Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

Welcome to the computing section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

• Computing
• Entertainment
• Humanities
• Language
• Mathematics
• Science
• Miscellaneous
• Archives

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

   

How can I get my question answered?

• Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
• Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
• Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
• Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
• Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
• Note:
  • We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
  • We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
  • We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
  • We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

• The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

See also:

• Teahouse
• Help desk
• Village pump
• Help manual

May 10

Router for PS3

What kind of router works best with Play Station 3? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.138.240.182 (talk) 01:13, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Does it even make a difference? I am not sure if it does at all as long as you get one that is compatible with PS3 (such as 802.11 b/g wireless router). Cisco's Linksys Linksys WRT54G series is a good place to start looking. Thanks to Google for the search: Router problems with PS3 Kushal (talk) 07:20, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

The wheel ... invented. Kushal (talk) 07:23, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd look at something that is capable of running DD-WRT or Tomato Firmware 206.126.163.20 (talk) 22:47, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

A question about Windows Paint...

I liked Windows Paint. I liked to draw on there and make pictures with that program. Another thing I liked to do with Windows Paint is that I can open pictures I saved in my Pictures folder and I can color them, change them to other colors, and other ways to manipulate the pictures. Now, here's the situation: I wanted to trace a picture with lines with Windows Paint, and then change the picture to blank, but also keeping the picture trace on the white background. Is it possible to do that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sirdrink13309622 (talk • contribs) 03:25, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

What you really need is a program with layers (such as GIMP). But, you can do what you want. It is just rather difficult (and I'm going from memory since I haven't used Windows since Windows 95 was introduced). The eraser has two functions. Left-button-dragging causes it to replace everything with the background color. Right-button-dragging replaces the foreground color only with the background color. So, you can use that to erase the colors you don't want. Still, it would be a hell of a lot easier to use layers. Just add a transparent layer. Trace the picture on it. Remove the picture's layer leaving the trace. -- kainaw™ 04:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Or use Inkscape and Bézier curves to trace, you get way better results that you can scale to whatever resolution you want. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:08, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

How to find IE Proxy Settings on a restricted computer

How can I find out what proxy settings Internet Explorer is using when I'm restricted from opening "Internet Options"? Many sofware have a "Use IE proxy settings" option which work well but it doesn't show the settings just uses them. I want to configure Firefox to use the proxy settings but I need to know them first and the owner of the computer would never tell me. I know they are in IE options but I'm blocked from looking in that. Please helps. Mr Beans Backside (talk) 09:04, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Install Firefox, let it import IE's settings, then look in Firefox's options to see what it got 206.126.163.20 (talk) 22:46, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

We are not here to help you gain access to areas of a computer that you shouldn't. If you really want it so badly, why not talk to the administrator? As for the FireFox thing, if he is restricted then that likely will not work. It all depends on what sort of restrictions are applied. asenine ^{say what?} 07:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Nvidia chip again

I posted a question asking if my laptop was any good for gaming as it claimed to have 'Nvidia graphics'. Someone told me to run dxdiag and after doing so I found out details of my computer and nvidia chip.

Model: Compaq Presario v3700 notebook

OS: Vista Home basic (6.0, Build 6000)

Processor: AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 Dual-core 2.0 GHz

RAM : 1982 MB

DirectX version : DirectX 10

Display device : NVIDIA MCP67M

Chip type: GeForce 7150M / nForce 630M

DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC

Approx Total Memory: 796 MB

So is my laptop any good for playing newer FPS games and other strategy games? Nvidiauser (talk) 10:32, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

The generic answer that your support personnel would give is "It depends on which games you want to play." Kushal (talk) 14:15, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, no. The GeForce 7150M is an integrated graphics card, and therefore it is very weak.

The specification "Nvidia graphics" should be taken as mere trivia, for it is meaningless as far as performance is concerned. A high-end GeForce 9800GX2 is roughly 20 times as powerful as a low-end GeForce 8400GS, both by Nvidia. And even the 8400GS is probably several times stronger than what you have. You can find some reviews of the card via A google search. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 17:26, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Forget newer FPS games unless you turn the resolution down and turn off most of the eye candy, as the specs of your notebook will make up for the lack of graphics power. As for strategy games - turn-based yes, others - it depends. Unfortunately if you want to play new FPS games as they were intended to be experienced, you would need a proper gaming machine. This would mean dual core cpu, ddr2 ram, 8800 or 9600+ nvidia card and a decent motherboard chipset. Lower these specs and you have to lower the resolution in games. 7000 series nvidia cards can play most FPS's just fine with lower settings. Sandman30s (talk) 23:58, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I had a mobile Geforce 7400Go. It was roughly equivalent to an ATI Radeon 9700 (faster than a 9600, slower than a 9800 Pro). Meaning, Half-Life 2 would play on high without AA. C&C3 would play on low acceptably, though with many units or action onscreen the framerate would drop (maybe mid 20s, still acceptable but getting choppy). That was all at the LCD's native resolution of 1200x800; newer FPS and RTS games would be harder or impossible to run at that resolution, and even hard at lower resolutions. Now, the 7150M is even worse, so that gives you an idea. Older games might be okay, but it'll be rough on anything remotely recent. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 22:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Something

Has anyone noticed that when using Google's Translate feature to translate from Japanese to English, it used to show unrecognisable words in small letters in brackets, but now it shows such words in all caps? Is there any way I can change it back to the old one? I do not like the new one because it makes me want to copy those all-caps words and add a swear word before them and a whole bunch of exclo-marks after them! Interactive Fiction Expert/Talk to me 13:56, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Why don't these yahoo answers links work?

Why don't these yahoo answers links work? Is it because I'm Canidain? [1] [2] [3] [4] Mr Beans Backside (talk) 14:04, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

If it is because you are a Canadian (and I seriously doubt it), you need to sue Yahoo! Inc. for discrimination. It might be because you happen to be in Canada (and their service is down in Canada). However, I don't think Yahoo! would ever do such a thing as to discriminate based on nationality. --Kushal (talk) 14:12, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Are you joking? Lots of very reputable web sites offer differing levels of service based on the nationality of the user. (For example, The BBC) There are a number of practical and legal reasons for this. You might also be shocked to learn that many movies only come out in certain parts of the world, and will not even work on DVD players from other parts of the world. APL (talk) 02:04, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

As far as I know, BBC is targeting content based on region and not on nationality. If a Nepalese national was in Manchester, I am sure he would get the same content as a British citizen. I can almost vouch that BBC would never discriminate based on nationality as far as serving content was concerned. Kushal (talk) 23:47, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

They don't work for me either and I'm from the US. And, since it's Canadian Yahoo, I'd expect it to work for Canadians in any case (why is there a seperate Canadian Yahoo answers anyway, do they substitute "oot" for "out" in all of their responses ?). I suspect the real issue is one of the 3 they list on the error page, probably the last one. StuRat (talk) 14:18, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Yahoo is down in Canada? But people are still asking questions, I just can't access any of them. This happens ever day when I use this google search to find Avril related news from the past 24 hours [5] Mr Beans Backside (talk) 14:20, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Specifically, I'd guess they archive their answers like we do here, with the consequence that the original links (which Google finds) no longer work after the archival. This seems to be a general Internet problem (links that "expire") which needs a general software solution. A partial solution would be for each site to provide redirects at the old location pointing to the new location when they do an archival. Of course, since this relies on each site to do something, it will never be 100% effective.

Another approach, which I'd like to see here, is for each site to put each question (or maybe each day's questions) on one permanent page to begin with, then provide temporary "transclusions" on the current questions view page. That means those questions and answers would appear on the current page, but would really already be on the permanent archive page. Picking on the links at the top of the current view page or "edit" in each section should then take you to the permanent page, where you would get the permanent link to that Q&A.

A comprehensive solution would be for Google to not only provide a link to each page, but to copy the contents of the page as well. This is currently prohibitively expensive due to the cost of storing that much data and may stay that way as the amount of data on the Internet (current and former pages) may grow faster than the cost of storage goes down. Also, there might be copyright concerns with such a system. I believe that Google does cache some popular pages currently, but certainly not all of them. StuRat (talk) 14:22, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I see. So they die after a certain amount of time? Thats a real bummer because there isn't a google cache link to view. Mr Beans Backside (talk) 14:27, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Slow computerr

Why is my computer being so slow? and it does not have a virus, for example, when i close a window, it takes a long time for that window to close down. how can i fix this? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 14:45, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

(See my response below, to your follow-on question. StuRat (talk) 14:57, 10 May 2008 (UTC))

Well, the most likely diagnosis for a slow computer is not viruses or malware, but instead exactly that - a slow computer. Have you considered upgrading? asenine ^{say what?} 07:06, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

If your hard drive is almost full you amy be experiencing a slowed rate. Try a disk cleanup. Also, you may have cache problems. There are ways to fix this, but for me, when my computer is running slowly, I think the most effective fix is to do a system restore. This will set your system back to how it was when you bought it. Just be sure to save any important files first, as everything gets deleted, but this will definetly speed things up.

I took the liberty of editing what was written above (in italics), so that the browser would not go on for a great width. I'm using Firefox, note you. 213.161.190.228 (talk) 07:33, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Strange application

There is a strange application running on my computer when I look under task manager called "Deepfreeze". It is a virus? How can I get rid of it I did not install it and it won't go with end task? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 14:46, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

This sounds like it might be related to the above "Why is my computer so slow" question. It does sound like a virus to me. First off, do you know that using the Task Manager (at Control-Alt-Delete) a second time to try to close an application will force it to close ? Try that. Unfortunately, many viruses will then just restart a new process. If you have an anti-virus program, try running that. Also remove any registry entries that sound related to "Deep Freeze" and do a "find files" on files that contain that phrase to see if you can track them down and delete them (save a backup copy somewhere in case those files did something important before the virus got to them). If you've done a system save recently (but before this virus appeared), you also may want to do a full system wipe and restore. StuRat (talk) 14:55, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this: http://www.faronics.com/html/deepfreeze.asp. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I should probably say that it is not "my" computer. This relates to my earlier question "How to find IE Proxy Settings on a restricted computer". Mr Beans Backside (talk) 15:02, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I thought DeepFreeze was a data backup program. Useight (talk) 15:59, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Why, it certainly freezes . Scaller (talk) 17:59, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

new ram not working

a freind recently brought some new ram and i installed it in his pc, the thing is windows pro sp2 wont recongise that it has the extra ram, i know windows 32 bit is limited to 4 gig, which is the total now in there but its only showing 490 mb, even when i remove the new ram, which should leave 2 gig, though my friend seemed to think its always been round there. I've updated the bios and the bios recongises that there are 4*1 gig ram, even beeps at me when i dont pair them correctly. I used memtest and that showed no errors. windows wont boot when i haaave only the new stuff in but does boot when it only has the old stuff or the old and new ram. i think the motherboard my be. the ram is PC3200 and its a D865GLC intel board. i'm thinking the boards broke, though it still works fine any ideas?--86.20.169.136 (talk) 15:34, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it's your motherboard. Motherboards can only support a certian amount of RAM. It sounds like an old computer. Try to find its max RAM capacity or get a new motherboard. --Randoman412 (talk) 20:25, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

intels website says it can handle 4 gig ram, guess its a new motherboard--86.20.169.136 (talk) 22:04, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I also think it is probably a problem with the motherboard. It may also be the RAM. While most RAM is tested before shipping, defects still can make it through the system. I would also check that before buying a new motherboard. However, if you do get the ram to work, and Windows only displays 2.5 GB, that is an issue with Windows XP Pro. Windows Media Center Edition will display it correctly, but XP Pro will not. Leeboyge (talk) 03:35, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Joyfully interesting graphical glitch

There seems to be something wrong with my old computer (running Win XP SP2). What programs and not have been installed (so as to give a clue for cause, eg through malware), I can't quite tell you. What I do know is that when I open the Control Panel task for installing/uninstalling software, the list of installed programs goes on perfectly as normal... until near the end. What takes shape is an enormous (likely 650x14,000 pixels, by eye measure and memory) rectangle. It is like a pyramid, if you'd like: First layer is black, then comes white, then comes black, then perhaps grey, then black and then white again. It is quite the interesting sight, and has not been seen in any other list on the computer (I searched rather exhaustively). It can be scrolled through just fine, but not selected. After it comes a few more listings of software. I am planning to reformat said computer, but would like you lot to have a go at this first. I would be able to produce a screenshot, had I not been impaired in access to the computer. So there'll likely be a chance at solving the mystery again, in summer, if anyone needed a screenshot for their diagnose. Scaller (talk) 17:56, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

If you could get your hand on a video camera, you could upload the entire episode to the Internet. Kushal (talk) 22:59, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

re kushal - Or FRAPS for that matter. asenine ^{say what?} 07:04, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

3D modeling software

Hi all, I know there isn't a definitive answer but I've tried some relevant forums and I seem to be getting biased replies so I hope you can point me in the right direction...

I'm a freelance graphic designer and most of my work is for print/web. Occasionally I have to do basic 3d work (eg. boxes, cylinders) to show how the finished products will look. I've been mainly using Bryce_(software) and a couple of free programs but over time I'm being asked for increasingly complex 3D work which I have to outsource as Bryce isn't really created for this type of work.

After trawling google, forums and looking through the 3D_computer_graphics_software I'm just confused so can anyone suggest a solid, easy-to-learn package please? I don't need anything ultra-powerful like film/games studios use. I'm not creating 'organic' scenes, most of my modeling would be based on combining primitives or 'lathing' (I forget the correct term), but if I could model things like this [6] and this [7] that would be great! And I do like the 4-window interface (X/Y/Z/perspective) that the likes of Anim8or use.

Oh, and I'd prefer to stick with something at £800 tops! PC or Mac! If there any designers out there who have made the move from Adobe-type products to 3D I'd particularly appreciate any comments you have!

Thanks in advance, Mike --87.114.18.154 (talk) 19:01, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah thats the thing with 3D graphics programs - there can be a bit of a steep learning curve initially. Blender is powerful and free, albeit can be difficult as the rest - but theres a lot of documentation and wikis on it - and if you're gonna be using it a bit in the future, may as well dive in? Boomshanka (talk) 22:08, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Three cheers for Blender ! Hip hip hurray! Kushal (talk) 22:29, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for quick replies! I know there's going to be a learning curve, I spent weeks playing with 3DS at college (this was about 10 years ago) and managed to create a box with a spotlight lol, I just want something fairly basic and easy to learn. Do either of you have any samples of your own work in Blender? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.114.7.177 (talk) 23:10, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Forgot to sign the previous comment, i was me! Mike 87.114.7.177 (talk) 23:14, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Forgive me if this sounds obvious, but have you thought about just working through one of the many Blender tutorials on the web? (I don't use it but I worked through part of one years ago.) I've found that's often the best way to dive into something relatively unknown and with its own particular interface paradigm and etc. Just going through the motions can give you a lot of insight, more than tinkering with something pre-made. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 23:58, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Art of Illusion. I have Bryce too and use Art of Illusion to make more complicated models. It has a lathe function and is very easy to use. AND ITS FREE!!!!! :-) Ilikefood (talk) 00:23, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Version Control System

Now that there are 4 coders and 2 designers in my company we have started thinking how we need some kind of version control system (yeah, I know, we should've thought of that before). Nobody has any experience with any VCS, so we are free to choose the best tool for the job. But, the big question is should we use SVN or get some kind of distributed system? Also, does anybody have some suggestion where we can learn this, and some best practices? Especially problematic is the fact that all of us use Dreamweaver, and while coders could switch to Eclipse or some other tool that has good integration with version control systems, designers certainly cant. And besides the split Design/Code view is damn useful. So, any tips regarding VCS and web development? If we go SVN how would we accommodate the existence of devel and live servers? — Shinhan < talk > 19:41, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Until someone comes here to actually answer the question, please feel free to browse List of revision control software. Thanks. Kushal (talk) 22:28, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I think for the size of organisation you are talking about there is not much advantage to a distributed system. A good place to look for best practice documents are the Perforce White Papers, start with the High Level Best Practices guide. These are generally applicable, not just to perforce - though they are more applicable to a branch based system (like SVN or Perforce) more than a label based system (like MS VSS). When our organisation looked at revision control, systems we came down to two SVN with the tortoise-svn client or perforce. We ended up going with the commercial perforce because it had a slightly better merge facility and our ITT manager is "nervous" about software that does not come with support - I.E. he likes to pay for things!

We decided to use the separate interface rather than eclipse integration, as with trials with the eclipse plugins we found that some users found it harder to control check in-outs and to ensure that only "working" builds were checked in to the mainline. We have about 20 programmers, ranging from mediocre to excellent, and if all your programmers are high-end this may not be an issue. -- Q Chris (talk) 07:07, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

My experience of version control systems is not broad - I used CVS in the past and now use CMVC for my day job and SVN on a side project. So while I can't advise on GIT, Bazaar, and so on, I can say that you won't go too far wrong with SVN. Sometimes there are benefits to following the herd :-) . I've found the Eclipse plugin for SVN to be adequate but not stunning, so don't worry too much that you won't all be able to use it. TortoiseSVN seems to be the standard standalone app for Windows, but (the herd thing again) I'm sure there are numerous alternatives.

With regard to your processes (the live/devel question) that's something can't really be answered without a lot more information about how you currently work and what you want to do (feel free to provide that information; I'd certainly be interested). As well as not knowing your approach, I've also never done any serious Web development, so please don't take the following suggestion as authoritative. That said, perhaps you could arrange for the current latest code to be extracted from SVN onto your devel server - either upon each commit or, if that integration is a little too continuous for you :-) , each night. SVN provides "hooks", places where you can script what you want to happen, and extracting the code in order to build it, test it, run metrics on it etc is perfectly normal. Then you have a second, manually-triggered script that extracts the code (in exactly the same way, otherwise the configuration is untested) onto the live server when you want to do an upgrade. You might also want to tag the tree as part of that script - that way you can roll back to that version if a subsequent one turns out to be bad. 81.187.153.189 (talk) 23:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Processor Compare

Is there any website where you can compre computer prossesors such as Intel to AMD or ATI to Nvidia? I mean this in terms of specs, power and price etc. --Randoman412 (talk) 20:23, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Try Tom's Hardware [8], Anandtech [9] and CPU benchmark [10]

Mike 87.114.18.154 (talk) 20:30, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Sisoft SANDRA can do this in real time (your processor vs. other processors), if that's what you want. asenine ^{say what?} 07:03, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

How can I make my computer run faster?

When I play a game its really slow. It can be fast actually at around 70 frames per second, but while I'm playing sometimes my computer just starts suddenly making more noise and i have like 30 fps. Theres probably something running in the background thats making it slow. How can I fix this? I'm playing and then randomly it slows down and once in a while it pauses for half a second or so. I want to know if theres anything I can do to make it clean and fresh again without completely reinstalling everything on my computer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.187.116.121 (talk) 23:48, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Try a clean boot [11] or the program CCleaner. I can attest to both of those, and perform them whenever needed. Good Luck! Hpfreak26 (talk) 01:45, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

With CCleaner, go to Tools > Startup and remove anything you don't need. This can dramatically increase the speed of your computer, but be careful when removing entries when you don't know what they do. Usually if you search for the name on Google you can find out what a startup process does. asenine ^{say what?} 07:00, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

May 11

Privacy and email

If I appreciate my privacy can I have a free email (like gmail, yahoo or hotmail)? Or is it absolutely necessary to pay for it?217.168.0.94 (talk) 00:11, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

To be truthful, it does not help even if you pay for it. Unless you send all of your emails to yourself over localhost and noone else, there will be a receiver. If you get an email, there will be a sender. Please stop worrying about things you cannot realistically help. Alternatively, you can come up with an entirely fresh paradigm and get filthy rich (you can give the money to me if you don't want to stay rich. =P) --Kushal (talk) 01:03, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

You might consider carefully reading the privacy policy of any email service you use, free or otherwise. Some of them may be scanning your emails for keywords to base advertisings on. Or they may be filtering for viruses or spam. You may consider this a violation of your privacy. Even if they don't do any of those things, you emails will still be going through at least one (probably more than one) third party who may either illegally monitor your emails, or turn them over to law enforcement agencies on demand. It's also possible that a hacker will gain access to a email server. See E-mail privacy for more. A possible solution is encryption. Pretty Good Privacy is a reasonably popular solution. APL (talk) 01:49, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

One word: Encryption. GPG. There's no other way. --grawity 13:20, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

iTunes on new computer

I just got a new computer, but had to give up the old one before the new one arrived. I'm trying to sync my iPod to the blank iTunes on the new computer, but it won't recognize it. I did save all my music files and everything from the old computer, and put it on a portable hard drive, but I can't just put the whole thing on, and am afraid I'll have to add each song individually, which will take forever, plus I'll have to re-enter all the information I spent so many hours diligently researching and filling in on the first computer. How can I make all the songs and playlists and everything from my iPod sync with the blank iTunes on my new computer without losing everything? Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 08:53, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

And to make matters worse, my iPod just froze. It won't play, it won't turn off, it won't go to the menu, it's just stuck on pause. (And no, it's not locked; I did think of that.) Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 09:00, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

You can restart your iPod by holding the MENU and center buttons pressed for a few seconds (until the Apple logo appears).

The information is stored in the music files themselves (see ID3), so you should be able to just add the whole folder to iTunes.

And next time, use "Backup to disc". (It's in "File" menu on Windows.)

--grawity 13:19, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Playlists, however, are not .froth. (talk) 13:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help so far. I did manage to add the entire music folder, and you were right, the artist and album and album art and all that stuff came with, but the things like play counts and playlists didn't (as mentioned by froth) so if I now plug in my iPod and sync it, will it import that info from the iPod to iTunes, or will I lose it all? (If it helps to mention this, I not only backed up the My Music folder onto the portable hard drive (which is the folder I just put onto iTunes), but also the iTunes folder from under Program Files. Would the stuff I'm looking for somehow be accessible from there?) Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 02:21, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

And now I see that all my music files imported in double, so I have two of every song. What happened there??? Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 02:26, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't have Google access right now so I can't get you a link, but there are pages that describe moving your iTunes library from one computer to another. Not sure if everything moves over, but some does. You want to click the export iTunes Library menu item (or something close to that), probably in the File menu. That'll give you an XML file. You may have to edit that to point it to the new location for your music (and album art?) (search/replace?), but when you import it on the new computer it should bring over most everything from your old library. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 02:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Just ONE file for flash

When I export a project from Swish Max, I end up with one lovely file that will import quite happily into Powerpoint (using a plugin). However, when I make a swf file in ADobe captivate (also to use in powerpoint) I end up with lots of different bits and pieces. Is there any way i can convert these bits and pieces into one file? Sorry for my use of over technical languag, you can tell I am no Flash expert! Thanks - Kirk UK —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.82.79.175 (talk) 11:26, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean 'bits and pieces'? What are the file extensions of the files generated? asenine ^{say what?} 07:01, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

C array and structure initialisation

I can't seem to figure out how you can set all the elements of multidimensional arrays or of structures to zero. I'm also having trouble initialising strings in structures at initialisation.Any help would be appreciatedBastard Soap (talk) 13:18, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

If you set the first element of an array to zero, the rest of the elements will be set to zero automatically. So just do something like

int array[size][size] = {0};

Dismas|^(talk) 13:22, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Didn't work, all elements came to a value of -858993460 Bastard Soap (talk) 13:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Try memset(array, '\0', sizeof(array) ); APL (talk) 15:12, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

If you used malloc, use calloc to allocate memory set at zero. --h2g2bob (talk) 16:47, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Dismas's suggestion should work. The C standard requires that it work. It's better not to use memset when you can avoid it, because it's easy to get the details wrong and crash your program or fail to initialize the whole array. Also, it's undefined behavior to use memset (or calloc) to initialize pointers or floating-point values to 0. It'll work on most modern implementations, but technically it's a bad idea to rely on it. The = {0} construct works correctly for pointers and floats. -- BenRG (talk) 01:26, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I want to initialise to zero multidimensional array of characters or structures with characters and doubles. Bastard Soap (talk) 13:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Your array appears to be neither static nor global, otherwise it would have been initialized for you. As such (being on the stack), you need to use memset(). -- Fullstop (talk) 17:42, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

You can initialize stack variables to zero in the way Dismas said. MyStruct x[12][34] = {0} will initialize the entirety of x to zero, not just the first subobject. Furthermore it will do this correctly, as though you'd explicitly assigned 0 to everything, whereas memset will set all bytes to zero, which doesn't always have the same effect (though it does on most implementations). What you can't do is assign zeros to a previously declared array this way. For that you can use memset (technically nonportable), or you can do something like this:

            static const MyStruct zero[12][34];
            memcpy(x, zero, sizeof x);

or this (which wastes a bit less memory):

            static const MyStruct zero;
            int i;
            for (i = 0; i < sizeof x / sizeof zero; ++i)
                x[0][i] = zero;

both of those are portable (though, again, I don't know how much that matters in this day and age). -- BenRG (talk) 10:46, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Automatically removing all line-breaks

Here is a page with a bunch of letters. I want all the letters on a single line. If it were any other character (even a tab-space), I could use find&replace to remove the separation, but I don't think this can work with line-breaks. Is there a way? ----Seans Potato Business 14:18, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Are you pasting it into something like Word? In Word you can just do a search and replace for '^p' to replace hard returns. If you're pasting into some other package that won't let you search for returns there's an easy workaround. View the source code of the web page, copy/paste into your package then serach and replace the html code surrounding the text. Mike --87.114.7.177 (talk) 15:04, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

View source wont work, because it's formated with line-breaks in the source code also. I use OpenOffice so will search for a code for that, but if anyone else posts it here, I'll be grateful since I'll be checking intermittently (and post the answer when I find it for prosperity). ----Seans Potato Business 16:20, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

In the Find and Replace dialogue enter a dollar sign in 'Search for'. Click the 'More options' button and check 'Regular Expressions'. Click 'Replace All'. William Avery (talk) 16:55, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

With OOo 2.3.1, I get "search key not found". Have you confirmed that this works? ----Seans Potato Business 17:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes. It works with 2.4.0 on Ubuntu. Possibly you need \n instead of $. William Avery (talk) 19:04, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Well it didn't work with either but I updated to 2.4 and now it works fine. Thank you very much! ----Seans Potato Business 08:13, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The unix tr command will do this job

tr -d '\n' 

You can download a Windows executable from UnxUtils at Sourceforge William Avery (talk) 16:15, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

How do I tell it which file to apply the effect upon? --Seans Potato Business 17:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

tr -d '\n' file-name

Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:18, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

In the end, I didn't use this option but I've retained the UnxUtils, since I've used Linux before and know you can do some nifty things in terms of searching through files. Thanks for the tip! --Seans Potato Business 08:13, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Metadata editor

Hello, I'm trying to find a way of editing the metadata on all my movie files in XP. I have loads, in all shapes and sizes and they appear to inherit random metadata as regards to Genre and suchlike. There are apps for editing MP4 files, of which I have vanishingly few examples, is there not an easier way? With MP3s one can simply right-click and edit the data manually, that fuction seems to be denied me with movie files. Thanks. 80.229.160.127 (talk) 14:37, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried importing them into either Windows Media Player or iTunes and editing the data like that? weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 19:20, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Movie files do not support things like the MP3 Tag which is appended to an MP3 file. Movie files have headers which contain for example FourCC which identifies it so that it is played by the correct codecs. Your best bet would be a third party app to categorize your collection. Sandman30s (talk) 19:50, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Windows Movie Maker

I am using Windows Movie Maker, and I created a movie. I noticed an error, so I fixed it in the project, and went to resave it as a movie. Now, I keep getting the error:

Windows Movie Maker cannot save the movie to the specified location. Verify that the original source files used in your movie are still available, that the saving location is still available, and that there is enough free disk space available, and then try again.

I have verified all that it said, and it still is not working. I have restarted the computer, changed save locations, tried different names, and it still wont work. What can I do? --Omnipotence407 (talk) 15:23, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Try importing all of your video clips or pictures into WMM again. weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 19:17, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Im afraid I have. The error I had to fix was on all the slides, my converter had put green lines along the bottoms of the pictures. I fixed that problem by reinserting properly converted files. --Omnipotence407 (talk) 00:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I have had this problem in the past, as well. As far as I know, it is an error with the program, and I haven't been able to find a workaround yet. Leeboyge (talk) 06:36, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd even accept a substitute. Even if I have to redo the whole thing, it isnt that intense. --Omnipotence407 (talk) 22:38, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Translate from Turkish

Does anyone know a good site where I can translate a web page in Turkish to English? Makey melly (talk) 18:02, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I've looked, and entire website translators and few and far between. I have however found some Turkish to English phrase translators:

• Translation Booth
• InterTran

Both of these are free. weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 19:24, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Hidden pic (Internet Explorer only)

How does this work? [12] --grawity 19:20, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

The image appears to have alternating pixels; the ones with the woman on are slightly smaller than the others and can only be seen when highlighted. weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 19:27, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

IE highlights images by drawing a checkerboard of blue pixels over the image (try highlighting the Google logo and looking closely at the white bits). This checkerboard hides all the pixels that make up the non-hidden image. If you look carefully in the top-left corner with the image not highlighted, you can see her face and the other image in alternating pixels. It doesn't work in other browsers because they highlight images with a semitransparent mask rather than alternating solid and transparent pixels. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 20:14, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

That's awesome!!!!!! (challenge try and see the outline of boob without highlighting)Xor24 ^{talk to me} 02:07, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Slow laptop

My laptop is 4 years old now, and it has recently begun to randomly slow down for about 5 seconds before resuming it's normal speed (though the fan really kicks in after those 15 seconds). Recently reformatted and plenty of free space. What could be causing this? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 20:45, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Could it be a hardware problem, as you said that you newly reformatted the computer? Perhaps the hard disk drive is malfunctioning? User:Yetmotega/1 Yetmotega (talk) 21:56, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Could it be a power problem (low battery)? 82.35.162.18 (talk) 22:09, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Overheating problem? Have you cleaned the dust from the fans etc in the past 4 years? Could explain both the slowdown and the fan. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

May 12

KDE 4 questions

I recently installed Kubuntu with KDE 4, and I have a number of questions.

First, new applications I install using adept and aptitude don't show up on the Applications menu, and I have to use the search bar to find them. How can I get them onto the menu?

Second, on a related note, where's the menu editor where I can remove or recategorize existing applications?

Third, when I delete a file from the desktop, it doesn't actually get removed from the ~/Desktop folder. I also can't cut-and-paste or drag-and-drop a file from the desktop into Ark, Dolphin etc. How can I fix this?

Finally, so that I can restore it if it disappears, what is the new version of Kicker called for invocation purposes? NeonMerlin 01:16, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

NeonMerlin 22:50, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

As far as I know, the desktop doesn't work as you'd expect. It uses those plasmoids or whatever they're called, the same type of widgets that run the panels. I don't know if there's a way to restore expected functionality there. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 23:14, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

internet radio in ipod touch

i have ipod touch, broadband internet connection and a 'modem with wifi facility'. is it possible to listen either shoucast radio stations in ipod touch if ipod touch has internet access via that wifi modem? if not shoutcast radio station, can i play radio stations listed under library folder in itunes software? thanks in advance —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.96.24.243 (talk) 04:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

A quick google (shoutcast iphone) found this.118.90.102.125 (talk) 11:23, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Down Loading free e-books on Plam Top 5

Hi, could any one please help me by telling me how do I down load free e-books on my Plam-top? The ones that I have downloaded appear in characte and symbols, when I try to open them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.190.32.66 (talk) 04:42, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

It sounds like you are opening a file in notepad which is not designed for notepad. If it is a PDF (which is likely), you can open the file with Adobe Reader. asenine ^{say what?} 06:56, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

There are several formats for e-books, all require special software. If you could tell us where you got the file, or perhaps the three letter extension on the end of the filename it would help. APL (talk) 19:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

IP Address Question

If one uses their internet connection from home to connect to their work machine, and if they make edits though this "Remote Desktop"s " whose IP address shows up? Only the the target computer, or can the IP address be seen that supports the connection to the internet, connecting to this work computer? I've heard conflicting answers to this question, but it should be easy enough to test out (if anyone has a remote desktop ability). My sources tell me that doing so would not mask the originating IP from the home internet connection, even if its done thought a remote desktop method. Any technical experts out there who can weigh in on this controversy, or test it? Thanks.Giovanni33 (talk) 04:50, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Only the address of your work machine would show up, since a remote desktop connection effectively means you're directly controlling your work machine, using the hardware of your home machine through the internet. It's no different to opening a webpage on the work machine with you sitting in front of it. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:49, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Registry

If you install a file to the Windows Registry in order for a game to run, is this okay? What does it do? How do you remove file later? 86.129.95.46 (talk) 08:02, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

It is normally safe to import these files. Open the file with a text editor and in there you can see exactly what it is trying to do. Usually, for a game, it would be installing keys and key values under the publisher's name. It is normally safe to remove the key from its root (find it using Regedit) after you uninstall the game, if the game itself hadn't removed it already. Sandman30s (talk) 14:32, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The game was downloaded. Is it still okay? 86.129.95.46 (talk) 15:44, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

If you suspect something would go wrong, you can backup your entire registry before you install the game. If you suspect malice, please do not install the game. Kushal (talk) 17:14, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Open the registry file up, look at it. And scan the game executable and installer for viruses while you're at it, warez-monkey. 24.76.169.85 (talk) 19:30, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Any substitute of CloneCD?

Yes, I'm curious to know if there is any substitute for CloneCD. CloneCD can copy CDs regardless of some sort of protective measures (as I read the article here). Can Magic ISO do the same?--Fitzwilliam (talk) 09:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Alcohol 120% works better in some cases. It also copies at the physical level unless you instruct it to remove copy protection. Sandman30s (talk) 14:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Big Brother

How easy would it be for the government to read your e-mail? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 10:12, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

What makes you think that they haven't? See Carnivore (software). Dismas|^(talk) 10:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

If you use a good encryption for your email correspondence, probably not so easy. Better questions are perhaps - why would the government want to read your email, and why would you care? -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 11:35, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Try giving that argument to EFF, Meni Rosenfeld. To stand up on a soapbox, these are definitely not better questions. Please let me quote from User:Rama,

“ People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both ”

That's all, my honor. --Kushal (talk) 12:01, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Rama should probably credit Benjamin Franklin. --LarryMac | Talk 13:51, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

As much as I disagree with this sentiment, I will refrain from any additional comments as this is obviously not the correct place for this. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 12:21, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I sincerely apologize for any hurt or resentment, Meni. I did not mean to attack you personally. I am sorry if it came out as such. I am very grateful that you had the kindness to restrain yourself. I hope you will accept my apologies. Kushal (talk) 17:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry, no offense was taken. I simply realized that this could easily evolve into a debate much beyond the scope of this venue, and a good stopping point would be after two opposite views were expressed. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 20:45, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. I cannot go without mentioning that you are very kind and very modest, though. Kushal (talk) 05:02, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

We have an article on e-mail privacy. Basic answer is that a government organisation can intercept and read your e-mail quite easily, and indeed legally if they can show a half-way good reason to do so, unless you add your own layer of encryption. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:50, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Note that it's not just the government. Most e-mail flies around through routers all over the place as plaintext. Anybody sniffing around on a router could read it, if it isn't strongly encrypted. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 15:34, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Spyware

What is Spyware and how did it get on my computer in the first place. I'm sure I never installed it. How can I get rid of it? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 10:14, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

See Spyware. Dismas|^(talk) 10:24, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Compression

What is the most effective compression method for a web archive which contains HTML, WAV, MP3, JS, CCS, EXE and JPG files? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 11:43, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

It may not be the best but 7z deserves a look. Kushal (talk) 12:19, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

If you really care about state-of-the-art compression, take a look at maximumcompression.com. But my advice to most people would be to use ZIP or, if that doesn't compress well enough, 7-Zip or RAR. -- BenRG (talk) 22:35, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

RAR is not supported by free software. 7-Zip provides better compression effectiveness. 89.76.165.87 (talk) 13:17, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Outlook error?

When I click on a link in an email I get the response: This link type (http) is not supported. How do I avoid/fix this? Kittybrewster ☎ 12:28, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

In windows explorer, go to Tools | Folder Options | File Types and in there see if that link type is registered. In there you can tinker with how you want outlook to open a file type or extention. Be careful though, it is not always trivial to change certain links back to original or intended behaviour. Sandman30s (talk) 14:37, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I have no clue why a simple http link type goes unrecognized. Which email client do you use? May I suggest the free and open-source Mozilla Thunderbird? It comes from one of the most trusted¹ software vendors and there are tons of features like IM² to look forward to. Kushal (talk) 17:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Probably KittyBrewster uses Outlook. I guessed this because it was the topic of the question. Outlook is perfectly capable of clicking on links, theres no point encouraging them to change email softwares for that. APL (talk) 19:19, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Unless it's broken as it sounds like it is. Although, usually just uninstalling/reinstalling Microsoft Office will fix a large percentage of Outlook errors (most of the rest are due to security software malfunctioning). 24.76.169.85 (talk) 19:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Additional hard drives

My computer has one internal hard drive but the cable which connects it appears to have a slot for an additional drive. But whenever I connect another drive the computer will not boot. It is a modern computer, two / three years old, and I know both HDDs work. Any ideas? Is the cable ment for this? xxx User:Hyper Girl 12:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Are the jumpers on the drive set to the right positions for a slave? Dismas|^(talk) 12:51, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I had this exact problem yesterday and as Dismas said, it was the jumpers. Look for a grid of pins on the side of the drive. There should be a little block covering two of them, which you can pull off and put in the correct position. The label on the drive may have the different jumper positions printed on it, or you can Google for '[drive manufacturer's name] jumper positions' to find them. The original hard drive should be set to Master and the one you've just added should be set to Slave. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 14:09, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Alternatively, most computers later than the stone age use a cable select cable that automagically sets the drives to Primary (Master) and Slave (Secondary) based on which connectors you plug the drives into. But the jumpers on the individual drives should then both be set to the "Cable Select" position.

Atlant (talk) 16:38, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've got the drive in my hand. There are four diagrams on the casing, each showing nine circles with two of them highlighted. I think this is what you are talking about. One of them is labeled "Cable Select", the others "Master", "Slave" and "Slave Present". What do I do with this? Do I have to solder the two pins together? xxx User:Hyper Girl 19:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The little plastic things are jumpers, the plastic protects a metal conductor. There is another jumper bridging two pins on the drive.

There should be a little plastic jumper bridging two of the pins (see picture). Remove it, using a pair of tweezers if necessary, and use it to bridge the two pins corresponding to cable select. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 19:53, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

As CaptainVindaloo mentioned, there should be a jumper already installed (or possibly "parked", installed but not doing anything) right there. If the jumper is missing, you can steal a jumper from another disk drive or what-have-you, or any computer shop can sell you replacement jumpers. Around here, they're commonly known as "Little Black Jumpers"/"Little Blue Jumpers"/"LBJs". On each of your drives, the jumper should be installed so it spans ("shorts together") the two highlighted pins for the mode you want ("Cable select" on both drives or "Master" on one and "Slave" on the other).

Atlant (talk) 00:23, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you everyone! I have it working now. I used some tin foil :) xxx User:Hyper Girl 12:41, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

That's a good jury rig! How come I never thought of that? I'll try to remember it next time. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 15:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Google balls

Who are they? What they mean? See here. --GoingOnTracks (talk) 14:41, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Probably a reference to a ball pit? --98.217.8.46 (talk) 14:58, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

GOOGLE has two O's. GOOOOOOOOOOGLE has ten O's. A ball pit has MANY O's. I think user:98.217.8.46 is at least partially right. It might also have reference to the huge number of O's that would be needed if each page for a result of a search of Anna Kournikova or any other search term was represented by a Google ball. Kushal (talk) 17:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe Google HQ has, among its many other employee perks, a ball pit. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 04:41, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Look on the bottom left of this page. That's all there is to it, they've just kind of acquired a cult fanbase of sorts. Martyring (talk) 20:00, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Firefox - force text/plain to view files instead of download?

OK, take this page for instance. If I click one of the .pl files, I get the good old "You have chosen to open ... which is a ..." open with/save as dialog. What I'd like is some way (an extension I guess) to right-click the link and force it to simply display in the browser, no matter what filetype it is. Is this possible, or will I have to write it myself? I did find the Force Content-Type extension, but it doesn't seem to do what I want. Any advice? Aeluwas (talk) 14:42, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

What would "Open with" > Mozilla Firefox do? Kushal (talk) 17:42, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Haha, it seems to create a loop! Every time I click OK, a new window pops up with the open with-window. :D -- Aeluwas (talk) 17:44, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

For you or anyone else interested, I wanted to point out the problem is the server is returning those .pl files with a content-type of "text/x-perl". This causes Firefox to show download options instead of display the file.

I was able to get the Force Content-Type add-on to partially work with url "http://", old type "text/x-", and new type "text/plain". The trick is you have to clear the Firefox cache, and then it only works the first time it loads the .pl file. If you refresh or click on it again, Firefox just gets it from its cache and it thinks it's text/x-perl again, I guess. --Bavi H (talk) 01:39, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if it will help, but try the extension/addon MIME Edit (this should allow you to set it as text/x- permanently and change it later if you install perl). --Con^structor 19:51, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

RSTP

1. I am using VLC on Mac OS X 10.4.11 I can play the location [rtsp://webcast.un.org/ondemand/unaction/unia1123.rm from UN] but I can only hear the audio, there is no video. How can I solve this problem?

2. How can I open BBC World Service's listen live programs on VLC? What is the address for it and how can I find out the same for BBC Nepalese Service?

Thank you. You guys are awesome! Kushal (talk) 18:06, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

1. Oh hell, Realplayer? VLC won't do it. Simply won't. You'll need Realplayer; I'm not aware of any alternative to downloading that on OS X (on Windows you could download an illegal standalone version of Real's codecs, but that wouldn't work in VLC either).
2. [13]. In fact, on the website, in the player window, there's a link that says "launch in standalone player" that uses this link :P. I can't navigate the Nepalese site, but see if there's an equivalent link there, and if not, just check the source of the page with the embedded player and look for a .asx file or a url starting with mms:// 24.76.169.85 (talk) 19:44, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The world service link that you gave me worked like a charm. thank you very much. However, when I tried the same with nepalese service from bbcnepali.com, it did not work.

I wonder why it is illegal to have alternative players for real media player. I would guess the more would be the merrier when it came to a service that was complaining of getting its behind kicked by a "monopolist". Kushal (talk) 00:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, guys! Kushal (talk) 05:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

MPlayer can load the RV40 codec (which is what the first RTSP link uses) regardless of your OS. If it's true that VLC can't do it, VLC is lagging behind. Hopefully libavcodec's RV30/RV40 implementation will be done soon and this problem will be history. (The code is already in SVN, disabled for now but if you can figure out how to activate it, it actually plays the movie!)

As for the Nepal thing, I can't read any of it but I pushed the submit button on the form, and the next page had an ASX link. The asx contained a link to another asx, which contained the mms URL. (They do make these things complicated, don't they?) At least there wasn't any damn Javascript. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 01:44, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

No, it's just that "Real Alternative" is the most common alternative way on Windows to run Real Player videos, and it's just an illegal (copyright-violation) standalone codec ripped out of the full Real Player package; ie. it's Real's code, redistributed without permission. VLC does often lag behind in various things, you may want to try MPlayer as suggested above, though it's not as friendly. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 03:49, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Simple graphics problem - make an Excel chart into an image

I have several charts that I have produced in MS Excel that I want to use in a Power Point presentation. Each of the charts has several thousand data points. To reduce the chances that my charts will appear incorrectly when I give my presentation, I'd like to turn them into plain old images. I don't know how to do this. I have the open source graphics applications Inkscape and The Gimp, but I don't kno whow to use thenm very well. Can you help? ike9898 (talk) 18:19, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

To clarify, by chart I mean a plot of many points on cartesian coordinantes, not a table. ike9898 (talk) 18:37, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

You might consider converting it to PDF. See List of PDF software. If you really want an image, there are come commercial products to print to an image such as JPG. You can also do a screen capture, depending on how the spreadsheet is displayed. [14] --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 18:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

A low-resolution solution would be to take a screenshot (screen capture) of the chart when being dispalyed correctly by Excel and then insert that image into your PowerPoint presentation. (You can trim off non-chart portions of the image any number of ways.) It's not the prettiest solution but it's pretty darned fool-proof.

Atlant (talk) 18:58, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Another alternative would be to save the chart as an HTML file, and then open the file. Right click on the image of the chart in the HTML file and save the image. weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 19:26, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

If you don't mind doing some VBA programming, You can export a chart as a GIF (or possibly JPEG or PNG) using the Export method. There's some example code here. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:05, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The odds are that if you take a screenshot of it in Excel it will be of appropriate resolution for PowerPoint. PowerPoint displays in a a very low resolution (usually just 800x600); screenshots are usually just fine. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:37, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

In Excel, go to chart worksheet (or select chart if it is another worksheet), go to Edit menu, select "Copy". In Powerpoint, go to destination slide, go to Edit menu, select "Paste Special...". As well as Excel Chart Object, Powerpoint should also offer you formats Picture and Picture (Enhanced Metafile) for the paste, and possibly other formats too. Pick your prefered format, click on "Okay", and you are done. I usually use Enhanced Metafile, as I think it scales best. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:32, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Runtime errors

What causes runtime error messages in Windows? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 19:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Mr BB do you have questionitis? What's stopping you from researching this in google? This has to be one of the most documented and varied problems in computing. Sandman30s (talk) 19:35, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd be willing to bet it has its roots in Microsoft's software design practices and quality control. --Prestidigitator (talk) 19:41, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd put my money on badly written drivers. Sandman30s (talk) 19:43, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd bet its run-time errors. Mad031683 (talk) 20:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

If you're talking about messages like "this program has performed an illegal operation..." then it's because the program performed an illegal operation, i.e. it tried to do something the operating system or the hardware forbids, such as writing over its own program code. If you're talking about BSODs, it's a similar situation but in kernel mode instead of user mode. It's a deliberate design choice to terminate the program or the whole operating system in these situations, the idea being that there's no way of knowing what further damage might occur to your permanent data (on the hard disk) if you don't shut the offending program down as soon as you notice that something's gone wrong. I'm not sure this is such a great idea, but Linux does it too, so it fails the standard Internet is-it-bad test. -- BenRG (talk) 22:13, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

HTML source

Is it possible to make the HTML source of a web page not viewable? Mr Beans Backside (talk) 19:11, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

No, not reliably. -- Coneslayer (talk) 19:15, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The browser that your users are accessing the page with has to see the source to render it, so... no. 24.76.169.85 (talk) 19:45, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

You could use a package that renders HTML as an image and set it up as a proxy for your real content. Of course, except in as much as you want to do things like implement an image input map to recreate at least some of the original source functionality, the result will not be interactive, and would not allow things like selecting and copying text. You could also implement your whole web page using a common plug-in format like Flash or Java applets to allow interaction and at least obscure source code, but by doing that kind of thing you are basically stripping all the benefits that have been built into HTTP/HTML. In general your browser needs the source code to show you the page, and if you happen to have a nice enough browser to provide the feature (most if not all do), it will happily display the source code directly to the user rather than or in addition to rendering it. --Prestidigitator (talk) 19:51, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

You could make it harder to view by having the whole thing load after the fact using Javascript and a server side script. Then if you did "View source" you'd just see the javascript page loader. Depending on your server side setup you could probably make it so that script which served up the page data only served it up to the Javascript loader, somehow. It's not foolproof but it would be make it much tougher to read, though it wouldn't work on any browser that didn't have Javascript enabled. There as also various Javascript/HTML "encryptors" which are really just obfuscators (making it hard to read, not true encryption), like this one. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:30, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Nope, thats not really harder. User just needs to click on View Generated Source in Firefox, or equivalent command in Opera. Also, I hope you didnt intend to password protect your page in javascript? Cause that would be a monumentally stupid thing to do. — Shinhan < talk > 04:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

If you really, really needed to, you could just take a screenshot of the page and display the image. It would wreak hell on any browser, but if you've got UBER-SECRET FBI HTML, that's the way to go, I guess. Ziggy Sawdust 01:29, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

But honestly, what's there to hide in HTML? I guarantee there's almost nothing you can do that someone else can't replicate without an immense amount of effort. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 03:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

With the exception of rendering to an image or a pdf : No. There are ways to make it more difficult, as described above, but they're all pretty trivial to get around. You could also potentialy encode your page's content into a embedded plug-in such as a java or flash applet, but keep in mind that those reduce usability. Especialy among those on slow dialups or those using non-standard browsers. (Potentialy because of a disability.)

I'm sorry, but I can't resist breaking the soapbox rule for a sentence or so : As a user, I usually feel insulted by websites that try this sort of trickery, Especially when coupled with misguided (and completely ineffective) attempts at blocking the right mouse button. You're all but accusing your users of thievery and plagiarism.

It would help if you would explain what you're trying to protect. Protecting the actual HTML markup seems pointless, Is there javascript or something in there that you're worried that people will see? APL (talk) 13:03, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Not usefully. Anyway, why would you want to do it? Stifle (talk) 09:28, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Why does everyone think he wants to do something to do this instead of just being interested in it? And - of course - he could use frames and encode the HTTP link in ASCII code (like %3F for question marks). While it's easy to find out which site actually is displayed, most people wouldn't be able to do so since they don't know about ASCII code. --Con^structor 12:54, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Oops, I note that modern browsers also prevent such tricks by allowing to directly go to framed websites. But with a permission only for this one site where it is framed it could work. --Con^structor 12:55, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

If someone is trying to hide HTML I don't know that they'd care that most people wouldn't be able to find it. 24.76.169.85 (talk) 07:51, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Monitoring upload/download

Is there a way I can determine what executables running are sending or receiving data from the internet? Sometimes I see network activity which I can't understand since there aren't many applications running in task manager, only the necessary ones for Windows to run properly. This is for Windows XP SP2 by the way. --Mark PEA (talk) 19:28, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd also like a reliable way to see this. What I do currently is stop all known active processes, then go and look at the list of processes in the task manager. Sort by CPU and see what is active. If something is using your bandwidth, you can be sure it's using a little bit of CPU too (jumping up and down the CPU usage list). However, if you're searching for spyware, it's probably better to get yourself a good spyware scanner. There are lots of good free ones on the net. Another thing to do often is clean out your temp folders as a lot of spyware seem to lurk there. Sandman30s (talk) 19:42, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm experienced with computers, have coded many apps in C++, and I'm pretty sure it isn't spyware (plus I just ran Spybot S&D and it gave the all clear). The most likely thing causing it is either rundll32.exe or services.exe, which have DLL modules loaded. Too many to cancel and establish a cause through deductive reasoning. If there was an application that could find it I'd love to know --Mark PEA (talk) 19:49, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

If you want you can go brute force hardcore. If you're using something like McAfee antivirus, setup a user-defined port blocking rule. Block ALL ports and see what comes up in the exception list. If you don't use McAfee, I'm sure a person with your skills can find (or even write!) a port sniffing program to see what activity is going on. Sandman30s (talk) 20:00, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

If you want a really cumbersome way to do it, get a copy of windump to watch the traffic, use the "netstat -on" command to match the outgoing port with a PID, then use Process Explorer from MS to match the PID to the running process. This will only spot TCP connections though, not UDP. You can also use ZoneAlarm as your firewall and selectively deny Internet access and wait to see what programs ask for access. Franamax (talk) 20:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't get the PID to show with WinDump, but did get some interesting IPs sending me packets (I'm only receiving, not sending, right now). In the space of 30 seconds, 4 different addresses sent packets to me, one from Italy, one from Russia and the other 2 were .net. I also found one of the client@hostname on a google search from IRC log files (on freenode, the only server I connect to coincidentally). From searching through on google, it occurred to me that maybe my ISP has recently changed my IP, and the last person to use this IP was part of a botnet or something, because I can't understand why at least 4 different people from all over the world are sending me packets all of a sudden. --Mark PEA (talk) 21:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

To get the PID's for both outbound connections and the processes accepting inbound connections, open a command window and type "netstat -a" or "netstat -an". You should also look at the port numbers on your side that are shown on windump, if they are <4096, they are common services you can look up. If the numbers are >4096, it is a process on your machine initiating the connection. If you can see the packets in windump, they are actually hitting your system. Your firewall shouldn't be letting anything connect inwards you haven't allowed. You can also get HijackThis, which shows all kinds of interesting stuff from your startup files. Franamax (talk) 21:42, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Task manager will also tell you pids. .froth. (talk) 22:39, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Sysinternals Process Explorer tool will give you this info (and a whole lot more) in a GUI. It's a free download from Microsoft. Google for "Sysinternals Process Explorer". It's great for figuring out what a service or program is doing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.92.130.188 (talk) 01:33, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

This is great, thanks for the heads up! It also tells me what program is accessing files so I can avoid those annoying undeletables now. 222.159.203.140 (talk) 04:17, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks. TCPView is the one that the OP was looking for. These utils are great! Sandman30s (talk) 10:03, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you all, TCPView is indeed the kind of tool I was looking for. --Mark PEA (talk) 23:14, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

May 13

cgi proxies

Does anyone know of alternatives to CGIProxy? I'm looking for SSL support. On Windows, setting up CGIProxy for SSL is a tall order for non-Perl geeks, requiring a classic "I can't get it to install" Perl module. –Outriggr § 00:49, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Need a good PC emulator

Hi! I need a good emulator for a common PC system (i.e., I need a virtual PC). I have MS Virtual PC but the graphics card is very bad. Is there an emulator that allows me to use my real hardware with a virtual hard disk, or at least one that emulates a relatively fast graphics card? Thing is, I'd like to run some things under Windows 98 (second edition) since they don't work on Windows XP but I only have hard disks that are too big for Windows 98. --Con^structor 01:26, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

No. VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop for OS X will pass some instructions directly to the GPU, but everything else does 3d in software. If your HDD is too big, you can try resizing the existing partitions and creating a small one with a GParted LiveCD. As far as I know there's no way to run Windows 98 in a loop device (like Wubi (Ubuntu)) nor any way to run it in a live CD, so you're stuck unless you can properly install the OS. Have you tried compatibility mode in XP? 206.126.163.20 (talk) 03:37, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I tried. Basically it's four games, two of which run and two won't because the graphics card is too bad: Exploration (video game) (aka Christoph Kolumbus (video game)) and Die Völker run while Hexplore and Industry Giant 2 won't run. Exploration needs an entry in the autoexec.bat file (however, this can be resolved by using DosBox, too), Die Völker has an issue with my graphics card (GeForce 7300 LE), same for Industry Giant 2. Hexplore crashes after a few seconds for no apparent reason. So it's not so important for me but these were fun back in the days when I used Windows 98. The thing is, it only supports HDs with up to 128 GB and then writes into the data that is not directly accessible normally (I don't know the name, it's where information about files are saved). I had an old HD which would have been useful (160 GB as partition of 127 GB and the rest not used anymore after Windows 98 managed to destroy many files by writing into that "forbidden" area) but sadly gave it away when I got a 500 GB HD. --Con^structor 13:17, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok, for Industry Giant II there seems to be a mod that fixes the issue. So only Hexplore doesn't run now. --Con^structor 13:37, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

It is in fact possible to make a Windows 98 live CD. Take a look at BartPE or this site. -- BenRG (talk) 20:26, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

This is exactly what I want! Many thanks! I'll reply when I got around to do this (if - of course - the thread isn't moved until then). :-) --Con^structor 07:35, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Coa2.exe is nowhere to be found. --Con^structor 07:58, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Wait! What would that help me at all? My problem is that the HD is too big. So I just need a virtual HD that can't access the outside. This is what Virtual PC does, just it gives me a hardware instead of letting me use mine. --Con^structor 10:40, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Right, because it's emulating the hardware. It's an emulator, that's what it does. An emulator that is able to pass all DirectX/OpenGL instructions from Windows 98 to your actual GPU does not exist, and likely will never exist. As far as I know, VMWare Fusion et al only work with XP and above, and since Windows 98 is old and rarely used it's unlikely they'll work in support for it. Because of the way Windows 98 works, and because it's closed-source software, it's pretty unlikely that anyone will come up with a way to run it off a loop device either. What you want does not and will not exist. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 23:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

No. BartPE only works with XP or Server 2003, because Microsoft actually designed them that way. See Windows Preinstallation Environment. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 23:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

What's the big problem here? I have Windows 98, I have the hardware, now why can't I make a virtual HD and prevent Windows 98 from accessing the real HD? --Con^structor 10:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Oops, sorry about BartPE, I wasn't thinking. The other site does do Windows 98, but it's a complicated process that requires installing on a hard drive as an intermediate step, so there's a chicken-and-egg problem. Maybe you could install to a USB key, since they mimic hard drives a lot more closely than CDROMs do. The difficulty with running Windows off a virtual drive is the bootstrap process. It's another chicken and egg problem. A virtual hard disk driver for Windows 98 is not good enough because you need to load Windows 98 itself off of the virtual hard drive in order to have support for Windows 98 drivers like the virtual hard disk driver. -- BenRG (talk) 15:42, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. Again, have you tried to simply create a smaller partition with something like GParted? I'm not sure, but I would think that would work (unless the reason your HDDs don't work is because they're SATA and don't have Windows 98 drivers, in which case it would not). 24.76.169.85 (talk) 19:02, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Electronic dictionaries' added contents

OK so I have one of those heavy duty electronic dictionaries with a load of software/dictionaries pre-installed. It's a Seiko SII SR-MV4800 if it matters. This model has an SD card slot (actually, it's a "SILUCA Red" slot, but phyically it's an SD card slot). Seiko and other brands obviously want people to spend a lot of money on flash upgrades; a single dictionary usually goes for almost $100 US. Rediculous really, when you consider that they are available for free on the internet.

As you may have guessed, I'm wondering if there isn't a way to make my electronic dictionary think that my SD card is the kind of card it needs, and thus install software onto the machine. I'm guessing the card would have to be formatted in a special way, and there are probably some specific instructions for each brand. Does anybody have any information on this? Thanks. 222.159.203.140 (talk) 04:12, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

If you already have one of the disks, try plugging it into the computer (preferably in read-only mode). You will be able to learn more about the file system and the hierarchy then. Please let us know what you find. Kushal (talk) 11:44, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Good idea. Maybe I can find someone who has one. They're damn expensive though. 222.158.163.117 (talk) 03:10, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

memory card

i saw in a website that continued overwriting of a file (or the whole memory card) will make the memory card unable to save, is this true--119.95.131.139 (talk) 05:34, 13 May 2008 (UTC)?

See Flash memory#Memory wear --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 06:02, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

What about flash storage being the next generation replacement for hard disks? Kushal (talk) 11:42, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

If the filesystem uses a proper wear levelling algorithm, it will take ten to twenty years of continuous writing to the memory to cause problems. --Carnildo (talk) 22:52, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

software for keeping track of articles, ebooks, notes

I am overflowed with information and would like to organize my private files better. What software could I use for it? (I prefer open-source). --GoingOnTracks (talk) 10:09, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

The thing is called Document management system. X1 Desktop Search could be perhaps very useful to you. This program will index your files and make your life easier (if you want to find something that you know more or less what it is). Some features expire after 30 days, but many interesting features remain active. 217.168.1.200 (talk) 17:50, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Windows not recognising partitioned flash drive

I have a 4gb flash drive which has a 750MB ext2 partition, 1.5GB ext3 partition (for Ubuntu on a stick) and a 2GB FAT32 partition, in that order. It all works in Ubuntu but in Windows only the first partition shows up, and Windows complains about it not being formatted. In diskmgmt.msc I can see other partitions but when I tried mounting them it requires Admin privileges, which I don't have. Is there something I can do in Ubuntu that can make it recognised in Windows? How do the S3 drives and the like do it? --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:36, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Well I wasn't aware you could partition flash drives. Perhaps Windows isn't aware of that fact either so it only sees the first partition? Try reordering the partitions so he FAT32 one appears first (probably easier from your Ubuntu install). Astronaut (talk) 12:46, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Linux: multiple shells in text mode

In Konsole, I can open multiple instances of the shell concurrently, have a program running in each, and switch between them with tabs. Can I do this in text mode as well? If so, what keys must I press to open a new shell, close a shell, or switch the keyboard and screen between shells? Does Linux offer a menu of the open shells analogous to Alt-Tab? Under what circumstances, if any, can a shell that doesn't have the keyboard and screen alert me that it needs my attention? NeonMerlin 12:56, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

GNU Screen supports this. It has also a very nice manual. 89.76.165.87 (talk) 13:22, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

At the computer itself, try Ctrl-Alt-F1 through Ctrl-Alt-F8 for multiple login screens. Through SSH, just open a new SSH terminal. If you want sessions to be open and stay open (even when you are disconnected), use Gnu screen. -- kainaw™ 15:49, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I fixed your hotkeys. --Tardis (talk) 15:48, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I also heartily endorse GNU screen. But also I've noticed that newbies ask about methods of managing multiple shells because they haven't learned that they can multitask with a single shell. It's called job control. Hit Ctrl-Z to suspend the current task and get a shell prompt. Run some other stuff, then type "fg" to bring the suspended task back into the foreground. You can even have multiple suspended tasks - type "jobs" to get a list of them, "fg %1", "fg %2", "fg %3", and so on to bring the one you want into the foreground. Learn to use this feature and you'll need fewer active shells. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 22:19, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

More on bash's job control: [15] --h2g2bob (talk) 22:45, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

As far as getting attention, the commands switchto or chvt (which uses /dev/tty instead of /dev/console and seems to work more often) might be useful, along with anything that generates sound (you could try echo $'\a' in bash). --Tardis (talk) 15:48, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

indexing software?

Hey, I have Mac OS X Leopard, and am wondering if anyone knows of a good offline file management program? False Prophet (talk) 15:45, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Depends on what kind of management you need, but you might try the demo for Leap, which is sort of like iTunes/iPhoto but for all other file formats. I have used Yep, a version specifically for PDFs, and found it very useful for finding PDFs on my machine (better than Spotlight), somewhat useful for organizing them. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 16:07, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I know of a free program . X1 Desktop Search could be perhaps very useful to you. This program will index your files and make your life easier (if you want to find something that you know more or less what it is). Some features expire after 30 days, but many interesting features remain active.217.168.1.200 (talk) 17:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

That only works for Windows, though. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 18:02, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Spotlight (software) and Google Desktop do some form of indexing themselves. However, they are not offline. Maybe you need to look at something like Google Mini? --Kushal (talk) 00:48, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

GTK+: locales, download

1. Where can I find the installer of GTK+ runtime for Windows? 2. How can I force GTK to use the default (en-US) locale instead of system (lt-LT), without deleting {gtk}/share/locale? Again, Windows XP. --grawity 17:57, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

ENTIRE PARTITION GONE!!!

I recently installed a zip drive in my computer. When i installed the drivers, i noticed that my restore partition disappeared! i uninstalled the zip drive and drivers and cleared the drive letter (D:\) but the partition stayed gone. I need some help as now all my device drivers and programs are gone! My computer is an eMachines T5010 tower. Thank you for your help. 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 18:02, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it's just hidden? Anyway, try this (sorry if my translation isn't correct): Start -> Settings -> System options -> Administration -> Computer administration -> Hard disk administration. If the partiton still shows up here, it's just hidden. What to do then, I don't know. I remember, there was an option (maybe manually in the registry) to hide partitions. One of mine is hidden because it is in a format windows doesn't recognize (used by a Linux system). However, that's not what we're looking for. We look for a registry key that hides it. --Con^structor 18:48, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Here's another way, much easier. I found it by googling. --Con^structor 18:50, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

PS: You may have to use assign letter instead assign drive, somebody says in the comments. So if it doesn't work, it may be this. --Con^structor 18:56, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

If all else fails, you can try TestDisk as a last resort. It worked for me when Partition Tragic crashed in the middle of resizing. Sandman30s (talk) 09:23, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Printer Ink Cartridges for Dell Printers

Dell has developed a neat "all-in-One" Printer with a device built into their cartrdges without which the user cannot keep current with the volume of ink left in the cartridge, so when in need of replacement, the user can no longer "watch" the gauge and the message immediately tells him he is out of ink even when he has just installed a fresh refill but not one supplied by Dell. Having decided, for reasons of economy, to take advantage of the Office Depot offering, I have been rebuffed twice by color cartridges that seem to be able to produce only green products, albeit the test printing looks ok with black, yellow, pink and blue swaths.

Is my all-green printing because of my equipment, a flaw in my knowledge, or is it likely that there is a toner or other glitch in the Office Depot "compatible" quality? The Office Depot Technical Assistant could only suggest that I go back to the OD store and exchange the cartridge (for the third time)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wtab1921 (talk • contribs) 19:11, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure there's not a "reset ink counter" function available from the printer driver setup? If you provide the specific Dell model number, we might be able to find some more details. --LarryMac | Talk 19:52, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Windows Movie Maker

Is there any way of adjusting the dimensions of snapshots taken with movie maker from, for example, 320x240 to 640x480? Digger3000 (talk) 19:57, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I suspect you can adjust them down but not up. Some other user with more knowledge than I might clarify this. Stifle (talk) 09:45, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Snapshots, as in still images? You can absolutely adjust them up or down with just about any piece of graphics editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop. Of course, if you take a 320x240 pixel image and bump it up to 640x480, it'll look pretty ugly and fuzzy blocky (think one thing, type the other, that's my motto), because even though the dimensions of the picture increase, its image resolution does not -- that is to say, it gets bigger, but its level of detail doesn't increase accordingly. So it's probably not a great idea, although in some instances it can be useful -- for example, if you want to make something bigger for ease of inspection and don't mind that the picture quality isn't that high. (It's no worse than it was before, it just looks blockier and uglier.) And yes, the same applies to moving video, of course. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 12:04, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

May 14

Debian openssl vulnerability

Debian has announced a vulnerability in OpenSSL that apparently everyone who uses most current versions of Debian, Ubuntu, etc, should patch immediately. See here: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1571 .

What I'd like someone to explain is just what it means to regenerate all these keys, specifically the ones that it says are used as session keys in SSL communications. Does that include logging in to secure websites? Specifically, if the client machine had the vulnerable openssl and logged into a secure website (https), would an attacker be able to view the traffic? Or would the problem arise only if the server machine had the vulnerable version? --Trovatore (talk) 08:38, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Keys in /etc/ssh and $HOME/.ssh are vulnerable. There are 2 steps:

• In Ubuntu, the key to identify your server is regenerated automatically when the patch is applied. Run ls -l /etc/ssh to check the creation date. Anybody trying to ssh into your box will be told to update their $HOME/.ssh/known_hosts file.
• Remove (ie backup :-) $HOME/.ssh/id_*. Then regenerate those files with ssh-keygen (ssh-keygen -t dsa or ssh-keygen -t rsa)

If you log in to other machines by having a key in their authorised_keys file, you will no longer be able to. When you try to log in, you will probably be prompted for a password instead. You should email them your new public key: they will replace your key in their authorised_keys file. --h2g2bob (talk) 11:43, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think your key is important when connecting over https. It is the webserver's key which is used to encrypt data. Webservers running debian and linux would be vulnerable to MITM attacks. --h2g2bob (talk) 11:58, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on SSL, but from looking at descriptions of the handshake it appears that the only data used to derive the session key that isn't known to the attacker is the premaster key, which is generated by the client. That would mean that any SSL (including HTTPS) connection made from a vulnerable client is potentially eavesdroppable, regardless of the server. On the other hand, a connection from a properly functioning client to a vulnerable server is probably okay as long as the broken PRNG wasn't also used to generate the server's public/private key pair. In the case of SSH I think the session key is compromised if either the client or server PRNG is broken. I don't think there's any cause for panic, though, since in practice credit card and banking information are never stolen this way; they're stolen by hacking into the endpoints. -- BenRG (talk) 12:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Is this premaster key regenerated every time, or should it also be regenerated after the <verbatim>apt-get update</verbatim> (and if so, how)? --Trovatore (talk) 17:11, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

It's generated on the fly for each session. I should say that I have no idea whether there's actually a vulnerability here. It depends on what was wrong with the PRNG. The premaster key uses 368 random bits from the PRNG, so there's still enough randomness there to make the connection secure if, say, half of the bits from the broken PRNG are predictable. Also, I may have misunderstood the protocol. -- BenRG (talk) 19:45, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks much. --20:23, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

C string scaning

What's wrong with this code:

scanf_s("%[^,] %[^,] %[^,] %d %d %c %d %c", &s.name,&s.ID,&s.address,&s.courseworkmark,&s.finalmark,&s.finalgrade,&s.overallmark,&s.overallmark); printf_s("%s %s %s %d %d %c %d %c", s.name,s.ID,s.address,s.courseworkmark,s.finalmark,s.finalgrade,s.overallmark,s.overallmark);

I want to scan from a string using the comma as a separator, and then print the values. Bastard Soap (talk) 09:36, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

scanf() doesn't "do" regexps. See scanf or your favorite man page for details.

Atlant (talk) 12:52, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

He's not trying to "do" regexps. The [^,] is a valid scanf conversion, called a scanset in the standard. I think the problem is that since s.name, s.ID, and s.address are presumably of type char * or char [], no ampersand ("address-of operator") is needed in front of them in scanf's argument list. They're already pointers. BTW, Bastard Soap, when asking questions like this, it's best to say what goes wrong. Does the code not compile? Are there warnings? Does it crash when you run it? If so, can you tell where? -- Coneslayer (talk) 13:11, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

One problem is that %[^,] won't eat the terminating comma, so it needs to be followed by a comma rather than (or in addition to) a space. If s.name and friends are pointers then the & will cause scanf to write over the pointer itself instead of the memory pointed to. If they're arrays then the & is harmless but unnecessary. (I think it's harmless, anyway. It leads to the wrong pointer type being passed to scanf, but I think the standard guarantees it'll work anyway.)

Incidentally, our scanf article also fails to mention the useful %n conversion specifier and the pretty much useless %p. Should they be added? -- BenRG (talk) 13:26, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

How they use Vmware and other virtual machines on business??

As a guy that played many emulators, used many emulators and know that just few of the consoles and arcades emulators are near complete or almost near complete and without bugs (bsnes is one of them), i ask:

How they use Vmware and other virtual machines on business??

Emulate some system correctly is a very difficult thing, and if you do this without using any hacks (things in code that make the emulator more faster in expense of accuracy).

Business is a very serious thing to use a program that will certanly will have bugs.

A example: I cant imagine someone using a nintendo 64 or sega saturn emulator to seriously aid the development of a real game (not homebrew one) to those consoles.

If the emulation of those things are near complete, how they can archieve if whithout making the program very slow.

And why consoles emulators are not so accurate, since some emulators have some very good and serious codders??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.0.150.151 (talk) 19:57, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Well they're somewhat different problems, but the simplest answer is because vmware has gooder and seriuouser coders than console emulators do. I'm sure there were plenty of bugs in vmware before it made its stable release, and I'm sure that vmware spent millions hammering them out. .froth. (talk) 21:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

VMWare has the advantage that they're emulating x86 on x86. There are some shortcuts you can take in that situation, such as direct execution of non-privileged instructions. --Carnildo (talk) 22:53, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Most of the hobbyists who write game system emulators don't care about accuracy in any case, they just want the (existing) games to run. They could probably improve the accuracy of the emulation, but it would take time they have no reason to spend. There are exceptions—the MAME project is pathologically obsessed with accuracy and probably could be used to develop new games for the systems it emulates (in fact, I think it has). Another thing is that the heterogeneity of PC hardware makes emulation an easier problem. You don't have to behave exactly like the hardware on the market, just like something that could be on the market. On a game console you might be able to rely on exactly N processor cycles passing between horizontal retraces, and that kind of thing is a hassle to emulate efficiently. -- BenRG (talk) 23:12, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

And aside from all that, businesses use things like VMWare or Xen as hypervisors for virtualization, and rarely pure emulation these days. This means that the instructions are being passed straight to the CPU. Really, it's more like running more than one OS at a time on one computer than it is similar to 'console emulation'. 206.126.163.20 (talk) 23:10, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

CD player woes (reposted with updated question)

Hello, I have a Toshiba satellite with Windows XP. recently, I am having problems with my matshita dvd-ram uj-840s. It does not show up under my computer anymore. There is a generic windows file icon instead. I then used Device Manager to uninstall the driver for the device. I rebooted my computer and hoped for the best. Windows detected the cd drive; however, it was unable to correctly install drivers for it. What should I do? Please help me. --67.165.212.35 (talk) 13:18, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Search for a driver? --LarryMac | Talk 13:26, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer. I already installed the program (.exe) given by the top hit. There was no effect. How can I find the official website from which to download the driver? --67.165.212.35 (talk) 13:48, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Normally I'd say go to Toshiba, but trying to search for that drive on their site didn't get me anywhere. What is the specific model number of your computer? --LarryMac | Talk 17:47, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Its a Satellite M55-S135. --Kushal (talk) 18:29, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I am downloading a file from Toshiba's website. --Kushal (talk) 18:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I was about to post a link with a similar URL that looks more like an explosion in a typesetting room than a web address.... --LarryMac | Talk 18:38, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

You have been a great help, LarryMac. I don't have any good news yet, however. The software unpacked and installed. However, nothing changed. :( What could have happened? --Kushal (talk) 18:55, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

developing story: It seems that Windows does not have the drivers for any CD device. I plugged in my SanDisk Cruzr with U3 disk, and Windows showed problems with that too! Is there a way that I can force Windows to download drivers from the Microsoft website? Kushal (talk) 12:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

It seems your windows installation is screwed up. I'd suggest formatting and reinstalling. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.202.21.253 (talk) 14:29, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

That's sad. How am I supposed to reinstall when Windows does not recognize my CD drive? :( Any more takers, please? Kushal (talk) 01:24, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

That isn't a problem. When you are _installing_ Windows from a CD, you are not _running_ Windows. Instead, you are running a program from a bootable CD. So, all you really need is the Windows CD, a functioning CD drive and the base hardware that sees it.

Have you verified yet that the actual hardware is good? When you first start your laptop, can you get into the BIOS setup? Does it see the CD drive? Can you boot from it? If you can, then the drive is good. This is, indeed, a windows driver issue, and reinstalling Windows should fix it. Reinstalling is overkill, yeah, but it will fix it.

If, however, your BIOS does not see the CD drive, then this is a hardware issue -something is broken, either the drive or the controller- and reinstalling Windows won't fix that. -SandyJax (talk) 14:27, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

CSS to wrap text around a center image?

I'd like to do a page layout where my image was in the center and the text wrapped around it on all sides. Can this be done in just HTML/CSS? --98.217.8.46 (talk) 22:53, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know much about HTML/CSS, but it isn't possible with MediaWiki (Wikipedia) coding. flaminglawyer^c 23:09, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, this isn't for Wikipedia, so that doesn't matter much. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 23:22, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

It can be done, but it is a pain to get it to look correct in all popular browsers (and you can't do it is just CSS). First, you have to deal with the issue that wrapping around a centred image implies that the text is in two columns, left and right. Otherwise, your lines of text will hop from one side of the image to the other and be nearly impossible to read. So - you have the classic "I want my text to show up in two skinny side-by-side columns like a newspaper" problem. Since the web is not a newspaper, it is not designed to do this. You must manually cut your text in half, place one half in a div on the left and one half in a div on the right. Then, you can use absolute positioning to put a picture in the middle. They won't wrap, of course, but the picture will be there. Now, the real tricky part. In the left div, you place an image that is nothing but transparency just under the image. Your transparent image will only he half the width of the main image, but it will float to the right side of the left div. The text will wrap around your transparent image - giving the appearance that it is wrapping around the main image. Repeat for the right div. Then, spend the next few years struggling with getting the text to be cut in half between the divs so that you don't get one a lot longer than the other. Struggle with font sizes that cause your transparent images to shift up and down. And, finally, ignore all the emails you get from people who hate the two-column layout. -- kainaw™ 03:02, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree. It is a difficult problem. If you are serious about playing with text wrap, there are plenty of good places to look on the web. I recommend this one. It shows some interesting techniques, and it links to some other pages that are good. Leeboyge (talk) 08:05, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Lame. For all of its "think outside the grid" approach, CSS is still all about thinking in fairly constrained grids. :-( --98.217.8.46 (talk) 14:27, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

What are you talking about? CSS has nothing to do with "think outside the grid." It is almost completely based on the box model. It is not based on the "outside the grid" model, or the multi-column model, or the floating wrap model, or the circle model... Everything is a box. -- kainaw™ 15:44, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki: operating system?

I noticed, while browsing the MediaWiki site, that the downloadable file was a .tar file. Does that mean that the MediaWiki software is an operating system? I think this because when I (unsuccessfully) tried to install Linux on my computer, the file I downloaded was a .tar file. flaminglawyer^c 23:08, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

No. It is just a file format for storing (an archive of) multiple smaller files together. Like a ZIP archive, but without the compression (often people compress the tar archive after creating it using a compression algorithm like gzip or bzip2, and the result would usually be stored with a hybrid extension like .tar.gz, .tgz, or .tar.bz2). You can store any kind of information in it. See Tar (file format). --Prestidigitator (talk) 23:21, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

May 15

Help- SQL

I am trying to get Microsoft Access (2000 version) to list all names in a table called "CUSTOMER", and then group those by LastName, FirstName ... but when I try:

SELECT *
FROM CUSTOMER
GROUP BY LastName, FirstName;

It says "Cannot group on fields selected with '*'"

When I try to list all of the fields in the database in the SELECT statement:
SELECT Phone, FirstName, LastName, Email
FROM CUSTOMER
GROUP BY LastName, FirstName;

It says "You tried to execute a query that does not include the specified instruction 'Phone' as part of an aggregate function."
-76.29.116.172 (talk) 02:08, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

The error is the same in both cases. When using a "GROUP BY" expression, you must include all of the columns rmentioned in the "SELECT" part. Using your examples, the second query should be:

SELECT Phone, FirstName, LastName, Email
FROM CUSTOMER
GROUP BY LastName, FirstName, Email, Phone

You could swap Email and Phone if you'd like. - SigmaEpsilon → ΣΕ 02:16, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

It's not clear to me what you're trying to achieve with GROUP BY in these examples. Do you mean you want to sort by LastName and FirstName? In that case the syntax SELECT * FROM CUSTOMER ORDER BY LastName, FirstName; should work. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 07:56, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. Just to add further clarification - GROUP BY is always used in conjunction with an aggregation function such as SUM, AVG or COUNT. The GROUP BY clause determines the level at which the aggregation function is applied - without it, the function is applied across all rows retrieved, and the query result is a single row. If there is a GROUP BY clause then it must contain all of the non-aggregated columns from the SELECT clause - otherwise, you are selecting a column that does not appear in or affect the query result in anyway, so SQL assumes you have made a mistake.

There is more information on using GROUP BY here - but, as AndrewWTaylor says above, you should be using ORDER BY instead if you don't actually want any aggregation. Gandalf61 (talk) 09:35, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

VCS with Visual Studio 2008 Express

I asked a similar question a few weeks ago but got no answer. Let's try again...

Can I use a version control system (preferably a free one such as CVS) with Visual Studio 2008 Express? I've found some conflicting advice, with Microsoft suggesting it is possible but then it didn't explicitly mention the different editions of Visual Studio, whilst the information from Perforce suggested that their product didn't work with the 2005 Express Edition.

If it is possible, how is a non-Microsoft product integrated with the Visual Studio IDE? And can it all be on one PC (ie. database, server, and client all on the same disk on the same machine)?

Astronaut (talk) 03:12, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

free MySQL hosting

Is there any free MySQL hosting out there? (for testing purposes and to learn how to use it). GoingOnTracks (talk) 08:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Just install MySQL on your own computer. --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:09, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I wanted to test a web application. GoingOnTracks (talk) 09:25, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Then install Apache too. If you use Windows, I suggest XAMPP - it's a bundle of Apache+PHP+MySQL+stuff. --grawity 11:57, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Try www.ulmb.com or www.phpnet.us. Phpnet is simpler but not as reliable, and ulmb is better but had used safe mode to the max. Adam (Manors) 12:08, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Free flash flex server

is there any free flex server out there? GoingOnTracks (talk) 10:49, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Ebay

Some eBay users have a bot program. I know this because those users somehow make a bid for an item they want about half a second after I make it. Could someone tell me where I can download this program? Interactive Fiction Expert/Talk to me 11:12, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

This is referred to as "sniping". I use Auction Sentry, but there are several other sniping applications available. --— Gadget850 (Ed)talk 11:17, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Ebay also has their own automatic bid system, where it will overbid anyone else, up to a bidding limit you define. Unfortunately, if two people are bidding on the same item using this system, it assures that one will pay the highest amount possible, given both their limits. StuRat (talk) 16:51, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

which is probably good for the seller but not for the buyer? Kushal (talk) 18:21, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't this be the same level reached if they had both bided conventionally? -- Q Chris (talk) 07:27, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Archive.org

If a website shuts down, does Archive.org keep the already archived files, or are they deleted? Atkinson's GM (talk) 12:23, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

The archives are maintained. If you are looking to archive a reference in an aricle, check out LinkChecker. It checks all the article links- if it finds a dead link, it can automatically search Archive.org and update the link. --— Gadget850 (Ed)talk 12:34, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

It keeps them. If User:Mr Beans Backside is blocked, does User:Atkinson's gluteus maximus get deleted too? -- Hoary (talk) 12:37, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks like yes to both. Didn't even look at the user name. --— Gadget850 (Ed)talk 12:46, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Visual Basic 2005 question re: images

I am trying to work on a project in Visual Basic 2005 in which I'm going to want to apply (programmatically) filter to a grayscale image where it will convert it to a black-and-white image in a way that I can adjust the threshold depending on the image. What's the best approach to take, here? I feel like ImageMagick might be a bit overkill for this one need -- is there any native way that VB can deal with image manipulation of this sort? It strikes me that going through pixel-by-pixel on my own is going to be very slow so I'd like to avoid that at all costs. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 16:19, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind, I found this code that helped out a lot. Basically I do end up running through it pixel-by-pixel but using the GDI+ framework that works pretty quickly. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:37, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Using Mediawiki

I've recently taken interest in the concept of personal wikis. I looked around but couldn't find anything which suited my needs, things like Wikipad or web-based wiki applications. I know Mediawiki is suited for large wiki-farms and not for personal note-taking, but I've grown used to Wikipedia's interface and as such, I'd like to use it to sort my notes and thoughts. The thing is, I do not wish to make any of it available on the internet. Is it possible for me to create an offline database and run Mediawiki on my machine alone? -- 83.132.220.63 (talk) 18:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, you can run Mediawiki offline, but that's probably overkill if you are just going to do note taking. But yeah; install Apache, install MySQL, install PHP, install MediaWiki, run it off the localhost. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 18:53, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

There is a spectacular little application called TiddlyWiki which is a personal wiki that's just a single HTML file. Download the file, open it in a webbrowser, and BAM!, you have a wiki. And a pretty frickin' cool wiki. No need for a database or server or anything. It's FANTASTIC for note-taking. --Oskar 22:45, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Photoshopping

Resolved

 – Trolling...... Dendodge .. Talk^Help 19:46, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Could someone who is good at photoshopping tell me if this image has been faked http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/717/brightonsy4.jpg —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.132.241.179 (talk) 19:33, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, what do you think? Yes...... Dendodge .. Talk^Help 19:46, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

No, it's a real photo. If you look really closely, you can see the thin wires holding up the cardboard cutouts. <g, d & r> —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:27, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

And the birds?...... Dendodge .. Talk^Help 20:32, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Printed on transparent plastic and hung from wires. Duh. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:40, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

But they're all identical, with a white splodge in the same relative position (like a bad photoshop). I can't see any wires either but...... Dendodge .. Talk^Help 21:23, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Coppermine Gallery

Could someone kind please tell me what would be the best program to harvest all the images from this Coppermine Photo Gallery [16] Thanks. Lop lop 7 (talk) 20:50, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

HTTrack is pretty all-purpose useful as a spider. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 04:11, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Wiki Nested Tables

I was wondering how to make the inner table on this larger table fill in the whole space.
Thanks in advance. -- Ishikawa Minoru (talk) 21:55, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the Help Desk would be better suited to answer that. Useight (talk) 06:56, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Why on earth are you doing nested table in the first place? It's very bad web design practice. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:31, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Acer Aspire

What is the lastest Acer Aspire and what major retailer sells it? House1561 (talk) 23:09, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to Acer Aspire, I reached [Acer notebook page] where AS 9920 has the highest product number. Here] is the specification grid, which you may want to look at. I am sorry I cannot give you more concrete answers at the moment. Kushal (talk) 13:11, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

May 16

MS Word stops spell checking my files in the middle of a page – Why?

I write with MS Word, and on some documents I get this strange problem where the software stops doing the online spelling and grammar checks write in the middle of a document. For example, on one line, misspelt words are red-underlined, yet on the next and subsequent lines, they are not. I’ve tried to chase the prob down, and copied and pasted passages around and even into completely new documents, but it doesn’t work. It’s like there is some “don’t spell check this text” command written into the text itself, and it just sticks there. I know that this problem is triggered after I have copied some text from an external source into a file, but sometimes this seems to cause a problem, other times it all goes perfectly. Moreover, when I ask for help from MS Word Help thingies, it lists dozens of reasons why the spell checker might not work but not this one. I’m a lover not a techie, so can someone put me straight on this? Myles325a (talk) 02:51, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Off the top of my head: You might want to check that the text that isn't being spell-checked isn't set in another language -- that is to say, Word marks all text with a language tag, regardless of the language it's actually written in. That's so that it knows which language it's supposed to be spell-checking for. If the text is in one language but the language tag is wrong, fairly often Word simply appears to ignore it, probably because it can't get a handle on the grammar and none of the words are similar enough to the words of that language to appear misspelled, so it just assumes that they're correct words, but ones that just aren't in its dictionary. You can see the language information displayed on the bottom bar of the Word window. I'm assuming that you're an American, so it should probably say "U.S. English" on the bottom of the bar. Check to see if it changes into something else when you place your cursor there. To make sure (provided that all of the document is indeed written in the same language, of course!), you can just select all of the text in the document with ctrl+a and then select Tools -> Language -> Set Language, and then select "U.S. English" (or whatever language you're writing in) from the menu that pops up.

Another possible solution is to copy the offending text into Notepad and then copying that text back into Word. That's a fairly classic method of stripping all formatting from the text. It's not that useful if the text is otherwise heavily formatted with italics or in some other way, but it may well do the trick. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 08:44, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Quick and dirty edge detection?

I'm trying to write a program that will let me input images taken of type-written documents and will help me convert them in monochromatic bitmaps (to later be turned into PDF pages).

The problem is that the documents are uneven in their lighting. The paper is a hue of gray and at the top of the page it is a lot lighter than the bottom. So just applying a threshold (if pixel brightness > some threshold, make it white, etc.) doesn't help much, because it'll only work locally (what works for one part of the image won't work for another).

It occurred to me that maybe the way to approach this is something like a quick and dirty edge detection algorithm? The relative contrast is pretty similar across the entire document -- that is, the difference between the text and the page is pretty constant, so if I had something that could locally adapt, it would maybe let me easily filter out the page from the text.

I'm doing this in Visual Basic 2005 (VB.NET). I'm having trouble finding an edge detection algorithm that works well with this, in the sense that it must be 1. pretty quick (each image is quite large, say 3300x2500 pixels, and there are many), and 2. not too sensitive to noise. I've played around with a Sobel operator one and it is too slow and too sensitive.

I'm no CS major, and I know when I'm in over my head. Can someone give me some advice? I'm not having too hard a time coding things once I know what to code, but I'm not exactly sure about what I ought to be doing here. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 04:02, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Another wasy is to do a two dimensional Fourier transform on the image and then give it a low pass filter to remove gradual changes in shading. You may be able to use libraries taht include these functions. For edge detection you have to make it work on a big enough scales that noise will not be enhanced too much, else every stray dot will become a black blob. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:09, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll look into that, though glancing at the Fourier transform page itself doesn't give me a great idea of what that would mean in practice... --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 15:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I have no specific knowledge of this, but this sounds so like what is needed to do decent OCR that I imagine that there are programs out there that will do this for you. -- SGBailey (talk) 10:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

You'd think... but again, remember that most OCR assumes a "flat" image, where paper and text are reliably the same hues. On my images, the darkest paper on part of the image is the same hue as the text on the lightest part. There are local contrast differences (in each place, text and paper have probably a constant difference between them though their hues vary throughout the document). I suspect more OCR software doesn't deal with that sort of thing, it is the sort of thing you'd come up with if you were mad enough to photograph (not scan) the documents. (And why would I do such a thing? Because the Library of Congress Manuscript Room lets you bring in digital cameras, not scanners. The latter are more taxing on the fragile documents themselves than the former.) --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 15:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

One way to do something like that would include dividing the whole image into relatively small blocks and applying different thresholds for each of them. However, the blocks should be small enough to allow the assumption of of even lighting in the block and big enough to include at least some text (or you can try to find out if there is any text in the block by analyzing the color distributions - in such case Gaussian distribution could be expected). Then mean intensity should be a good threshold. Maybe this would work? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 14:11, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought of that while laying in bed last night, and I might actually give it a shot. I think, given the geometry of the document and the fact of how the irregularities lie, that breaking the document into, say, five horizontal bands and doing a local contrast on each of those might actually produce OK results. Will give it a go, in any case, sounds like it would be quicker than edge detection and have less of a noise problem. --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 15:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Many scanners come with software that will convert scans into PDFs directly. The scanner often gives you a choice between gray-scale and black-and-white images. (This type of image is made without doing any Optical Character Recognition; it is just a picture of the page). Don't see why you need to do any edge detection at all. EdJohnston (talk) 15:15, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

What I have are photographs (digital ones) of documents, not scans. There is a big difference between photographing and scanning a document—on a scanner, the light source is uniform and the distance from the lens is uniform, so this isn't an issue. What I'm talking about using this for is converting grayscale photographs into something that approximates what the same thing would look like scanned; just adjusting contrast levels does not work well (I've tried). --Captain Ref Desk (talk) 15:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

MICROSOFT VISIO 2007

Is this downloadable for free in any way?

(preferably not the trial because I've already found that —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.217.35.134 (talk) 06:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Software piracy? Or else why on earth would Microsoft distribute its software for free when they charge a couple of hundred bucks for a hard copy? --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:30, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Starcraft 2 is considering having their Creep Colonies to damage enemy buildings

Starcraft 2 is considering having their Creep Colonies to damage enemy buildings. I have 3 questions:

Is it possible for their game engine to make it so that the creep actually deals a maximum of 40 damage/second to an enemy, but if say there are 4 Marines, each Marine will take 10 damage/second? (Axiom: that Creep Colonies damage units instead of buildings, simply having enemy units stand on top of the Creep, or the Creep growing to the point that the Creep is under enemy feet. We are NOT talking about Sunken Colonies.)

Is it possible for their game engine to make it so that the creep actually deals a maximum of 40 damage/second to an enemy, but if say there are 4 Marines, each Marine will take 10 damage/second? (Axiom: that Creep Colonies damage units and buildings, simply having enemy units stand on top of the Creep, or the Creep growing to the point that the Creep is under enemy feet. We are NOT talking about Sunken Colonies.)

If this is not possible for Starcraft 2, is it possible for other games? Like other strategy games? What I am asking, is that can other games calculate damage in this way? (In this aoe-max-dmg-style?) Thanks.68.148.164.166 (talk) 09:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Of course any of this can be implemented without any difficulty, if the developer so wishes. I don't know what will be Blizzard's decision on the matter and why, but this is probably not the best place to discuss it (did you try the StarCraft 2 forum)? -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 09:42, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Windows XP compatibility

I have a program that was originally written for Windows 95 that I need to get running in XP/Vista. As far as I can tell there are no real compatibility issues, the program starts up fine, and it's a really simple program actually, just picture and text and like "links", but there is a line in the program that checks the Windows version and it tells you to "Run this program in Windows95" and quits if it doesn't find the correct version. For some reason it works in 98 (maybe me?) but the error message comes up in XP/Vista. I've heard that there are ways I can get around this, I guess by tricking it into thinking that I'm running Win95 before the program runs. Can anybody steer me in the right direction? Thanks a lot! 222.158.118.22 (talk) 09:33, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Try compatibility mode. Right-click the program's icon, select Properties and go to Compatibility. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 10:01, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Changing the compatibility mode doesn't work, because there are no real compatibility issues with the program, it runs fine. Whoever programmed it simply didn't want users of other operating systems trying to use it though, so s/he programmed a check into the program that can recognize it as non-95, and even in 95 compatibility mode it still says "please run this program in Windows 95". I've downloaded Microsoft Application Compatibility tools now, and I still can't get it to run. I'll admit I don't really know how to use this program though. 222.158.118.22 (talk) 10:53, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Babelfish

I want the Altavista Babelfish back. If not that, I want the following features from the Altavista Babelfish to return:

• The text you want translated, in a different font.
• When translating a Web page, the text to be larger.

Interactive Fiction Expert/Talk to me 09:36, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

And how do you hope the Wikipedia reference desk will advance these goals? Algebraist 09:54, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

AFAIK, it is still there. Albeit now a redirect to Yahoo babel fish. Go to altavista and click the babelfish link. -- SGBailey (talk) 10:19, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Did you know most browsers will do a text zoom for you? For example in Firefox you can go to View -> Text Size -> Increase/Decrease (Ctrl-+, Ctrl--, and Ctrl-0 to go back to default size). --Prestidigitator (talk) 15:59, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Printing out columns with css

Is there a simple way of ensuring that columns organised with css divs are printed out more or less as they look on screen?

To be a bit more precise, my content is arranged in two pairs of columns:

XX

XX

where each X represents one column. An example is at http://www.chinese-poems.com/d47test.html . Most of the answers I've come across suggest simply taking out the floats and having the columns print below one another, but the parallel arrangement is important here. Any help much appreciated! Henry^Flower 14:34, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Place each row in a div vertically aligned to top (assuming the internal divs are not the exact same height). So, you'll have a top row div that contains two divs (one float left and one float right). Then, below that, you'll have another div row with two internal divs (one float left, one float right). Your problem will be that the float will break if the two internal divs cannot be shown side-by-side in the width of the screen. You will have to hard-set a width on the div row to ensure that the two divs can fit. You can force a width using CSS - but you will have to somehow figure out what the width should be. I'd measure it in ems so it gets bigger as the font size gets bigger. -- kainaw™ 15:50, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Font in LaTex documents

What is the default font they use for pdf documents created by Latex? What is the name of that font in MS Office? Borisblue (talk) 16:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Computer Modern. It's not standard outside the TeX world but is available in TrueType format (link in the article). -- BenRG (talk) 16:19, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Latin Modern looks nearly identical except having much more characters and is available in OpenType. 89.76.165.87 (talk) 18:35, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

IPV6 behaviour

Hello,

I just installed the IPv6 stack on this Windows XP Home Edition SP3 computer, and I'm currently using Teredo as my ipv6 tunneling gateway (with from time to time 6to4 when I bypass the nat thanks to a direct PPPoE connection).

Now the problem is that even if I can connect to some ipv6 website that only possess an AAAA record, say Google the websites possessing both record like the microsoft research site, having an accessible AAAA record and a useless A record, will make my computer try to connect to those site using ipv4 instead of teredo/6to4 tunneling. End result : I can't access them.

Now I assume there is a priority settings -somewhere- like a metric in a routing table asking my computer to prefer ipv4 address over ipv6. Does anyone have any remote idea where is this settings and how to change it? — Esurnir (talk) 16:16, 16 May 2008 (UTC)