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September 29

Presentation Maps

I have an Excel spreadsheet full of names and addresses. About 70-75 of them. I'd like to print out large-ish copies of a map of the state of Vermont with "pins" on the map according to all the addresses so that I can find a central location for monthly meetings in the coming year. The reason I need presentation size is for a meeting that's coming up in October for the same people. I've found a number of places on the net that will import a spreadsheet and put markers on a map using Google Maps or Yahoo Maps but I don't know of a way to get a large file suitable for printing and posting on an easel or whatever. I don't see a way to do it with either map site. Does anyone have any idea where I can do this?

I don't want to just project this with a laptop and a projector since I'd like hard copies for people, like the president of the club, to be able to take home and maybe make notes on.

Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 01:45, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

You need a geocoding program that produces SVG images. I've written my own geocoding software for my own projects (so it isn't generalized to use anyone else's data). I'm sure that if I can write the program, someone else has produced a similar program that lets you put in a spreadsheet and get a map. -- kainaw™ 03:26, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Creating a webcomic...need help with programming and CMS ideas

What should the site I present my content be like? I like how xkcd does it. Ruby on Rails seems to be very popular with comic admins and I think many of the more popular sites use it. I don't know how to program any web scripting languages like PHP and I don't have much experience with databases. I certainly don't want a series of static pages. --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 04:10, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Wordpress is always an option...its pretty easy to navigate and use for those new to the game...plus theres a shedload of themes out there that'll make it uniquely yours (with a few modifications)...you may need to learn some PHP tho'. Boomshanka (talk) 04:16, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't want it to look like a blog, though. Really, I'm using this as a learning experience to get into some web programming. --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 04:30, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

From what I can tell, xkcd uses static pages... If you like how they do it, then read up on HTML and CSS and find someone to host your web site. You can also use an editor like Dreamweaver or MS Expression. There are many companies that will host yours for free.

But when you wrote that you didn't want static pages, did you mean that you wanted to animate the comics? If that's the case, in addition to HTML and CSS, you'd need to use something like Adobe Flash Professional. There are other animation techniques, but that's what I'd recommend. Some people also use JavaScript to improve the feel of their sites with things like drop-down lists and roll-over images.

Tell me: what format are your images in? You asked for help, and if you'd like, I can assist...--465jn (talk) 06:03, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

A Wordpress site doesn't have to "look like a blog". Have you seen some of the webcomics that use Comicpress (a Wordpress theme)? —Tamfang (talk) 08:34, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't accuse PVP, for example, of looking like a blog. —Tamfang (talk) 05:52, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I tried quite a lot of CMS software out there a while ago, the vast majority I thought were real bad, the only one I really liked was MODx, very modular, and good use of page cache. It's not for everyone, but if you are not afraid to learn something a little more complex than your average "install & post" web bundle, it's good. Equendil Talk 09:33, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Take a look at Comicpress. It's the Wordpress theme that many other webcomics use (like Starslip Crisis, just to give you an example to look at). --98.217.8.46 (talk) 13:33, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

A very simple way of using php is to specify some kind of variable in the URL: www.example.com/showcomic.php?id=102

Then just have one page with all the layout and each comic saved in a numbered file, i.e. 102.jpg. Somewhere in the page would be a statement like this:

<img src="<?php echo ($_GET["id"]).'\.jpg'; ?>">

Please contact me via my talk page if you need more on this - I could build you an example page based on this. -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 14:54, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Note that if you just cobble together some very ad hoc code it is likely to have a variety of security problems. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 23:54, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Duly noted. I normally add a small script which will only process the $GET value from the URL if it matches one of a set of values defined in an array. It's also not difficult to "sanitise" any potential user input (such as $GET from the URL) to remove anything except letters and/or numbers, using regular expressions. -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 14:40, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Hacked AIM Account

I've gone through all of AIM's steps on trying to "fix" the problem but it's not helping me.

It's like for whatever reason, I can no longer access my account nor change/reset my password like all of the account info/registration has been somehow changed.

Is there any other way at getting it back...legally? —Preceding unsigned comment added by L3tt3rz (talk • contribs) 10:08, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Is there any proof that this account is actually yours and you aren't trying to hack into someone else's account? --wj32 ^t/c 20:45, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Building A Computer: Processor Type

Should i go with an AMD processor or an Intel Processor. AMDs are really expensive but i've never used one. I like intel but their processors faster than 3 GHz are uber-expensive. I am sick of my crappy computer and want to build a new one, but i'm stuck on the processor choice. Can someone help? 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 13:15, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Try Tom's hardware (put it in google) they provide comparative tests of CPUs. There is no 'correct' answer and it will depend on applications/tasks as I understand it. Anyhoo Tom's hardware is a good place to start comparing CPUs. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 15:17, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

What websites have you been looking at? AMD have almost always been cheaper than Intel at the same performance level, but their higher-range (ie. the 3Ghz+ ones you were talking about) is very... lacking. --antilived^{T | C | G} 22:27, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Whose opinion have you been reading without actually researching yourself? It didn't take me more than half an hour in an electronics shop to see that there's no bias either way, and I've never known one. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 00:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Are you talking to me? Recently this gap had virtually disappeared (hence the "almost", considering AMD and Intel's long history), but AMD is still cheaper in the lower-end, when you take the motherboard into account. --antilived^{T | C | G} 03:37, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

If you planning on building a Hackintosh, get an Intel processor. Otherwise, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't get AMD processors. --wj32 ^t/c 03:02, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Any practical difference between Cat 5e and Cat 6?

Our IT guy wants to rewire our offices with Cat 6 Ethernet cable which will require considerable expense. We're already wired for Cat 5e and run Gigabit Ethernet over that without problems. Are there any real benefits to a Cat 6 network? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.167.58.6 (talk) 14:53, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I can't think of any reason to rewire offices with cat 6 where cat 5e is already installed. It might be a good idea for connecting major servers or buildings together but honestly I think the bandwidth would just be wasted going to a bunch of individual pcs. Personally I wouldn't rewire with something that was only twice as good - I'd put in more cables. Otherwise you have the problems of lots of changes to things that are already working. I'd only consider rewiring where here was a requirement for and the cables could support three or four times as much traffic. Dmcq (talk) 15:30, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Mac conversion MOV to GIF

Resolved

 – Time passed.

Hello. Can you tell me how to convert a Quicktime movie (.mov) to an animated movie that is usable on Wikipedia (.gif)? I tried the menu items in GraphicConverter, searched Wikipedia a while, and found nothing so far at versiontracker.com. Thank you. -SusanLesch (talk) 15:41, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Just to save precious time here, for now I no longer need to post the movie. Maybe Quicktime Pro or a GraphicConverter upgrade will do this, or maybe I missed the obvious. If there is follow up please copy my talk page as I may not be able to return to the Reference desk anytime soon. -SusanLesch (talk) 17:23, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Just a note that Quicktime Pro does not have this ability. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 23:48, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

For the absolute best quality, I export my movie as an image sequence, import that to ImageReady CS2 (which automatically builds an GIF animation from a image sequence folder), then do my color optimizing then export. I'm sure there are far more automated ways, but I've have yet to see a process that gives me the quality and control as this method. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 21:34, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Phone infrastructure?

When you set up a corporate phone network, and you set up an option on somebody's voice mail to press "zero" to go to another person in the same branch, is that flowchart called phone infrastructure or what's the term? A term to mean the map and layout of who gets redirected to whom for optimal service standards and covering for other people if the caller needs immediate assistance to redirect a live person when they reach a voice mail.--Sonjaaa (talk) 18:07, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

A bunch of extensions that all ring in response to a given stimulus (generally a given external line ringing) is called a "ring group". Voicemail, and the "press 0" thing are examples of what phone people call an "attendant" (voicemail is an example of "automated attendant", which also includes VP systems). So probably what you're doing is proposing setting the "missed-call attendant" (or "optional missed-call attendant") to a given ring group. Modern phone exchanges generally have hideously complicated "maps", which allow you to set up any number of complicated things like this. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:13, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Metalink and local files?

I was wondering if it was possible to link to local files (on my computer), with the metalink standard. SF007 (talk) 22:29, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

The latest spec says:

<url> has values of "ftp", "ftps", "http", "https", "rsync", "bittorrent", "magnet", "ed2k" for the type attribute.

so apparently not. --Sean 23:09, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, it was just to be sure. Thanks. SF007 (talk) 21:49, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Of course, you can hack together a solution by running an http or ftp server on your computer, and then directing the metalink to that (using localhost). But it seems a little silly to me (not to mention potentially unsafe, unless you block incoming connections from other computers) 90.235.17.83 (talk) 12:44, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

September 30

Help understanding SSH command

ssh -D 8080 -C -q username@domain.com

I'm using the above command to access my home network via my web browser while I'm away at university. There are many other people on this local network -- what's to stop them from connecting to {my.local.ip.address}:8080 and thus having access to my personal home network? I trust that when used as just a secure shell SSH is completely safe, but since I have explicitly asked it to do this, doesn't that negate its in-built security? Apologies if this question seems a bit redundant to the more experienced computer users out there, but I want to make sure, just in case.

Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.243.37 (talk) 02:25, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Just because you are using a different port does not make it less secure. The security is in the encrypted traffic between the two computers and the password you use when you login. So, I may be able to try and SSH into your computer on port 8080, but without knowing your password, there is nothing I can do. You aren't using "password" as your password, are you? -- kainaw™ 02:54, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

The -D option makes the SSH client listen as a SOCKS proxy on that port on the client computer and forward connections through the SSH directly to the other side. So the OP has a legitimate concern that if his computer is now listening on that port to allow his applications to use it, other people might be able to use it too. --Spoon! (talk) 04:41, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

The answer is that, by default, the SSH client only listens for port forwarding connections on the localhost, and so only programs from your own computer can use it. There is a setting in ssh_config called "GatewayPorts" (see the ssh_config(5) man page) which if enabled allows remote hosts to connect to forwarded ports too; but this option is disabled by default. --Spoon! (talk) 04:41, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you; that's exactly what I was concerned about, and it's good to know I have nothing to worry about. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.243.37 (talk) 09:53, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Don't do this on a multi-user system, though. If someone else can log onto the same computer as you're using, they can also connect to that port. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:42, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Run a command at startup

Hello, I am running PCLinuxOS inside Virtual Box and I want to automatically mount the shared folder at startup because I don't want to run the command mount -t vboxsf vmshared /mnt/share everytime I start the VM.

I also have Ubuntu in VBox. In Ubuntu all I did was created this script in my home partition and added the line /home/abhishek/mount.sh to the end of the file /etc/rc.local and it worked. But this is not working in PCLinuxOS. Is there something I'm doing wrong or any other alternative method to do this? Thanks -Abhishek ^{Talk |Contribs} 10:42, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh and I also made the script executable with chmod a+x -Abhishek ^{Talk |Contribs} 10:42, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

The normal way of mounting a given filesystem on system startup is to add the appropriate entry to /etc/fstab (see man -S 5 fstab). This is not recommended for network filesystems (as the network being down or the remote filesystem's provider being off makes your bootup hang) - but if in this case the thing you're mounting is really on the same physical computer (presumably its an fs on the hosting OS) then this is generally safe enough. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:29, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree - it would be very tricky to put the mount command into an auto-start setup because the UNIX/Linux autostart mechanism is complicated - when in the startup sequence do you want your command to run? Presumably after the networking system is up and running - but before the program pops up the "LOGIN:" screen. That's why you do it in the /etc/fstab - it's guaranteed to do this stuff at the appropriate time. You can avoid your machine hanging when a networked file system won't automount - you make it a 'soft' mount instead of a hard one. That results in the mount command for the soft-mounted partition being backgrounded if it doesn't pop up immediately. You can specify a timeout and a number of retries too - the information about that is also in the 'mount' manual page. SteveBaker (talk) 00:47, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Error message

Request: GET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLOW, from 198.85.212.10 via sq35.wikimedia.org (squid/2.6.STABLE21) to () Error: ERR_CANNOT_FORWARD, errno (11) Resource temporarily unavailable at Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:11:26 GMTVchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:33, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Whatever caused this, try it again. Wikipedia often hiccoughs but usually does something right next time. If this isn't the case, please expalin what you were trying to do. -- SGBailey (talk) 15:05, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I forgot to come here later in the day, but I posted as soon as it worked. I had been trying for several minutes just to post and couldn't. Perhaps I should have said something about thatVchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC).

Itunes

Is there a way I can switch back to the older version of itunes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.119.61.7 (talk) 23:51, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Try oldversion.com - or put it in google (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=old+version&meta=) 194.221.133.226 (talk) 08:17, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

October 1

Reconstructor and Graphical Chroot?

Hi, I have the latest version of reconstructor (2.8.1), and I think it already has support for graphical apps in the chrooted environment, (by looking at the source, it seems to automatically do many things needed for that) but I don't know how to start the graphical chroot... I open the chrooted terminal, and now what?!? Is anyone familiar with this program? SF007 (talk) 00:13, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

See: http://reconstructor.aperantis.com/index.php?option=com_joomlaboard&Itemid=44&func=view&id=1054&catid=3

Winamp tags

When I add a new play list to winamp all the songs have their file names as the song names in the list. And as I scroll over them they slowly change over to their tagged details. Is there any way to make them automatically show their tagged name before I scroll over them? Thanks 203.202.144.223 (talk) 00:33, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

In Winamp 5.5, the relevant setting is in Preferences, General Preferences, Titles. There are three choices there that select when Winamp reads metadata: when files are loaded, when files are visible in the playlist window, or only when files are played. It warns that reading the metadata at load can be slow if many files are added at once. --Bavi H (talk) 03:05, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

A Template Metaprogram for the Ackermann Function

I am trying to write a metaprogram for the Ackermann Function and have written this so far:

   template<typename M, typename N>
   class Ackermann
   {
   public:
       enum{ result = Ackermann<M-1, Ackermann<M, N-1>::result>::result };
   };

   template<typename M>
   class Ackermann<M, 0>
   {
   public:
       enum{ result = Ackermann<M-1, 1>::result };
   };

   template<typename N>
   class Ackermann<0,N>
   {
   public:
       enum{ result = N+1 };
   };

The first error I am getting is that second parameter in the first enum is incorrect, any ideas how that can be fixed? Also, for the other two templates, I am getting "expected a type got 0" error (which makes sense for the third template, but I cant figure out a way to get rid of the third template yet). I have also tried using a conditional '?' in the first enum for the last enum i.e

   result = M ? N+1 : Ackermann<M-1, Ackermann<M, N-1>::result>::result

but that too doesn't seem to work. Maybe I am just missing something fundamental. Any comments shall be helpful. Thanks in advance! Aks... (talk) 00:39, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

First thing, M and N should be "int" instead of "typename". --Spoon! (talk) 03:10, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Regular Expression for...

Grabbing the text within <>'s, like: "Mr. John Doe" <johnd@fakeemail.com>

Thanks Louis Waweru  Talk  00:40, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The syntax depends on what you are programming the regex in. One way to write it is "/<([^>]*)>/". Everything between ( and ) will be a sub-match of the entire match from < to >. -- kainaw™ 00:43, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, I'll see if I can wrap my head around it. I was hoping to do it in Word's Find/Replace box, if you know how to do that it would help because it's a real world problem. But I have Visual Studio and have been meaning to learn regular expressions, so I might wind up creating a sample project. Thanks for giving me something to dissect. Louis Waweru  Talk  00:53, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The "/" and "/" at the beginning and end are just "this is a regular expression" holders. Everything between them is a regular expression. I don't know what Word uses to encase regular expressions. The < means "look for a <". The ( and ) mean "keep an eye on everything in here because I may want to use it later." The [ and ] mean "I am explaining more than one character here." The ^ means "anything except." The >'s mean "look for the > character." the * means "zero or more repetitions of the previous thing." All put together, this says "look for a <. Then, keep an eye on everything that isn't a > until you find a >." -- kainaw™ 01:33, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't have the latest version of word, but earlier versions (I still use Word97) have an imcomplete regular expression implementation. In the search and replace dialog, check the "use wildcards" option, set "Find what" to

"[ -~]@" [<]([ -~]@)[>]

and "Replace with:" to

\1

. The "[ -~]" is an imperfect attempt to capture spaces and printable ASCII characters (acented or extended characters might not be omitted), but not line breaks. The "@" looks for 1 or more repetitions of the preceeding item. The "[<]" and "[>]" matches just those characters (as opposed to "<" and ">" which matches the beginning and end of a word). The "(...)" captures whatever is matched within, and is represented by "\1" in the replace expression. Hope this helps. If you have a comma or semicolon separated list, you might have to modify the "[ -~] with something like "[- -+.-:<-~]" which includes the ASCII characters excluding the comma and colon (dash, space-to-plus, period-to-colon, and lessthan-to-tilda). See ASCII. I suggest you capture the operation into a macro. Hope this helps. -- Tcncv (talk) 02:11, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Wow, excellent! Thanks you two. Tcncv, that still works in Word 2007. I was able to change it a bit to catch the lines that were slightly different. I don't think I will be coming up with a single expression to catch them all at once anytime soon though, haha. Confusing stuff, thanks again! For your amusement, here is the only time I wrote a regular expression, behold!

<rewrite url="~/Tagged-(.+).aspx" to="~/Browse.aspx?tag=$1" />

Louis Waweru  Talk  03:52, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

IP subnet mask

is 0.0.0.0 a valid subnet mask ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by R.srinivaas (talk • contribs) 05:50, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

That would be one giant subnet. A subnet called "The Internet". That would include all possible IP addresses, so it wouldn't really be a "subnet" per-se. If you're asking if there is something theoretically wrong with it, no, I would guess not. But it's not something you would enter into your router configuration 90.235.17.83 (talk) 12:06, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

If, by chance, you answered 0.0.0.0 on homework or a test, I would count it wrong. There is no valid use of 0.0.0.0 as a subnet mask that I know of. I would require you to show that you understand what a subnet mask is by showing me a valid use for 0.0.0.0 since answering with 0.0.0.0 indicates that you don't know what a subnet mask is. If you did show me a valid use for it, I would amend the grade and thank you for teaching me something new. -- kainaw™ 17:07, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Considering that he asked if it is a "valid" mask and not is it a "useful" mask, I would have to say your conclusion is superficial. In addition, I can think of a perfectly good "use" for an all-0 subnet mask, it would be the equivalent of setting the gateway to 127.0.0.1, that is, traffic is voluntarily sequestered on the local subnet. --66.195.232.121 (talk) 17:01, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

As I said, if this were on a test, I would have counted it wrong and asked you what a good use for 0.0.0.0 would be. If you answered that it would be the equivalent of setting the gateway to 127.0.0.1, I would have changed it to be correct. My response was based on 90.235.17.83's response and I was just trying further clarify between being "valid" and being "correct". -- kainaw™ 22:51, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for answering ....

but RFC 1878 states that

• Subnet all zeroes and all ones excluded. (Obsolete)
• Host all zeroes and all ones excluded. (Obsolete)

but routers still accept 0.0.0.0 as subnet why ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by R.srinivaas (talk • contribs) 07:42, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Programmers for them didn't feel like writing extra code to reject obsolete subnets and hosts. There's no deep answer here. -- kainaw™ 12:04, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

The dictionary would like a word with you... it's "obsolete". --66.195.232.121 (talk) 19:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I doubt there are many uses for 255.0.0.0 for subnet masks either. Huge corporations, maybe. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 07:16, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

to write a complex program on multiplication

How to write a program to print the multiplication table of a number such that it prints the multiplication table of that number & also the numbers preceding it?Newtondon87 (talk) 07:41, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

That sounds like a for loop for the multiplication table inside a for loop for each table. ~~ ----

I meant -- ~~~~ not ~~ ----. -- SGBailey (talk) 17:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

sounds like homework you mean :) but heres a hint Newtondon87 dont try and solve it all in one go. first just write a function which just prints the multiplication table for a number. e.g. 5. then when you've got that working, modify the function so it'll print the multiplication table for any number you pass to it, then when you've got that bit working modify it again to do the next bit and so on. Mission Fleg (talk) 10:05, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Edit "Open With" context menu in Windows Explorer

How do I add, change or remove items in the "Open With" menu? This is the menu that pops up when you right-click a filename displayed in Windows Explorer. (I have Windows XP SP2.)

For example, if I right-click a file with a ".rtf" extension I get options to open it with MS Word and WordPad, but I wish to change the list for that extension and other ones as well.--85.158.137.195 (talk) 10:52, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't have XP in English, so I might be giving the wrong names for the menu-items. But here's what you do: in the Open With submenu, there's a list of programs that you can open the file with. At the bottom of that submenu, there's an additional item that says something like "Select program" or something (as I said, I don't have it in English). Press that, and it will give you a list of programs that you have installed. Open the file with whatever program you want, and from then on, that program will be in the menu 90.235.17.83 (talk) 12:38, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not the OP, but I would also like to know if there's a way to remove options from the Open With and other right-click menus. For example, I have Paint Shop Pro installed. When I right-click on the recycle bin to empty it, the option to "Browse in Paint Shop Pro" is right underneath it. That would be a complete waste of time, so I'd like to get rid of that option. DreamWeaver options also show up in weird places. Matt Deres (talk) 20:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

For your Paint Shop Pro item, I recommend you look in the settings of Paint Shop Pro first.

Removing items from the Open With menu seems to require a registry edit: How to Remove Programs from the "Open With" List.

Removing items from the main context menu for a file type can be done via Control Panel, Folder Options, File Types.

• Warning: Do not edit the settings for "Drive", "File Folder", or "Folder" types unless you are technical user comfortable with modifying the registry. If you edit the "Drive" or "File Folder" types, double-clicking on drives or folders will act strange, and you will need to follow this registry modification to correct the problem. Also, the Folder Options control panel doesn't allow you to edit or remove items from these types, even if you added them yourself. If you add items using the Folder Options control panel, you will have to use Registry Editor if you want to remove them later. (In Registry Editor you can go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and find "Drive", "Directory", and "Folder" keys which correspond to the "Drive", "File Folder" and "Folder" types in the Folder Options control panel. In each one, the subkey "shell" contains the context menu items.)

• The "Drive" type contains context menu items for drive icons (root folders) only. The "File Folder"/"Directory" type contains context menu items for other non-root, non-special folders only. The "Folder" type contains context menu items for every drive, folder, special folder, or other container in Windows. The Paint Shop Pro item appearing when you right click on the Recycle Bin will be found in the "Folder" type. However, if you remove it, then it will be removed from the context menus of all folders and containers.

• If you are comfortable modifying the registry, then you can consider the following. Remove the item from the "Folder" type, then add it to the "Drive" and "File Folder"/"Directory" types. If you used the Folder Options control panel, then follow the registry modification mentioned above to get drives and folders working correctly when you double-click on them. These modifications will show the item in the context menu of drives and other normal folders, and remove it from all other special folders and containers. --Bavi H (talk) 04:32, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks everyone - most helpful.--92.41.251.222 (talk) 05:35, 2 October 2008 (UTC) (OP)

games in laptop

hi,i think of buying a computer.i want to play a lot of games.my friend told me that laptops will get damaged if u play a lot of games.if we connect a key board to it,will there be any damage?i mean damage to software,hard drive etc.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.199.213.66 (talk) 13:10, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I've never heard of laptops getting damaged from "playing a lot of games". I'm not sure it's something you ought to be seriously worried about. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 13:17, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Did he say what kind of damage he was worried about? APL (talk) 13:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Maybe keyboard/touchpad damage from mashing the keys? It won't damage the hard drive or any other part. Installing a game might cause problems with other software, but that's not any more likely on a laptop than a desktop. -- BenRG (talk) 16:52, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

If by "playing a lot of games" you mean games like tennis, hockey or boxing, then I would say "yes, your laptop has a good chance of getting damaged, and always wear eye protection if you're throwing the laptop around..." — Sam 21:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

You need quite a good laptop to play games well and it'll probably drain the battery quickly. For the same amount of money you may be better off getting a lower class of portable for word processing and suchlike plus a dedicated games machine.

Well, most laptops have horrendous cooling capabilities (compared to larger computers such as a desktop or those that are immersed in Fluorinert), so if you are playing a game that stresses the hardware for many hours at a time, that might reduce the lifetime of the laptop if the laptop has a powerful-ish microprocessor and GPU (which most don't) due to heat. Rilak (talk) 09:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I have been playing games on my laptop for years with no problems (none attribuable to it being a laptop, anyway). However, a few things to note - if you're going to using an external mouse/keyboard, you will likely be plugging and unplugging them more often than with a desktop. USB connectors are fairly solid, but apply too much force and it will break. Also, more importantly, laptops are usually not designed for graphics-intensive activities such as gaming (especially more modern games). You will probably have to pay dearly for a laptop which will play the latest games well, plus, such machines will inevitably run very very hot and go through their battery like there's no tomorrow. — QuantumEleven 14:47, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

The question then would be what sort of games and what kind of laptop. Playing something like Snakes on a low-power VIA-based laptop with integrated graphics for hours isn't going to do much harm, but if it made the laptop a bit too warm to touch, there might be a problem. Rilak (talk) 08:42, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

That's true, it obviously depends what kind of gaming you want to do. — QuantumEleven 11:41, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Im playing Hockey with my Laptop, and keys fly off whenever I do a slapshot. BaaDUM! ok. Some games, like EA sports which involve hitting the same keys continiously, can damage the keyboard. Playing other games, like Dungeon Siege or Diablo II will not hurt the laptop per sae, might get them a bit hot, but your mind and your schedule are the only things to get trashed. pizzabox13@USWEST(battlenet) A Laptop that plays CRYSYS is now specially built to handle the demanding graphics. Consider getting a fan pad. 173.8.65.213 (talk) 21:22, 9 October 2008 (UTC)--

Tablet PC

Hellow friends, I am a newcomer in computer field. I am a medical student. I want to buy something computer related/digital device(but neither a laptop nor a fixed PC) that can help me in my studies. I have study material in the form of Power Point presentations, media player files, office word pages, PDF files, pictures, diccionaries. Is there anything that can help me in my studies (excluding a laptop and a fixed PC). What about a Tablet PC? What is this ? Will u help me to know about its peculiarities,its prices and its comparison to a laptop? I will b very thankful. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.220.215.13 (talk) 14:44, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

A Tablet PC is basically a specialized laptop, normally with the ability to flip around the screen so that you may use your handwriting on it.

Why no laptop or desktop? I would think that a laptop would be the best choice for you if you have Powerpoints, media, office, PDF, pictures and dictionaries to work with. Washii (talk) 15:55, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

As Washii points out - there are only two things that make a laptop a tablet. First, if you can shut your laptop such that the screen's display is facing out, like a tablet, then it is most likely a tablet. Second, if you can also write on the screen using a stylus, then it is definitely a tablet. Other than those two things, a tablet is just a laptop. They are not smaller, lighter, or cheaper than laptops. They are just laptops with two extra little features. I know a lot of doctors who love them. I know many who don't like them. I know many who refuse to acknowledge that computers exist. -- kainaw™ 16:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia on iPod

I just got an iPod Touch, and I have read somewhere on Wikipedia that there is a way to download a static version of Wikipedia without pictures onto the iPod. Yes, the Touch gets Internet, but I'm not always around Wi-Fi, so it would be nice to have this even though it takes up tons of space. Where might this program be? Thanks, Reywas92^Talk 20:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Encyclopodia. Unfortunately, it's not compatible with the iPod touch. If you happen to have an older iPod lying around, though, give it a go; it's compatible with the iPod mini and 1st through 4th generation (full-size) iPods. --CalusReyma (talk) 22:31, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Darn, but thanks. Though I'm pretty sure that it was some article in the Wikipedia namespace. I definitely don't remember seeing that website, and it worked with more versions of iPods, so there must be a few different versions of this out there. Reywas92^Talk 02:30, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Maybe one of these will help: Wikipedia:Database download, Wikipedia:TomeRaider database, mw:Alternative parsers --Spoon! (talk) 03:44, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I've done some Googling and I think this Lifehacker article may be what you're looking for. You'll need to jailbreak your iPod, though, and if you've got the new 2nd gen Touch, you'll be out of luck, as these can't be jailbroken just yet. --CalusReyma (talk) 09:29, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Which Linux distro should I install on Parallels?

Ok, ok, I know this is a little bit like starting a post entitled "Which is better, Macs or PCs?" but hopefully I'll get a couple ideas and can ignore the flame from everyone else... ;)

I'm a programmer (Java, some web technologies) working mostly on a Mac, and doing a fair but of command-line unixy stuff with it. I'm thinking of installing a Linux ditro on my Parallels in order to improve my unix experience. Which distribution would you recommend (e.g. Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, etc), both in terms of real-world practicality, and it terms of ease of installing? Any thoughts welcome!

Thanks! — Sam 20:59, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The normal recommendation tends to be Ubuntu, mainly for ease of install and its fairly large and supportive community. CentOS isn't a bad choice either, and there are countless others. Really, it's hard to make a "bad choice".

There's two other related things I want to note though. #1: VMWare Fusion is totally better than Parallels. #2: OS X is a Unix-certified OS, so if that's all you want to get out of it it's right there.

And FYI, your IP address is still in the page history (history tab at the top). -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:11, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the recommendation. I was in fact just looking at a fairly simple Ubuntu installation walk-through. And as for the FYI, I just hate that wretched SineBot. I sign my name and timestamp it with tildes as well, every time I post. If I'm vandalizing, someone will find out PDQ, without needing extra junk attached to the end of my signature each time I write a message. It makes those of us who don't feel like logging in or having our IP stuck everywhere feel like we're being cattle branded or something. </end rant> — Sam 21:19, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, there is almost nothing to installing Ubuntu. Download the ISO image. Start VMware, create a new Linux VM, feed it the ISO (in the virtual machine settings, go to the CD/DVD drive options, easy to find), and start the VM. It should boot off the disc, you can proceed with installing Ubuntu (easy to do, just follow instructions), and all will be good in the world. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:21, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Consumed Crustacean is right, Ubuntu is probably the best distro for starters, and I also think VMware software is better than Parallels... SF007 (talk) 21:24, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

If you want to try a virtualizer that doesn't cost anything, you might give VirtualBox a spin. I haven't used it, personally, though. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 02:47, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

October 2

monitor driver issues after reformat

I just reformatted and reinstalled win xp home on my dell. The screen resolution has defaulted to 640x480. I went into 'Display Properties > Settings' to change it, but the slider wouldn't budge which makes me think the driver for my monitor isn't installed (which makes zero sense). I continued on to 'advanced > monitor' where I saw that the monitor was set to "default monitor." the dialog box would not allow me to push the 'properties' button to specify a monitor/driver. I dug out a dell resource cd titled 'drivers and utilities' but found no clear solutions there. Any ideas? --Shaggorama (talk) 04:55, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not your monitor, but your graphics card driver. What graphics card do you have? If it's a Dell why didn't you just use its recovery software? --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:04, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Why should he use the recovery cd by dell? Dell did not manufacture the graphics card, did it? I would say all the OP has to do is figure out what graphics card it is and download the appropriate drivers for it. Am I missing something? Kushal (talk) 15:18, 5 October 2008 (UTC)ß

i managed to have the issue resolved by dell tech support. Apparently there was a whole slew of drivers I assumed had been installed but were on a separate disk. noob --> Shaggorama (talk) 07:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

This issue isn't unique to Dell.... in fact, in my experience Dell is the easiest to get drivers for unknown hardware once you've reinstalled the OS. Most of their computers come with a "Service Tag" - using that at their support site will give you links to all the driver downloads for your model. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 01:57, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Windows ME

I like to use windows ME. My usual computer crashed so I went to my backup computer which is older. I had put in a new hard drive and installed windows ME. But when I turn the compuer on it says "loading os". I have waited for over an hour and it does not load. The system does meet the requirements. What must I do? I would really appreciate any help. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.16.170.143 (talk) 12:20, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Did you install windows ME on the crashed computer or on your backup computer? 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 13:24, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

My vote is to install Windows XP instead of ME. Useight (talk) 16:19, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

The support for Windows ME ended on 11 July 2006, so I second Useight on that. Alternatively try a free OS based on Linux or BSD if the backup computer doesn't meet the system requirements of Windows XP. -- Reep (talk) 23:59, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Windows ME is a horrible operating system compared to XP - ME's flakey as all hell and XP is actually pretty stable. If you can get a copy of XP to install - that's probably your best option (unless, of course you're ready for Linux...which I'd certainly recommend to keep an older machine running on the cheap). SteveBaker (talk) 02:47, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Wow. "Hey this guy can't run windows ME on his PC because it doesn't meet system requirements. Lets recommend something with higher system requirements!" To the question asker, since you are used to 9x systems and your PC isn't powerful enough to run Windows ME I'd suggest hunting down a copy of Windows 98 SE (the SE part is important). While in some ways it is worse than ME (driver installation for instance) it is better in others, and also doesn't need as powerful a system. 88.211.96.3 (talk) 12:07, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Calm down, 88. Please read what the OP said. They said:

"The system does meet the requirements."

They did not say:

"can't run windows ME on his PC because it doesn't meet system requirements"

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Kushal one (talk • contribs)

I'd also recommend Windows 98 SE over ME. And if your system can handle it, try Windows 2000. Win 2k is vastly superior to both 98 and ME. Even if you manage to get ME to install, it will probably give you other problems. There is also a grass-roots support effort for 98, including an unofficial service pack.--Tree 'uns 5 (talk) 05:50, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Win2k is about as good as Windows gets. But I'm not sure that you have any option other than (a) leaving it without any service packs, security patches, etc., or (b) installing the damned things one after another. The last time I did the latter, it seemed to take half a day: in order to to Z, you first had to do Y; in order to do Y, you first had to do X; all the way back to A or so it seemed. If you do install any version of Win2k, be sure not to use MSIE or Outlook Express; no hardship, as the latest Mozilla alternatives should run just fine. -- Hoary (talk) 06:07, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Excel VBA question

Just a quick question I hope someone can help me with. On a TI-83 calculator under mode there's an option to have imaginary numbers display in a+bi mode. Is there any kind of command to do that in VBA? Thanks in advance for your help. Deltacom1515 (talk) 16:57, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure which version of Excel you have, but this microsoft.com page may be hinting towards what you need. Laenir (talk) 18:28, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Dual booting linux and windows

I'm trying to install Linux (Fedora) for the first time. I found instructions on partitioning my hard drive here and have downloaded Fedora and burned it to a disk (after verifying the sha1 checksum). What I want to know is, will installing Fedora now erase all the files I have on my Windows partition? Will they be completely seperate? And will I be able to select between Windows and Fedora when I turn on my computer? I want to still be able to access Windows so that my parents can use this computer. Thanks! 86.164.163.72 (talk) 17:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

> What I want to know is, will installing Fedora now erase all the files I have on my Windows partition?

No. You have to have it shrink the Windows partition and use the other space for Fedora.

> Will they be completely separate?

Yes. But you will be able to access your Windows partition from within Linux.

> Will I be able to select between Windows and Fedora when I turn on my computer?

Yes.

Also, you might want to get some more updated instructions. The current Fedora is Fedora 9 (soon to be Fedora 10 next month). That page is about Fedora Core 1, from 2003. So some things might be different. --71.106.183.17 (talk) 18:39, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

yeah im using the fedora 9 installation guide on their site for most of the info, i just used that link to find out how to partition my hard drive :) thanks for the info, i am much less nervous about installing now! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.163.72 (talk) 20:57, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify, now a days, you don't need to partition your drive before installing a Linux distribution, because distributions now have partitioning applications that can create, remove and resize existing partitions (including partitions with FAT and NTFS) during installation. Just make sure you read the options the installer gives you before you click "Next", there's probably an option to wipe the whole drive and install linux on the whole drive, so don't choose that one ;) -- Reep (talk) 23:50, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Make sure you backup all your Windows data before you begin, just in case. - Akamad (talk) 22:10, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

If it's done 100% correctly - you can have all of your Windows files kept intact (although with considerably less free disk space!) and Linux happily installed off on it's own chunk of the drive. Once that's done, Windows is blissfully unaware that Linux is there - and Linux will be blissfully unaware that Windows is there (unless you choose to mount the windows partition under Linux so you can copy files back and forth. However, it's alarmingly easy to misread a dialog or misunderstand what it's asking - and then you can VERY easily trash your Windows partition...AND the 'hidden backup' partition that most laptops have to allow you to reinstall Windows in the event of a disaster!! So whatever you do:

1. Make a "windows recovery CD" before you even take that Linux CD out of the wrapper! Make two - the first one might not work!
2. Back up all of the files that matter to you - you don't want to risk losing a single thing.
3. Read carefully what the Linux installer is saying to you - take your time. If there is something you don't understand - come back here to the RD and ask our resident Linux geeks before you carry on.

For the super-nervous - you can install some of the smaller Linux distro's on a flash drive - or an external USB hard drive. In the past (when I was still dual-booting - I'm 100% linux these days) I bought a second hard drive to install Linux on - and actually unplugged the Windows drive to be 100% sure I wasn't going to screw it up. But the advantage of installing on a flash drive is that you can unplug it from your PC and all trace of it is definitely gone. If you set up your BIOS to try to boot from USB first - and from the hard drive second - then you plug in the "Linux widget" and hit the reset button to get into Linux - pull it out and hit the button again to get back into Windows. This is good if you have warranty or service contract on your computer - or if it belongs to your company or something.

As for booting - your distro installer will probably install "GRUB" - it sits on the hard drive where the Windows boot-up code usually lives. You can choose at that point how you want the system to start up. You can have it come up with a little text-mode menu ("Hit 1 for Linux, 2 for Windows" kind of thing) and you can have it boot into one or other operating system "by default" if nobody hits a key within some number of seconds that you can also set. So have it boot into Windows if nobody hit a key within (say) 5 seconds - and your parents won't have to do anything special to get Windows to boot up. You can install other programs and different versions of operating systems - that install on that same menu. I have a built-in RAM-check program and two different Linux versions installed on my boot menu for example. With care you can even get it to boot between Windows XP and Windows Vista and Linux and BSD-Unix...it's a great little tool.

But once you've done the whole installation thing a few times, you'll know what's going on - it'll get a lot easier.

SteveBaker (talk) 02:34, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Unless Microsoft has changed its spots, which I doubt, the problem will come if/when you want to reinstall or upgrade Windows, a process that (the last time I heard) trashes any other OS that's elsewhere on the same hard drive. But there are (were) workarounds.

Parents can use GNU/Linux too. I know some parents who do just that. -- Hoary (talk) 06:01, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Is there a street atlas with municipal borders on the web?

Google maps and expedia don't have municipal borders. Thanks! Nero y (talk) 17:30, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried tiger? It has a lot of stuff the other maps don't have (as it is not designed to be a user-friendly direction finder). -- kainaw™ 17:31, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, its quality is not very good, and the map is pretty little. But anyway, how can I see there the municipal borders? Nero y (talk) 18:24, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

On the right, there are a lot of checkboxes to have it draw city, county, state... borders. If you are looking for a specific type of municipal border (ie: the border between Barry Harbor and Barry Heights in North Kansas City), then ask for specifically what you want. As you've asked, showing city and town borders is showing municipal borders. And, yes, it isn't great for scrolling around and looking at the map like Google Maps is. -- kainaw™ 22:47, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

IIRC Google Earth has these minor borders - not exactly "on the web" I know, but it uses data streamed from the web. Astronaut (talk) 17:52, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with that. Can I use it thru the browser? Nero y (talk) 18:24, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

No, but it's easy to download. See Google Earth for more information. Anonymous101 (talk) 20:33, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I downloaded it, but can't find the municipal borders... I guess that if they had it - they would have put them in Google maps as well... AM I wrong? Nero y (talk) 08:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I was at the office and working from memory. Now I'm at home, I see Google Earth can display (see the Borders and labels" layer): "International Borders" in yellow, "1st Level Admin Borders (States/Privinces)" in blue and "2nd Level Admin Regions (Counties)" in green. Astronaut (talk) 18:49, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Norton 360

If i bought the original version of Norton 360 and put it on my computer, then updated it, would i autmoatically then have the version 2.0?Jwking (talk) 22:12, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I would think twice about getting a Norton product unless it is required. Unless things have changed in the last two years, uninstalling the Norton product will be a PITA! Kushal (talk) 22:31, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

That's what the Norton Removal Tool (made by Symantec) is for (should be first result on Google with those three words in order). It also has the nice side-effect of removing the horrid lockdown that will be left behind from a normal uninstall on XP SP2 and above. Just don't uninstall first, or it won't be as effective. Use the tool to uninstall. Washii (talk) 03:18, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

If the removal tool walks the walk as it does talk the talk, I apologize and withdraw my opposition to it. Thanks for pointing it out. Kushal (talk) 15:12, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Some googling reveals that users of the original version got free upgrades to version 2, so I'm pretty sure you would get a free upgrade. Symantec makes most of their money from subscriptions anyway. --wj32 ^t/c 02:51, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

October 3

Virtualization

Man, it seems every day people get more and more excited about virtual machines and the likes. My question is, My friends and I have a gag that we like to try and see how deeply of a virtualizing we can get (Virtualbox in parallel in virtualbox and etc.) And we were thinking if there could actually be a practical application of multiple virtual machines... We could think of none. If the machine is being virtualized it has its limits from the program and blah blah blah. Does anyone have any counterstatements I can push back at them? I'm not talking about a master server running a DHCP server, and beside that a squid server, beside that etc. I'm talking about a computer running a dhcp server running a virtual box machine and inside that is another thing.

66.216.163.92 (talk) 01:42, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I can only see testing a virtualization environment as the only worthwhile example. Assume you are a VMWare developer. You may want to test running virtualbox on it just to ensure it works. A second example, which I don't see as very valid because I disagree with the basic assumption of usefulness of the virtualization is a situation such as having every computer in an office running a virtualization image (so the IT staff only has to configure one computer, not all of them). Then, assume you work there and you want to run Linux on your virtual Windows box. You would be running some virtual OS in your virtual Windows. Of course, you wouldn't do that anyway since you would obviously kill the virtual Windows after a few days there and already have your computer reformatted and reinstalled with Linux. -- kainaw™ 01:50, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

One thing all the commercial virtualisation providers are interested in is providing a general market for generic virtualised computing, much like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. In that business model large enterprises would have large physical compute infrastructures (whether big iron like Suns and IBMs or clusters of more modest hardware) and they'd sell compute time on that wholesale. Between those wholesalers and the final users of compute power (small websites, university projects, individual users) there might be several layers of middlemen and retailers; they break stuff down to more affordable chunks, and also aggregate otherwise unrelated chunks (e.g. cheap chunks bought from anywhere that has idle time, geographically distributed chunks to allow quick response to distributed users). While making each layer of this compute-cloud economy a concentric layer of virtualisation is, from a technical standpoint, rather inefficient, it might nevertheless turn out to be the easy and pragmatic way to structure things for business reasons. Still, surely you'd only expect to be a few layers of virtualisation from the hardware (in even the most byzantine market structure), and the economic pressures of disintermediation should keep the depth down pretty low. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:15, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Depending on the environment(s) you chose, a Russian nested doll virtualization setup could assist in security isolation in either direction (top-down-- isolating something you trust, or bottom-up-- isolating something you definitely do NOT trust). Having a number of layered hypervisors, especially on different operating systems and of different programmatic backgrounds, would lend itself to a self-contained heterogeneous system that proved very resistant to "generic" vulnerabilities. Of course, the key to this is the security of the hypervisor and the code that ties one system to the next (such as the virtualized network stack), so you would need a deep understanding from top to bottom to assert that this is worth anything but a lot of CPU cycles and disk space. --66.195.232.121 (talk) 19:44, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Forwarding in Firefox and IExplorer

Here at the office, we connect to the internet with Nortel Guesspass. That means that if we want to reach the outside world (and not only the intranet) we are prompted for our password through the browser. Unhappily, the page that prompts us don't work in IExplorer, but we don't know exactly why. This page has a self-made certificate (not recognized by any authority). In Firefox we are able to add an exception to accept this certificate, however, IExplorer do not let's us add an exception and so we are not able to login using IE.

Any solution? Mr.K. (talk) 10:17, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Umm... Request IT to get a legitimate certificate and in the meantime, use Mozilla Firefox? Is there something specific that you are unable to accomplish in Mozilla Firefox? I would assume that once you are connected to the Internet, you can use any browser you want. Kushal (talk) 21:23, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Since the certificate is self-signed, I presume what you are seeing is the standard "invalid certificate" page introduced in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3, respectively. As you say, the Firefox 3 one requires you to click through various dialogues to "add an exception" for the certificate.

In IE 7, it's actually much simpler: you are given 2 links, one of which says "Continue to this website (not recommended)"; clicking that link should load the page as normal.

I'm not sure if there is a way of permanently accepting an invalid certificate in IE7 (the above remembers your choice only for the current browsing session), but it looks like you may be able to add the certificate to IE's "certificate store": Once you're on the secure page, you should see a red "Certificate Error" box next to the address bar; clicking this will show extra information, including a link labelled "View Certificates"; from there, you can launch the "Import certificate wizard". Note that I don't actually know if this will help, as the test case I have is for a mismatched domain, rather than an invalid issuer, so importing won't help.

As Kushal says, it may be worth requesting your company acquire a legitimately signed certificate, but if this is purely an internal system, they may decide it's not worth the registration fees. - IMSoP (talk) 00:01, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

How about getting a real proxy server and dispense with this nonsense? ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 01:53, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

about array in VB

WHAT IS ARRAY? WHAT ARE THE VARIOUS TYPES OF ARRAYS IN VB? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.89.49.220 (talk) 11:07, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Have a look at Array and this online tutorial. Feel free to come back here with further questions. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 11:10, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Wrong Address on Google

Hello. I work for a non profit organisation which has a website listed on google. When you search for the name of our organisation, google's first hit is for our website - but the address and telephone number it lists is for a completely different business with a similar name. This has only happened recently - it's not from our site, it's the little map it shows at the top of google with the address and number. We've recently had a few calls from them saying that people have been calling them up when they're after us. What's the best way to get the address on google back to our address? Theorytest (talk) 12:40, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

It looks like Google provides some help on that question at their page here. Laenir (talk) 12:47, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps your organisation's website doesn't have the address on it, in an accepted format that Google can recognise. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:53, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Just curious about website domain names

Why do you have to pay to get a domain name? For example if I want to create a website dhgfuigdagdhf.com, will I have to pay for the domain name? I don't believe anyone else is using this website right now, so isn't the domain name my own creation? Abhishek ^Talk 15:11, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

You're paying to be listed in the indices of the various DNS root nameservers. Some of these are operated by private entities, others by government bodies. None give anything away for free. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:15, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

and (hopefully not to belabour the point) you can indeed create a website (say on a web hosting service like Dreamhost) without binding it to any domain. There it'll sit in splendid isolation, untroubled by search engines or other visitors. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:37, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Also, most domain names that people come up with are not unique which is why they have to try again. Who's to settle the argument over whether you or the guy who lives down the street came up with "berzerksheep.com" first? That's part of what registration does. --- OtherDave (talk) 16:04, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

It isn't the root nameservers but the nameserver(s) for the top-level domain, in this case .com. I suppose one can't expect them to give away the service for free, but the actual cost of each new domain to VeriSign is minuscule, probably less than $0.01 per year. -- BenRG (talk) 16:22, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

If domain names were free I would write a program to acquire every last one of them. My program would fail because someone who types faster than me would have beaten me to it. APL (talk) 18:46, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

That used to be the case. Originally, someone thought humans were nice trustworthy creatures that would only register domain names they planned to make good use of. Once domain hoarding started, the cost of registering domain names went up and up and up until it wasn't worthwhile to register every domain name that exists. -- kainaw™ 19:11, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Really it was a pretty stupid way to set it up from the beginning. Five minutes of consulting would have cleared up the idea that cheap domain names would lead to anything but wild irresponsibility. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 22:42, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

It depends on how jaded you are. You could be of the opinion that they did consult with lawyers. The lawyers discussed it and realized that if they allowed people to register tons of domain names, others would sue to get ownership of those domain names. A whole new area of law would emerge. The lawyers would make more money. So, they came back and suggested making domain name registration free - just to see what happens. -- kainaw™ 23:23, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

To be fair, the Internet wasn't really open to "the "public" back then. It was all military and universities. APL (talk) 03:14, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Isn't that like saying that opening an encyclopedia to editing by anyone would lead to wild irresponsibility? Anyway, as APL said, things were different back then. Commercial activity used to be banned on the Internet, because the universities and US government sites that funded it didn't want to subsidize for-profit use. And "ordinary people" hadn't even heard of the Internet; there was no incentive to register a domain unless you had a use for it.

Also, even at $0.01 per domain per year—heck, even at $0—it's not economical to register every possible domain name. There are 609,269,436,886,430,207,415,724,313,935,118,185,567,366,503,082,897,299,581,429,354,820,868,365,318,591,594,476,323,925,066,482,884 of them. Most of those are pretty long, but even a lower length limit of 8 characters, say, would be enough to effectively discourage people from registering random combinations of characters. They'd still register all the dictionary words, but they do that anyway. -- BenRG (talk) 08:54, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

No, it's not like saying that an encyclopedia open to the public would lead to irresponsibility—it's easy to reverse misuse of Wikipedia and it never costs anybody anything. It's not easy to reverse misuse of domain squatting and other domain ills. The issue is not with registering all combinations, obviously (straw man, much?), but with people selectively registering valuable/useful names and then hoping someone else will want to actually use it for something useful and pay them more for it. What did the squatter do to deserve that pay bump? Nothing. They didn't do anything creative, they didn't add anything to the world, and they didn't invest any real labor or resources into it. They just beat someone to the draw. I consider that a fatally flawed system. If it were up to me squatting would be disallowed by ICANN and challenges to squatting would be easy to file. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 04:09, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

There are already rules about squatting. If you own the trademark to a name and you owned it before the squatter, then it's no contest. There have been several court cases about this exact issue. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 01:52, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The actual operating cost for a domain name isn't just the bandwidth or the hardware... it also includes overhead costs for the entire business set up around selling them. Those things get expensive fast. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 01:50, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

October 4

Where's that picture of the Mac-laptop-filled auditorium-style classroom?

I remember this picture having a student with a non-Mac laptop, and that being the highlight of many modifications. Where can I find this picture? --156.34.83.223 (talk) 01:19, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Ancient Computer...Ancient Games?

About a year and a half ago, my computer died, and my old man gave me his ancient Windows 98 to replace it. I was wondering if you guys could reccomend some good games for it (specifically First person shooters) that would work with a-get this-8mb VRAM vid card. I already have a few good games that I had on my old comp: Fallout and FO2, Red alert 2, roller coaster tycoon, GTA2, Counter Strike, stuff like that. All input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks! P.S. I'm going into the military soon, so buying a new computer really isn't an option. --AtTheAbyss (talk) 03:45, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

If you liked Red Alert 2, you can legally download Red Alert for free from http://www.ea.com/redalert/news-detail.jsp?id=62. As for first person shooters, there's Hidden & Dangerous, which has also been released as freeware, just google it to find a download link. --Silver Edge (talk) 04:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Get a web browser (which you obviously have) and flash. There are plenty of flash games online. I like to see what's new at http://www.funny-games.biz (I think they even have a first-person shooter or two). -- kainaw™ 04:15, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Doom is a classic that should work if you have Windows 95 port, or the original floppy. The Star Wars: X-Wing series, while not strictly a FPS, is a fine series of games. You may also want to consider Delta Force, The House of the Dead 2, Battlezone (not strictly an FPS), Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, Star Wars: Dark Forces, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, Quake II, and Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (not an FPS, but pretty darn fun). bibliomaniac15 04:36, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

All your computers are belong to us. Windows 98 is liable to be turned into a spambot if you start accessing the internet, especially for downloading freebies. Dmcq (talk) 11:40, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

In a fit of nostalgia I recently installed "SimAnt" and "Outpost II" on my computer. Outpost II is about as I remember it. (Fun but with some interface weirdness.) but SimAnt was surprisingly easy. I don't recall it being so easy. APL (talk) 16:25, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Day of the Tentacle is, simply, perfect. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:06, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

• If your feeling adventurous you could throw Linux on it and actually run some semi-new games on it.:) ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 01:45, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Starsiege: Tribes is an old online FPS, still has a decent number of players, and is also available for free now. [1] has a copy with scripts, the anti-cheat software, and other goodies tossed in. 24.76.161.28 (talk) 07:14, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Youtube access

I've noticed that I have problems accessing the regular YouTube URL, youtube.com, but are able to access the site again when I try using some other version of Youtube such as ca.youtube.com, the Canadian version. On websites linking to a Youtube video, I am unable to view it, which I speculated could be due to Flash issues. But if it were Flash-related, why am I able to access Canadian youtube? Why do I have problems accessing Youtube? Could it be my server or access to one? --Blue387 (talk) 07:49, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I've been having the same problem. But Youtube.com takes me to Youtube.co.uk (and I'm in the states). Weird, eh? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 00:25, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

GoogleTalk Error - The Handle is Invalid

Hi

Over the last few days in my office, certain people are obtaining errors saying that the "The handle is invalid" when they try to run GoogleTalk. It initially started with one or two people and its starting to spread...

Everyone has admin permissions, but we are using Symantic Endpoint, which is the only thing that is common among us all, with permissions set centrally.

Is it possible that Symantic is blocking it, or is it more likely that it is a virus? If Symantic is blocking it, how are we to find out? Its not possible to uninstall Endpoint without a password, which we do not have.

An extensive search on google revealed that onlthe error was extremely uncommon, and there were hardly any answers available.

We have also tried renaming the file, but that makes no difference.

This error, however, has only happened to people who have WindowsXP. It has not manifiested itself on machines with Vista

Thanks

123.238.1.240 (talk) 16:55, 4 October 2008 (UTC)Alex

Uninstall

I tried to install a program for only 32-bit Vista in 64-bit, and obviously it didn't work. In fact, when it was installing and recognized the 64-bit environment, it began to uninstall what it had already installed and suddenly rebooted. Most of the installation still remained on my computer, and Windows Add/Remove Programs on the Control Panel doesn't help, so I tried deleting everything in the program file. Then, one time when I rebooted my computer, it tried to install itself again, and remade the program file with everything in it. How can I get rid of it for good? Do I have to change something in the system registry? How do I do that? Thanks!--El aprendelenguas (talk) 18:30, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Depends... on what your trying to uninstall. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 02:09, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

October 5

Searching Process Memory

I made a program in C# that uses Windows APIs (ReadProcessMemory) to search for some bytes inside any process's memory. However, when my program is searching, the target process's memory usage grows to around 3 times its original. Any ideas why? --wj32 ^t/c 02:26, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

hard to tell without seeing the code, but according to the msdn page on ReadProcessMemory one of the parameters supplied to the function is..."lpBuffer [out] -- A pointer to a buffer that receives the contents from the address space of the specified process." so it looks to me like the target process is giving you a copy of its address space which would almost certainly cause new objects to come into existence in the *targets* address space which would therefore explain the memory increase. at some point (one would hope) when those objects go out of scope the garbage collector will kick in and the memory usage would reduce again. cheers Mission Fleg (talk) 05:22, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

...or you might just have uncovered a bug :) as i said, hard to tell without seeing all the code thats involved. cheers Mission Fleg (talk) 07:08, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

ReadProcessMemory is handled by the OS, and the target process shouldn't even be aware that it's happening. My best guess is that you're measuring physical RAM usage and reading the virtual address space is causing data to be paged in from disk. This isn't a real increase, it's just a form of caching, and eventually the physical RAM usage will drop back to its former value. -- BenRG (talk) 07:46, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, calc.exe uses 4MB before I read the memory, and after I read the memory it uses around 40MB. I am measuring the working set, so you may be right, but other memory searchers don't seem to affect memory usage. --wj32 ^t/c 07:50, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, you ARE right! My program uses the working set and that displays a big increase, while Task Manager shows very little increase. Thanks! --wj32 ^t/c 07:55, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Yahoo Answers

How can you create a Yahoo Answers account if you don't have or want a Yahoo e-mail address? 58.165.15.180 (talk) 04:16, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe you can. To use Yahoo Answers you must have a Yahoo account or an account with one of their partners, like btinternet. Yahoo email addresses are free so what's the harm in having one? Just don't use it. Abhishek ^Talk 11:00, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Also, the wikipedia reference desk is much nicer than Yahoo Answers! Just stay here :) 83.250.202.36 (talk) 11:06, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Pretty please? Kushal (talk) 15:08, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Changing colours

Say I have an image all in red tones. Is there an easy way to transform all tones of red into another colour, say green? Digitally, of course, and preferably not too difficult. --217.227.72.192 (talk) 13:55, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

In Photoshop or Gimp: 1. desaturate it (make it grayscale), 2. add a layer above it, 3. fill layer with the color you want it to be (say, green), 4. change the blending mode of the layer to "hue" or "overlay" or whatever looks best.

Alternatively, Photoshop (and probably Gimp) has an option called "Hue/Saturation" which has a "Colorize" mode which does the same sort of thing but in my experience is harder to control. --140.247.11.44 (talk) 15:24, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

SQL plus 8.0

hey ther! i hav just downloaded an oracle software program to practice SQL.Although when i start the program SQL plus 8, they ask username,password and hoststring.iknow the username and password but i dont know wht to do with Hoststring.Can u tell me what it is exactly??i havnt been acquainted with Oracle much...this is my first time...@_@ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arya237 (talk • contribs) 14:57, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

If you're running it off of your own computer, try "localhost". --140.247.11.44 (talk) 17:31, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

October 6

Graphing Equations on Office

Hello. Is there a feature in Office 2007 Home and Student Edition where I can have an equation of my choice graphed onto a Cartesian plane (with a grid in the plot area) in a smooth line without listing so many x- or y- values? If so, how do I use it? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 02:55, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

CD-R Disks

I have a few CD-R disks i'm trying to get my lectures from school on, and they say 700MB/80 minutes. Does this mean that the maximum time limit for file(s) on the disk is 80 minutes, even if the material is well under 700MB? I've tried to start burning the files, but it says I may need more than one disk. Could someone confirm that its a 80 minute limit, or can I fit 700MB on there. Thank you in advance, Matty (talk) 03:05, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The 700MB limit applies to data, like your lecture files. The 80 minutes limit only applies of you are burning an Audio CD for use in CD players. WikiY ^Talk 03:58, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The lectures are audio recordings, so i'm guessing the 80 minute limit applies to them? Alright, well thats saved me alot of time trying to get it to work. Thank you! Matty (talk) 04:08, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

If your audio files are in MP3 format then the 80 min limit does not apply. If the files are more then 80 min long and under 700megs then they are most likely NOT in audio-cd format yet. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 07:12, 6 October 2008 (UTC)