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March 7

Default Connection

I am currently running OSX 10.5 If i have to connections to the internet (Wifi and a 3G Modem) What will my computer default to?--196.207.47.60 (talk) 13:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know for sure but with my Macbook if I don't turn Airport off it will go with that if it has a signal, no matter what else is plugged into it, I believe. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 15:39, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

In the Network Preferences, find the little gearwheel under the list of interfaces on the left. One of the options there is "set service order", which will allow you to specify the priority you want (and is a lot harder to find than the equivalent function on older versions of OS X!). I tend to put things like modem and bluetooth, which I would be turning manually on and off, at the top of the list, so that when I turn one on it takes over automatically. Then wired ethernet (I can unplug it if I don't want to use it) then wireless. 81.187.153.189 (talk) 22:43, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Creating a wiki like wikipedia?

How can I start one up? Thank You Very Much! --Coltrum (talk) 01:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Try wikia or set up your own web server and install mysql and apache and set up mod_php :D\=< (talk) 01:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

to hard i need a basic wikipedia type database to get started. --Coltrum (talk) 01:48, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I told you, try Wikia. :D\=< (talk) 01:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

they never help me --Coltrum (talk) 01:58, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

ok i downloaded both and now i need to know to set up a web server how? --Coltrum (talk) 02:07, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Have a look that this Think outside the box 10:52, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

If you only need a simple wiki, try DokuWiki. --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 15:46, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

However little they help you (and I find it unlikely that Wikia would be so unforgiving), using Wikia (or any other pre-set-up wiki) is going to be vastly easier than setting up your own system. Daniel (‽) 19:56, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Laptops in Aircraft

If you have a laptop on your person in high altitude can it be damaged by the altitude difference if it is on.--logger (talk) 03:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I would say on civil aircraft no. If you are talking about a military flight, where you need an oxygen mask, that is a whole different ballgame. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:30, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Completely original research, but I've used my laptop on flights from Hawaii to mainland US and from NYC to Dublin, and many other shorter flights (which presumably didn't get as high) and had no problems at all. --LarryMac | Talk 03:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Vibrations from takeoff and landing (or maybe turbulence) would frag a non-solid-state drive pretty quick. Air pressure doesn't change much. Change in gravity isn't an issue. I don't think I'm missing anything :D\=< (talk) 04:07, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

At some sufficiently-high altitude, the flying read-write heads in the hard disk drive will be unable to fly and will crash into the media. Similarly, the less-dense air will be unable to sufficiently cool the chips in the laptop. But that altitude is higher than the "altitude" that the cabin is ordinarily allowed to ascend to. Still, your laptop will probably run hotter, having a minor effect on its ultimate lifetime per the Arrhenius equation.

Atlant (talk) 13:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Air pressure changes enough to cause several issues, although for civil aviation they're managed and mitigated. FAA regulations mandate that, for passenger aircraft, the cabin pressure be no lower than the pressure you'd experience at 8000ft in the open (ref), which gives a pressure level of around 75% of that you'd experience at sea level (ref). That's not a huge change, but if your laptop contained any air-filled voids that weren't open to the outside (i.e. that didn't depressurise along with the cabin) that would exert a quite nontrivial force, enough to cause thin-walled enclosures to swell a bit. So for this reason laptops, along with other electronic devices, don't contain such voids (there's always a channel connecting any non-solid space to the outside world). This poses a problem for the design of hard disk drives, which depend on having very clean air inside (dust getting in is devastating); they have foam plugs that fill the channel between the inner void and the outside, allowing the air pressure to equalise without risking inducting dirt from outside into the platter void. A second air pressure issue is cooling - PCs and (most) other electronic systems shed excess heat by dumping it into the surrounding air. As the air pressure at altitude is lower, there's less air mass into which to shed that heat, and so cooling systems are proportionately less efficient. So your laptop fan will have to work a bit harder to keep the system cool (and if you're mad enough to radically overclock your laptop you would be increasing the chance of overheating). Now there's also cosmic rays, which you do encounter a bit more at altitude, although I really don't know to what practical degree (this guy's claims that it's quite a lot). Of course none of this stops millions of people using their laptops on commercial flights every day, to no ill effect other than annoying the bloke next to them. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:32, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

In what way is it annoying to the bloke next to me if I'm using my laptop? --LarryMac | Talk 14:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Once I sat between weird-porno-guy and guy-watching-odd-slapstick-while-making-sinister-choking-noises-guy. Which one were you?  :) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 14:23, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Also the size of your laptop is often correlated with the amount of annoyance. People with monster laptops end up pushing their elbows out to the side in order to type on them, given the cramped conditions of modern flight. And that's kind of annoying. But not as annoying as the person in front of you deciding that they'd like to push their seat back far enough to put their head in your lap, which seems to be quite common in my experience. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 15:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

When man first dreamt of flying through the sky he had no idea of the horrible sacrifices he would have to make in order to do so. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 16:16, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Right right. We should all be happy with whatever we get, no matter how shoddy the service is, no matter how unnecessarily irritating our fellow man can be with his lack of consideration for others. Why have standards? It could always be worse. And so it will be. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 23:41, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

/me smells Sarcasm. Kushal 20:59, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Hoping that someone still reads this thread... what means to "frag a non-solid-state drive", as mentioned by :D\=< above? And what's the best way to prevent it (other than not flying with a labtop)? Thanks, Ibn Battuta (talk) 06:38, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

D\=< is wrong. Laptops (and their flying disk heads and platters) will routinely survive the sorts of shock loads imposed by turbulence. The force that the head mount imposes on the air bearing is much larger than the G-loads imposed bythe external vibration.

Atlant (talk) 16:47, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I would expect to see a cheap drive head crash after one rough landing, or a few miles of clacky train track. Oh and I mean if it's in use-- yeah if the laptop's just sitting in your case it's fine, Atlant is right. But combine an in-use drive platter spinning at 5200 times per minute with a sharp metal drive head smashing downward, and you have data loss. :D\=< (talk) 19:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you have any actual experience, or references, or anything to back up your claims?

Atlant (talk) 00:28, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

On the cosmic ray side of things, an IBM study in the 80s found that you were 5 times more likely to experience bit rot from cosmic radiation in Boulder, Colorado at about 1 mile above sea level, than in New York City. You were ten times more likely to see errors in Leadville, Colorado at about 2 miles above sea level. If that continues linearly (and I'd have to go re-read the study again to be sure), then a laptop at 30,000ft would be 30x more likely to experience memory problems than one at sea level. Lattitude also figures, though. That said, I've been running machines at 10,000ft for a looong time, and I've never been bothered by any more than the usual instability. --Mdwyer (talk) 21:40, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

batch file (.bat) to rename all the extension of some file -including- in all subfolders

Hello, I'm completely new to Windows scripting and I hosted a VB board for very long but now is the time to shutdown... I still want to be able to use all the attachement that were uploaded to the VB board, but they are all named in the format #.attach where # is an integer. I found that this script :

ren *.attach *.jpg

could do the trick, -but- the trick here is that vbuiltin put all those attachement in folders that contain subfolders, that contain other subfolders. I would like to be able to apply this batch command to all file in subfolders included.

How can I do that Esurnir (talk) 15:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

hmmm it seems like there wasn't only jpg in the archive, is there any way to look into the file and if the first hex match a certain type (like FF D8 FF for jpg) rename the file to the correct extension ?

I can live without but it would help Esurnir (talk) 16:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I had this solution for you that I thought should do the trick, but that was prior to that added twist. I really don't think batch is going to be the answer if you need to look at the file contents. For the record, here's what I came up with previously. You'd want to find a way to test this on a small set of data -

for %%i in (dir your base directory here /ad /s /b) do
( cd "%%i"
  ren *.attach *.jpg )

--LarryMac | Talk 16:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

For the benefit of anybody else who might have been looking at this, my initial attempt had some problems. Further revisions can be found on both my and Esurnir's talk pages. --LarryMac | Talk 19:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

recursive walking through a directory structure is much easier with JPSoft's 4DOS & 4NT.
4DOS (v7.58) is now free since DOS/Windows9x is now out of date but it can't see long file names in windows NT - use 4NT (or the current version - TakeCommand au$79.95) for it's 30 day trial (www.jpsoft.com)
If you need to go more than about 4 layers down you need to set stacks= higher in config.sys (4NT has a limit of 32 layers deep)
this is ren-all.bat

 for /d %d in (*.*) do (cd %d & call %0 %d & cd ..)
if ISFILE *.attach for %f in (*.attach)(
if %@FILEREAD[%@FILEOPEN[%f,r],3]==0xFFD8FF ren %f %@name[%f].jpg
)

this is off-the-cuff & would need debugging

I think the signature is 'JFIF' at 6 bytes in which would be

if %@right[4,%@left[10,%@line[%f,0]]]==JFIF ren %f %@name[%f].jpg

Alanthehat (talk) 21:04, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

BNF for a quoted string

BNF - Backus–Naur form
I was working on some BNF rules and I started working on clearly defining a quoted string. This is any string of characters that begins and ends with a double-quote, such as "this is a quoted string". The issue is with escape characters. I'm using the backslash, so I can use "escape looks like\"". So, obviously, a BNF that just demands a beginning and ending quote won't work because "something \" is not valid. This led to wonder if someone has written a nice concise BNF for a quoted string. If so, what does it look like? -- kainaw™ 19:30, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

This description of Java in BNF describes it by defining:

<string literal> ::= " <string characters>?"

<string characters> ::= <string character> | <string characters> <string character>

<string character> ::= <input character> except " and \ | <escape character>

where presumably an escape character is a " or a \ followed by a single string character. Does that help? grendel|khan 19:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

It appears that there is no way around the ambiguity of the escape character without clearly defining a non-escaped character as anything except a \. The problem I have is that I don't think "Anything except..." is proper BNF. So, I was trying to avoid that as well as avoid typing out every possible character except the \. -- kainaw™ 01:40, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

In my day, when compilers were being written you would handle quoted strings in the lexical analysis phase, sometimes called the scanner. One reason for doing this was performance. It gets tedious to handle all the low-level details in the BNF, and it may not be very fast. Also, there is usually some corner of the grammar where you have to 'cheat' (no context-free grammar for the language feature may exist) and the scanner can handle the funny cases in regular procedural code. EdJohnston (talk) 02:36, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Saying "this production except ..." is OK for Extended BNF. --sean —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.134.115.242 (talk) 17:36, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

(Alanthehat (talk) 22:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC))

Why is tr working differently on one server?

On every server but one:

$ sh -c "echo 'abc123' | tr -d '[:alpha:]'"
123
$ sh -c "echo 'abc123' | tr -d [:alpha:]"
123

On one server:

$ sh -c "echo 'abc123' | tr -d '[:alpha:]'"
123
$ sh -c "echo 'abc123' | tr -d [:alpha:]"
bc123

The versions of bash (3.2-0ubuntu7) and coreutils (5.97-5.2ubuntu3) match up. All servers are running Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty). Is the latter form something that isn't really guaranteed to work, and it's weird that it is working on one machine? If I'm using a packaged script which uses the latter form, should I file a bug requesting that they use the former? grendel|khan 19:39, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

You should. I tested these on a OpenBSD system (grex, to be exact), with these results:

grawity@grex:~ $ sh -c "echo 'abc123' | tr -d '[:alpha:]'"
123
grawity@grex:~ $ sh -c "echo 'abc123' | tr -d [:alpha:]"
abc123
grawity@grex:~ $ echo 'abc123' | tr -d "[:alpha:]"
123
grawity@grex:~ $ echo 'abc123' | tr -d [:alpha:]
abc123
grawity@grex:~ $

--grawity ^{talk / PGP} 20:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

The form without quotes will be picked up by the shell and treated as a filename wildcard _if there is a filename that matches it_ (i.e. single letter in the set ':','a','l','p','h'), but will be passed to tr as-is if there is no such filename. —Random832 20:22, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, you're right! I moved into an empty directory on the offending server (which happened to have a file called "a" in ~) and got the "proper" response.

$ touch a
$ echo tr -d [:alpha:] 
tr -d a
$ rm a
$ echo tr -d [:alpha:] 
tr -d [:alpha:]

This has been bugging the guys at the office for the last three weeks--it's the sort of thing that wasn't a problem for months and months until someone decided to name some scratch file "a"... and the brackets were interpreted by the shell. You guys are fantastic. I'll go file that bug. grendel|khan 20:37, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

And isn't it always the way that after nailing down and patching a particularly recalcitrant bug, it'll turn out to have been fixed months ago upstream? Gah. grendel|khan 20:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Internet Explorer 8

Hello, I have installed IE 8, now I want to deinstall it, but I don't now how. It is now shown at "software". So please can you teach me step-by-step what I have to do for deinstalling? Greetings, --85.178.36.102 (talk) 19:59, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried a howto such as this one? The key seems to be viewing the list of "Updates" specifically, as it doesn't appear as an installed program. grendel|khan 20:10, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

First I haven't vista, second I don't know how to uninstall updates. Please help. -85.178.36.102 (talk) 20:16, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Under Add/remove programs, there should be a check box that says "show updates" or something similar. Try checking/unchecking the box to see if you can see IE8 under it. I hope that helps. Kushal

Add/Remove programs is found in the Control Panel (which may be under Settings in your Start Menu). Useight (talk) 23:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Advertisement: By the way, did you know that Mozilla Firefox 3 is in active development? It would be great if you could it out. The nightly build for Firefox 3 beta 5 preview is currently available for free download from the Mozilla website. Kushal 20:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

You can get old versions of Internet Explorer (or many other programs) at www.oldversion.org. It's pretty good for reverting to a different version of Windows Media Player or anything else that you think got worse with updates. Useight (talk) 23:52, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

www.oldversion.org seems to be an add site? Think outside the box 15:50, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe Useight meant http://www.oldversion.com. Algebraist 17:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. Think outside the box 10:09, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Sending files over Bluetooth

Widcomm's Windows Bluetooth stack had a nice way to send files via Bluetooth - it was just like copying them. Microsoft's program to send files is just stupid. Is there any program (command-line preferred) to batch-send files over Bluetooth? I use Microsoft's stack on Windows XP SP2. --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 20:17, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

How to predict necessary server hardware by server role

I am an admin for the computer lab of a K12 school. We are about to replace the lab, likely with a dozen Vista PCs. We have one server that functions as a domain controller, file server, and print server. Also, each of the 30 students has a roaming profile. Assuming that our new server runs Windows Server 2008 Standard, how do I calculate (or whom do I ask about) the necessary hardware: speed/number of CPU cores, transfer rate of HD, speed of NIC, speed/amount of RAM (missing anything?). I can make minor adjustments after the purchase (like more RAM), but not buying 15000RPM SAS drives and a controller when they would have helped would be a pain, as would buying them when they were not necessary. If it makes a difference, I am eying something like an IBM x3200 or x3400. --41.210.1.120 (talk) 21:58, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you really need any of that? None of the things that you've mentioned are anywhere near CPU-intensive, and you are just getting Vista on the clients for memory hog and nothing else. A fast gigabit backbone is a must and it should have RAID arrays (RAID 5 with harddrives from different manufacturers would be nice, RAID 6 is even nicer) for speed/data security, but otherwise a dual-core Xeon (or if you're crazy enough, a quad-core Xeon) is just overkill. You should concentrate more on the networking and enough ram for Vista (or just go back to XP, or consider a Linux-based network like Edubuntu). --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:34, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Do I really need any of this? Well, that's my question, isn't it? I don't know! I immediately suspect your experience, though, when you suggest RAID 5 with different manufacturers, which is almost always a big no-no. Having cold spares of identical HDs is usually the preferred method of using RAID 5. Heck, do I even need RAID 5, or is RAID 1 enough? I'm thinking of 1 or 2 GB RAM in the clients, which will be doing lightweight tasks. Vista and Server 2008 have plenty of features I'm ready to use (improved Remote Access, improved Remote Desktop Connection, new Shadow Copy, etc). Stop bashing Vista. Remember when XP came out, and people like you were telling people to stick to 2000? Our current server is Fedora Core with Samba, and I have previously administered Edubuntu labs. Edubuntu does not fill my needs for this lab. The typing tutors offered on Linux, for example, are not nearly as full-featured as those on Windows. Also, OpenOffice's bibliography tools are a mess compared to MS Office's. And if you tell me that I can use crossover or wine, then I challenge you to look at the memory footprint of Edubuntu + CrossOver. It ain't no Damn Small Linux. I'm writing this from Ubuntu, and pushing 600 MB. I do suspect you are right about the relative unimportance of the CPU, though. --41.210.1.120 (talk) 00:08, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Well I like the notion of having some more time to do the replacing and recovery than having all drives from the same batch of the same manufacturer. With proper back-ups you don't even need RAID arrays, but then this is getting out of scope. I think you're using features for the sake of them being available, because I don't see why you need the new RDP when the old RDP is perfectly capable, and versioning can be done for ages through something like rdiff-backup. Also, I'm confused: why would a K12 school need bibliography of this scale? People have done them manually for ages, why would a K12 school REQUIRE some vendor-specific feature that is only recently available? Same for the typing tutor, are these actual feedbacks from the students themselves? I also question the benefits of moving to Vista, what do you need it for? Don't fall into the trap of useless software bloat. --antilived^{T | C | G} 03:21, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

March 8

Strange XP Problem

I have this problem with XP that it seems to crash after 20 minutes or so of video chat, on both Live Messenger and QQ. The network would die off and pinging give "Destination host unreachable", then launching new applications would give an error of "not enough quota", or sometimes even "xxxx.exe is not a valid W32 programme". Disabling and then enabling my ethernet connection doesn't help, nor does the "repair connection" button. The only way to fix this is to restart (logging off and then back on doesn't work), but it will come back in another 20 minutes or so.

I have reinstalled Windoze but came to the same problem, and the problem only occurs while doing video chat, as XP is perfectly stable for hours of TF2 or others. My Ubuntu is as stable as ever so I doubt it is a hardware problem, and as reinstalling didn't help I am thinking it's a driver error. But before I go on reinstalling all the drivers I want to see if there are any other leads that I could follow to solve this problem other than hours and hours of driver trial-and-error. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:48, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

It sounds like it's an issue with your video drivers. I wish I could help you more: perhaps you could try to find the drivers somewhere on the net (reinstalling Windows, BTW, was the right move IMO, even if it didn't work). The Evil Spartan (talk) 18:18, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

We have a similar problem, except just IM (W/Windows Live Cam X3000) crashes whenever I'm on too long. It's really annoying, but the only thing I could suggest would be to have your calls in 15 minute segments, close out, then redial. Andrew Kanode (talk) 20:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Google advanced search

I've just noticed google's advanced search [1] has changed. How can I view the old search form? xxx User:Hyper Girl 12:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't imagine you can, if they've changed it. Why do you want to? Ale_Jrb^talk 12:37, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I wanted the feature where you can search for a page within a specific time period. Ahh! *hits self on head* Just realized it is there, its just hidden under the "Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more" heading. Stupid me. xxx User:Hyper Girl 12:53, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Glad you found it! :D Ale_Jrb^talk 12:55, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

PartitionMagic alternative for Vista

Does anyone know a program for resizing, moving and creating partitions without data loss for Windows Vista? PartitionMagic has compatibility problems, apparently. --Taraborn (talk) 13:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Gparted? A brief googling doesn't turn up any strong complaints of incompatibility. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 14:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Our article PartitionMagic says that... no idea whether it's wrong or not. Thanks to both. --Taraborn (talk) 16:39, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I also thought of Gparted, but decided to wait someone wiser to answer. Respect. --82.141.92.211 (talk) 15:33, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

iPod to PC

hello,

does anyone have any suggestions for good software that will enable songs to be taken from an iPod and put onto a PC (windows XP).......

thanks, --81.76.41.242 (talk) 14:15, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Try iDump. It's worked well for me before. [2] Hpfreak26 (talk) 16:25, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Police Simulator

My brother is looking for a computer game in which the player is a police officer (preferably in the US), fighting criminality. He would like the game to be a Vista compatible modern 3D sandbox styled car game. Is there any such game? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 14:47, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Modern 3D sandbox? How about GTA:SA in vigilante mode? --antilived^{T | C | G} 20:57, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

"Taxicab missions got old fast; if I wanted Crazy Taxi, I'd dust off my dreamcast" ... the SA minigames are borrrinnggg, especially Vigilante mode. He should try out SWAT 4. :D\=< (talk) 19:41, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

The closest I can think of is The Getaway, where (for part of the game) you are a police officer fighting crime, but it's set in London, and is only on the PS2 (and backwards compatible PS3s. The best "police" type game is SWAT4, although this deals only with on foot SWAT operations, and isn't really sandbox. The game focuses on the LA SWAT team, and you play through a variety of scenarios that are sort of realistic, and therefor quite challenging. By the way most modern games are Vista compatible. TheGreatZorko (talk) 15:03, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

The game you want is CRACKDOWN for XBOX360 and Windows, Its not at all realistic but its hell fun :)

VB6 Question

I'm going to feel like a total idiot posting this, but... I've got to learn Visual Basic 6 in one week , and I have to know a couple of things. Could someone tell me how to work out the problem V = A * (1 + R)^Y when V is the end value, A is the original amount, R is the annual interest rate, and Y is the number of years of gained interest; and the user inputs A, R, and Y. I have the form written in the editor, but I don't know how to get the values or make it calculate with the click of a button. Thanks A WHOLE LOT!!! Andrew Kanode (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 17:32, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Add a few text controls on your form. Give them names like "txtOriginalAmount" and "txtAnnualInterestRate" and etc. Then add a button. Give it a name like "btnCalculate". Double click on the button and you should enter into the code editor and you want to edit/create the function btnCalculate_Click (there should be a little drop-down menu where you find this). Dimension your variables (Dim A as Single, etc.), then assign them the values from the text controls (A = Val(txtOriginalAmount.Text). Then do your calculaton (V = A * (1 + R)^Y) and then display the final value somehow (e.g. Msgbox V). Does that help? There's more to getting it right (what if they forget to fill in a value? what if they put invalid information in?) but that's the basic process. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 17:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Andrew Kanode (talk) 18:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Best Program for Web Pages

Now that Frontpage is discontinued, what is the best software to create web pages with? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.126.131.115 (talk) 17:46, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I use Mozilla Thunderbird. (Do you get it? That's an email client) In reality I use kompozer, which I ironically found using Wikipedia earlier in the year (maybe last). We have some pages on them, look at the WYSIWYG article, and follow links. Andrew Kanode (talk) 17:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Even better: List of HTML editors Andrew Kanode (talk) 17:55, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

If you want to stay with Microsoft, see Microsoft Expression Web (the successor to FrontPage). Xenon⁵⁴ 17:59, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Note that "best" is a matter of opinion. In my opinion, if it is a WYSIWYG editor, it is garbage. Anything more than a text editor is a waste of time. Your opinion will surely vary. So, instead of asking for the "best", you should ask for specifically what you want your software to do. -- kainaw™ 19:42, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Myep. I prefer Notepad2, but any text editor is good as long as you type the actual code and don't use WYSIWYG ("Design" mode). --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 13:39, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I of course code by hand but I understand that it's very hard for a lot of people to learn how to join the very skills of graphic design and good coding. They're two very different worlds. Computer people tend to think "good coding" should be valued above all else, but of course the real world doesn't work that way — your end goal is not always to impress computer people, but people who just want something that "looks good." So there's some place for a WYSIWYG editor in the world, I think, though I don't use them. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 20:03, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I code websites by hand, but I find that the code-view in Dreamweaver is helpful. It offers syntax highlighting and auto-completion which just speeds up the process of coding a site. Acceptable (talk) 17:02, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Syntax highlighting is helpful but total overkill for writing something as simple as a web page. Just use notepad/notepad2/vi/mousepad :D\=< (talk) 19:49, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Eh, it's pretty useful when you make typos (is there shame in that, now?) and you can't figure out which errant tag has gone crazy. I use TextWrangler which is wonderfully bare bones (so to speak) but has nice and subtle syntax highlighting. And recommending vi to someone who wants advice as to which WYSIWYG editor they should use is pretty silly. (I've never understood the modern fetish with ages-old programs like vi and emacs, personally. I guess it must have some sort of retro appeal, the equivalent of insisting on using eight-track rather than CDs much less MP3s.)--98.217.18.109 (talk) 20:03, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Personally I've never understood the backward fetish with bloated programs like emacs :D\=< (talk) 15:53, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

If you are looking for a WYSWYG editor, try Nvu. Even discontinued, it is still one of the best free editors for Windows. Personally I just use Vim the text editor, but that is not for everyone. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 20:07, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

"export" in OS X Terminal

I'm using OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger). I'm trying to install ImageMagick based on the instructions on this page.

My problem seems to be that the "export" command seems to only work for the session of the Terminal that I am running. When I close it down and open up Terminal again, it has forgotten everything. E.g., if I run export MAGICK_HOME="~/ImageMagick-6.3.9/" and then run echo $MAGICK_HOME, it'll tell me the right path. But if I close Terminal and open it again, when I run echo $MAGICK_HOME then it gives me nothing.

What am I doing wrong? I hate bash. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 19:12, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

This is true in all shells. You need to add the command to your bash configuration file. Doing a

echo 'export MAGICK_HOME="~/ImageMagick-6.3.9/"' >> ~/.profile

should do the trick. --Sean —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.134.115.242 (talk) 23:16, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Wish the ImageMagick instructions had said that and not made me go through all of those hoops for nothing first. Will give it a shot. Thanks. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 04:55, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

No Dial Tone

I have a scanner for work (one that scans UPC codes and keeps track of how many). It has to hook into a telephone line in order to send information and for me to receive it. For the past few nights it keeps giving me the message, Error: no dial tone. I tried two different telephone cords, my telephone is working. What could it be and how could I fix it? Any ideas/suggestion? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.126.131.115 (talk) 19:16, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

If the outlet works and the cord works, blame the scanner. It must be broken. -- kainaw™ 19:43, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Help - AOL Instant Messager (AIM) will not allow my to sign in

Hi; I have two linked accounts on AIM. I tried to log onto one a few minutes ago, and it would not work. I tried logging into my AIMail for the same account, and it also did not work. I logged into the second account and it was fine; however, I noticed two things. The first account was not displayed above the second account (as it should appear and always has), and when I opened an IM and attempted to use the first account, it was offline and unusable (even though it was selectable). Does anyone know what is happening here? The screen name and password are correct; I attempted signing in about a dozen times. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you. 70.105.164.43 (talk) 19:50, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

By the way, the error message displayed reads "Invalid Screen Name or Password". 70.105.164.43 (talk) 19:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like an incident of hacking. Have you ever given out you passwords to anyone? You may wish to change the other's password if they were the same. I haven't used AOL since '00, but I think the master (or administrative whatever it's called...) has superiority over the other accounts, so was the other account your more important one? It sounds like you should call AOL support, and get them to reset the other password, though they had horrible service when I used it. Andrew Kanode (talk) 20:09, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I've never given my password to anyone, but I do use the same one on other sites. Only two people know about the second account, and they are both completely trustworthy and aren't good enough with computers to hack/get my password. I made the second one about two weeks ago, and have used it maybe 3 times. I made the first in June and use it almost every day. One thing I forgot to mention was when I failed to login to AIMail, the message was "this action is unavailable at this time". Does this mean the problem is just temporary, or is it insignifigant? Thanks. 70.105.164.43 (talk) 20:22, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

March 9

Windows keyboard transpose

Is there a very simple way in Windows (98, XP, Vista...) to transpose the keys on the keypad so that the top row is 123 and the bottom row is 789? -- kainaw™ 05:10, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I use Sharpkeys for all my keyboard remapping needs. It's an easy to use registry tweaker. Works great! — Kieff | Talk 06:14, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Dizzler copyright vio?

Why does the website Dizzler.com still exist? I’m no expert, but it looks like it’s violating international copyright law. Why haven’t the record companies blown it out of the water? --S.dedalus (talk) 06:43, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I poked around it using DownloadHelper, and it looks like the actual MP3 files are on a large assortment of hosts outside the U.S. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 08:55, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Which doesn't make it legal under the DMCA. See MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd..--98.217.18.109 (talk) 14:21, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

The DMCA is not international.. The Pirate Bay is still alive. :D\=< (talk) 19:54, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, the Pirate Bay has been in the middle of local legal issues for a few years now. Don't rejoice yet. Everybody claims they'll never get taken down, until they do. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 22:25, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Anyway, nobody's even trying to say that they're being prosecuted under the DMCA- that's clearly US law :D\=< (talk) 18:55, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Lol international copyright law? As much as America would like to think otherwise, the entire world hasn't signed the Berne Convention, and most of the world isn't going to spend one penny on enforcing America's IP for them, even if they have signed it. :D\=< (talk) 19:51, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Wow, Froth, who knew you were an expert on international IP negotiations? "Lol" indeed! Actually the countries who aren't parties to international copyright treaties can be counted on a few hands and feet—it has nothing to do with loving the US's approach to things, it has to do with the US having made it a requirement to join the treaties in order to get the big-big money in US trade. The governments of most countries, quite rightly, see their own trade with the US as being more important than whether or not people can most pirated MP3s and movies around without a penny going to the content creator. (I think US copyright laws are draconian, but not for that reason. They're draconian because the copyrights do not expire in a timely manner, if at all. But the idea of copyright itself isn't so bad. People should be able to get paid for what they create.) In any case, Dizzler is registered in the USA, so yeah, US law probably applies. Dizzler itself says it adheres to the DMCA[3], and gives a very dubious legal justification for its action (it uses cases regarding image search engines to justify its own approach, and apparently disregards the Grokster ruling I mentioned above). --98.217.18.109 (talk) 22:25, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh yeah, that dizzler nonsense is going down hard. Funny they don't hide behind tv-links's defense, which was "oshi don't imprison me please" :D\=< (talk) 18:57, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Converting an mp3 into something readable

I have a short mp3 that I want to be able to play on an instrument myself. I've gotten most of it by ear, but a few chords are still off. Is there some way I could convert the mp3 into some format that shows roughly what notes are being played? HYENASTE 07:11, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Not really, its a very tricky subject. You can play a midi keyboard into cubase or sibelius, and it'll notate it for you. However, it is often a confusing mathematical way of writing the notes, with excessive rests and dotted notes, something which still needs 'translating' into a decent readable score.

As for software that 'reads' an MP3, as far as I'm aware, it cannot be done, and if there is software out there, I doubt how good it is. Radiofred (talk) 14:49, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Converting an audio file to a musical transcription is difficult for a computer to do. You can find programs for this purpose, but they really only provide useful results on audio recordings of a single instrument playing no more than one note at a time. For example, you can try the freeware AmazingMIDI, a WAV to MIDI converter, and see how it works for you.

An alternative approach is a program that assists you in analyzing the music, but ultimately leaves it to you to decide which notes best match the audio. I've tried a program called Transcribe! (30 day evaluation, $50 for one copy) that works in this way.

When you try to determine the notes on your own, it can be useful to slow the recording down without changing it's pitch. In Windows Media Player you can go to the View menu and choose Enhancements, Play Speed Settings. Or, if you use Winamp, you can install a plug-in called PaceMaker that can change the speed of files playing. Or you can use an audio editor to change the speed. For example, in Audacity, you can select a portion of the audio, then go to the Effect menu and choose Change Tempo. --Bavi H (talk) 01:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Generally, most music recordings contain different combinations of sounds and instruments, many of which "overlap" - that is, their sounds share common frequencies. Whilst analysing the frequencies that make up these sounds is a trivial exercise (there are many programs like SPEAR that do it for you), getting a computer to identify the parts you want transcribed is the hard part. There is constant research in this area but as mentioned before, it's a tricky subject. Having said that, recordings of solo instruments are relatively easy to analyse since there is no other interference from other instruments. Chords are hard to determine because typically a musical instrument or sound will be made up of many different frequency components (which define its timbre), so you won't see three unique notes, but a wash of many at different amplitudes.

Unless of course the chord in question is played on an instrument that produces pure sine waves. Good luck! Damien Karras (talk) 13:36, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Apache Tomcat?

Hi there. In the past I've used the Apache web server (with its PHP module) to run a hobbyist website. I've been without a computer and an internet connection for a while but I shall shortly have both back and will want to set it all up again. However, this time I shall also want to run some JSP / servlet thingies on a separate, private part of the website.

My questions are:

1 - am I right in thinking I can't do the Java stuff with just Apache?

2 - if I replace Apache with Tomcat then will Tomcat be able to do the PHP stuff?

3 - how much of a pain is running both Apache AND Tomcat?

Thanks! --79.64.51.58 (talk) 11:11, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know much about this but googling for things like "Apache JSP PHP" turns up a lot of hits. Apparently you can, with a lot of configuration, get Tomcat to do both PHP and JSP (see here); and apparently you can run both Apache and Tomcat at the same time, getting Apache to forward certain types of requests on to Tomcat (see here and here). Hope that helps. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 20:13, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Previous poster is correct, you can get Tomcat to do PHP. For a site with more than a few hits the best option is to use a combination of apache tomcat and http server. You can achieve this with mod_jk, there are other ways too but this is the most common way. -- Q Chris (talk) 11:48, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

decompling proframs wrintten using DBASE and CLIPPER

Anyone know how you can decompile programs written some time ago using DBSAE and CLIPPER to get back to source15:15, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Google "clipper decompiler" and you'll find a lot of programs that do it. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 20:16, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Finding out passwords

Is it possible for the system administrators/developers of a site to reveal the password of your user account? For example, can the developers of Facebook, Hotmail find out your password given your username? Similarly, can the developers of Wikipedia also find out your password? Acceptable (talk) 16:42, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Most sites use a one-way hashing method to encrypt password. That is, they pick the password you choose, hash it to obtain a virtually unique string, and store it in the database. The next time you log, they hash the password you inputted and check if the resulting string is the same as the one stored in the database. This way, they don't have to store your real password (they have disclaimers that, once you forget your password, you lose your account).

So, don't worry, even if their databases are leaked, it is very possible they only store the hashed strings and not your password. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 17:00, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Many sites store one-way hashes, and all sites probably should, but there are still plenty who do not. I got into an argument with the developer of a very commonly used forum software about this. He felt that a plaintext password was required so that he could e-mail your password back to you. I think that's chasing a bad reason with a bad reason. It is probably best to assume that your password is recoverable from any site. For what it is worth, the Payment Card Industry standards and OWASP recommendations require secure storage of passwords. There's no way for you, on the outside, to tell if a site is actually following those standards. --Mdwyer (talk) 21:31, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

But if you had hashed strings you could find out a lot of passwords using rainbow tables. You can pretty easily find out small, simple passwords in such a fashion. When you use very long passwords with non-standard characters, you make it a lot harder. (Unfortunately some sites don't let you use long passwords, even though they are much more secure than the most convoluted short ones against such an attack.) --98.217.18.109 (talk) 17:08, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

That is true. However, I assumed Acceptable was just wondering whether developers could just say "User X has password Y" without effort. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 17:15, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

They could, if they wanted to. There are rainbow table sites running things like ophcrack and things of that nature. Needless to say, one should be cautious in using the same password for everything. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 20:08, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

The md5 keyspace has been 100% indexed. There are fast (<5 second) lookup bots floating around IRC :D\=< (talk) 18:54, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

But they don't have to hash it- fact is, they have your password in plain text during the signup script, and if they don't hash it and throw it away like they should, they can do anything they want with it. My friend, a beginner PHP programmer, didn't even think to use hashes and could see any of his users' passwords in phpmyadmin. I wrote my own login script and hash the passwords with md5, but in the user manager I link the hashes to their lookup query on rednoize and most of the test accounts' passwords are in the hash database. :D\=< (talk) 19:45, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

And of course there is the worst-case-scenario of an unscrupulous programmer using their programs to just harvest passwords (e.g. [4]). --98.217.18.109 (talk) 20:08, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

They probably have it in plain text every time you sign in. It would be trivial to write a script that emailed a programmer a users password before hashing it. You cannot trust others to safeguard your password just because they have a website. So, always assume that the site is going to sell your account info for profit and give them as little as possible. -- kainaw™ 01:19, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

This is why everything except website logins uses techniques such as challenge-handshake authentication protocol: they let you prove you know the password without it ever leaving your computer. --12.169.167.154 (talk) 10:30, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I think to summarise the answer is that if an organisation does the "right thing" and stores hashes with salt values, peer reviews deployed code to make sure input values aren't intercepted, etc. you would be safe. There is nothing to guarantee that they do any of this, so you should assume that your password is not safe. -- Q Chris (talk) 11:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

A friend of mine (and one-time Wikipedia high mucky-muck of some description) once ran a site popular among a certain audience. The user table stored hashes (wired up to the real login system in the correct manner as described above), but *also* plain-text passwords purely for his own perusal, interest and amusement. If you give someone your password, you give them your password - even if they have software acting on their behalf. 81.187.153.189 (talk) 22:58, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Any TLDs with very few second-level domains, and no barriers to registration?

Are there any two-character top-level domains that have very few domains under them, and that have no barriers to registration of such second-level domains (such as residency requirement, excessive cost)?

Reason for my question: I want have a very short and simple domain that can be typed quickly.--86.146.241.92 (talk) 18:40, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I suspect there's more reason to it than that, only because you're talking about a big-big savings of a single keystroke. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 19:42, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, yes there are more reasons, not all of which I want to say (except to say there's nothing illegal or immoral involved). Anyway, hope someone can help...--86.146.241.92 (talk) 19:50, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

See Country_code_top-level_domain#Vanity_ccTLDs and the list below it- ccTLDs with asterisks are open to foreign registration. :D\=< (talk) 20:01, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Free the Space

G'day... My XP laptop reports a different amount of free space available on my external hard-drive compared to the Mac at work. I deleted a whole lota files at work yesterday... for eg. its stating 600Mb free on my XP machine while on the Mac it says 11.5Gb is free for the same partition. I've emptied both recycle bin and trash can without any difference. Cheers for any advice :1 Boomshanka (talk) 20:53, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure that your external drive has a recycle bin and a trash can? I thought external drives do not have recycle bins. Kushal 05:07, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

That depends on how Windows recognizes it. If in My Computer it shows as a hard disk, then it has a Recycle Bin (\Recycled) and (sometimes) a System Restore Information folder. If it shows as a removable disk, then Windows doesn't create such folders. --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 16:20, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

So that means XP and Mac OS report deleted files differently? ...and so one OS would not recognise the fact the other OS had marked them as deleted. That makes sense I guess; ok, thanks Boomshanka (talk) 21:54, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

March 10

Laptop Screen Edges

The black screen edge on my toshiba by the logo has come loose for some reason. I am talking about the black plastic that surrounds the main screen. i am thinking that with continued use the side and bottom edges may come off and may expose the screen in a bad way. Are there any ways to get the plastic edges to get tight again like with glue etc...--logger (talk) 01:35, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Well if it is something that you want to keep in warranty, don't glue it, call up the manufacturer. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 02:02, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I speak from personal experience when I tell you NOT to use a nail gun. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 19:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Ouch. :) bibliomaniac15 23:01, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

need memory

I need memory with the following attributes.

1. Memory Size: 1024MB
2. Memory Speed: 266MHz PC2700
3. Memory Type: DDR

Compatible with IBM ThinkPad T.

Where do I find?

Thank you.--Goon Noot (talk) 02:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

PS I don't want two 512MB sticks, one of my memory slots is broken.--Goon Noot (talk) 02:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Did you try Newegg? Just wondering ... Kushal 03:53, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

This eBay search shows that components there start at around fifty bucks (shipping included) for a single 1GB stick of PC2700 in SODIMM (laptop) form factor. (Though it is eBay--be cautious over there!) Also, is your problem with a memory slot being broken related to this issue, where memory in one slot is simply not recognized? IBM may fix that one for free; it's worth giving them a call. grendel|khan 12:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Lenovo sells half as much memory for the same price, but you get the fancy static proof bag and bulletproof box. :D\=< (talk) 18:43, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I think Froth was trying to be sarcastic. What I read from his post is: Don't buy from Lenovo. Kushal 03:51, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

No, I did. The only reason you pay $700 more than you should for a laptop is for the industry leading thinkpad dependability. I paid $150 for an SO-DIMM gig stick of RAM from lenovo and it came in a static-proof bag and bulletproof cardboard box. :D\=< (talk) 01:10, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Formatting query

What is the enlarged (and left-aligned) first letter of the first word in an article called? Thanks for your help! — [sd] 12:12, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean a drop cap? (Apparently the more generalized term is "initial", but all the ones I can recall seeing are drop caps.) grendel|khan 12:19, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Great! Thanks for the quick assistance. [sd] 12:21, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

MS Outlook 2003 SP2 - Inbox

My sub-window showing the text of the messages has vanished. How do I recover it please? Kittybrewster ☎ 12:18, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I assume you mean the Reading pane. If so, go to view menu>reading pane>right (or bottom)

X201 (talk) 12:55, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Dual boot Xubuntu and xp - yet again

Hello, dear friends. Sorry for the abrupt disappearance a few days ago, but I've moved and my PC's not up to snuff yet, and I am still waiting to get a permanent Internet connection. Anyway, I'm getting a new hard drive, a 160 gig baby from Maxtor, and I want to divide it as follows:

• Linux partition - for Xubuntu probably - 20-30 g
• xp partition - for compatibility stuff if I need it - 20-30 g
• rest - data.

My questions as to this:

1. What to install first (Xubuntu preferred)?
2. How to order the partitions best?

It's gonna be safe - only Linux is gonna have Internet access :) anyway, suggestions welcome, all the best from the beautiful city of Olsztyn. --Ouro (blah blah) 16:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Ey Ouro. Boo maxtor, yeeeeeah Xubuntu! This is how you want it:

Primary 1 - XP - 20GB

Primary 2 - /boot - 50mb or whatever

Primary 3 - Your data, format it fat32 if you need it at all from Windows. Don't trust wrappers.

EXTENDED

Logical 1 - / - 10GB?

Logical 2 - /home - 20GB

Logical 3 - swap - 2GB

--:D\=< (talk) 18:48, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh and definitely install Windows first. And partition and format everything even before that from a gparted livecd, except leave unused space for the XP partition.. let the XP installer make its own NTFS partition in the empty space. :D\=< (talk) 18:51, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Maxtors rock, Froth, been usin' 'em for years now. Anyhoo, I figured the gparted bit - always have it handy - and the fat32 bit, I was only unsure how to order the partitions around. Thanks loads! --Ouro (blah blah) 20:19, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Pah, Western Digital is the best hands down. The order of the partitions doesn't really matter, other than that windows likes to be #1, /boot should be primary (don't think it HAS to be), and you can only have 4 primaries before you go to extended :D\=< (talk) 20:30, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Make your data partition NTFS, as ntfs-3g is stable now. Or format it as ext3 and install ext2IFS (yes it works with ext3 is well) on Windows. FAT32 has lots of fragmentations and the 4GiB limit means you can't even store an image of a DVD. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:45, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm gonna be accessing my data mainly from Xubuntu, but there could come a time when I could need it under win (that's why I'm installing it - should I need certain software that's only available for windows). The DVD image is a point. Cheers, Ouro (when he was too lazy to log in). --83.9.68.252 (talk) 07:17, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I definitely don't trust ntfs-3g.. if it can't even force mount without serious risk of data loss then it's obviously not stable enough for backup purposes. FAT support is 100% :D\=< (talk) 15:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm gonna go with FAT32 for now, I think. I can cope with the fragmentation and I'm used to it anyway. Keep your fingers crossed, the disk is due in today. --Ouro (blah blah) 06:34, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Mega Byte & Giga Byte

How many Mega byte equals 1 Giga byte? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.200.103.2 (talk) 18:04, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Approximately one thousand megabytes is one gigabyte.87.102.94.48 (talk) 18:28, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Exactly, not approximately. We have names now. :D\=< (talk) 18:40, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

If you think megabyte is 10⁶ bytes and gigabyte is 10⁹ bytes, then you have 1000 megabytes = 1 gigabyte. If you think megabyte is 2²⁰ bytes and gigabyte is 2³⁰ bytes, as you often do, then you have 2¹⁰ megabytes = 1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte. Read megabyte and gigabyte. --212.149.216.233 (talk) 18:45, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

A gigabyte is not 2³⁰, that would be a gibibyte. :D\=< (talk) 18:49, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Nevertheless, Gigabyte is in common usage, often where gibibyte is the defined correct term.

To the original poster (Hello!) Our Gigabyte article explains some of the confusion. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 19:13, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

You link to Gibibyte, and yet you missed the "gigabyte... can... be a synonym for gibibyte". Megabyte has been used as $2^{20}$ for quite some time, and even now it is not incorrect usage (unrecommended, maybe). -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Just when I thought computers couldn't get any more confusing. I understand it all, but I can see how a layperson would have a major headache when trying to buy a computer. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 19:26, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Simply speaking, you can usually think about it as 1024 Megabytes in a Gigabyte. Useight (talk) 01:01, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The gigabyte/gibibyte distinction is usually not meaningful for things like buying a computer. When you're comparing components (how much hard drive space or RAM, for example), the same unit will always be in effect. Hard drive space is almost always specified in base-10 gigabytes, while RAM is always specified in base-2 gigabytes, so unless you're actually doing capacity planning where you know your needs more specifically than just "bigger is better", they may as well call the units of RAM potrzebies or something.

The average user can safely forget about the SI prefixes, IMO. I've been in the software biz for many years and have never once heard anyone using "gibibyte" and friends. A google search for Template:Websearch gives millions of hits, while a search for Template:Websearch gives around 36,000 -- and almost all of them are about what it is and why no one cares. :) --Sean 13:06, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Enemy Territory

I hate buying presents, but it seems I soon have to. The one for which I should get something always complains that Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory doesn't run well on Windows Vista. I think he should have upgraded his games instead of going for Vista. Then a day ago I stumbled upon Super Gamer LiveCD that has it. It looks like quite perfect (=free), but download size is huge for my <60kB/s download rate. Is there something similar out there that would be a bit more minimal that has/on which can be installed Enemy Territory (yes and also put on something I can just handle over)? Sorry for my English. --212.149.216.233 (talk) 18:31, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

A DVD is not too big for 60kB/s. In round figures, it would take 100,000 seconds to download 4 gigabytes at 40 kilobytes per second. That's 1667 minutes. 27 hours. Just over a day. Just run the torrent for a day and you have it. You even have 20KB/s to spare. :D\=< (talk) 18:39, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Öhm, let's play it is too big. My computer is quite noisy, öhm öhm. Öhm. --212.149.216.233 (talk) 18:48, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I just love öhm. Maybe I'll start getting it now. Hints are still appreciated. --212.149.216.233 (talk) 18:51, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

ಠ_ಠ :D\=< (talk) 18:53, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

You forgot the law of download speeds. I go at 3 mb/s a second, but when I put a torrent on it NEVER goes above 100 kb/s. Thusly, 60 kb/s will never go above 2 kb/s. I have seen this happen with DSL all the time, it's quite sad. Of course, it may just be me, your mileage may vary wildly. Also, for the record: my PC sounds like a vacuum cleaner when I turn it on. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 19:20, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Yah, typical for America. With a horribly misconfigured setup. Open the incoming bittorrent port, tweak your load. You can triple that 100kb/s easy :D\=< (talk) 20:25, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I've opened the port and saw absolutely no improvement. It must be the wireless, but I get 2 mb/s consistantly on Steam, so why should bittorrent be different? 206.252.74.48 (talk) 20:44, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

It's complicated. How many peers are you connecting to? :D\=< (talk) 21:09, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I connect to about 20 for each torrent, but only about 5-10 actually add to my download speed. And each one at about 2 kb/s... 206.252.74.48 (talk) 12:40, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I downloaded Knoppix and ET Linux version. Took some 7 hours. It\s playing fine, but some map&mod downloads crash the computer. My keyboard map is now freaked, can\t sign this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.149.217.84 (talk) 05:23, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Good Star-watching Software

Ages ago I got a Meade Polaris telescope as a gift, and it came with some great astronomy software called "Starfinder" on 2 floppy disks. But alas, I have lost those disks and am having trouble finding a program that is as good as it. Can anyone lead me a website where I can find it again, or recommend any software that is simular to it? Specifically, I am looking for the following features:

-Simple rendering of the ground and the horizon (so I know what I can and can't see!)

-Symbols and labels (instead of fancy rendering like Celestia)

-A "nightvision" mode that makes the entire UI red-coloured to preserve vision in the dark (this is the most important feature)

Thanks in advance. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 19:14, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I had that exact software with those same 2 floppy disks O_O I was like 8 years old and I loved flicking nightvision on and off :D It was just tweaking windows "Appearance" tab settings though.. you could probably tweak your own and save it as a template then restore that every time you go stargazing. Or just use the normal screen, turn down your screen brightness (look for sun or lamp icons in blue) :D\=< (talk) 20:28, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

That's a great suggestion, but changing the appearance of Windows won't change the colour of the UI button icons and sky view. I'm surprised that there aren't many stargazing programs with this great feature. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 20:40, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Try Stellarium. It is free and has all the features you asked for, plus much more. Morana (talk) 06:22, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Or Cartes du Ciel. Also free, but a bit more practical. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:33, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Help thief!!!!!

why did i buy a seagate 80 gb not 79 not 76 not 81 gb and when i install its reads i have 76 gb.thats outright theft.why dont they just say their selling a 76 gb hdd.another thing i buy a 512 mb of ram but i have a 480 or something..dont vendors know this or is it a ploy to hook u in their trap of insufficient storage and memory so u keep on adding more stuff.can i overclock my hdd to increase its size?if i email those guys of seagate can they hook me with an extra 4gb of storage? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.220.113.117 (talk) 20:08, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

See Gigabyte. Seagate is even quoted in the article. Short answer - to a guy in marketing, 1 GB = 10⁹, or 1,000,000,000. To a computer geek, 1 GB = 2³⁰, or 1,073,741,824. 80*10⁹=80,000,000. 74.5*2³⁰=79,993,765,888. Close enough for government work. --LarryMac | Talk 20:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Where are you getting 74.5? :D\=< (talk) 20:17, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Grin. See today's XKCD, second row from the bottom. For more helpful reading, see Binary_prefix#Legal_disputes, which someone should clean up, someone seems to have some sort of a problem with lawyers mopping up millions while the working man labors. For some reason. :D\=< (talk) 20:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Hard drive and RAM measurements are basically an estimate. It is nigh impossible to get an accurate number for storage. The explanation may also lie with the fact that hard drives store data in "clusters" of a certain size. This means that some space cannot be used. It is better with NTFS than it is with FAT32, but you will still lose some storage space as a result. There is also LarryMac's answer, which is part of the problem as well. So, it is both an issue of size labeling as well as the restrictions of data storage methods. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 20:18, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

What you're describing is internal fragmentation, and is why you won't be able to fit 79,993,765,888 bytes of data on your 79,993,765,888-byte hard drive. What LarryMac is describing is why your computer reports an 80-gigabyte hard drive as 74. gigabytes. --Carnildo (talk) 20:50, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

You always lose 7% of the drive size. I bought a 750GB external drive and it's actual capacity is 698GB (a loss of 52GB and you're distraught over 4, which, on the other hand, is still enough to install a good first-person-shooter). Useight (talk) 21:41, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

No way it's always 7% :D\=< (talk) 22:19, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

It was less when the disk sizes were measured in megabytes. When terabytes come, the edge will be 10% Admiral Norton ^(talk) 22:47, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

As I've said before, the hard drive companies are in the right here. The problem is the senseless software industry practice of reporting file and drive sizes in mebibytes and gibibytes instead of megabytes and gigabytes. It confuses the heck out of most users, and it's far less convenient than decimal units in virtually every situation even for geeks. -- BenRG (talk) 23:31, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

internal or no internal fragmentation..why do they label them as 80 gb.i cant blame software makers or anybody apart from the manufacture.its a basic priciple.i go to the shop buy something and actually expect that specific things.What next?i go to buy kaspersky 6 and am given a kaspersky 7?Manufacturers know the market very well..and they msot certainly know all the ups and downs in their products.Why is the consumer allowed to bear the brunt in technological flaws..because they explicitly labelled my hdd as 80 gb.no warning was given that am losing a whole 4 gb.I wouldnt be haing a problem if they actually told me am buyng a 76 gb hd.and on reaching home i get a 76 gb.plain and simple..so I think all this excuses is just but an eyeshutter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.220.113.117 (talk) 23:50, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

There's actually usually a warning on the hard drive's box, something like, "Actual capacity will be less." Useight (talk) 00:59, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

It is an 80 gigabyte drive. It's also 76 gibibytes. Gibibytes are a different unit. You didn't lose anything. That's like saying you lost 9 of something in going from 100 yards to 91 meters. Yes, the hard drive manufacturers and the software manufacturers should get together and agree to use the same units. They should both use gigabytes, because it's a more sensible unit. Unfortunately they don't. But that doesn't mean you lost something. -- BenRG (talk) 01:06, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

What, gibibyte is the more sensible unit! Who uses 10s? :D\=< (talk) 03:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

OOh! THERES gigabyte and theres gibibyte?silly me.if you put it that way thats cool.But what about ram?you cant tell me theres also mibibiytye? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.220.113.117 (talk) 02:45, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Uh well there's mebibyte. :D\=< (talk) 03:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

More likely is that your computer is using the memory from 480meg to 512 for a 32meg video card that is built into the motherboard. --Trieste (talk) 21:54, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

That's not the case if you have a video card installed. As an interesting side note, Windows XP Pro and Home will not display more than 2.5GB RAM properly but XP Media Center will. Useight (talk) 23:28, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Not to mention that he's completely wrong. Shared video memory thieves memory from RAM, not from the hard drive. I bet there are safeguards to keep that memory from being paged/swapped, or maybe that memory isn't addressable by the OS without going through the video card :D\=< (talk) 15:39, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Or perhaps you'd like to re-read the original question, in particular the sentence that begins "another thing ...". --LarryMac | Talk 15:51, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

O :D\=< (talk) 17:00, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

And it may have been noted, but I haven't seen any harddrive as of late that doesn't have a note on the box explicitly stating that "1GB = 10⁹ bytes" -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:31, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Empty boxes

I am creating a to-do list on Word 2007, I was wondering if there was a way other then manually adding an empty box at the end of each item, where I could check it off when each task is completed, if there was an autoset way to add in theose boxes rather than using autoshapes or drawing a box myself because the line-up always ends up crooked? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.127.174.50 (talk) 21:42, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

OneNote 2007 has this feature, as is usually bundled with Word 2007. Do you have it? Ale_Jrb^talk 22:37, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Isn't one of the dingbats you can use with a bulleted list a box of some kind?

Atlant (talk) 00:29, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Here is Microsoft's tutorial on making a checklist. It says it's specific to Word 2003, but I would imagine it's a fairly similar process in the newer version. I found that page by using Word's help facility and searching for "check box". --LarryMac | Talk 13:23, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Nice tip! Thanks. However, according to the tutorial, enabling the toggle disables editing; enabling editing disables the toggle. Is there an alternative way where checkboxes can be toggled on and off any time? --Kjoonlee 10:10, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

March 11

Software to save memory of an application

I wonder if there are apps that can "save" the memory usage of another app so that the memory can be loaded back later and the app would think its at the point it was at during savetime.

For example, ability to "save" a dos game that doesn't have a save option.

I need it to be runnable under WinXP.

Thanks!

24.83.195.130 (talk) 03:52, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps there are some debuggers or dump applications that can do that. One issue is preserving the state of all the gadgets in the PC such as the interrupt timer, video memory, sound card etc. Under DOS there is more direct control by programs and so it will be more tricky to interrupt and restore control later. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

If possible, it would be an acceptable option for me to preserve not the dos prog itself but an emulator running it, such as doxbox. Of course I have no idea what kind of cans of worms that option can open... 24.83.195.130 (talk) 04:14, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

One option that may be overkill but which is guaranteed to work is to use vmware server (which is free). You could run freedos or windows in the virtual machine. Vmware server allows you to suspend the state of the machine and restart it later. Morana (talk) 10:29, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Why not hibernate your whole computer? Then everything would be saved. xxx User:Hyper Girl 14:34, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

It sounds to me like what you want is a general Savestate feature for DOS programs. No clue if any DOS emulators have them but that'd be the term to search for. Googling for "Dosbox save state" turns up a lot of hits -- some seem to imply you can do it though I don't see instructions how anywhere. I dunno. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 15:01, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

On a related note, how come MAME32 can save memory states but DOSBox can't? Is it a matter of complexity? Or is it simply that noone's bothered to program it into DSOBox yet? Zunaid©® 08:18, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

NEED PSP HELP!!!!

I have recently downloaded the god of war demo for the psp on the playstationstore.com.I took and put in the removable disk thingy or "psp" then I tried to look for a games file but I could'nt find it. AND NOW I CAN'T PLAY MY DEMO!! whats wrong. Thank you for your and generousity (Computerwookie (talk) 04:14, 11 March 2008 (UTC))

Downloads are supposed to go onto a memory stick - did you download onto a memory stick? Did you download onto a PC - if so you need to transfer the data to a memory stick.87.102.14.194 (talk) 08:12, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer and time but I am 100% sure it went into the psp memory card, I just can't find the game file in the psp.The only files there is the "PHOTO" and "MUSIC" place and I was able to put pictures and music in but since I can't find the "GAMES" file I cant put the game in. (Computerwookie (talk) 21:31, 11 March 2008 (UTC))

Create it! *Right Click* → "New" → "Folder" —Preceding unsigned comment added by WikiY (talk • contribs) 00:57, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I think what the above is saying is you need to make a 'games' folder then download the file to that.

Can you connect the memory stick to a PC and check if the file is anywhere in there - it looks possible that the PSP hasn't recognised it because it isn't in a specific games folder.87.102.17.32 (talk) 13:11, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I remember something from penny arcade recently that you had to make a folder with a crazy numerical name :D\=< (talk) 15:37, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Surely the software supports its own downloads in a simple fashion - downloads are an official feature of PSP right??87.102.17.32 (talk) 20:33, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

found this http://www.us.playstation.com/psp/downloads/systemupdate/pc.html looks like you need to create a folder called 'GAME' hopefully that fixed it.. did it work or are you still having problems?87.102.17.32 (talk) 20:53, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Cybersquatting for Fraud and Profit

Does anyone know if there have been published cases of cybersquatting where the squatter mimics a charity site in order to receive donations? AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 09:25, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know whether you'd consider Madeleine McCann's disappearance as a "charity" but [5]? x42bn6 Talk Mess 18:33, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the interesting link, but what I meant was something that mimics the original in appearance, with a "Click here to donate" button that sends money to the squatter. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 19:38, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Toshiba Laptop switching itself on

Last night my fiancé's Toshiba Satellite M30 laptop switched itself on in the middle of the night, despite the fact that she put it in standby mode before going to bed. She got up in the middle of the night, saw a glow coming from the screen, and for some reason it was on, so she had to shut it down again. We'd both been up before then and it was definitely off, so we're somewhat confused. It's actually the second time it's happened. She's worried that it may have a virus and someone is accessing it while she sleeps, and while I know this is unlikely, I can't explain what's happening. Can anyone help? Is there a known explanation for this (other than 'are you sure you turned it off?')? Thanks in advance! Phileas (talk) 12:54, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Edit- Maybe I should have mentioned that the laptop is nearly four years old. Phileas (talk) 12:56, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I can't think of anything except network boot, which AFAIK requires a hard ethernet connection :D\=< (talk) 12:57, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

My usb-keyboard kept turning my computer on from stand-by mode until I unallowed it from doing it, but it was not a laptop and that happened quite frequently. You could try the same for all (usb-)devices. --212.149.216.233 (talk) 13:48, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

For some values of "last night", some machines will change their own clocks for DST, which may for some odd reason start everything else up.... SandyJax (why amn't I logged in?) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.55.10.178 (talk) 18:45, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

• Some options exist like 'allow ethernet to wake computer' or similar things including bluetooth. 86.139.91.153 (talk) 11:40, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

My old Toshiba had a BIOS setting for a timed power-on. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:42, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I need a textfile splitter

OS: Windows XP

I have thusands ASCII plain text files. Each file consists of up to hundreds of documents. Each document ends with "END OF DOCUMENT". Some individal documents are more than 500 KBytes. Some files are several MBs. These are very large text files.

I need to split the files into separate documents and save them. Naming is not an issue because I can rename them later. They can be indxed by a desktop search engine.

I tried TextWedge. It is buggy. From time to time it fails to split the documents properly. I have no idea why some large files are correctly splited while some others are not.

Is there a good tool for this job?

Most text splitters only split files by size or by line count. Many of them do not support drag-and-drop, batch or multiple files. Some shareware products are simply crap.

I can actually use a line splitter to do this job. I can batch replace all /n to a placeholder and then add /n before and after "END OF DOCUMENT" so the file would look like:

1. Very lengthy single-line document 1 ... blah ... blah ... blah ... /n
2. END OF DOCUMENT /n
3. Very lengthy single-line document 2 ... blah ... blah ... blah ... /n
4. END OF DOCUMENT /n
5. Very lengthy single-line document 3 ... blah ... blah ... blah ... /n
6. END OF DOCUMENT /n
7. Very lengthy single-line document 4 ... blah ... blah ... blah ... /n
8. END OF DOCUMENT /n
9. Very lengthy single-line document 5 ... blah ... blah ... blah ... /n
10. END OF DOCUMENT /n
11. ... /n

Then I can split the files every other line. I can then restore /n.

Are there GOOD tools for this job? -- Toytoy (talk) 18:12, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

It would be trivial to do this with a programming language like C, Pascal (Delphi), (Visual) Basic or Perl. I take it you don't know any? I suppose it can be done with a tool that supports macro scripting but I would not be bothered with the effort. I also would not trust shareware to do this. Backup your files! Sandman30s (talk) 18:20, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd use csplit. I think it is a standard BASH command. I'm sure there are a million other ways to do it. -- kainaw™ 18:23, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Right, the problem is that the task you want done is highly specific to your particular needs, though the ways of doing it are relatively easy with scripting languages, so there's not going to be some sort of not-quite-scripting solution out there for this particular task.

Given what you've told us the easiest way to do it will probably be in Visual Basic, just because you probably already have programs with VBA interpreters in them (e.g. Microsoft Office), so you won't have to install anything new, and VBA (of this sort) is relatively easy to read comparative to other scripting languages. Perhaps someone on here will take the time to write out the code for you but basically what you want to do is have it go through every file in a directory, open the file, loop through the lines of a file and see if it equals END OF DOCUMENT or not and if so take the lines since the last END OF DOCUMENT and put them in a new file (named?). I haven't written VBA in awhile so if I try to do it from scratch it'll probably be buggy (and I don't have time to really try it out), but it's not hard to do if you can find someone who knows VBA. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 18:28, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

If you grab ActiveState Perl the following command will do the trick:

perl -ne 'sub bump { open STDOUT, ">out" . ++$i . ".txt" } bump unless $i; bump and next if /END OF DOCUMENT/; print' in.txt

--Sean 14:00, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I use HJSplit[6] to split just about anything. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:43, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Anasoft Licence Manager? Nitrogen service? Anybody heard of?

Has anybody heard of "Anasoft License Manager" or the "Nitrogen" service? Here7ic (talk) 18:22, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Other than the fact that the software package -"Anasoft License Manager"- was assigned TCP ports 1083 and 1084 in the IETF's old "Well known ports" list -which makes said package at least 15 years old- a quick Google search doesn't turn up much that's useful. Um, dry nitrogen is often the working fluid of choice for pneumatic systems that must be both inert and cheap, and many machines using it are computerized. Not much help on that one. There, I'm logged in now. -SandyJax (talk) 19:04, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Windows Vista, suitable directory for standalone command line utility

I'm trying to help my father-in-law, who bought a new PC with Windows Vista, to get a command line utility working. I've never touched Vista. His hearing isn't too good, and he lives in a different city, so this is (a rather difficult case of) telephone support. So far, he has managed to copy the .exe file to a usb-stick. The question is, where to put it. On XP, I'd simply drop it in C:\Windows or C:\Windows\System32. Is the directory setup the same on Vista, and if so, would copying it there work as it would in xp? Otherwise, what would be the easiest solution? Having him create a directory for it, modify the PATH environment variable etc. to make Vista aware of the program would be *very* difficult. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:52, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe command line support was removed from Vista. ArcAngel (talk) 21:17, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

It's still there, just less obvious. Either hit start and search for 'cmd' or go to all programs->accessories->command prompt. Anyway, I just checked the directory structure on my Vista box, it's the same as XP - those paths are still good. Not sure if UAC would take too kindly to it, but unless it does really wierd stuff, it should be fine. What does this program do? CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 21:29, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

It's good old grep, which he uses for searching his genealogy data base (a huge collection of huge text files). Unfortunately, the fact that he's working from the command line does not imply that he's computer savvy, just that he started doing this on a CP/M machine... On Vista, we had a hard time even launching a shell, but this site came to the rescue. Will we be able to copy the .exe to c:\windows from an ordinary dos shell, or will we need a shell with special privileges? If special privileges are needed, can these be acquired once the shell is launched (like su in unix)? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 22:04, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I think maybe I found the answer to my preceding question in a subpage of the site I linked to, but I'd be grateful if someone would check it out and confirm:

1. Logon to Vista using your normal username and password.
2. Click on the Start button
3. Click on Start Search.
4. Type, cmd.
5. Right-click cmd, select 'Run as administrator' from the shortcut menu.

In the last step, what exactly is meant by right-clicking? Clicking on the blank background of the shell, on the icon at the top left of the window frame (system menu) or something else? If you're thinking, "well why don't you try?", remember: I cannot see the machine, the gentleman I'm trying to help does not communicate very clearly what he is doing, and has problems in hearing what I am saying. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 22:20, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

That's right, I was just typing up a response to say the same thing. You need to close the command prompt, right click the command prompt icon and select run as admin from the menu. Provided the text files are in his workspace (C:\Users\username), there shouldn't be any more problems from here. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 23:04, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

You definitely should not need elevated privileges to grep. :D\=< (talk) 01:49, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Clearly not, the question was whether you need elevated privileges to copy grep.exe from the usb-stick to C:\windows. CaptainVindaloo, you're saying that you need to right-click the cmd-icon in the start-menu, right? Is there no way to elevate the privileges of a shell that is already running? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 12:54, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Yep, it's the start menu icon you're after. I don't think there is a way of elevating cmd's permissions while it's still running. Sorry Froth, I didn't mean to imply you needed elevated permissions to use grep, I just meant you just need it once to install it in system32 without aggroing UAC. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 18:27, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Resolved

Thanks a lot! --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:22, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Another way to do it: Browse to the desired folder. Hold down shift and right click on the folder. Select "Open Command Window Here". --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:49, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Python: extreme index

My Python-fu is rusty, and I've had surprisingly little luck with available documentation. What's the "standard" way to find the index of the lowest (or highest) element in a list? —Tamfang (talk) 20:57, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Something like L.index(max(L)). --71.162.233.151 (talk) 23:03, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay. Seems inelegant, though, as it involves searching the list twice. —Tamfang (talk) 23:38, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

You could just do it the real way and loop through L, keeping track of the index and highest value. Probabaly no slower than using max() unless functions aren't actually interpreted on the fly, I have no idea how python works :D\=< (talk) 01:14, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

My goodness, are you suggesting that a programmer actually should manually loop through a list in python! Heresy! Python people are crazy-lazy, I'm just sayin'. It's like two lines, fer chrissakes! --Oskar 10:34, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Using builtins will almost always be faster than coding it explicitly, since the builtins are written in C. The following program shows the builtins (even with the double-lookup) to be 4 times faster than searching the list explicitly. --Sean 14:36, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

#!/usr/bin/python

import random, time

list = [random.random() for x in range)]

iterations = 1000
start = time.time()
for i in xrange(iterations):
    list.index(max(list))

end = time.time()
per = (end - start) / iterations

print "%f seconds per loop with builtins" % per


start = time.time()
max_idx = -1
max_val = -1
for i in xrange(iterations):
    for idx in xrange(len(list)):
        if list[idx] > list[max_idx]:
            max_idx = idx

end = time.time()
per = (end - start) / iterations

print "%f seconds per loop by hand" % per

I get 7.3 times faster, and yet another 10% slower if I actually implement the max_val "optimization" you implied that loads each element of the list only once. With -O and (of course) a different list, I get 6.1 times faster, and 8% slower; the index() solution, of course, only has to rescan a random-length prefix of the list. It's amazing just how much slower Python is than C — even C that has to test the type of each list element and so on. Of course, no index manipulation has to occur, and I guess the interpreter doesn't even know that xrange isn't modifying the list... --Tardis (talk) 23:34, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

March 12

Distributed Computing

I searched wikipedia on the topic "Large archive sharing and rights management " but couldnt find any article about it, can anyone please give me detail info about this topic? --58.65.203.8 (talk) 08:32, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Of note - the search tool in Wikipedia is terrible. You are better off going to Google and seraching "large archive sharing and rights management site:wikipedia.org". As for the topic, I am confused. The name of the section here is distributed computing, which is a method of running a program such that different parts of the program run on different processors, all running with a common goal for the overall program. Then, your question appears to be about large archive sharing, which I use a NAS for. Also, you mention what appears to be file system permissions. None of those topics really have a lot to do with one another. So, I'm not sure what you are asking about. -- kainaw™ 12:06, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I've always been mystified why our search tool doesn't just use Google itself. --Sean 20:11, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Because a good built-in search would be able to take into account assumptions about the structure of Wikipedia that Google can't. --Carnildo (talk) 20:59, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Plus all the legal issues of licensing Google search, the intrusive ads, etc. It's more trouble than it's worth for the way Wikipedia is structured. -- Kesh (talk) 21:25, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

And there is no reason to assume Google is anything more than the flavor of the moment. The number 1 search engine comes and goes. It won't be long before some new search engine supplants Google as #1. Why should Wikipedia blindly show support for Google over the others? Instead, it makes it very easy to choose to search with google after you click the "search" button. -- kainaw™ 00:06, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Wireless broadband

Hi, I live in the uk and have Virgin media home phone tv and internet, my internet modem is in one room and my ps3 in the other, this makes it hard to use an ethernet cable to link my ps3 to the internet, can anyone suggest a way to get around this problem (i cant move the tv nearer) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.115.175.247 (talk) 09:48, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Get a wireless router? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 14:36, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes - your PS3 has WiFi, so a wireless router would solve it. Alternately, get a longer ethernet cable. You can buy ones up to 50m in length from a big Comet store or somewhere like that (although they are expensive - I'd look online at dabs.com or somewhere like that). Neıl ☎ 17:52, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

There's also power over ethernet, PCWorld stock them, they're not cheap though Silent52 (talk) 03:49, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

How to find USB port speed using visual basic 6.0

Hai,

  I am working in visual basic 6.0.Using Cypress driver i will communicate with the Device

using USB Cable. But I have the Problem is wtether I will communicate at High Speed or Full Speed.But I want to Communicate in Both Version USB 1.1 to USB 2.0.So Please Help me How to Find the Speed of Port.

    Details:
          Cyusb.sys       ------>  USB Driver
          Visual Basic 6.0---------> Platform(Language)
  Please any one send the code to communicate or Give me guidence to Me.

Advance thanks

By R.Rajesh Kumar —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.59.117 (talk) 11:18, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Watching pages?

How much memory it would take on Wikipedia's servers if single user clicked "Watch" on the top of all >2 million articles? Yes I'm not planning to try. --212.149.216.233 (talk) 13:56, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

It would probably take a lot of memory to execute all of that php, but to actually store the user's watchlist wouldn't take more than 100mb :D\=< (talk) 15:36, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

That would be a monster watchlist. Useight (talk) 16:12, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

That would be a "Recent changes", I should say :)  ARTYOM  16:52, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

You had to remind me of that page. And so I dove head-first into the muck after I swore I wouldn't - and cleared up enough vandalism to somehow earn a barnstar. Now I wish I had the courage to log in. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 14:03, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Haha, wow! That's the first time I see a barnstar on an IP's page! Lol :)  ARTYOM  16:31, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Several (three or more) years ago lengthy watchlists were a real issue, with occasional database slowdowns getting so bad that the developers had to institute severe limits on the "view my watchlist" query (not on the watchlist you actually have, but on the maximum number of watchlist changes you could see), down as few as 20 one time. Subsequent (software and DB structure) improvements seem to have mostly fixed this problem. A few times the devs have complained that people running semi-automated queries with URLs manipulated to request very large datasets have made the servers slow, but I've not seen that lately either. Most large database-backed websites eventually institude mechanisms to cull any user-generated query that's taking more than a reasonable one should (say a second or two), to limit the asymmetric leverage available to DoS-ers; I don't know of WikiMedia has done this on their MediaWiki/PHP/MySQL setup. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:57, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

The Evils of Geek Squad

A few weeks ago I asked about what was wrong with my ThinkPad and from the answers I've decided to hand my laptop over for repairs. Since I have no warrenty or anything of the sort (and I'm lazy and impatient), I'm thinking of going over to Geek Squad (which I can literally hit with a stone throw from my home) and entrusting it to their care. However, my friend told me he hates Geek Squad because they just send it back to the manufacturer - who replaces the components with cheaper ones. I really don't want to go to the local mom and pop computer repair shop (although normally I would, but this particular one charges ridiculous prices), so I'm wondering if this is true. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 14:39, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

This and the various slashdot stores (and their comments) may be somewhat enlightening. And there's this and this... and so on. They're not all like this, but it's all YMMV. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 14:51, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Do not give your money to geek squad- seriously. :D\=< (talk) 15:29, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Circuit City's Firedog is better than Geek Squad. Personally, I'd fix my computer myself and take the opportunity to throw that stone you speak of at Geek Squad. But, being that it's a laptop, instead of a desktop, which was your first mistake, I guess take it to Circuit City. Useight (talk) 16:12, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Every time someone asks me to repair a laptop, my solution is to send in all the guts and replace them. I'm not going to waste time poking around in those mini-components. Now, if it was a real computer, I'd happily open up the case and try to figure out specifically what is wrong and replace it with possibly better parts. So, I would expect any repair shop to do the same thing. Just swap out the guts for whatever they can find. -- kainaw™ 16:23, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Why are some of you complaining that I have a laptop? I have a desktop, and I do repair it myself. I have a laptop because it is very useful when I'm running my D&D campaigns. Like Kainaw said, everything is too damn small to mess around with. As for Firedog - the Circuit City that I could throw a stone at has turned into a restaurant, and the nearest one is 20 minutes away. But if I get enough support for Firedog then I'll risk the engine failure gladly. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 16:29, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I definitely wouldn't take it to a restaurant. Are you saying you aren't sure if your car can make a 20 minute drive? You may have more pressing things to fix, especially if your desktop is working fine. Useight (talk) 21:23, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Given current gasoline prices, a 20 minute drive can be a major consideration depending on your income and vehicle involved. -- Kesh (talk) 21:28, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I love the anti-laptop sentiment. Nothing more entertaining that irrational discounting of an entire category of machines on the sole basis that their compact nature makes them harder to repair, as if that were the sole deciding factor in purchasing a computer. (But not impossible. You can often find very wonderful and detailed instructions online about what order to remove things and then it's just a case of keeping track of all the screws. I've taken apart iBooks, Powerbooks, and Macbooks multiple times. It's not that hard once you've done it once and have a general idea of where everything goes. You just have to be more organized than a desktop, which you can rip into without paying much attention to what you are doing.) --98.217.18.109 (talk) 22:47, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

The anti-laptop sentiment is understandable. It comes from dealing with people who do not take their needs into account when purchasing a computer. They spend twice the money on a laptop with half the capabilities of a desktop and then never, under any circumstances, move the laptop off their desk. It isn't just limited to computers. A coworker just purchased a blackberry pearl. I asked if she liked the email reader. She said didn't get email service with her plan. I asked if she liked the web browser. She said she didn't get internet service with her plan. I asked what she had. Just telephone. So why, I wondered, did she buy a blackberry? Because it is the cool thing to do. -- kainaw™ 00:03, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

It's ridiculous to assume that just because someone has a laptop they aren't using it as a laptop. If you've been around a university in the past four years, for example, you'll see that laptops greatly outnumber desktops because the latter force you to be bolted in one location to get any work done. In any case, berating someone for buying a laptop when they are asking about where to get it repaired is a bit like, well, something terribly unproductive, and the sort of smarmy thing that tech-savvy people do that makes the non-tech-savvy think they are all pricks. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 00:51, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I didn't voice any anti-laptop ownership rhetoric in my reply. I only mentioned that they are too small to easily work on and then explained why others have an anti-laptop sentimentality. Also, I never claimed that all the tech-savvy people weren't pricks. -- kainaw™ 01:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Personal story time: I bought a laptop once, and I used it roughly as many times. There's no doubt there are people to whom laptops are invaluable, but I think that too many misidentify themselves as such. For me, having a reliable, comfortable, powerful and affordable bolted-in station for serious work & play, and a book for when I'm on the go, is a wonderful arrangement - and I think it should be satisfactory for most. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 11:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

9600gt and compatible motherboards

Hello

I would like to purchase the graphics card here:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?NOV-96GTS

But was wondering whether it will work on the motherboard here:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?ASU-P5N32E

And if not whether you lovely guys and girls could find:

a) A motherboard it will work on for no more than £200 and sli-ready b) Whether this motherboard:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?ASU-P5KC

Would be a better selection.

Thank you ever so much, I look forward to your replies.

89.241.203.130 (talk) 19:56, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I see no reason the card shouldn't work on either of the boards. The P5KC doesn't support SLI, though. Its main advantage is that it supports both DDR2 and DDR3, but I don't think this is all that beneficial. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 21:10, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

The 9600GT requires an extra power connector that you should make sure your PSU has. It needs a 6 pin molex connector but depending on the brand of graphics card you have it should come with an adaptor for a standard 4 pin molex connector of the sort you'd use to power an IDE hard drive. The motherboards you have posted are fine by the way, and will work with the 9600GT TheGreatZorko (talk) 13:56, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Download Wikipedia

Hello,

On an unrelated subject I've always wondered if it were possible to download the entire of wikipedia (for arguments sake lets say I have a computer that is capable of holding and running this download of wikipedia). I would imagine that the process would save the entire of wikipedia as it is in that state and then transfer the data.

Just Wondering

89.241.203.130 (talk) 20:01, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you can - see m:Database dumps. Hut 8.5 20:06, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

It takes a lot of computer these days, though. The last time I did it (a year and a half ago), the current versions of pages in the English Wikipedia took 100GB of disk space and ten days to import the database. --Carnildo (talk) 21:05, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

100GB! That's a lot of space to dedicate. Even though my PC's capacity is 1.1TB, I can't imagine a need to have Wikipedia offline that merits the use of 100GB. Useight (talk) 21:20, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Compressed article pages (excluding talk pages, history, pictures, photos, user pages and so on) will take considerably less than 100 GB, though. --Kjoonlee 21:59, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

For example, the latest pages-articles.xml.bz2 file is 3.2 G.

• http://users.softlab.ece.ntua.gr/~ttsiod/buildWikipediaOffline.html
• http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/ --Kjoonlee 22:03, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I used to have wikipedia on my pocket pc with the tomeraider files that wikimedia puts up on this page, http://download.wikimedia.org/tomeraider/, It does require the tomeraider application which i dont think is free, but you might find it useful to know. The files are not complete, eg some wikipedia files are missing, but the size is less than a Gb, you can also find tr3 files that contain pictures. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iownatv (talk • contribs) 01:28, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

March 13

the purpose of binding a socket to an address

In standard unix programming, what is the purpose of binding a socket (via the bind(2) command) to an address? I can see why one needs to bind to a certain port, obviously it is to tell the socket to listen on that port, but why give the option of an address? --Iownatv (talk) 01:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

It is possible to have multiple addresses on a single computer. You need to be able to tell the computer which address to use. -- kainaw™ 01:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

what else than 127.0.0.1 would it be? the local loopback. I thought it was uncommon in code to know what one's own address is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iownatv (talk • contribs) 01:43, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

If you were using it as a server, you could use a different IP for each service: Web, FTP, SMTP, etc. If your network is divided into subnets, the you could assign an IP for each subnet. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 01:54, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec) You appear to be thinking along the lines of desktop computers. I work primarily with servers. Two quick examples of multiple IP address uses:

• Server has a network connection to the world with an IP address of something like 11.22.33.44. There is a mirror server sitting right by it that the main program copies all changes to. The mirror is connected on a separate network connection with a fake address like 192.168.0.1. The program handles real-world activity on, say port 123 address 11.22.33.44. It talks to the mirror on, say, port 777 address 192.168.0.1.
• You have three websites on one server. Each requires SSL. Since the SSL handshake takes place before the hostname requested is given, you have to give the server three IP addresses. Each one requires a unique certificate for SSL. So, you listen on port 443 address 11.22.33.1, port 443 address 11.22.33.2, and port 443 address 11.22.33.3. Since you can uniquely identify which address is hit, you know which certificate to use.

There are many other reasons to use multiple IP addresses on a single server. I'm sure you can quickly think of a few. -- kainaw™ 01:56, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

To bind to all interfaces, 0.0.0.0 is used. (I think.) --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 15:46, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

TI-BASIC semicircle

Does anyone know how to draw a half-circle using TI-Basic? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.108.249.191 (talk) 02:04, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, figure out whatever command it is to plot points and you could easily write a Midpoint circle algorithm function that would do it. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 02:08, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Or not- it's a graphing calculator just graph the equation- it's going to be a lot faster than plotting individual points in BASIC. Use uhh strtoeq I think, something like that to convert "sqrt(1-x^2)" and store it in Y1, then turn Y1 on if it isn't already and then put one of the zoom commands to flush it :D\=< (talk) 02:17, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

strtoeq? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.108.249.191 (talk) 02:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll check.. ok check the catalog for String>Eq( :D\=< (talk) 03:35, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Can you give me specific steps? It gives back an argument error. --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 04:14, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

You need to write the equivalent of:

x=x value of centre of circle !insert a value here

y=y value of centre of circle !insert a value here

a=angle that semicircle will make to the horizontal !insert a value here

r=radius of circle !insert a value here

For n=0 to pi step (1/(2 x pi x r) !use radians or change pi to 180 if you are using degrees

plot {x + r cos (n+a) , y+ r x sin (n+a)} ! plot each point

next n  ! repeat for all the points

stop

If you don't have a for/next loop use an 'if' statement and a loop

It should be easy for you to convert this to TI-84 syntax

If you can do that it would be interesting to look at Midpoint circle algorithm which is almost always a faster way to do it..87.102.8.240 (talk) 10:18, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Why are you trying to plot points?! O_O Just:

String>Eq("sqrt(1 - x^2)") -> Y1
ZoomSquare

Note that String>Eq( is a token and so is sqrt( and so is ^2 (the 'squared' key) and so is -> (the STO key) :D\=< (talk) 13:25, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Using my method I could plot semicircles at any angle, upside down, side ways etc..

PS I'm sure the equation is sqrt(1-x^2) or sqrt(r^2-x^2) for radius r. For x>1 (or x>r second case) there's a possibility of an error code if the computer doesn't like being given complex numbers.. I don't know how good TI are in this respect - so it may not be a problem.87.102.35.142 (talk) 13:40, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeh you're right I changed it :D\=< (talk) 14:02, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Also another one near the top - changed it for you.83.100.138.116 (talk) 14:40, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

SMS Gateways: How can I send an SMS text message via email to a Korean cell phone?

In the US, almost all cellular service providers have an e-mail address associated to each cell phone to send text messages to the phone via e-mail (e.g., number@messaging.sprintpcs.com for Sprint, number@txt.att.net for AT&T, etc.). How can I do the same with Korean cell phone companies (SK, KT, LG)? I haven't found much information about Korean cell phone SMS gateways. I would rather use the actual telecom if possible, rather than a third party service, to avoid number harvesting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.75.102.95 (talk) 03:05, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Wow that would be quite a useful feature, are the txts sent through email free to receive? From your description it seems like that the company merely sends the content of the email through SMS to your phone so as long as the phone is compatible to SMS I don't see what's the difference between a Korean cell phone to other cell phones. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:16, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

With Sprint, in the US, e-mailed texts cost the same to send/receive as any domestic texts. It is really great, however, when sending international texts. Instead of being routed through the phone company's private networks, and being subject to international text fees, they are sent over the public internet as e-mail, so they just cost the same as a regular domestic text. The problem (which I'm trying to solve) is figuring out what the SMS gateways are for Korean mobile telecoms. I found that SK has a data service called NATE which may be in charge of their SMS gateways (if they even have any), since I've found a few Google results with the number@vmms.nate.com syntax. However, sending texts to a few friends using SK in Korea gets me an SMTP delivery failed response when sending from both my phone and my e-mail client on the computer. Unfortunately, I can't read Hangul, so I can't go through the nate.com site, which is all in Korean, to see if they have any support pages that could give me some more information. :( 66.75.102.95 (talk) 16:09, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

"Upgrade" to XP Pro?

Honestly, I should know this but I've been a little stumped with it recently. I recently (Christmas time) received a new Gateway P-6301 with Windows Vista Home Premium pre-installed on it. The computer's hardware is all still factory, with the exceptions of a few scratches. Heh. Anyway, without having to go through 10 acts of Congress could someone please tell me if there's a fairly simple and hassle-free way to upgrade to Windows XP Pro from pre-installed Vista? crassic!^[talk] 04:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you have a copy of Windows XP Pro? If so, I don't think there should be a problem at all - just install XP as usual and format the drive. If you are asking about getting an XP license cheaper based on your current Vista - I don't know, but a quick search at Microsoft's site (for some reason they call moving from Vista to XP "downgrading") reveals some seemingly relevant results. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 11:07, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

The trouble with that (just installing XP as usual) is that it consumes a licence (so you've paid for Vista, and paid for XP, but are only using one). As the Vista licence Crassic has is a Gateway OEM licence, he should approach Gateway and enquire about their Vista->XP migration options. Microsoft does allow OEMs to offer this capability (and I think provides them with some tools to that end), although they don't exactly shout it from the rooftops. I'd also check that they'll allow a return to Vista at some future time when Vista is actually finished. The other programmes I've seen (I don't know anything about Gateway's) allow you do all this on one licence without any (financial) cost. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 11:53, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Vista's perfectly fine if your computer doesn't suck- yours unfortunately does. What's with all the vista bashing? You're not hard or something if you stay with XP (after all, it's all Windows garbage)- XP is stable but sorely out-of-date, which is painfully obvious every time I have to work with it. Vista's a memory hog but it's a far more mature OS than 7-year-old XP. Or switch to linux and dual boot XP for gaming- for its lower memory overhead. :D\=< (talk) 13:20, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

You would want to make sure that XP drivers are available for all of the hardware in your Gateway, which I understand can be an issue. --LarryMac | Talk 13:19, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Yah, I've seen a lot of Vista gateway laptops that have no device drivers for XP. You'll have a 800x600 screen, no networking. :D\=< (talk) 13:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Vista isn't actually a memory hog, and I wish people would stop calling it that. It uses about 50mb more than XP SP2, with only its services running. The rest that you see in the task manager is something called Superfetch which means Vista puts programs it thinks you might use in the RAM so they launch faster. If another program requires that memory then the Superfetch cache is emptied, and the other program is allowed to use it as normal.

However Vista runs a lot better on 2GB of memory than the 1GB that you have (It still runs fine on 1GB of memory so I'm not sure why you want to switch). You could probably buy another 1GB stick of laptop memory for less than the price of a copy of XP Pro. TheGreatZorko (talk) 13:50, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't talking about commit charge I meant specifically dwm.exe. I do run vista and compiz fusion and I have the memory for it, but compositing window managers like them suck. you. dry. :D\=< (talk) 13:59, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

DWM.exe often sits around at 30-50MB, which is hardly sucking all my memory, if that's what you are implying. Oh and turning off Aero gives you almost no speed boost by the way (because it's all done on the graphics card, and is turned off or frozen when a 3d application (or something that demands the use of the graphics card) has focus), so if you can run it you may as well keep it. TheGreatZorko (talk) 14:19, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

My computer is an Athlon FX-60 2.6GHz Dual Core, 3GB RAM, 1.1TB HDD, 8800GTX 768MB video card, so I would call it a gaming machine. And you want to know what OS I'm running? Windows XP Pro. I recommend the upgrade from Vista to XP. You can buy a XP install disc at tigerdirect.com or newegg.com and you should be good to go. Useight (talk) 16:40, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Why don't you like Vista? Nvidia driver support is finally ok on vista.. :D\=< (talk) 16:46, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Converting Outlook mail to Mbox

Hi. I am trying to import my mail from Outlook to Mozilla Thunderbird. If I use Thunderbird's import feature, any international character in the bodies of some messages becomes corrupted (and no character encoding tweaking on Thunderbird's end will help). If I import to Outlook Express and then to Thunderbird, the subject lines become corrupted on the Outlook -> Express step.

So, does anyone know a solution to this problem? Perhaps some script I can run that will hybridate the correct subject lines from one version of the mail with the correct bodies of the other? Or a different program to do the conversion? I have encountered an Outlook plug-in called MessageSave that can do the trick, but its trial version is too limiting and its full version is too pricey. Does anyone know of a free alternative, or at least one with a better cost / value?

Thanks. 79.178.115.92 (talk) 11:19, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I've used Aid4Mail (which is commercial, if not terribly expensive) to interchange mail from a variety of formats, and in particular moving Outlook PST archives (which are its equivalent of MBOX files) to EML files that Thunderbird will read (so I'd have Outlook export a folder or account to PST, then have Aid4Mail turn them into EML files). While there are some open source libraries that claim to read Outlook's proprietary formats (and the different, incompatable, and proprietary Outlook Express formats) they don't appear to be heavily maintained and the tools that use them don't seem terribly effective. Update: Ah, I checked MessageSave's price, which is the same as Aid4Mail, so maybe this isn't what you're looking for. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 11:30, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, on one hand, Aid4Mail can do a lot more than MessageSave. On the other hand, it seems to still have problems with some of the messages. Since all I want is to convert my mail to mbox and forget any other format ever existed, I've decided to purchase MessageSave. Thanks for the help. 79.178.115.92 (talk) 14:31, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Aid4Mail is great if you, like me, were going to be exchanging mails in various formats on a regular basis; it's a sorry state of affairs when someone who, like yourself, has to buy software just to get control of their own data for a one-time migration. If you're up for a bit of labour, you could try the following: get yourself an IMAP email account and configure both Outlook and Thunderbird to access it (Outlook, as usual, will try to do vexing things like download all the mail unless you make sure it knows not to). Then, in Outlook, drag your emails (ideally en-masse) from your existing account to the IMAP account (it should copy them up). Then, when they're all copied, use Thunderbird to drag them back down from the IMAP server to a local thunderbird folder (or you could choose to keep them in IMAP land permanently). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:10, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Removal of icon from Sys Tray?

Hey there,

I'm running Google Web Accelerator, but I don't want it to show on the sys tray. Can I get rid of the icon on Windows XP, while still using it?

Perfect Proposal ^{Speak Out!} 14:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

If you just want to hide it so that it doesn't show on the first sight (i.e. you'll have to click on the arrow at the left end of the sys tray to show the hidden icons), then you can right-click on the taskbar, go to properties, click customize, find the web accelerator and select the option "always hide" from the drop-down menu. I'm not sure if you can totally remove it, there might be an option for it in the program's options menu though, why don't you look thru it?  ARTYOM  16:43, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Google Maps

Hello. When I open a Google Maps info window on the toolbar, I can only locate my destinations. When I ask for directions, a new Internet Explorer 7 window appears instead of a new tab. My tab settings are set such that programs open links in a new tab in the current window. How can I fix this? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 15:15, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Ultimate Bluetooth Mobile Phone Spy Software New Edition 2008?

How does this work exactly? What do I need to do in order for this work? Has anyone used this before? --Jonasmanohar (talk) 16:36, 13 March 2008 (UTC) http://www.e-stealth.com/ULTIMATE-BLUETOOTH-MOBILE-PHONE-SPY-SOFTWARE-NEW-EDITION-2008_p_1-8.html --Jonasmanohar (talk) 16:44, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems to be a program to grab data (SMS, phonebooks) from other cellphones via Bluetooth. Let's see...

• Title: 0/5
• Website design: 0/5
• Price: -1/5
• Features: 2/5
• Overall rating: 0/5

Other things to notice:

• Settings screenshot is from Blooover
• The four "Actions" shots are from BT Info
• One screenshot is from EasyJack

Overall rating: SCAM!

I suggest you to try BT Info instead of wasting money. --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 17:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Grawity, do you mind this in layman's terms? Also, how do I use the link you just provided? --Jonasmanohar (talk) 18:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Simulating PowerPoint's increase/decrease font size features in OpenOffice.org Impress

In PowerPoint, you can select a block of text and adjust the font size (upward or downward) by clicking the "increase font size" or "decrease font size" buttons. These buttons increases/decreases the font size of the selected text to the next predefined font size in the "font size" dropdown list. If original font size is between two predefined font sizes, the adjusted font size will be between two (new) predefined font sizes, too. In other words, relative font size is preserved in the adjustments.

These functions are not available natively in OpenOffice.org Impress. Is there simple way to add these functions to Impress, perhaps by means of an extension or via OpenOffice.org Basic macros? --71.162.242.230 (talk) 16:21, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Linux System Calls

What methods there are to do system calls on Linux, from x86 assembly viewpoint? It was easy enough to find int 80h, but what about mysterious glibc & others? I'm such of a hobbyist in all this (weird that way, should I say) that I don't have any clue on how they work. I'd just like to see a somewhat complete list here of elsewhere. --212.149.217.84 (talk) 18:14, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I only know a little assembly but it seems like since the kernel is written in C and has a C interface, you'd need to use C :D\=< (talk) 18:38, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

This site will get you started. The basic idea is that you stick a syscall number from /usr/include/asm-i386/unistd.h into %eax, then put argument 1 in %ebx, argument 2 in %ecx, and so on. Do the int $0x80 to trap into the kernel, and get the return value out of %eax. E.g., to call time(), which is syscall #13, we do:

       movl    $13, %eax
       movl    $0, %ebx
       int     $0x80

Now %eax will contain the current unix time. As for glibc, that's just a normal user space library (albeit one that makes heavy use of system calls), and has nothing to do with them per se. --Sean 19:39, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Simulating PowerPoint's increase/decrease font size features in OpenOffice.org Impress

In PowerPoint, you can select a block of text and adjust the font size (upward or downward) by clicking the "increase font size" or "decrease font size" buttons. These buttons increases/decreases the font size of the selected text to the next predefined font size in the "font size" dropdown list. If original font size is between two predefined font sizes, the adjusted font size will be between two (new) predefined font sizes, too. In other words, relative font size is preserved in the adjustments.

These functions are not available natively in OpenOffice.org Impress. Is there simple way to add these functions to Impress, perhaps by means of an extension or via OpenOffice.org Basic macros? --71.162.242.230 (talk) 16:21, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Explorer.exe large Virtual Memory usage

Hello to all. All my problems started when I was writing a program in Python (PythonWim IDE), requesting it to store quite large bitmap in memory, and then write it to a file. In calculating what to put in its header as width and height, I divided wrongly by 16 instead of 256, and ended up with astronomically large width and height values (57000x12000). Upon attempting to view the file (from my desktop) in Paint, everything locked up, needing to be resolved by closing a few processes (including explorer.exe).

Upon restarting the explorer.exe process, it began with quite a small amount of virtual memory usage (5000 kB), then suddenly jumping to 600 000 kB and locking up. Of course, I tried a reboot, but it didn't work. The problem does not seem to occur on other accounts apart from mine (the only administrator account).

To try to solve it, I fired up WinDbg and chose Step over many times until finally reaching the point where memory usage darted up. It did so in two stages: first to 250 000 kB, then to 600 000 kB. The error seems to occur in the BrowseUI.dll module of the explorer.exe process. This is the output of !analyze -v:

==================
Exception Analysis
==================

FAULTING_IP: 
GDI32!StretchDIBits+1bd
77f2c6ec f3a5            rep movs dword ptr es:[edi],dword ptr [esi] 
Attempt to read from address 

FAULTING_THREAD:  000009b0
DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  APPLICATION_FAULT
PROCESS_NAME:  explorer.exe
ERROR_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc - The instruction at "0x%08lx" referenced memory at "0x%08lx". The memory could not be "%s".
READ_ADDRESS:   
BUGCHECK_STR:  ACCESS_VIOLATION
LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER:  from 7e to 77f2c6ec
STACK_TEXT:  
00ece84c 7e  GDI32!StretchDIBits+0x1bd
00ece898 7e  USER32!SmartStretchDIBits+0x16e
00ece8ec 7e  USER32!BitmapFromDIB+0x1cf
00ece934 7e4284aa 2021000e  USER32!ConvertDIBBitmap+0x10a
00ecedec 7e 00ecf  USER32!RtlLoadObjectFromDIBFile+0x2e4
00ecee10 7e4254de 7e 00ecf USER32!ObjectFromDIBResource+0x25
00ecee60 7e422d2a   USER32!LoadBmp+0x4b5
00ecee84 7e 00ecf USER32!LoadImageW+0x7c
00eceed4 7e444d0a 00ecf  USER32!ExtractIconFromBMP+0x35
00ecf340 7ca2239b 00ecf  USER32!PrivateExtractIconsW+0x202
00ecf384 7ca232be 00ecf 0000000a SHELL32!SHDefExtractIconW+0xe7
00ecf3b0 7ca232e7 00ecf 00ecf420 SHELL32!CExtractIcon::_ExtractW+0x82
00ecf3cc 7ca22a09 001521ec 00ecf554 0968ebb5 SHELL32!CExtractIconBase::Extract+0x1f
00ecf3f4 7ca228d2 001521ec 00ecf554 0968ebb5 SHELL32!IExtractIcon_Extract+0x35
00ecf760 7c9f6015 001521ec  01d0d2f0 SHELL32!_GetILIndexGivenPXIcon+0x29e
00ecf788 7c9fd9ce 000f0f18 001521ec 01d0d2f0 SHELL32!SHGetIconFromPIDL+0x90
00ecfe04 7ca04859 000f0f1c 01d0d2f SHELL32!CFSFolder::GetIconOf+0x24e
00ecfe20 7c9fb22e 000f0f1c 01d0d2f SHELL32!CDesktopFolder::GetIconOf+0x35
00ecfe40 7ca22a64 000f0d20 000f0cbc 01d0d2f0 SHELL32!SHGetIconFromPIDL+0x20
00ecfe68 7c9f209d 01d0d2a0 01e0c608 01eef838 SHELL32!CGetIconTask::RunInitRT+0x47
00ecfe84 75f81b9a 01d0d2a0 75f81b18 75f80000 SHELL32!CRunnableTask::Run+0x54
00ecfee0 77f69498 01de57f8 01d8c748 77f6947b BROWSEUI!CShellTaskScheduler_ThreadProc+0x111
00ecfef8 7c 01d8c748 7c97c3a0 000febe0 SHLWAPI!ExecuteWorkItem+0x1d
00ecff40 7c 77f6947b 01d8c ntdll!RtlpWorkerCallout+0x70
00ecff60 7c 01d8c748 000febe0 ntdll!RtlpExecuteWorkerRequest+0x1a
00ecff74 7c92761c 7c 01d8c748 ntdll!RtlpApcCallout+0x11
00ecffb4 7c80b 7ffd0000 7c ntdll!RtlpWorkerThread+0x87
00ecffec  7c  kernel32!BaseThreadStart+0x37

FOLLOWUP_IP: 
BROWSEUI!CShellTaskScheduler_ThreadProc+111
75f81b9a 8945fc          mov     dword ptr [ebp-4],eax 

SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX:  15
FOLLOWUP_NAME:  MachineOwner
MODULE_NAME: BROWSEUI
IMAGE_NAME:  BROWSEUI.dll
DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP:  47589cbf
SYMBOL_NAME:  BROWSEUI!CShellTaskScheduler_ThreadProc+111
STACK_COMMAND:  ~8s ; kb
FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  ACCESS_VIOLATION_BROWSEUI!CShellTaskScheduler_ThreadProc+111
BUCKET_ID:  ACCESS_VIOLATION_BROWSEUI!CShellTaskScheduler_ThreadProc+111

As convenient as it would seem to an assembly-language programmer, it is still giberish to me. Please help me regain control of explorer.exe, as it is extremely inconvenient to work without making use of the desktop or of the file manager.

--Danielsavoiu (talk) 18:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

It looks like what's happening is Windows is trying to process the file to give you a nice icon for it, but choking on the large file. I would try to get access to the disk somehow (boot into DOS or whatever kind of single-user mode equivalent Windows has, or do it from another account if possible), and go and delete the bad file. I'm always amazed at how hard and noisily Windows sucks! :) --Sean 19:47, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Sean. It is also amazing how the human mind seeks to solve problems in a much more complicated way then necessary. To think that I tried debugging the whole process before trying to delete the file. Indeed, your advice worked perfectly. Thank you once more. --Danielsavoiu (talk) 19:59, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

NFS Permission Problem

I have a fileserver. /home is owned by root:users and 777. Inside that is library owned by root:users and 777. Inside that is text files owned by root:users and 666. All users are in group users. I NFS mount /home/library. On the fileserver, exports is using rw,no_root_squash,async. On the local computer, it mounts as nfs rw. I ensured all user and group IDs are the same between both machines. I can read files fine. When I try to save a file, it deletes the contents of the file and then complains that the local user doesn't have rights to save the file. If I change the owner of the file to the local user, I can open and save without problems. I need for all members of group users to be able to read/write the files. I really need to stop the current experience of clicking "save" and having it delete the contents of the file and then throw a permission error. Is there something obvious that I am missing? -- kainaw™ 18:41, 13 March 2008 (UTC)