else with a different sized screen - or who has overridden the default fonts - or who is utterly blind and using a braille reader or text-to-speed - or who is looking at it on a 1.5" x 1" cellphone display...you're messing it up HORRIBLY. When you want a new paragraph, you should be using a paragraph (<p>) tag - and not a <br> tag and a bunch of &nbsp;'s or whatever weird stuff WORD does to try to make the document look exactly like you wrote it. If you need a particular piece of text to line up with a particular photo, you need to use <div> or <table> because if you just hit enough RETURNs to get it to line up in WORD, you'll be sadly disappointed when you see it on your laptop or on an iPhone. The thing with HTML (like Wiki markup) is that you are describing what the text is - not how it looks. You tell the browser that this is a paragraph and that this needs to be next to that - and you let the browser figure out the best way to make that happen.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:52, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

There are text editors that have spell checkers in them. Notepad++ apparently has one. You might try something like that. Word is not an adequate program for coding HTML for a number of reasons. It's barely adequate as word processing software, in my opinion, and it certainly can't handle the web. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 18:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

using telnet

ok im just starting to learn about computers, and one of the problems i have is with telnet. i use windows vista and i already have the telnet client active. lets say i want to check my email from gmail (i don't use outlook or anything btw, only webmail). i would open up a command prompt, and then what would i type? and on my older computers when i type telnet, it comes up with a white terminal telnet window, but on vista it just appears inside the black dos window with microsfot telnet. any ideas on this? any help is appreciated, thanx! 63.24.154.141 (talk) 03:12, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Gmail requires encryption so you can't use telnet for that. You can for example use telnet to get the main page of Wikipedia. Just type telnet en.wikipedia.org 80, and then another cursor pops up, there you can type HTTP commands. To get the main page, you can type GET /, and telnet will spill the HTML source code of the main page down your screen. Telnet only allows you to directly talk to servers, but you have to know how to talk to the servers yourself. Read up on the protocol you're trying to use and experiment. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:00, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

ok so it allows a direct connection to servers but only if the servers allow it. the code above worked, but i couldn't see what i typed when i tryed to type get /. is this normal? and so telnet doesn't work with gmail. but would it work with something like ssh? and would telnet work on other mail servers (yahoo, msn, hotmail etc...) or do they requre encryption too? (btw this is the same person just with a differnt comp) 63.28.158.210 (talk) 23:24, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Usually servers won't allow connection to the telnet port (21) for security reasons, but if you're just using telnet to talk to the server by typing the actual commands instead of using a software to do it, you can telnet into a port for another protocol, such as HTTP, which is what is done above. Telnet connects to en.wikipedia.org at port 80, which connects you to the Wikipedia HTTP server. Can you post the output straight after you've typed that command? It should say connected to ---.wikimedia.org and give you a prompt for you to type things into. SSH is also encrypted, so you won't be able to use telnet for it (SSH is actually supposed to replace telnet for remote controlling other computers). Hotmail and Yahoo and MSN don't have POP3 access, so I don't think it will work. --antilived^{T | C | G} 02:25, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

when i type in 'telnet en.wikipedia.org 80', it shows 'Connecting To en.wikipedia.org 80' for about 2 seconds, then teh screen clears and nothing is left except a blinking curser. if i type immediately thereafter i can't see what i type, ie. if type 'get /' i just see the cursor moving but not actual characters. after that i press enter and it 'spills the source code' as you said, then the connection is lost. if i don't type anything on the blank screen and wait for a minute it eventually kicks me back to c:\ 63.28.135.93 (talk) 02:05, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

That is exactly what it is supposed to do. Why are you expecting anything different? -- kainaw™ 02:08, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The only reason to use Telnet anymore is to connect to a service that only uses Telnet. There's no reason at all to use it for browsing websites or checking email, when you can use graphical clients. Basically, the only uses for telnet anymore are: 1) server administrators who want to remotely connect to their machines for maintenance purposes (usually over SSH), or 2) people connecting to MUDs like FurryMUCK. -- 68.156.149.62 (talk) 01:06, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

About ram requirement for getting good FPS

I asked my doubt listed in 5.7 that if more ram is needed for getting good FPS, I still have this doubt. As steve baker mentioned a detailed explanation about the stuff, I looked into his article/essay on the real bottleneck for getting good gaming results. I could well understand those facts but I'm not clear with one point steve and that is about Virtual memory.If I have say 1GB RAM and the game I play demand 1.5GB as recommended config, then whilst playing my pc may try to write data into HDD due to insufficient ram and this may add time delay overhead while playing.Wouldn't this delay might cause drag or drop in FPS?, since the transfer rate for HDD is very slow compared to RAM!. Also please answer me this that if 512 MB of RAM is demanded for a game, then does it mean I should have 512 MB free memory out of 1GB or exclusive 512 MB physical RAM chip?. Sorry for a delay in posting...Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 06:51, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

"Paged" (microsoft term) memory is extremely slow.. tertiary storage is millions of times slower than cache and thousands of times slower than RAM. Also system requirements list how much total memory you're expected to need, not how much you need to set aside for the program itself. --ffroth 07:34, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Right. I'm trying hard not to confuse you here. IN GENERAL: Adding more RAM won't make your game go faster. HOWEVER: If there isn't enough RAM for the game to fit in - then the OS will start swapping and that will KILL your games performance - it won't just be slow - it'll literally stop for seconds at a time.

The typical behavior of a game that's run out of physical RAM (and is therefore using the disk drive for swapping) is that it will be literally unbearably slow - like 5 seconds per frame or something - and the disk drive light will come on every time the game hesitates like that. Some games don't need all of the RAM they demand for all of the time - so they might run for a while - then suddenly stop working for a few seconds, then carry on working smoothely again. At any rate - having less memory than the game needs is never a good idea. The only possibility is that the game manufacturer imagined that he had to require enough space for the game - plus some other stuff like maybe a browser and an email or chat client to be running at the same time. That might mean that you'd be able to get away with a little less than the required amount providing you're very careful to shut down everything other than the game...but to be honest - I doubt that's going to help much.

But if you have enough RAM that the game is running at (say) 5 frames per second or better - then it's obviously not swapping and adding more RAM is unlikely to help.

One way to see this to go to your control panel, select Admin Tools, then open the "Performance" widget. You should see some scrolling graphs indicating what's going on inside your machine - if not click on the 'System Monitor' entry on the left then on the 'View graphs' icon at the top. The yellow line ("Pages/sec") shows how much swapping is going on. If there is a big yellow blip on the graph, your computer just moved something to or from the disk drive because it didn't have enough RAM. So start this graph running and start up the game. Once the game is playing and you are experiencing slowdown, quickly pop up the Performance widget and see if there is a lot of activity on the yellow line. If there is - then perhaps you've got a RAM shortage.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:38, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

What is the difference between Monitor refresh rate and FPS?

I'm unclear of the fact that some I heard saying that the graphics cards frame rate is restricted by monitors refresh rate. For example say if a monitor like an 15 inch CRT can make 60Hz of refresh rate at 1024 by 768 pixel resolution then wouldn't my gpu card be able to send data beyond 60FPS when VSYNC is turned to on?. Esp I heard this problem on LCD where the refresh rate is only 60Hz.also does VSYNC have some other meaning?...please anybody try to post your reply anything you know about this. Thanks a lot —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 07:19, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

That's right, if your monitor is only refreshing the screen 60 times a second, you can't see more than 60fps. If VSYNC is on, the graphics card won't even push a new frame until the monitor refreshes, reducing tearing (which I don't mind anyway) and also the apparent frame rate (which I do very much mind) --ffroth 07:40, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

In an ideal world, you'd have all of your interactive software refresh the screen at the exact same rate as the monitor itself repaints the screen and have the graphics card set up to swap it's video buffers during the monitors' vertical retrace period so you don't see a visual glitch. However, there are two considerations that result in people not doing that:

1. With 'twitch response' type games where very precise shooting behavior is required of players, some people find advantage in increasing the frame rate above what the monitor can actually redisplay. This makes one or more horizontal 'tear' lines to appear as you see the top half of one frame of video and the bottom half of another - this reduces graphics quality - but it makes the game software iterate faster which reduces the delay (the "latency") between pushing a button on the joystick and something actually happening in the game world. This obviously demands a really fast computer (or an older game where the demands on the system were not as high). Some people set the refresh rate of the monitor up to 72 or 80Hz in order to get lower latency without making the graphics look worse.
2. If (as is commonly the case), the game cannot maintain a solid 60Hz frame rate (with a 60Hz monitor), the policy of locking the buffer swap to the vertical retrace results in the game frame rate being forced to be an exact submultiple of the monitor rate. Hence, if the game COULD iterate at 59Hz, clamping to the vertical retrace will force it to run at 30Hz. Worse still, if the game's freame rate changes from frame to frame (say it varies between 59Hz and 61Hz) - then clamping frame rate makes it jitter between 60Hz and 30Hz which is even worse. If you don't clamp to the vertical retrace then the game can actually run at 59Hz but just as with speeding up the frame rate, this results in a horizontal tear line in the image. So which works best depends on the user's preferences.

SteveBaker (talk) 12:34, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks but if this is the case,then what's the use and advantage of running games at very high frame rate say above 100 or so while we can't go beyond the actual refresh rate?..And what is the purpose of VSYNC here?.Enabling it seems to reduce performance in terms of FPS.I do not understand this,but not all games have this option. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 08:40, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The purpose of VSYNC is to make sure that the frame isn't half-drawn when the monitor refreshes. VSYNC will lock the game's FPS to the frequency of the monitor's refreshing to eliminate that "tearing" glitch. Basically, if you want it to look pretty, use VSYNC. If you're playing to win, turn it off. As for running at really high framerates.. basically if you have an enormous framerate then it's just a sign that your computer is having no trouble running the game, and the controls will be very responsive. You can't really tell the visual difference between 60fps and 100fps on a 60hz monitor, but any experienced PC gamer can tell you that they'll just play much better on the 100fps one because of the difference in responsiveness --ffroth 00:31, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

OK - two separate things. Running the game at a frame rate higher than the monitor can refresh has advantages in some cases. Notably: Most games do everything once per frame - so they'll check the mouse once, the keyboard once, update the player's movement and each of the AI's once then draw the graphics once. If it's running at (say) 60 frames per second, that means that it'll read your keyboard and decide what to do about that 60 times per second - that's once every 16.7 milliseconds. If you are lucky then you press the 'fire' button the moment you see the enemy appear and at that exact moment, the computer reads your keyboard and tells the server "HE FIRED!!!". If you are unlucky, the computer reads the keyboard, then you press the key just a fraction too late, then 16.7 milliseconds later, the computer reads the key and tells the server that you fired. On average, it's about 8.3 milliseconds between you hitting the key and the computer noticing. Of course in that amount of time, the other player may have moved some more - so maybe you missed. If you crank up your frame rate to (say) 100Hz (if the computer can handle doing everything 100 times a second instead of 60 times) - then the computer reads the keyboard ever 10 milliseconds - so the average delay between hitting the key and the computer reading it is only 5 milliseconds. The other player will have moved a smaller distance over 5 milliseconds than he would have done over 8.3 milliseconds - so on the average, you shoot more accurately than you did at 60Hz. HOWEVER, your graphics don't look so good...maybe that's a bad thing.

The business of VSYNC is a bit more complicated. Inside the graphics card, there are two copies of what you see on-screen, there is the "Front Buffer" which the graphics card is reading from in order to form a picture on your monitor or TV - and the "Back Buffer" which is where the computer is drawing the next image. What's in the back buffer at any given moment will be an incomplete scene - maybe the buildings have been drawn and the sky but not the evil aliens of the laser zaps or whatever. When the computer finishes drawing a complete scene, it swaps the front and back buffers over (or perhaps copies the back buffer into the front buffer...it depends). So what's in the front buffer becomes the freshly drawn picture and the back buffer can be erased and a new picture started ready for the next frame - this is called 'Swapping the buffers' - or 'buffer-swap' for short. The 'VSYNC' thing relates to when, precisely the computer does that buffer swap. Remember that (at 60Hz), your monitor is drawing the picture line by line down the screen as it scans out the raster (we call this 'painting the screen'). If the computer were to swap buffers as the raster is painting halfway down the screen then the top half of the picture would represent where everything in the virtual world was one frame ago - and the bottom half of the screen would show it as it is now. If something is moving fast across the screen or (especially) if the camera is moving quickly - then the screen looks like it's got a tear across the middle because the top and bottom parts don't line up properly anymore. The 'proper' way to fix that is to have the computer always do the buffer-swap when the monitor has just finished painting at the bottom of the screen and is zipping back to the top to start again. This is called "the vertical retrace interval" - and there is a signal called 'VSYNC' that determines when that is happening. So - if the buffer-swap is made to happen when VSYNC happens then there is no tearing on the screen because each new raster is repainted with one entire picture.

However, the problem with this is that the computer has to wait for that VSYNC signal before it can buffer-swap - and that's a waste of time. So if the VSYNC is happening at 60Hz (every 16.7 milliseconds) and the computer is ready to swap after 10 milliseconds, it's got to sit there twiddling it's thumbs waiting for the slow old monitor to get done painting the raster. Well, if your computer is generating frames at better than 60Hz - then maybe you don't care that it's waiting for the VSYNC and therefore never able to go faster than 60Hz. However, what happens if your software is taking MORE than 16.7 milliseconds? Suppose it's taking 18 milliseconds. In that case, when the VSYNC signal pops up, the graphics card hasn't finished drawing the picture yet and so the buffer can't be swapped. Instead it has to wait until the following VSYNC - which is 33.3 milliseconds after we started drawing - so when the computer finishes drawing after 18 milliseconds - it has to wait around for another 15.3 milliseconds before it can swap the buffers. Then off we go again with the next frame - and the same thing happens. So the frame rate (which at 18 milliseconds would have been a reasonable 55Hz) has now dropped to half the rate of the monitor's VSYNC - which is 30Hz! In fact, if your software is running anywhere below 60Hz, it'll drop all the way down to 30Hz. If it's slower than 30Hz then it'll drop down to the next sub-multiple of 60Hz - which is 20Hz (three VSYNC intervals), 15Hz (four VSYNC intervals) and so on.

So here you have a trade-off. If you lock the software to swap the buffers at VSYNC then you risk making the frame rate slower than it could have been - but if you don't lock it, you get the "tearing" artifact. It's largely a matter of personal preference.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:30, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

can I instal and work on VB 2005 and VB 6.0 simulatneously ?

I have been working in VB 6 so far, and now I have got VB 2005(.NET Framework 2.0). I'm thinking of using both of these application software since I have previous programs and some new projects to be done in VB6 whereas I need to run VB 2005 also for some client's projects. So I'm now unclear that if I can run these two installed onto the same OS.Also by installing VB 2005, will VB2005 affect the VB6 tools such as "package and deployment" in anyway?...Please help me. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 07:24, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The VB 6 IDE and VS 2005 can coexist, and will not conflict. Splintercellguy (talk) 18:02, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

User Agent Information

My user agent information shows the following in the website whatsmyuseragent.com

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.6;MEGAUPLOAD 1.0

Will this be the same for everyone using Firefox 2.0.0.11? Any idea why I am getting that 'MEGAUPLOAD 1.0'? What does rv:1.8.1.11 and Gecko/20071127 say? Once upon a time, I installed Megaupload toolbar, but uninstalled later. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.112.197 (talk) 08:38, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

rv:1.8.1.11 is the build of your Windows, Gecko denotes the layout engine of Mozilla (and the build). Megaupload must've left something behind (some software usually uninstalls in full but leaves behind in the registry some info that says they've been installed here before, certain time-trial and shareware software does this). --Ouro (blah blah) 09:34, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

rv:1.8.1.11 is the version of Gecko. --Spoon! (talk) 11:42, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks :) I'll correct myself then. --Ouro (blah blah) 16:52, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

(From the asker of the question) Thanks for the reply. If anyone of you know how to get rid of that MEGAUPLOAD 1.0 from my user agent, please tell. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.119.195 (talk) 18:34, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

This might help you: User Agent Switcher. It's a Firefox addon. G'luck! --Ouro (blah blah) 21:10, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Or just go into about:config and search for the useragent, and change that instead. --antilived^{T | C | G} 22:48, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

How do you use a jar file?

Hi! I neeeded to download a *.JAR file as I need it to use it on Template:Image label begin, but, how do you run such a file? --41.201.169.19 (talk) 13:12, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

JAR is a Java archive file. You'll need to have at least the Java runtime environment (JRE), or possibly the development kit (JDK). --LarryMac | Talk 14:32, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Once you have it, the command line "java -jar filename.jar" should run it. Friday (talk) 15:42, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Jar files are actually Linux/Unix-style '.a' files. If you have the 'ar' tool (which is standard for Linux/Unix and comes with Cygwin for Windows), you can unpack a '.jar' file into its component parts. This is sometimes useful for extracting data files that are inside the jar. But mostly - you're just going to hand it to the Java interpreter per Friday above. SteveBaker (talk) 18:05, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, JARs are ZIPs; the ar format is different. --Tardis (talk) 18:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Canon RAW in Photoshop CS

Dear Wikipedia contributors,

Can Photoshop CS open up all of Canon's RAW extensions? Thank you 71.18.216.110 (talk) 15:13, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

No it won't. New cameras (such as the 40D) save to .CR2 which you won't be able to open in CS. You'll need at least CS2 with Camera RAW 3.7 and then upgrade to 4.3 here. --Fir0002 23:44, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Whoa, Fir0002, thanks for the tip. I'm getting the 40D myself in a while, good to know :) --Ouro (blah blah) 06:53, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Some software that does read RAW formats is listed at RAW image format#Software support. If you don't, or can't, upgrade what you have to a version that does, you can download (for free) dcraw or Imagemagick (ref), both of which will recode a CR2 into something standard. Lacking a decent reference to CR2, it's not totally clear to me if you'd lose colour resolution in doing so - if you use them to convert to standard TIFF or a PPM you'd get 8 bits per channel. I doubt (but don't know for sure) that a current CCD could exceed that. -- Unitshead (talk) 10:27, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

This is OR (allowable here on the RD, apparently), but... Canon has at least 3 different native raw/TIFF formats. Their first was CRW. This was replaced by CR2, and, just this year, it appears that Canon is using a modified version of their CR2 format in some cameras sold in the US since early summer. They are still using the CR2 extension, but the new version has some minor differences that break some photo importing programs. As of ~October, one of my customers was telling me that Adobe was aware, but had not yet "fixed" their software to deal with it. In fact, his call was what alerted my company that it wasn't us getting confused, it was Canon making a change. Granted, they are not in any way obligated to tell us, but it sure would have been nice! We shouldn't advertise our own products here, but it should be okay to say that, as of December, both Adobe and <insert-my-company> have released software that can read Canon's "new" CR2 format. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SandyJax (talk • contribs) 14:47, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Kindle

How does the Kindle access the Internet? Does the owner need to supply his/her own WiFi? If so what does it mean by free access to Wikipedia included? Am I missing something? Is Amazon offering its own Wireless subscription service? --Kushal^t 16:51, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Kindle "downloads content over Amazon Whispernet, which uses the Sprint EVDO network." --LarryMac | Talk 16:55, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. --Kushal^t 17:49, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The important thing is that the Kindle DOES NOT GIVE YOU ACCESS TO THE INTERNET! It uses a cellphone-like connection to Amazon headquarters (which they pay for) which gives you access to just the few websites that Amazon choose to provide. One of those is Wikipedia - there are some blogs and some other services - plus Amazon.com of course - but you can't (AFACT) stick in any old URL and get access to it. Someone who played with one for 10 minutes told me that he couldn't edit Wikipedia using the Kindle - only view it! This makes me suspect that you are actually getting a mirror of Wikipedia - not "the real thing"...but that's hearsay evidence. But it's OK - if Santa is is listening, I still want one for Xmas - I have been very, very good this year. SteveBaker (talk) 23:43, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

You want one? Haven't you seen that side-by-side comparison of the Kindle's terms of use and RMS's "The Right to Read"? --ffroth 02:47, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I have read both separately but not the side by side comparison. Could you link us please? Thanks --Kushal^t 04:32, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

yep yep --ffroth 13:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Neither the critics of the Kindle, nor (oddly) Amazon themselves seem to mention two CRUCIAL facts:

Amazon would rather have people steer clear of Project Gutenberg. I should stop before I start a holy war. Moreover, if I was selling Kindle, would I not do the same thing? --Kushal^t 21:42, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

1. That there are several OpenSource tools that convert from other formats into Kindle's internal format (which, incidentally, is an open standard).
2. That you can provide your own memory card for the Kindle - which you can read/write from your PC with the right adaptor.

So getting your own content onto Kindle is a breeze and doing it that way costs you nothing. So - with a suitably large memory card, you can immediately dump Project Gutenburg (22,000 books!) onto the thing for starters - cost $0...and any other eBook format that you can convert to PDF or something can also be read on Kindle. What you can't do is read Amazon-supplied material on anything other than your, personal Kindle...that's not really much different from the iPod/iTunes setup.

The reason you can't get to the general internet through the thing is that Amazon are paying your phone bill and they'd go bust VERY quickly if people used it a lot. Also the display (being a weird ePaper thing) doesn't update fast enough for interactive types of usage - you certainly couldn't watch movies or even GIF animations on the thing...and without flash/Javascript/Java/etc, it would be a pretty poor Internet experience anyway. But that's NOT what it's for. It's a book/Wikipedia/magazine/news-blog reader - and for that, it's not half bad. For me, it's worth $400 just to be able to comfortably read Project Gutenberg+Wikipedia+Slashdot+email without needing an Internet connection or a crappy backlit 320 pixel display.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:30, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

That's really worth $400 to you? I mean, personally I don't sit down and "read" Wikipedia all that often (I edit, but that's quite different, and I like to be able to snake all over the place at once), when I want to read books I prefer them in hard copy (I've got this thing called a "library" in my town that keeps me from having to actually buy them all, but even then, I don't really MIND owning a few books now and then, and I don't go through them that quickly), and I am suspicious that I would enjoy reading blog feeds in black-and-white "on the go" enough to warrant the price. Personally I think $400 could probably be better spent elsewhere; if they drop it to $50 and make it considerably less bulky looking then I think it'll give books a run for their money, but until then I'm predicting a pretty short lifetime for this. I could buy a pretty nice iPod for $400; that'd be worth a lot more to me than a book reader of any sort. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 01:44, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

You have got that one. I have tried to read a plain text e-book from PG on the Nokia 6600. I would not recommend that to anyone. --Kushal^t 18:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I actually did read Dante's Inferno on my laptop - (1200x800 display) it wasn't good either. ePaper is definitely the way to go for that kind of thing. SteveBaker (talk) 20:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Hold on, I read the whole of Great Expectations and all but the last chapter of Anna Karenina on a desktop computer (a lowly 1024 x 768!)

But that was not my point. Does not the Kindle have technical restrictions on how large an SD card it can hold? I am pretty sure it is capped below 4 GB. PG is already past 4 GB. --Kushal^t 21:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, OK! So load a mere 11,000 books today - and about 10 years from now, when you've finished reading them all (at a rate of maybe three books a day), spare 20 minutes out of your busy day to put the other 11,000 on there. (Sheesh!) SteveBaker (talk) 00:24, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

It certainly takes a little getting used to to read books on a computer screen, but I don't have much of a problem with it. I read almost all of His Dark Materials, all but one of the Ringworld books, and 3 or 4 Robert A. Heinlein books in microsoft reader. I've got better places to spend it if I had $400 to burn ($400 for a little e-paper display that displays text files?!) --ffroth 23:57, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

• I want a good e-paper thingy really badly, but I'm just not sure if they're there yet. I wish I could go into Best Buy and actually handle one of these things. I frequently want to read long documents that are available online as PDFs (scientific papers and such), but I don't want to waste the paper and ink to print them out when I often end up just skimming them. An e-book would be perfect for that. This thing just kind of looks clunky, though. Maybe when Apple comes out with one it will be pretty and not suck. --Sean 23:46, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Cafepress will print and bind a book from a pdf for very very cheap, and you only have to order one- you can set up a store with one item, buy it yourself, then close the store. --ffroth 00:22, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Text-to-speech on Java using Microsoft voices?

Does anyone know if there are any open-source Java programs/libraries that can use the voices built into Windows XP/Vista?

Thanks!
Sam 18:52, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The only open-source Java Speech implementation I'm aware of is FreeTTS. It uses its own voices, not the build-in Windows ones, however. -- Unitshead (talk) 10:54, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Caesar IV

Moved from Entertainment Desk. Rockpocket 19:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I installed the Caesar IV game in my pc and started it. The game started but all I see is white screen though I can hear the music running in the background. When the music stops the Caesar IV cursor appears but the white screen is still there. I can move around the cursor and could even blindly press the menu buttons of the game. But I cannot see anything. What could be wrong? The total display memory of my pc is 64 MB (I got this info from the DirectX diagnostic tool that one gets by typing "dxdiag" in the "run" program in start menu). I got the same problem previously with harry potter 3 but when i modified certain settings like color depth in the .ini file I could see everything again. I tried this with Caesar IV too. But it didn't work. Can you help me out? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.89.21.98 (talk) 09:05, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

See the related posts on Sierra's forum: [9] --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:59, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Ipod + Limewire

I get some music via Limewire and upload it from there to the Itunes music folder (File, Add Folder to Libary (the folder my Limewire tunes are in)). The songs all display in the main Itunes music folder. My question is, can I transfer these tunes to an Ipod without any problem? I want an Ipod but don't want to spend a few hundred on something that doesn't work for me. (Note: I'm not talking about the Shared Limewire tab that comes up in like the middle of the sidebar, I mean I have uploaded them into the main music folder). Thanks! DoomsDay349 22:05, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you can transfer any old MP3 no matter what the source to your ipod. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 22:13, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

If you look at the iPod article and also (http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/specs.html/) the apple site you can find a list of all compatible music-storage files. Basically you should be fine. ny156uk (talk) 23:20, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

its true ive been doing it for like 3 fuckin years Esskater11 04:08, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I like the passion in this response - good work! ny156uk (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 22:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Second that --Kushal^t 16:17, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

unicode characters

how would i type in unicode characters if i didn't have a numeric keypad? is it the same if you typed it in using the number row? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.28.158.210 (talk) 23:04, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Good question. My new keyboard doesn't have a numberpad either.--SeizureDog (talk) 23:59, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

If nothing else, you could copy and paste them from a page like Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Unicode) (draft). Pfly (talk) 04:20, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Start run charmap --ffroth 13:43, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Computer start up process

Hi, I am currently using Windows Xp opearating stystem.Whenever i turn on the computer a lot of "unwanted programs" start up automatically.My question is :Where are instructions to start up these programs are located? Can I customize edit which programs to start and which programs not to start?202.70.74.161 (talk) 23:31, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Start > Run > type in "msconfig" > navigate to "startup" tab (last one) > choose the services you want to startup --Fir0002 23:38, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

msconfig will find some, but you'll find many more using Microsoft's Autoruns program. A word of warning to 202.70.74.161 - this shows many process and services, and you won't know what most of them do. Most will be benign, and necessary, parts of Windows, so if you just zap everything you don't recognise you'll kill your machine dead. Using a decent Antivirus (AVG) and Spyware remover (Spybot) first will clean up a lot of problems, as will uninstalling stuff you definately don't need using the "add/remove programs" thing in the Control Panel. Only if that doens't work would I go removing stuff, either with Autoruns or msconfig, and then only after I'd done a pretty thorough Google search to make surethat what I was removing really was something unpleasant or unnecessary. -- Unitshead (talk) 10:52, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Spybot has a nice feature if you enable its "Advanced" mode that will show you all startup processes and highlight all of the ones known to be totally unnecessary and the ones known to be totally necessary, and explain what most of them are as well. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 15:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Memory Speeds

Hi,
Can anyone point me to a comparison of memory speeds (approximate read/write speeds in MB/s) which includes a standard 7,200RPM HDD, a 10,000RPM HDD, RAM (something similar to say Corsair 8500 C5D), a USB key (reasonably good one - USB 2.0 obviously) and a 16x DVD. Thanks! --Fir0002 23:37, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Places like this (http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchmark/bench_sort.php) and tomshardware (http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html). This one compares a 7200rpm hDD with a Raptor HDD which (as i understand it) is a faster setup than normal (http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html?modelx=33&model1=117&model2=138&chart=32). ny156uk (talk) 00:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm especially fond of List of device bandwidths. It's telling you the maximums though - so remember to tone down the numbers it gives in the face of reality! SteveBaker (talk) 00:31, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Steve - that's perfect! :) --Fir0002 00:50, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

To my door. I've been good, honest. --ffroth 02:49, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

You're asking Santa to bring you an OC-3072 line for Xmas? Have you any idea how hard they are to gift-wrap? Besides, Reindeer don't like being shoved down sub-street-level service ducting - so delivery is at best problematic. :-P SteveBaker (talk) 15:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Elves? --ffroth 02:07, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

December 11

Sansa C140 MP3 player Frozen

My sansa c140 was doing just fine yesterday. Today I loaded it up to my PC to upload more music. When I opened Drive E all the music was gone but I was able to upload a few new mp3. After I disconnceted it from my computer it would not go past the Sansa opening screen. Now the only way to shut it off is by disconnecting the battery. And even when I connect it to the computer the screen likes up but the PC doesn't recongize that any device is even connected. Please help!

Ok so I've left my mp3 player connected to the USB whenever I use my computer and suddenly my computer recongized it. I tried to take advantage of it by using the downloadable fixers but it didn't work. Now my computer wont recongize it any more.

I was thinking about formatting it..but that erases EVERYTHING. If its ok to do that let me know and I'll try it if it ever pops up again.--Gosplan (talk) 00:38, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Function Key not Working after Hibernation

I'm running XP on a Vaio Laptop. Most of the time when I suspend or hibernate my computer, the function key, and the controls that go along with it (including the secondary volume keys) do not work...what would be the reason for this? A glitch? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.180.2.110 (talk) 01:12, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

My computer suffers the same way. I have to push the functionn lock on the keyboard after wakeup. From the lights on the keyboard I can see it goes wrong when the computer restarts. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:19, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

ram software

is there a software to check if ur ram is faulty? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.77.226 (talk) 16:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Try MemTest86+ -SandyJax (talk) 16:27, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Not sure why that doesn't work; I'm probably doing it wrong. Search for MemTest86+. -SandyJax (talk) 16:29, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Memtest86+. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 16:52, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

.ogg

Anyone know how to run a file like this? it might be a type of sound file, if that helps.the juggreserection (talk) 20:57, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

If it's audio then it'll be in Vorbis, so see Vorbis#Software for a list of players and plugins that will handle it. Try VLC media player. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:17, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Image watermarks

How difficult would it be to remove the watermark in Image:KenwoodFrontDoor.jpg to obtain this? Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 21:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Removing it would be labourious. Either you'd have to find exactly the right font and locate and size and rotate it perfectly to the same position, and then apply exactly the inverse of same filter (looks light lighten) - get it even a pixel out and you'll have to clear stuff up by hand. Or you could just clear the whole thing away by hand. So not difficult, per se (you don't need great skill or knowledge) but lots of work. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. That's pretty much what I expected. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 21:36, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Weird - the image-fixer-upper fairy seems to have just uploaded a fixed version! (Clone paint RULEZ!) SteveBaker (talk) 21:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Open Source software - source code only

Hi there, I have came across several instances where I have wanted to download free software from the net but not found anywhere I can actually download the software itself from, only finding the 'source code', for example I tried to download the LAME MP3 codec tonight only to be told by their website: "LAME is only distribued in source code form. For binaries and GUI based programs which can use LAME (or include fully licensed versions of LAME), check the LAME related links. All software from the LAME project can be found in the project's file area."

This isn't very helpful and I would imagine it would put a lot of people off downloading their software. I like to think I know a fair bit about PCs but I wouldn't know what to do with the source code. Does it have to be executed at a command line or something or is is there some kind of software that I have to use to compile it? GaryReggae (talk) 21:46, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I think you need to compile it with a compiler. But if you are not paranoid, there are other versions online. The problem with LAME is that although LAME was invented separately, MP3 technology is patented. This means it does not matter if you invented it separately from the original inventor, you cannot distribute your invention. I am not a lawyer but I know it is not a good idea to host the executable binary software unless I know what I am getting into. --Kushal^t 21:57, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem for many small development teams is that they just don't have the resources to build for every platform on the planet. Remember - they aren't getting paid for it - and much of the time they write the software for their own use and simply decide to 'put it out there' and let anyone who can take benefit from it to do so. There is no guarantee of some kind of service for everyone who might need it. You rashly assume that the original author actually cares about how many people download it! For example, my own PLIB software is only distributed as source code because it's just too much hassle to make windows versions and MacOS versions and versions for half a dozen different Linux systems. Furthermore, I don't own a Windows machine or a Mac - so I really can't build those versions easily. If you want it, you can have it - but I'm not going to build it for you. In the Linux world, this is actually a pretty acceptable approach because:

1. Most people get most software via a Linux Distributor (like RedHat or SuSE or whatever) - and those companies like to build from source code anyway.
2. Since everyone in the Linux world has all the tools they need to build from source code, it's rarely any harder to install from source than it is from a binary.

  tar xzvf somepackage.tgz
  cd somepackage
  ./configure ; make install

...and you're done. Sadly, under Windows, it's a lot more hassle...and if the package is set up for MSVC, it may be expensive!

SteveBaker (talk) 21:59, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Graphical file search utility for Linux

Hi. I've been trying to find a graphical (GTK etc.) file search utility for Linux, but it seems surprisingly difficult. I found gnome-find, but it was removed by a dist-upgrade some time ago. I recall there was one that could take advantage of locate and its database, but I can't remember what it was called. Any ideas? Thanks in advance. ›mysid (☎∆) 22:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Try tracker, beagle, strigi or Google Desktop. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:26, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! :-) ›mysid (☎∆) 08:08, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

CPU Question from a newb

I was just wondering if somebody could give me a basic quick comparison of the differences in Celeron vs P4 and P4 vs Dual core? Or even pentium vs AMD? How much difference does ____(whatever this element/aspect of a CPU) make? Ultimately I imagine the speed is what matters, but I've seen different speeds attacked to each of these titles. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.28.144.36 (talk) 23:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Comparing different CPUs is tricky, and depends on the specific CPUs and what you're doing with them. As a general rule:

• At a given clock speed, a Celeron is slower than a Pentium 4. The difference depends greatly on the exact model of Celeron and P4.
• At a given clock speed, an AMD Athlon/Athlon XP is faster than a Pentium 4. You can get a rough idea of how much faster by comparing AMD's "performance rating" number to the Pentium's clock speed.
• For most purposes, a dual-core CPU is no faster than a single-core CPU of the same design and clock speed.
• At a given clock speed, an Intel Core 2 Duo is about as fast as an AMD dual-core CPU.

In general, the most important number for comparing CPU speeds is one that never shows up in advertising: the number of instructions per second the CPU is capable of executing. --Carnildo (talk) 00:11, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

December 12

MacBook

Is it possible to reinstall Mac OS X in a MacBook (not macbook pro) from an external USB optical drive? Thank you --Kushal^t 00:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm not sure—I'm suspicious that the OS would be able to boot from the USB optical drive. But googling around, this page seems to suggest it is possible. Sounds daunting though.

It is very easy to reinstall OS X onto a MacBook from another MacBook, using a Firewire cable. (I've done that a few times with iBooks, should be the same thing with a MacBook). You hook the MacBook to-be-installed-upon up as an external drive in target disk mode and then use the one which already has OS X on it to install it upon that drive. Not sure if that will work in your situation but thought I would throw it out there. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 01:36, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The only problem is my sister lives around thirteen hours away and she is the only other person I know who owns a MacBook.

To be specific, the optical drive has a CD stuck in it so I cannot use the CD drive to reinstall Mac OS X. The computer boots up and all I get is an empty screen. (Its become just a very expensive iPod charging device.) :'( Any suggestions? Has this happened to anyone else? --Kushal^t 00:47, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Check to see if the external optical drive also has a Firewire connnection. You can boot off an external Firewire drive, but I'm not sure about USB. As far as the stuck CD goes, try this: hold down the trackpad button as the computer boots; that's the universal MacOS signal for "eject the disk in the floppy/CD drive." If that doesn't work, you'll probably have to take it to an Apple-authorized dealer. From what I understand the Macbooks lack the old pinhole to force a manual eject. - 68.156.149.62 (talk) 01:16, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I will want to try that. --Kushal^t 16:19, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Translation

I would like to be able to enter into my address bar "Spanish: Word" and have Firefox translate the word for me. This can include going to a site, like wordreference.com, and automatically searching for it. Is this possible? --Omnipotence407 (talk) 02:35, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

1. Go to bookmarks->organize bookmarks
2. New bookmark
3. Name it whatever you want
4. In the location put http://www.wordreference.com/es/translation.asp?tranword=%s
5. In the keyword put Spanish
6. Hit OK (this would be the perfect thing to "Load this bookmark in sidebar", especially since the site layout is so thin)

Now type Spanish run or whatever other word you want in the address bar and hit enter --ffroth 08:30, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Works Great, Thanks --Omnipotence407 (talk) 22:00, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, now that that works great, I was trying to do the same to verbix.com's online conjugator, but after a while, staring at sourcecode, and trying to make it work, didnt work. Im computer literate, but certainly not fluent. Can I do the same for Verbix in some way? --Omnipotence407 (talk) 03:04, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I looked at verbix.com's Spanish conjugator and the needed url pattern seems to be http://verbix.com/webverbix/go.asp?D1=1&H1=101&T1=%s --Bavi H (talk) 03:55, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

What are the hot keys for HTML of web page on Mac

My apologies because I bookmarked this answer before but can't find it anywhere. What are the hot keys to bring up a web page in HTML please? Tried to remember the combinations but zip. Thanks in advance, Julia Rossi (talk) 02:50, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

⌘+U? --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:22, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

We also have a table of keyboard shortcuts (which does not include the HTML source one, though). ›mysid (☎∆) 08:07, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

When using Safari on a Mac, it's Option-⌘-U. I don't know what it would be in Firefox or Opera. Dismas|^(talk) 21:06, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks all, much appreciated. It's the Dismas one. Julia Rossi (talk) 22:03, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Search engines indexing

Are 'public' search engine like google and yahoo equally fast at indexing pages? 217.168.0.203 (talk) 03:50, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I would imagine that depends on a lot of different things. Google and Yahoo will have different algorithms, different criteria for indexing, different frequency of re-indexing sites. Their Web crawlers will work differently, and crawl different areas at different times. Some SEOs did a test in 2006 that suggested Yahoo was faster. In August, Matt Cutts reported that Google was indexing pages pretty much instantaneously, but they probably don't check all pages on all sites with such frequency. The correct term is apparently "index freshness". If you search Google index freshness or Yahoo index freshness there are some relevant results, including a paper on the subject in 2005. --Kateshortforbob 10:39, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes Google can take a lonng time to reindex pages. I've sometimes changed pages on a site I own and had to wait a month or so for its cache to update (and for it to begin indexing the new subpages, for example). I'm not very high on their spider's priority list! --24.147.86.187 (talk) 15:35, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Random crashes, "bad pixels" leaving trails on moving windows

Okay, here's a computer problem I can't make any sense of. I'm hoping someone here with more experience with odd hardware faults might be able to diagnose this for me.

Some months ago, I agreed to buy a friend's computer when he was leaving to work abroad. It's a pretty nice new system, but he warned me that it had some stability issues, which he suspected might be caused by a faulty motherboard. Indeed, while the computer mostly runs very nicely, it does have a tendency to occasionally crash (either rebooting or just spontaneously turning off) for no apparent reason, usually in the middle of perfectly normal web surfing. It's quite infrequent, only happening about, oh, say, once or twice a month with typical usage, so I've been mostly just putting up with it and waiting to see if I could figure out more about what's causing it.

Besides the spontaneous crashing, so far I've found one way that seems to reliably trigger a crash: copying files with WinSCP off another computer on the same LAN has, on the few occasions that I've tried it, always resulted in a crash after a few minutes of copying. Note that merely running WinSCP does not trigger a crash by itself; I can use it just fine to access a server over the Internet, it's only when copying lots of data from a server on the same LAN that it crashes.

The case feels quite warm when the computer is running, so my own suspicion (until the latest symptoms, anyway) had been insufficient cooling. However, merely running the CPU (both cores, even) at 100% load does not seem to trigger a crash, and while I'm not into 3D gaming, my friend did play some and he at least didn't mention any correlation between crashes and 3D load.

Also, a couple of times after the system had crashed and shut down, the power LED (I think; not 100% sure it wasn't one of the HD LEDs) was blinking on and off at about 1 Hz and the system absolutely refused to turn back on. More curiously, even after pulling out the power cord from the PSU, the LED still kept blinking and the system still refused to power on after being plugged in again. Pulling off the power cord and holding down the power button for a few seconds, however, stopped the blinking and allowed the system to power up again after plugging in. (My assumption is that, by doing so, I was draining some capacitor that was providing standby current while the PSU was unplugged, but that leaves me none the wiser as to why it would act that way.)

Finally, and here's the symptom that left me stumped and prompted me to write this query, just this morning I noticed something odd while working with images: on certain parts of the screen there were some small colored dots that initially looked like bad pixels on the TFT. (I can see a couple right here as I'm typing this.) However, when I dragged the window the "bad pixels" appeared over, they left trails on the image in the window! What's more, I even managed to take a screenshot(!) of the trails, which I've uploaded here.

So, does anyone have any idea what might be causing all this?

Oh, one more data point: when my friend originally bought and built this computer, it would crash a lot more than it does now, to the point where he couldn't even install an OS on it since it always crashed during the install. The problem was eventually traced, using memtest86, to a faulty RAM module. After swapping the broken RAM for a new one, the system has since been working much better... apart from still occasionally crashing, that is, and now these funny pixels.

I'm thinking maybe I should do another memtest86 run, just in case there's still something wrong with the memory. In the mean time, I'd be most grateful for any help you might be able to offer in solving this. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 06:29, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The pixels look like a problem in the graphics card, but everything else sound like the motherboard. My friend had a similar problem where it would randomly crash and sometimes couldn't even display the graphics card BIOS information before POST. It failed a memtest and my own working ram module that I used to test it was also blown after the test. The CPU couldn't boot in other machines after a while of testing. In the end the whole motherboard, CPU and ram had to be replaced. I suspect there's either something wrong in the regulators on the motherboard, or the power supply, which is ruining the components one at a time. Since your problem affects the graphics card is well and randomly reboots, I'm more inclined to suspect the power supply than the motherboard. Try using another one to see if it fixes the problem. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:19, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

You might want to try running chkdsk (boot from your XP CD and run it from the repair console) and HDD Regenerator (boot from hiren's bootcd) in case it's a hard drive problem.. the copying of large amounts of data triggering a crash is suspicious --ffroth 08:24, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

This is definitely symptomatic of overheating. The messing around you did with powering down, pulling out the cord then holding down the button then plugging back in again weren't actually having any effect - except that they gave the computer more time to cool down. Problems with crashing are rarely related to dropouts on the graphics card - and dropouts on the graphics card are rarely caused by CPU/motherboard issues - so you very likely have two separate sets of symptoms of the same root cause. You mentioned it was a high end machine - well, faster CPU's and GPU's means more heat. It may also mean that the power supply is being run closer to it's upper limit (which will generally make it run hotter too).

I recommend taking the lid off of your PC and take a gigantic box fan or office fan and blast air at it's internals. Run it like that and see if your problems go away. If your PC is full of dust and fluff, then gently vacuum that out - it blocks heat flow around the components - which is bad. Make sure that the CPU, GPU and powersupply fans are all working. Check that your friend didn't set up the BIOS to overclock the CPU in an effort to get more speed - that too generates a ton more heat. If there is a card in the slot next to the graphics card - and if you have another slot free - move the card away from the graphics board to give it more room to breathe. If all of those things produce no great result - but taking the lid off and blowing it with a desk fan fixes it...then you may need to consider more drastic measures. Additional fans inside the case, venting out the back somewhere would be a good idea. Try to avoid putting things on top of or close to either side of the computers case - leave room for air to circulate around it.

SteveBaker (talk) 20:59, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Subfloats and prooftrees in LaTeX.

Hi, I am using the subfg.sty and bussproofs.sty package. Is it possible to put the prooftree's from the latter into a subfloat from the former? When I try I get; "Someting is missing - perhaps a missing \item".

\begin{figure}
  \centering
  \subfloat[Splitting proof]{
\begin{prooftree}
\AxiomC{\begin{small}$u^1/a$\end{small}}
\UnaryInfC{$a$}
\end{prooftree}
} %Error message points at this line.
\end{figure}

Packages used;

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{lscape}
\usepackage{graphs}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{bussproofs}
\usepackage{accents}
\usepackage{subfig}

Error occurs also if I add another subfloat, but not if I but the contents of the subfloats to asdf.

What am I doing wrong? How can I get my prooftrees into subfloats?

Taemyr (talk) 11:08, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

SATA and PATA ??

Hi,

I just got a new SATA drive today. It is a seagate 80gb one, and it specifically mentions "SATA" on the drive. I opened up my desktop CPU to plug it in, however on the motherboard I don't find any ports like these - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:SATA_ports.jpg

The motherboard definitely has the IDE PATA ports. I will need to look again, though because about the SATA ports. However, assuming my motherboard does not have those SATA ports can I still use the SATA hard disk ? Are converter for PATA -> SATA available ? If I use one of those converters, will I get the speed benefit of using SATA ?

Also, if I do connect the SATA drive, can SATA and PATA drives be used together on the same computer ? If not, is there any way I can transfer my data from the PATA drive to SATA drive ? (without using something like external pen drive or online storage)

Thanks a lot !!

--RohanDhruva (talk) 12:04, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Converters are available.

Atlant (talk) 13:16, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there are converters. Here is a page full of them. The speed of the transfer will be limited by the bus you're using (IDE, SATA, etc). But the speed of the hard drive, in terms of cache size, latency, etc, will not be effected by the connector type. If you're going to go the SATA -> IDE converter route, then sure, you can use them both just as you would multiple IDE drives.--droptone (talk) 13:17, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, that explains it :) I'll go for a converter or a casing to use it as an external drive .. --RohanDhruva (talk) 13:42, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Uninstalling GRUB bootloader

I used to dual boot my laptop with linux and windows. The bootloader I had was Grub. I recently deleted the entire linux partition. Now the trouble is, when the computer starts, I get the GRUB comand prompt and I have to type the following to load from my windows partition:

grub> rootnoverify (hd0,0)
grub> makeactive
grub> chainloader +1
grub> boot


I'd like to know if there is some way by which I can make GRUB execute this code automatically each time my computer boots? Or even better, can I completely unistall Grub and get my windows partition to load by default? Thanks for the help!--Seraphiel (talk) 13:11, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi .. Insert your windows xp cd, boot from it. Select to go into the "Recovery console". After you get into it, type "fixboot" followed by "fixmbr". That should do it. --RohanDhruva (talk) 13:46, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The computer as general purpose tool and the internet as general purpose network and slices of salami

I had a worrying thought this afternoon, it went roughly as follows:

• whereas there is an ongoing and probably still accelerating boom in mobile telecommunications largely powered by proprietary technology and connected via subscription telephony;
• whereas internet utility is more and more being subsumed into black-box technology behind web interfaces (facebook, et al);
• whereas the rate of change of technology seems to be out-pacing the agreement of open standards (the complete failure of the semantic web movement):

what is to stop large corporate interests (mobile network owners, mobile computing proprietors, rights-holding groups, etc.) from salami-slicing the utility of the general purpose (free) computer and internet until they are useless in comparison to the feature-full, ubiquitous but centrally controlled and fundamentally unfree alternatives?

Can someone, or even better, lots of people, please reassure me that this isn't going to happen, preferably with some believable and consoling reasons? 86.146.254.177 (talk) 16:54, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

It's unclear to me what you're asking, exactly. But, there are a few assumptions you've made that are IMO wrong. Facebook is hardly a black box- they have an API. Open standards are not failing at all- they're a large part of what is allowing the changing landscape you describe. I dunno where you live, but I PAY for my internet access. And the companies making money off that have an interest in ensuring future business. I don't see that the internet is in danger of going away any time soon. Friday (talk) 17:01, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I think it's unwise to assume that the companies are always going to be making money off of YOU. If net-neutrality fails then ISP's can make money from charging data providers for access to their customers. There will then be scope for reducing costs to internet users - perhaps to zero. So, we can imagine someone (and let's say it's "NetZero" since they started out in the 'free ISP' business) decides they can give you free DSL access - but charges Google et'al for access to their customers. Now, there is no pressure on them to do what subscribers want - and instead they are driven by whichever data provider pays them the most. If Microsoft wants to pay the ISP's ten times what Google can - they can drive Google out of business by arranging that their packets are so slow as to be useless. Services that are free (and free of adverts) such as Wikipedia are going to have a hard problem surviving. The Internet becomes a place which (like television) is paid for by advertising (never a good thing for content!) and only those with deep pockets can afford to play. Personal websites (like mine) will be too costly to maintain. The only way for an individual to get his voice out onto the net would be via wrapper services like facebook, youtube and others who can screen your content wrapped with their adverts. SteveBaker (talk) 20:17, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

(OP:) I say black box, not because you can't use it for certain purposes (you can get lots of information from a black box recorder), but because there is central control and opaqueness of what happens behind the scenes (how does facebook work? can anyone make it work better without being on the inside? (yes i know, the api provides opportunities for innovation, but *only to the extent* that the people who run facebook allow)). I didn't say open standards are failing, just that they might be too slow to keep up with commercial non-open-standards (which is reasonably evident: what web2.0 features do you use?). And lastly, of course companies making money will continue to encourage business, the point is that they are less economically-motivated to encourage openness, in fact, it's much more appealing to try and control information if you have a vested monitary interest. Hope this clears things up a little. 86.146.254.177 (talk) 17:30, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The big issue is not charging for Internet use. It is network neutrality. If I want to download the latest Fedora install disk on bittorrent, I should be allowed to. Comcast has decided that bittorrent transfers should be randomly blocked to drastically slow down the service. Right now, Comcast is the only viable Internet carrier in my area. But, I live in a highly capitalist society. If Comcast continues to make people angry, someone will see the opportunity to step in and offer more network neutral services - probably at a slightly higher cost. I'll be happy to pay an extra $10/month if I an get truly unlimited Internet access. This is currently happening to cell phones in my area. Up until last year, the "Internet" access was only access to a handful of preset web-like pages that contained a few news articles, a couple videos, and a few songs. One company offered real Internet access last February. It quickly became the top-selling service in our area. So, another offered it. Then another. Now, Verizon is the only cell-phone service in our area (that I know of) that doesn't have true Internet access. So, to summarize, capitalism can be a tool to ensure the people get what they want. -- kainaw™ 17:14, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

A note on your further definition of "black box". Capitalism can help there also. If you don't trust Facebook for some reason, there are alternatives. One of the big advantages of the Internet is that there are always alternatives. One thing is the king of the mountain for a few years and then another takes over. Think about Lycos, then Alta Vista, then Google. You may consider the move from Slashdot to Digg similar. The corporations are trying to use patents to stop competition, but that isn't working too well (yet). All in all, the Internet is capitalism at its best. There's even competition among the nasty parts of the Internet - spammers competing to be the next great spam king, porn sites competing to get the next big porn service, illegal gambling sites competing to find new ways to get people to think they actually have some shot of winning money... It is a big brutal slug fest and we benefit from it. Hmm... Nupedia... H2G2... Wikipedia... who's next? -- kainaw™ 17:39, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

As a general principle, (and not enough people think about this) you should pay for things you use. Things that are "free" rarely are. When I buy a printer or a video game console - I'm paying a fraction of what the thing cost to make - and making up the difference in overpriced ink/games. This is a bad thing because it means these machines have to be unnecessarily encumbered with patents and encryption. Small games companies can't write games for game consoles because they can't afford the 'tax' they have to pay the Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft people. In the end, the user saved money up-front, but then made up for it increased costs down the line - but this isn't a zero-sum game. He also he suffers from a lack of choice because only the big games companies can afford to provide content. Similarly, if I want to watch TV - I would prefer to pay my share of the production costs for the programs and my share of the transmitter infrastructure and NOT have it supported by advertising. Why? Well, firstly I want the programs to be made to suit me (and the other consumers) and not made in such a way as to keep the advertisers happy. Secondly, things that are paid for by advertising aren't free. The cost of making and broadcasting the advert is added to the price of goods you buy. I heard somewhere that between 20% and 30% of the cost of a car is the cost of advertising it to you! When you think how much money that is, on this single product alone, you can imagine how much better it would be if nobody advertised and you paid for your television directly. You actually lose out on this deal because if the TV station charges $X for advertising, then the advertising company (who have to make the adverts and get them screened) have to charge the car company $(X+Y) and the car company has to pass that on to the car dealership (who has to make some profit) so the cost to you is $(X+Y+Z}. If you paid the TV company $X to start with, you'd be better off and get better TV programming.

Getting back to the Internet, I'd rather have websites that charged you money to visit them than websites supported by advertising. I'd also prefer net neutrality (meaning I pay my entire share of the cost of my ISP) rather than having "cheaper" internet access but forcing (say) Google to increase the amount of advertising it does in order that it has the additional revenue to pay my ISP for my share of it's bandwidth.

It's always cheaper to pay more for access to these kinds of things than to have the price buried in something else. In the case of the Internet (as Kainaw so rightly says) there are always new alternatives popping up. However, how many of those things started out as big business ventures? Google? Nope - two guys with some Linux boxes doing a project. Nupedia, H2G2, Wikipedia? Nope - just some guys fooling around having fun. Slashdot? Nope - some guy's blog. The services we like the almost never came from big businesses. If we let big business pay for the Internet, how will new and creative stuff like that ever get started? If we lose net neutrality - it's the end of the Internet as we know it - and the beginning of just another TV network.

SteveBaker (talk) 20:46, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

"If we let"? Not our choice.. and I honestly can't see an electoral candidate getting ahead in the polls because he bases his platform on not letting ISPs take bribes from websites. Middle america would be scratching their heads saying "who the what now?" --ffroth 02:04, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Seems obvious to me that the Internet can't possibly last the way it is. We're in the golden age of the internet, and golden ages always come to an end. My prediction is that bad legislation will mark its downfall. --ffroth 02:00, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

How do I clean my notebook screen??

I need to clean my notebook screen, how i do this?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Exdeathbr (talk • contribs) 18:00, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Usually a little water and a soft rag will do and is a very safe bet. But your manufacturer probably has instructions printed somewhere on their website or in the notebook's manual. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 18:21, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Java Chat rooms

Hey, I don't know if any of you have come across one, but an example of one is here. I wondered if anyone knows what you type in to change the settings (such as cap the amount of people aloud in)? I have looked on Google and could find very little. Thanks in advance. Creative Lemon (talk) 19:56, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

You'd have to have some kind of administrative privilege --ffroth 02:06, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Apache server redirection...

When you go to a wikipedia page like, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark you're not actually going to a page called Aardvark under the directory wiki in the filesystem, you're actually going to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aardvark . That's some deep apache hoodoo! How do you do that? That is, actually query a php-script with some parts of the URL when it looks like you're accessing a file? 83.250.203.75 (talk) 20:40, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I haven't used it myself but it's something to do with mod_rewrite. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 21:02, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

FTP Client for windows needed

Hi! I need an ftp client for windows. Something like Filezilla, except it doesn't suck. Thank you--193.196.64.2 (talk) 21:29, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I rather like SmartFTP. More are listed in Category:FTP clients. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:35, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Just for my own interest, why do you think FileZilla sucks?

Atlant (talk) 01:03, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to go out on a limb here: because it does? --ffroth 02:07, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Eh, not an altogether helpful answer, considering Atlant seems to have asked it out of curiosity. I can't see why either; though I don't use it every day, Filezilla has been fine for me. Can you kindly elaborate? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 05:06, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I ask because the only FileZilla suckages I've noticed are:

• Right now, the new release is being updated rather too often; perhaps it wasn't quite ready for "prime time".
• As recently as a few days ago, it still had a definite problem operating with the VxWorks FTP server.
• It ought to automatically reconnect after a timeout-inspired disconnect, more like Fetch.

But generally, I find it to be pretty useful and, of course, free.

Atlant (talk) 13:11, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Start -> Run -> ftp.exe -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 04:48, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

That's kind of a "feature free" client, though, and certainly not applicable if someone is looking for a GUI.

Atlant (talk) 13:11, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, WinSCP. SCP, FTP and SFTP support. — Kieff | Talk 05:58, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I prefer the FTP client in Total Commander. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:45, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

So-and-so has added to your FunWall!!! Really?

(Ok, I know this question is a little specific, but I assume there are other people on WP that have a "FunWall" on FaceBook or have received this notification...)

I keep getting messages that say "So-and-so has added to your FunWall!" When I click on the link, I am asked if I want to create a FunWall.

Question: Are these people really adding posts to my non-existent wall, or are they just telling me to get one? Do they see a whole bunch of posts that have gone unanswered? Can they see that I have not yet created my FunWall?

Thanks! Mark, 22:18, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I use Facebook myself - and many of the applications when you first join them, give you the option to "write" or "add" things on your friends pages with the application, whether they actually use this application on their facebook page or not. For example, I added a bumper sticker application to my page, and sent a bumper sticker to my brother in law that says I heart my family. I also sent the same bumper sticker to my sister, but she chose not to add that application. So, the bumper sticker I added currently shows up on his page, but not on her page, when I view their pages.

So yes, they are probably adding posts to your non-existent wall, that you will not be able to see until you add the application. If you do choose to add the application, you will be able to see the posts they have sent you. Until then, neither you nor anyone else will be able to view those posts. Hope this answers your question! Userafw (talk) 23:47, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Don't think the other people can see it. It's just an additional (annoying) way of spreading an application. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 04:47, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

December 13

Ubuntu networking question

I recently installed Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (7.10). Installation went off without a hitch, except for networking. I have a NetGear WG111v2 wireless adapter (which is notoriously hard to set up in linux) hooked into the computer. I successfully installed ndiswrapper and subsequently got Ubuntu to recognise the adapter. However, it refuses to connect to my NetGear WGR614v6 router. My wireless network has two Windows computers connected to it and is WEP-secured (64bit; I know, it's outdated but I don't believe WPA works well with Ubuntu). I cannot connect even without encryption. DHCP does not work for some reason, IP's have to be assigned by me. I did manage to get Ubuntu to connect for an hour by assiging the same IP as the Windows installation it's dual-booting with. However, connection was dropped on reboot. Any suggestions? Thank you! NF24^{(radio me!)} 00:21, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Um. Why are you even WEP-encrypted? Seriously, it's no better at all than unencrypted. Turn off SSID broadcasting, filter by MAC addresses, and use static IPs. Poof you have client-independent security. --ffroth 01:57, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Security in that no one can get on your network, but everyone can watch what you are doing.--Dacium (talk) 03:03, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

It's not impossible to connect either. MACs can be spoofed without too much difficulty. Though, if someone actually cares, having the SSID broadcast off will at least keep you somewhat off the radar. May as well combine that and WEP if it's all you've got. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 05:00, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

WEP, SSID hiding and MAC address filtering are all terrible solutions, none of these are even close to safe (sniff one packet and you have the MAC address of an allowed card, sniff a connecting packet and you have the SSID, all in cleartext). I'd say that relatively speaking, of these three, WEP is the best one since at least you get some encryption. If that's all you got, use it. 83.250.203.75 (talk) 09:54, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I haven't found Gutsy's wifi abilities to be particularly... stable. What I found sometimes works is setting up a wpa_supplicant.conf manually, running wpa_supplicant, and then running dhclient. I usually only had to resort to that when the signal quality was weak though. Sometimes (okay, often) NetworkManager would crap out on me and I'd have to kill it. I gave up on it after a couple weeks. And WPA does work with Ubuntu, and pretty much as well as WEP as far as I've seen. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 05:00, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

**FATAL** String Manager Failed to Initialize Properly

What does it mean and how do I fix it? Its an error message that comes up whenever I try to start a game on my computer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.101.53.169 (talk) 02:08, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

It's probably specific to the game. What game is it? What type of computer? Googling around makes it seem like it is a Command & Conquer error; a few of the results give specific recommendations.[10][11] Have you tried those? --24.147.86.187 (talk) 03:58, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

PSP

How exactly do you get it to where the music on the PSP has a picture of the album attached to it so that, like if you created a subfolder for the band, you could see a picture of the album in place of the typical white box? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.23.71.23 (talk) 03:12, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

A Google search for PSP music album art reveals you need to add the album art to the MP3 files using ID3v2 tags. The first result shows how to use a program called GodFather to add the tags: Music Transfer Guide (with album art) --Bavi H (talk) 03:35, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Linux webcam drivers

Hi, I'm on Linux and I have a USB webcam with a TP6810 chipset (Vendor 06a2, ProdID 6810). Apparently there is no Linux driver for it. How should I proceed if I wanted to write one? I know C to some extent, so that wouldn't be a problem. I also have patience and I'm willing to reverse engineer. :-) ›mysid (☎∆) 14:08, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Handwriting translation / reading program?

Hi, me again, having discovered the reference desk I am going through an addiction phase like I did with eBay in 2001.

Anyway, you know those forensic CSI FBI CIA etc. shows on TV where they just scan the messily handwritten letter into the computer and then, after some CGI graphics that seem to be swiped from a BBC documentary about Black Holes and Hawking Radiation, the computer spits-out a complete and spelling-corrected print-out of the text?

Do they really have such programs?

I am a historian trying to read the letters of someone who wrote as if she just stuck the blunt end of the pen into her ear canal and then moved her head parallel to the paper! Egads!

Just curious about the state of the technology. Saudade7 14:39, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

This is two fields of ongoing research. AFAI no program such as the one you desribe exists. You might want to read the articles Handwriting recognition, and Machine translation. Expect both problems to be harder when combined. This because flaws in the translation will cause uncertainties in the recognicion, and vis-a-versa

Wikipedia:Translation#What_to_remember_when_translating sums up our own views on computerized translation. Taemyr (talk) 15:07, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Can't your pharmacist just ask your doctor what he/she meant? It would have to be easier. And what does your profession have to do with your medical issues? :) Honestly, this _is_ a field of research, but we're not where you need, yet. -SandyJax (talk) 15:13, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Printing issue in Excel.

I have a spreadsheet I am trying to print in Excel '03. It should be several pages. I go to print preview and it only displays the last page of the document. I have it set to 80% of the actual size. (shouldn't matter because when i changed it back to 100% it still only showed the last page) I'm not sure if this is a setup issue or whats the deal. I went and looked through all the print options and everything looks good. Help is appreciated.