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October 9

Shipping

If I ship my PC, do I need to do anything special to prepare it? Clarityfiend (talk) 04:14, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

A heap of bubble wrap. I shipped my PC from the Australia to the Philippines and it had dents all over it and needed a repair on arrival after the long trip. It may also be worth removing the important components (like the graphics card if it is a good one) and wrap them up separately just to be sure. Shipping companies tend to ignore ‘fragile’ stickers. 203.202.144.223 (talk) 06:43, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Only if it's a really impressive heap. I recently recieved a computer with an inch of bubble wrap around it, which wasn't enough: one corner of the case had been dented in transit. I recommend taping styrofoam blocks to the corners and edges, to imitate the way computer companies package things. --Carnildo (talk) 19:59, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Heh, with all the computers I had transfer I always had them in the styrofoam blocks, I just don't trust the alternative of it getting trashed by shipping. For monitors I throw a peice of cardbord infront of the LCD too for at least the illusion it does something. pretty much though it's just "Wrap it in bubble wrap or use styrofoam blocks if you can get them." Forai (talk) 22:07, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Personally I'd take the hard drive out and just carry it with me on my person. No sense is risking losing all your data at once if your computer gets redirected to Dubai on accident. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 23:17, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I strongly agree - take the hard-drive out and hand-carry it. Everything else in the machine can easily be repaired or replaced in the event of a disaster - but if the drive gets trashed (and it's by far the most sensitive component to being dropped or jolted) then you've got a major problem with reinstalling everything. Obviously you should back everything up onto CD's or DVD's too (even a hand-carried drive can get damaged). But even with a decent backup - the hassle of getting everything back how you like it makes looking after the hard drive very important. If possible, put it into one of those silver/grey plastic bags and then wrap the bag in bubble-wrap. As for the rest of the computer - I'd probably remove any internal cards (eg the graphics card if you have a separate one) and treat those the same way - silver/metallised plastic bag - then bubble-wrap. Don't forget to wrap your keyboard - the keys tend to suffer during shipping and can pop-out and get lost. SteveBaker (talk) 13:37, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

In addition to the above, if you have a very large CPU heatsink consider removing it. With enough jostling they can yank the CPU right off the motherboard in a very destructive way. This is especially true if you've got some sort of super-duper giant aftermarket heatsink designed for overclocking or fanless operation. APL (talk) 17:40, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I actually did that once, yanking my whole heatsink and CPU out without releasing it from the socket, and it's fine to this day (turns out my thermal paste had turned into a glue-like substance). Having a big block of loose metal tumbling around your case though, is definitely no good. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:04, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

New file system on Windows

Say I have a disk with a custom file-system on it - something that Windows does not support as of now. Could someone guide me on how I can go about creating a driver to make windows understand, and access this new file system?--Seraphiel (talk) 08:21, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

You need the IFS Kit. It used to cost money and it looks from that page like it still does, but I was under the impression that it's now available for free, so look around. The NTFSD mailing list, run by OSR, is a useful resource. I think there's only one book on the subject. Sorry for the quick reply but I have limited time... -- BenRG (talk) 17:04, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

The other alternative is to just access the partition directly and write your own user-mode driver and GUI... --wj32 ^t/c 22:57, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, BenRG and Wj32. Those look like good starting points. I've managed to get my hands on the book, and have joined the mailing list too. I'll go through them and post back if I have further queries. Thanks again.--Seraphiel (talk) 07:35, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Help installing LinuxMCE

Has anyone here successfully installed a full LinuxMCE system in their home? We are thinking of doing an installation at my friend's house; his is the guinea pig for what will hopefully be many more. I've browsed the LinuxMCE Wiki but it is simply information overload. What I'd REALLY like is for someone who has already done it to give some guidance as to which components to buy, particularly when it comes to the security cameras and controllers for them. I thought I'd try the Refdesk first before hitting the LinuxMCE forums, please don't shoot me :P Zunaid 14:01, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

global village

We know right now that the globe is now turning to be a global village with the use of computers everywhere. At first it wasnt so. My question why is it now important to learn computing and not just the fundamentals but to go into details to learn oracle, systems administration and engineering etc. Emmanuel —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.210.28.223 (talk) 14:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

It isn't important to know those things. That is specialization relevant only to a small number of occupational fields. Having good knowledge of computers and a basic understanding of how they work/operate is a good thing. I've never seen anyone suggest Oracle knowledge etc. is important to the general public. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 14:39, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

There are huge benefits to be had from learning some basic computer stuff - like scripting/programming and basic systems admin. Even if you wind up in a career that doesn't demand those things - it's amazing how many day-to-day office tasks can be helped out by being able to write a simple script - or by understanding how to fix simple technical matters yourself rather than having to run to the IT department (or paying a bunch of bozo's like "The Geek Squad" or the Microsoft help desk) every time you have a minor problem. Computers are here to stay - and they are getting into every corner of our lives - not being "computer literate" in the age of computers is going to be as bad as not being "literate" in the age of printing. SteveBaker (talk) 13:30, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

graphic cards

is it possible for graphic cards to display 1920x1080 pixels on a 46" sony hdtv used as a monitor? actually wut ishould be asking is are there any graphic cards out there displaying that many pixels when set on the settings tab when u right click?Jwking (talk) 16:23, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

The settings tab should display the resolutions compatible with your monitor if you have installed the appropriate drivers. As long as your graphic card has enough video memory, you should be able to use large resolutions. --wj32 ^t/c 22:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Actaully a few graphics cards that have a HDMI output connector on the card, have a Native resolution of 1920x1080. To get a graphic card who's programmable clip clock is fast enought to do that resolution requries a peice of software called Power~ something. I cant remember. My EVGA PCIx16 nVidia 7600 is the only card I have that can do it. I have a Toshiba Libretto U105 at work, that has the 64Mb of VRam ( shared memory ), but its pixel clock is not fast enough. ( Damn old Intel internal video chip ). Use the " Dell Ultrasharp UXGA 17" Screen" driver (.inf file ) to tell your video card, what monitor you have ) ( You can see this thread: [1] ) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.185.0.29 (talk) 06:31, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, what? A Voodoo 3 3000 could do 2046x1536 at 60Hz. You don't need HDMI out either; you can get a simple adapter to go from DVI to HDMI, and some TVs take VGA as input. You can do component video out too, depending on the video card. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 06:37, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

And: The software you're likely thinking of is Powerstrip; that will let you get resolutions that are not displayed as an option by the driver, but it's usually not necessary for 1920x1080. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 06:46, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Damn! Thanks Crusty, Thats the software exactly. What is your definition of Usually? I have never seen a video card, except a nVidia 8800GT that didnt need it.

And, 1920x1080 is 1Mpixel, so you need at least 32MB to do a 24-bit still picture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.185.0.29 (talk) 08:58, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

My definition of 'usually' is "> 50% of the time". Unless there's something wrong with the card's detection of the TV, I haven't seen any that require using powerstrip for that resolution. 1080p is an HDTV resolution, it's pretty common. Also, your calculation looks wrong: (1920*1080 pixels) * (24 bits / pixel) * (1 megabyte / 8388608 bits) = 5.93 megabytes. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 13:48, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Most modern graphics cards should be able to get to that resolution - but are you sure your TV can handle it? By default the graphics card is going to produce 1080p (progressive scan) - but many (even quite high end) TV sets can only do 720p or 1080i (interlaced) which is not quite the same thing. Most of them will accept those higher resolution images - but down-sample them to the resolution they actually can manage. That looks OK with TV programs and movies - but when you do that with images from a computer, you get a picture that looks pretty terrible - and running your graphics at the actual resolution that the TV can manage without tricks will produce better results. SteveBaker (talk) 13:24, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

.net Framework

Is there any good reason why I would need to have .net v2 and v3 installed on my computer at the same time, or does v3 being the latest issue provide the full functionality of previous versions ? I just note that v2 and v3 are installed side by side on my machine rather than v3 having overwritten v2. The size of the latest updates is also an issue if I have to download for both versions.--196.207.47.60 (talk) 16:36, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Probabbly there is no good reason, but I think you need to keep both to be able to run files that require one or another. Hey, it's Microsoft software, don't try to understand it... SF007 (talk) 19:59, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

.NET Framework 3.0 is based on 2.0 and adds support for WPF, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Windows Communication Foundation. When you install 3.0, it installs 2.0, plus those features. .NET Framework 3.5 is similar (this is from the download page for 3.5):

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 contains many new features building incrementally upon .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.0, and includes .NET Framework 2.0 service pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.0 service pack 1.

--wj32 ^t/c 22:50, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

It's quite common for different major versions of shared libraries to be binary-incompatible, meaning that you have to have at least one instance of each major version installed if you want to support all the applications that use that library. I'm not sure this is true of .NET but I think it is. -- BenRG (talk) 21:25, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

CR-RW problems

Hi everybody. My brother recently downloaded some files for me and burned them to a CD-R. I have a CDRW drive, but for some reason when I open the drive, it says there is nothing on the disk (0 objects). If I look at the disk properties, it says there is 250mb of data on the disk. I have never before had any problems reading any disks on my Sony CRX100E CDRW drive. Any ideas what the problem is? I have WIndows 98, if that info is at all important. --AtTheAbyss (talk) 18:13, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

IsoBuster is a good program to recover/check data on CDs/DVDs, it will let you see all the "tacks" on the CD, and the files in them... you can try it (I think a trial verion is available) SF007 (talk) 19:56, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Are you opening the CD with Windows Explorer or with some other program (I'm amazed at the number of users who have no idea what WE is and try to read stuff by browsing from Excel or something...)? It's been a long time since I used 98, but it may have had the option to not show certain file types (mostly internal-type files like DLLs, etc.); if the files your brother put on the CD are of the type WE doesn't think you should see, the window will be empty but the disc still show as having memory used up on it. I believe the options for that are under Tools - Options in WE. If that doesn't help, it may help us if we know what kind of files you're expecting to see. Matt Deres (talk) 20:42, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes I'm using windows explorer. He put a patch for one of my games and a mod for another on the disk. I'm assuming they'd appear as zip or intall shield/setup launchers, but I'm not totally sure. I'll try to get ahold of him to check. I've been able to use disks with the exact same specs, so I know for sure that it's not a case of a disk being to advanced for my drive. --136.247.76.236 (talk) 22:01, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Whew. Do you have any indications that the disc is not being read correctly (light flashing or not coming on at all, weird sounds of the disc being spun up faster and faster)? If so, the disc could simply be mis-burnt. It happens. Did you check to see if Windows was hiding the files on you? I believe the check for that is under Tools - Options (or Folder Options, something like that). Somewhere there'll be an option to show or hide hidden files (at least I think so; as I said, it's been ages since '98 for me) - make sure Windows is showing you everything. Also, ask your friend if he left the disc "open" or closed. I've heard some drives can't read discs left open by a different drive. To be honest, it sounds to me like the disc is simply toast. I've been burning discs for about a decade now, back when the fast model was a 4-2-24, and they are notoriously unreliable. BurnProof tech has helped a lot, but it's still a leap of faith, especially for burning simple files (as opposed to ISOs and other images). Spend $10 on a flash drive and never worry about it again. Matt Deres (talk) 00:33, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I took the disk to my old man's house, and I was able to read it on his computer. I burned the files to another disk, which I am able to read on my computer. I installed the mod, but when I try to install the patch, I come up with this: "Could not initialize installation. File size expected= 121137572, size returned= 121139200. The parameter is incorrect." Any ideas? Thanks. --AtTheAbyss (talk) 17:56, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Writing CDs and DVDs on a MacBook

Out of nowhere, my MacBook has problems writing to and recognizing blank CDs and DVDs. The drive itself seems to have no problems reading CDs or DVDs, including writable and rewritable CDs and +/- DVDs that already have data written to them.

However, if I insert a blank CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, or DVD+R/RW, the drive spins the disk up and down a couple of times, then ejects the disk, not recognizing it anywhere.

It seems as, all of a sudden, the drive itself does not recognize that it is a burner. Toast 8 reports (as it always did) that the drive has burning capability.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance. --Renwique (talk) 19:56, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

October 10

My trashcan has gone missing !

My "trashcan" or "recycle casket" or whatever to call it has suddenly gone missing from my desktop.. Almost as if it has been deleted. And I can say I certainly haven't deleted no trashcan!

This is a problem coz i can't find it again anywhere and im a bit clueless as to what to do. And i don't know/rememebr what it was called exactly so I havent been able to 'search' my harddisc either for it.. hopefully it is just the shortcut that has gone missing from the desktop, but i just dont know...

what might have happened? and more importantly - how to fix it and find it and/or restore it?

thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Krikkert7 (talk • contribs) 00:07, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, My first guess would be that you accidently moved the recycle bin off the screen somehow and lost it. The simple way to fix it in that case is re-align the desktop by rightclicking and arrange icons by whatever. Then grab your recycle bin and re-arrange how you liked your desktop. If it's more complex then that then please reply with information. Forai (talk) 00:23, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it is actually possible to delete the icon for recycle bin on windows xp or later. Did you accidentally press delete for it? 12.169.180.158 (talk) 01:49, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

If you are using Vista, you can right-click on the desktop and choose Personalize. Then click "Change desktop icons" on the left and you can get your Recycle Bin back. --wj32 ^t/c 02:16, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Dont look for tech support here often. OK! To find your trash can, if its on the display but hidden? ( Right click on the desktop ) Arrange Icons by (Third option)Type. To UnHide it, run TweakUI Windows Power Tool. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.185.0.29 (talk) 06:33, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

thanks guys big time, with your help I got it sorted out! :D

Spyware

I am a complete retard and have managed to infect my computer with spyware. What good, free scanners can I use to get rid of it? Thanks in advance. 86.143.234.77 (talk) 02:18, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Spybot search and destroy and AdAware are both good scanner. Just google 'em. --AtTheAbyss (talk) 02:28, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

The steps laid out here seem to be pretty solid (open the appropriate thread for you operating system). Yes they're recommending you run several scanners, but it's a good idea to do so if you've been hit. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 04:14, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

You are NOT a complete retard. Humans CANNOT MAKE MISTAKES! Only computers can. OK! If you computer is infected with spyware, you want to get a program called Spybot Search and Destory. [2].

Install it.

Run the Immunize function

Have it scan as the last thing you do during the day. ( it should take an hour or so )

Turn on Expert mode, and look at BHO's ( Browser HiJacker functions ) and click on each one. If one appears that you dont know what it does, type is SPID code ( looks like {EAD4891924-2120-1249 ) into google, and you can easily find if it needs to be deleted.

Just so you know, I got an email, and moused over the graphicl. Turns out it was a link to a codec downloader that loads a trojan horse.

What this means, is that anyone can be fooled, and Windows is inhearntly unsafe by design ----~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.185.0.29 (talk) 06:41, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

how to change from alphabet to ascii code?

i want to know ,how to change from alphabets to ascii code in c++ language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.179.31.23 (talk) 07:26, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

With single quotes, like 'a' (not "a") --194.197.235.221 (talk) 09:13, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what the question means. Most codes around now except EBCDIC have ASCII as a subset and nearly everything extra is extra because it isn't in ASCII, there are a few things which could be put to something similar but have different semantics. Give an example of an alphabet you would come from and what you would expect the result to be. Do you want to change to Unicode, e.g. UTF8 or UTF16 for instance instead? Dmcq (talk) 12:08, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Generally (since almost nobody uses EBCDIC anymore) - and presuming we're talking about a non-internationalized program, letters are "already" in ASCII codes. So if you write:

 for ( int i = '!' ; i < '~' ; i++ )  // Run 'i' over the entire set of 'printable' characters
   printf ( "'%c' is %d\n", i, i ) ;  // Print 'i' as both a character and an ASCII code

...you'll get an ASCII chart printed out that starts with:

   '!' is 33
   '"' is 34
   '#' is 35

...and eventually...

   'A' is 65
   'B' is 66
      ...
   'Z' is 90

...and so on until we get to...

   '}' is 125
   '~' is 126

SteveBaker (talk) 13:09, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

IBM sells five gigabucks worth of EBCDIC-based mainframes each year, so somebody must be using them. A very miserable somebody, but still. --Sean 13:50, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd be quite surprised if there were any C++ programs running on them though! SteveBaker (talk) 14:09, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Why? My current project involves Java on the mainframe; I don't have any direct experience of C++ but I don't see why people wouldn't use it. 81.187.153.189 (talk) 10:04, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about Java - but C++ on ZOS/OS-390 uses the ASCII character set. Some sort of EBCDIC-to-ASCII and ASCII-to-EBCDIC kludge is used on the inputs and outputs of the C++ code so it can run in a "normal" ASCII environment internally. I'd be quite surprised if Java for that operating system didn't do the exact same thing. SteveBaker (talk) 03:18, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, characters (or 'alphabets' as you call them) are stored as numbers (in ASCII codes). With printf you can choose to print the ASCII code as a character (%c) or as a number (%d) (simplistic explanation) --wj32 ^t/c 21:18, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Converting ClearSpace markup to MediaWiki

Does anyone know of a package/plugin/whatever to convert documents in the Clearspace wiki markup (urgh!) to MediaWiki? SteveBaker (talk) 14:10, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Scanning banknotes

Why can't banknotes be scanned? 14:31, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

They can — they just don't give an accurate reproduction when scanned. This makes it more difficult to forge them. -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 14:52, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Many photocopiers and computer programs detect the EURion constellation, a pattern present on many bank notes, and refuse to operate. That article also suggests digital watermarking may be used as well. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 14:54, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Interestingly, photocopying American dollars is a felony, unless changed/enlarged/shrunk to the point that it is immediately obvious that it is a fake. Even if you never intended to pass the money as counterfeit, it's still illegal. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 00:47, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Laptop Downloading Woes

I was given a troubled HP laptop computer to diagnose and repair that I can not find a solution for.

The problem it had initially was that it could connect to a network via cable or wireless and would show up with IP information, connected to IM programs, etc. but would not connect to the internet through a web browser. This turned out to be a problem with the a Norton program that apparently comes pre-loaded on HP systems.

So, now the laptop is connecting to browsers and everything seemed fine. Come to find out that I can not download anything from the internet to the hard-drive, such as a simple installer program. Any files will begin downloading like normal (ask where I would like to save, pop up the download window, etc.) but then just immediately complete and do not show up with any resulting download. The very first time I had this issue, I believe it actually downloaded for some time, completed, and left me with a fragmented file that could not be opened.

The laptop -will- download updates via Windows Updater, but I believe it will not allow me to download files from other programs, such as Zune Marketplace.

I have tried hooking this laptop to different networks (work network and home network), using different web browsers (FireFox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome), clearing the TCP/IP Stack via the command line, logging in as a Guest user on the computer, booting up in Safe Mode + Network, and have not been able to identify any firewall, anti-virus/spyware programs, or generic Windows settings that could possibly cause this issue.

The computer is using 32-bit Windows Vista Home Premium.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

209.253.35.194 (talk) 17:05, 10 October 2008 (UTC)Impen

As a temporary solution, try getting a download manager and resuming every time the download breaks. This might be an issue with your ISP, or with Norton security software. Have you tried disabling Norton antivirus/firewall? Also, by "not show up with any resulting download" do you mean the download doesn't show up in the download manager, or isn't present as a file on the filesystem? If it exists, how big is it? --wj32 ^t/c 21:23, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that the download is not breaking - it is completing extremely quick. There is no download to resume, because the system thinks it has finished.

I know it is not a problem with an ISP, because I have tried it at two different locations with separate networks (home and work) and it is not a problem with Norton. I uninstalled any/all Norton related software I could find on the computer with the aid of the program they make you download to uninstall their software.

By "not show up with any resulting download," I mean it does not create any new file on the system. The option for "Open" and "Open Containing Folder" options are not available in the browser. It appears the downloaded file does not exist at all.

Also, I have tried this on a wired and wireless network.

Thank you for the input, wj32. =) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.253.35.194 (talk) 22:28, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Try using IE and "Open"ing the file. Does it download properly? It might be that you can't write to the download location (very unlikely though). Also, what was the problem with Norton? Try going to C:\Windows\system32\drivers and seeing if any Norton-related drivers are still there. --wj32 ^t/c 22:46, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I have tried "Open"ing or "Run"ing these fies when downloading with Internet Explorer and FireFox, and it does appear to work. The files I was trying to download previously may have been too small to determine whether they were actively trying to download or just cutting short (I didn't think they were, as my work network is typically slow).

After trying to download a few larger files to the hard-drive, it appears that the browser is allowing the downloads to make progress up to 100%, then immediately eliminating the download. The file does not appear on the system once the download progress is complete. This was the same result when trying to download to desktop, My Documents, or a USB thumb-drive.

I searched the C:\windows\system32\drivers directory for any suspicious looking drivers, but the esoteric nature of driver naming prevents me from really locating any that may have been associated with Norton.

I am not sure what the problem was with Norton, but it seemed to be a common issue with HP laptops pre-installed with the Norton software. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.253.35.194 (talk) 23:59, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

That's very strange... are you sure the file is actually present while the browser is downloading? Obviously, if the file is present, the browser can't be deleting the file (why would it do that?). --wj32 ^t/c 00:55, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I tried downloading a larger file with FireFox and also with the Zune software. During these downloads, I looked in the folder they were transferring into to see if there was a temporary or any trace of a file being downloaded, and there was. Once the download was complete, the file was completely removed for some reason. The result was the same between the browser and the Zune software.

The Zune software even showed up with a new subscription (I was just downloading podcasts from the Marketplace, since they are free and sizely), got to 100% download status in the software, etc. I was unable to play these once they were downloaded or, as I was saying previously, locate them in the downloads folder specified in the Zune software.

Any other ideas?

64.244.94.114 (talk) 17:33, 17 October 2008 (UTC)Impen

Ubuntu download as VMware virtual machine, VMware tools preinstalled

Where can I download Ubuntu as a VMware virtual machine with VMware tools preinstalled, aside from the VMware website? I have an Intel Mac 10.5. The VMware website keeps 7zip archives of Ubuntu with VMware tools pre-installed, but the only one (of four files in the archive) which VMware Fusion can open gives me a Terminal only. (The 770MB "VMware Virtual Disk" remains untouched.) I successfully installed Ubuntu manually, and then I tried installing VMware Tools afterwards. But that doesn't work either. When it goes to configure itself, it seems to want a C-compiler, but can't find gcc even though it is installed. (Apparently, v4.2 is already installed.)

My solution is to download it, altogether, with Tools pre-installed. VMware Tools is software that runs in the virtual machine, to help it integrate better with the host system. I'm a noob, much as I make every effort I can to decipher what I can't understand!My name is anetta (talk) 17:53, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

In the guest, open a terminal and type sudo apt-get build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`. Then install VMware Tools. Ubuntu comes with GCC, but without the essential headers. --wj32 ^t/c 21:27, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou for your help, Wj32, but copied straight in it says "E: Invalid operation build-essential", and even when I change it to apt-get build-essential linux-headers -"uname -r", it says E: Command line option ‘n’ [from -uname -r] is not known. Even when I run it as root. I'll try again after updating the machine, however.My name is anetta (talk) 23:51, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Oops, sorry! I meant sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`. --wj32 ^t/c 23:56, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

You can get "Super Ubuntu" in a Virtual Machine (not an official version):

http://hacktolive.org/wiki/Download_Super_Ubuntu —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.196.42.142 (talk) 01:38, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou. Terminal is busy. And I'm torrenting Super Ubuntu as well.My name is anetta (talk) 11:16, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Why memory segmentation?

We have an introductory course in microprocessors. In 8085, the data bus of RAM chip and microprocessor both are 8-bit and hence interfacing is straightforward. For 8086 however, data bus of processor is 16-bit and that of RAM chip is 8-bit. We can't have a 1MB ram chip in which we can address two locations at the same, hence we use two chips each of 512kb for interfacing to the 8086. This is also where the concept of memory banking comes in.

However, my question is - instead of going through all this hassle, why can't we have RAM chips with data bus of 16-bits? It would make the trouble of segmentation unnecessary. (For now, let's ignore the other advantages of memory segmentation.) My professor explained that it's a "hardware limitation" of 8086, but I don't understand how - if data bus of both processor and RAM is 16-bit.

Thanks --RohanDhruva (talk) 19:06, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Doubling the size of a given bus is a lot more than just adding 8 wires; you need to double the number of parts for every part of the system that touch that bus. This uses real estate on the silicon die, which is always in short supply. Worse, particularly back in them days, chip design software was very primitive (making even trivial-seeming changes into a lot of hard work) and really Intel didn't employ all that many people. Plus I guess they thought (rightly, from an economic standpoint) that the 16/8 chip would sell perfectly well, and they could do a 16/16 chip later. I'm sure they came to regret that, from a technical standpoint, later - but by that time they had huge piles of 8086 cash, so it's hard to say they were wrong. Incidentally if they had made it 16/16 you wouldn't have needed 16 bit RAM chips - you'd just use two 8 bit ones in parallel and common their chip selects. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:22, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Additionally (in general; I don't know the specifics of the 8085->8086 transition) there are other reasons why a new chip might willfully inherit the limitations of its predecessor. These include the goal to be:

• pin-compatible, or as close to as possible, to minimise the effort designers have to put in to switch a given board from your old device to your new one
• instruction compatible, or at least very similar, so existing software works, or can be ported with less effort
• hardware compatible, so existing devices (like memory SIMMs) from the old system can be used in the new. Also remember that RAM isn't the only thing on a classic x86 system address/data bus - external devices like UARTs, mouse controllers, floppy controllers, and many more are all built to the same architecture standard; the less you change that, the more of these devices will work (or the easier it will be to make them work).

As with my first answer, the real reason is "economics". -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:13, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, Finlay! --RohanDhruva (talk) 10:52, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Self-Replicating Program

How would one go about making a program that makes a random change to its programming based on a dictionary of commands and then replicates itself? Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Freiberg (talk • contribs) 21:48, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

You'll have to tell us what environment you're thinking of programming this in (or, if you have no constraints). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:52, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

While I don't necessary care about the programming language used, I am hoping to not have it swamp my hard drive, perhaps by partitioning the hard drive. Also, I am hoping that any program that fails to replicate is deleted.--Freiberg, Let's talk!, contribs 22:20, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, you want to build a virtual machine with a limited instruction set defined by yourself and have your "programs" run inside that virtual machine. Assumedly what you are thinking of is a kind of artificial life evolving through a genetic algorithm. See Tierra for an implementation of that. Equendil Talk 01:12, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not that hard to do it in most languages. You could even do it in C++. Write a program that writes a copy of itself to disk - then runs the C++ compiler on the result - then runs the result and exits itself. That's not too tough - after that it's a matter of making the random changes...but the trouble with that is that almost any random change results in a program that won't compile. Hence the attraction of making a virtual machine with a limited instruction set (as Equendil suggests). The principle benefit of doing that is that you can arrange that (a) there are no "illegal" programs - they all run in some manner no matter what garbage they contain...and (b) that the ratio of 'useful' instructions in the instruction set to 'obscure, not very useful' ones is kept to a minimum to give the next generation. In that setting, you can make a single 'special' instruction that means "make a copy of yourself with N random alterations". Being able to control the virtual machine also means that there is no risk of "The Terminator" knocking on your door and telling you that a program evolved from your system will escape in the future and takes over the world enslaving all of humanity (never a good thing!). SteveBaker (talk) 01:38, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you; this is exactly what I needed to know. That was also exactly my intent, as I wanted to set goals and see what kinds of programs I could "breed". I now know.--Freiberg, Let's talk!, contribs 21:54, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

You may be interested in the evolutionary computation article. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:58, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I am indeed. Thanks. --Freiberg, Let's talk!, contribs 16:09, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

You may be interested in Nanopond. APL (talk) 01:18, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

"See what I did there?"

What does "See what I did there?" mean in the context of web forums or blogs (I'm asking on Computing instead of Humanities only because it seems like a web meme). From what I can tell from Google, it generally follows a dumb pun or play on words. Generally a really obvious one. Is the idea that people aren't clever enough to get the play on words? Or is there some sub-text or joke that I'm missing?

Thanks! Madd4Max 23:04, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Google gave me this at Urban Dictionary. Algebraist 23:08, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I've seen "I see what you did there." - but not the form you describe. It usually happens when someone posts a lame pun or a crappily photoshopped "joke" image - and the other person replies "I see what you did there." as a way to say "I acknowledge that you tried - but I didn't find that at all funny or original". SteveBaker (talk) 03:10, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've seen it used (and have used it myself) to call attention to a genuinely clever remark or post that may be too subtle to be noticed and too good to waste. Kind of an egotistical move on the part of the poster - at least, in my case it is. Vonbontee

October 11

Web Programming Question

I want to construct a website with an interface that randomly presents users with one of a finite set of variables -- such as an image and accompanying text or audio, or a randomly generated web-page -- and requests user input -- such as a series of radio buttons next to accompanying text. So ideally it would work something like this: A user would hit a button or a link, be taken to a web-page generated with a randomly selected picture and accompanying audio, and then have the user fill out a form with radio buttons or something similar. Oh, and most importantly, I then need to collect the data from the forms and the information about the randomly generated page, store it in someplace, and allow me to perform meaningful operations with it (such as computing averages, etc.).

My question is: what programming language does this series of tasks sound most appropriate for? I'm used to programming (C++, Python) but have very limited experience with web-programming, so I don't really know where to begin. Further, do I need access and knowledge to/of the server on which the application would be stored in order to program the necessary CGI to perform the kinds of operations I mentioned before, or can I somehow just have it all written to a .data file stored elsewhere on the site? Deshi no Shi (talk) 00:50, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

For something like that, I'd normally toss something together in PHP - database access is fairly trivial that way, especially if you're using something like MySQL, and PHP uses a C-type syntax, which should help given your C++ background. Plus you just toss the PHP code into a plain text file for parsing by the web server, so if the server supports it you won't need any access beyond the norm. If you go with a CGI Python would be easy (although I'd use Perl as a matter of habit). Typical server configs place CGIs in a separate executable folder, so you'll need access and permissions. - Bilby (talk) 00:59, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Would be so easy to do in PHP. Do it PHP. If you know C++ and Python you'll find PHP to be a walk in the park. Just look online for a quicky tutorial on using form data (e.g.) and databases (e.g.) with PHP and you'll be able to figure out the rest just fine. PHP is just a matter of knowing how to work with the web—the syntax is easy and there are functions pre-built for just about everything.

As for the server stuff... if you do it in PHP, you don't really have to know much about the server at all, esp. if you are just doing the sort of thing you describe. Some areas of functions (e.g. image manipulation) can be heavily affected by the version of PHP installed and what options it was compiled with. If you are using a real MySQL database you will have to get things set up on the server correctly with that (I recommend using a tool like phpMyAdmin for that). If you are just writing to a plaintext file then no, you don't need anything special.

Note that the easiest way to develop in PHP is to install a local Apache server (if you don't have one already) and install PHP with that and do it on your local computer, and then transfer that to the server. Sometimes there are little bugs or differences incurred when doing this, based on differences in OSes or installations, but they are rarely things that can't be worked around pretty easily. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 01:39, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Mouse problems.

I have seemed to run in to a small problem with my logitech mouse. The problem is that i have reached the far left end of my mouse, but the curser is on the far right side of my screen, i can still move is up and down, but i am unable to move it further to the left without going off my mouse pad, what should i do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.164.220.177 (talk) 06:40, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Lift the mouse up (with your hand, against gravity) and place it at the centre of your mouse pad again. 59.95.101.123 (talk) 12:10, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Alternatively, purchase a larger mouse pad :) --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:13, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your help, I have a budget of $880, where would i be able to find a mouse pad that will work with a Macintouch Computer for under $800? —Preceding unsigned comment added by E smith2000 (talk • contribs) 05:51, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Huh? --98.217.8.46 (talk) 13:23, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I can create a large mouse pad for you at a bargin price of $879.00 203.202.144.223 (talk) 22:27, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Markup language for desktop frontend ?

Will ever HTML, or any other template based / markup languages be used, to design desktop frontend (of course, in combination with some scripting language, and style sheets) ? With xml and xsl, I don't think this is impossible. In this case we need only a rendering engine and a scripting engine on the top of kernel. This could possibly replace other traditional desktop frontends like, xwindows, gnome, or KDE. I am not sure, just asking... --V4vijayakumar (talk) 07:22, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Depends on what you meant by that, Glade Interface Designer outputs a xml file that's used with bindings but is itself language independent. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:37, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't that be a bit slow, especially with using scripting languages? Of course, there's already XUL which uses JavaScript, but that isn't used for non-web-applications (much). --wj32 ^t/c 09:14, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

NeWS (one of the early windowing systems for Solaris) used PostScript for all of it's rendering and user interactions. When a normal application program (written in C, perhaps) wanted a GUI widget (like a button or a menu), it would send the PostScript source code to the windowing system that would run hundreds of these little postscript programs in parallel. The postscript would draw the widget - monitor interaction with it and send data back to the application as needed. It was a pretty elegant concept and even on mid-1980's hardware, it was pretty usable. However, it fizzled and never became really popular. SteveBaker (talk) 03:07, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

NeWS hm.. interesting. I am sure something like this will come back. :) --V4vijayakumar (talk) 08:11, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I've heard that OS X uses PDF in its display layer, though individual applications don't have to send it PDF source to work. 81.187.153.189 (talk) 09:25, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not the same thing though - Postscript is an actual programming language. You execute the program in order to make the graphics. The cool thing about NeWS was that if (for example) you wanted a widget with a weird set of radio buttons where any two out of three could be pressed down at any time - or a widget that let you enter numbers in base 12 or something crazy like that - or a button that turns pink when you click on it - then you could send a little Postscript program to the window manager that would draw the widget - monitor mouse clicks and keyboard input directed at it and handle all of those little annoying error checking things...so the real C-language application would only ever see "clean" data coming from the GUI in a format that it could determine. This is nice for a system like NeWS (the 'N' stands for "Network") because a program running somewhere remotely can send a short Postscript program to your local computer that's drawing the desktop - and low level GUI stuff is handled on the client machine with only final results being sent back to the application. Because Postscript is portable - and the interface between application and window manager is just ASCII source code - the machine architecture of the windowing client and the host could be completely different. SteveBaker (talk) 19:10, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Alternatively to everyone just telling you names of Interface Markup Languages, read the article User interface markup language and find out for yourself. Note that you could have easily find that article yourself. You'll also see that XAML can define language logic as well as interface, plus it can be scripted/hard coded as well. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 11:08, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Linux kernel

I know that optimizing the kernel for a machine will give faster boot-up, but will it make other userspace application more responsive too? Will Firefox launch faster when I click its icon, or is it just the boot time that depends on kernel optimization?
The Firewall (talk) 10:27, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but usually not by much (single-digit %); mainly because the kernel will use less memory, freeing some more for the applications, and because you can optimize the kernel for your particular CPU instead of a generic i386. MaxVT (talk) 19:24, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok, but, how much memory can it use/free? In modern systems; with > 1 Gb or RAM, what good would it do if the kernel uses 1 Mb or 800 Kb? Any measured performance optimization on this? Renich (talk) 23:13, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

It really depends a lot on the application. A program that (say) calculates the first million digits of PI will probably use almost no kernel time - it'll get interrupted by the kernel once in a while - but that's going to be a tiny fraction of the total runtime. In that situation, the performance of the kernel is almost irrelevant. But pick a program that's doing LOTS of kernel-related activity (allocating memory, doing I/O, switching back and forth between lots of tasks) - and it's time could be dramatically affected by the performance of the kernel. The only reason booting up is so sensitive to kernel performance is because most of the programs that are invoked (and there are LOTS of them) are doing exactly those kinds of things that lean heavily on the kernel's performance. FIrefox ought to launch noticably quicker if the kernel gets a lot faster. SteveBaker (talk) 02:55, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Strange symbols on webpages

I've often noticed strange symbols appearing on webpages. In all of them, a valid character is replaced by a seemingly unrelated group of characters. For example, see this page where in the search result, ‘ gets replaced by ’. Could someone tell me why this happens? --Seraphiel (talk) 13:24, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I can confirm that I have also seen this phenomenon, but I do not know what causes it. - SigmaEpsilon → ΣΕ 16:09, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I think this is usually caused by software getting the character encoding wrong - if you visit the original article in Firefox and go to View > Character Encoding > Western (ISO-8859-1) you'll see the weirdness in the headline there too. It seems to work fine in UTF-8, and I'm not sure why the Google News spider isn't using that. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 16:39, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

The Google News spider is probably at fault. The original article is served using the utf-8 encoding both from web server and in the document, and the characters used are encoded properly. Some script on Google's side bungles them, probably assuming ISO-8859-1 encoding or incorrectly handling UTF-8 characters. MaxVT (talk) 19:36, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Read the article on Mojibake for more information. While the problem explained in this article occurs when trying to view content in other languages, the underlying cause of the problem is the same. Hope that gives you at least some insight. --Renwique (talk) 17:06, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

JAVA PROGRAM(Test1 of Computer Science)

Qsn1. Write down a java program that produces the following pattern,given any value of n. n=1;

*  

n=2;

 *
* *
 *

n=3;

  *
 * *
* * *                      [15]marks
 * *
  * 

n=4;

   *
  * *
 * * *
* * * *
 * * *
  * *
   * 
//The input should be from the keyboard Tsotetsirapman (talk) 14:33, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Read the top of the page. No homework questions. And really, this is pretty straightforward. Just look up how to for loops. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 14:37, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Looks like you want a counter, say i, which increases until n, at which point it decreases until 0. Then, for each i, you want to print out i amount of stars (with the correct spacing as well). Should be pretty easy. Here's a big clue: the code looks something like this in C:

int up = 1;
int i;
int n = 4;

for (i = 1; !((!up) && (!i)); (i == n) ? (up = 0) : (up = up), up ? i++ : i--)
{
    // print stars here
}

--wj32 ^t/c 23:54, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Here's another clue: for each i, the amount of space characters before the first star is n - i. I hope you were able to figure that out by yourself!--wj32 ^t/c 23:46, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

If it were me, I would probably use recursion... perhaps it may be a bit over complicated, but I've always found writing recursive functions to be much more interesting than for loops.

   void printStars(int n)
   {
       if(n==0)
           return;
       for(int temp=0; temp < n; temp++)
       {
       cout << " *";
       }
       cout << endl;
       printStars(n-1);
   }

Obviously that's not complete, but that's the basis of what I would do... :) DaRkAgE7_[Talk] 04:21, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

MHTML

This [3] says you can save a "whole Web site" as MHTML. How is this done? I've only ever got it to save one page at a time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.63.184.3 (talk) 17:53, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I think [4] meant "page", not "site". --grawity 18:07, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Auto-Refresh?

Is there a way to make Firefox automatically reload a page after a specified amount of time? I'm playing Forumwarz and there's a page that displays crucial information, but I need to to be always up-to-date. Instead of pressing F5 and alt+tab all the time, is there a simpler way?. 58.161.97.173 (talk) 22:05, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

There is a "Reload every" plugin for Firefox - [5] -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:23, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, thank you very much 58.161.97.173 (talk) 23:00, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

October 12

Cryptographic hash in less than O(n)

Do any known cryptographic hash functions run in less than linear time? NeonMerlin 01:14, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Bad ones can run in far less than O(n) time. Consider the worse one of all: Just use the first X bits as the hash. That is O(1). But, you can use whatever integer you want for X and get arbitrary length hashes! I do see that the list of popular hash functions on cryptographic hash function doesn't have runtime costs. Checking the articles, I don't even see anything in there. Looks like we need some research. -- kainaw™ 02:31, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Even worse and faster hash function: always return 42. Not so "cryptographic" though. --71.106.183.17 (talk) 04:14, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I doubt that any good cryptographic hash functions run in less than linear time. You might be able to fudge "good" for a particular application, and get away with less, but not in general. Consider the property "second preimage resistant" as described in the article Cryptographic hash function: It should be very hard, given one input x, to generate a second input y, such that hash(x)=hash(y). To get that, you need every byte of the input to have an effect on the output. But doing anything to every byte of input is necessarily going to take at least O(n) time.

It's also a minor point from a practical perspective. Most of the times that you're interested in the cryptographic hash of some data, you're also doing something else with the data -- storing it on disk, or transmitting it across a network -- that takes O(n) time, and a fairly substantial amount of time at that. So any gains you'd make from having a sub-O(n) hash function would be swamped to insignificance by the cost of your other operations.

The only application that comes to mind where it's not moot would be something like Open Source Tripwire (checking to see if files have been modified, in part by checking their hashes) since you're potentially hashing the file a lot more often than you read it, or write it, or transfer it. But I think that's one application where you couldn't "fudge" things -- if you don't use each and every byte in your hash, an attacker could conceivably slip something into the bytes you ignore.

On a parting note: I think (but I'm no expert) that currently used cryptographic hashes are all O(n) in time and O(1) in space (excluding any space used to hold the input). -- Why Not A Duck 04:37, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Google 2001 and phrases

A google 2001 search for "Sarah Palin" with quotes gives no hits, but doing a search for Sarah Palin Alaska (without quotes) reveals that pages featuring the phrase "Sarah Palin" existed back then. Does anything like this happen for any other search terms in google 2001? Andjam (talk) 04:09, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

It looks like the quoted phrase feature didn't work back then. --Sean 21:56, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Doing a google 2001 search for "Steven Bradbury" with and without quotes gives different results, so I don't think that's it. Andjam (talk) 08:04, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I remember being asked how to search for phrases, by a coworker at a firm that dissolved at the end of 2001, so the capability must indeed have existed then; though I think it was not then true that hand-rail, say, would find both "handrail" and "hand rail". —Tamfang (talk) 04:00, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Firefox: Predict my URL please, but not a whole bunch of nonsense

Hi all,

I set Firefox to auto-fill my url bar as I type some time ago (using about:config, I don't exactly remember where), so that typing in 'news.g' would fill in 'news.google.com' and I could just hit enter. After the latest update, though, it's started filling in much more than I typed, and instead filling in addresses it's been to, e.g. news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=:ePkh8BM9E2IF2mHAArFFW[.....], forcing me to finish typing and hit delete, or using my mouse to delete the rest.

How can I tell Firefox to only auto-fill addresses that I've actually typed, instead of addresses that I've been to?

Thanks! — Sam 07:58, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Found it at last! It's another about:config change. Set browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped to True. Incidentally, there's a couple of lists of about:config settings - at http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_entries and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Category:Preferences . AJHW (talk) 10:46, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Great! Thanks for tracking that down. — Sam 03:05, 14 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.115.120.108 (talk)

ASP.NET: <%# %>

Can someone remind me what that is called? In between it would be an expression. I would search for it, but those characters aren't coming up in google or msdn. Thanks Louis Waweru  Talk  15:40, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

is that like a preprocessor directive? 68.146.178.33 (talk) 18:51, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that you are right...it's strange but I can't find anything about them to confirm this. Someone else described them the way you do, and give this list of them #if #else #elif #endif #define #undef #warning #error #line #region #endregion. That one in this section title is the only one I've been using, it's always been with binding data...I'm trying to figure out how many there are and how to use them to see what I can and can't do with them. But they're not turning up anything for me. Louis Waweru  Talk  22:31, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

gnome 2.24

Is there a .deb package of GNOME 2.24 available for downlaod for either Debian or Ubuntu (latest stable versions of both)? Thanks in advance :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.138.187.117 (talk) 16:06, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Linux: inline text editing

What is "inline text editing" in Linux? Thanks. Smaug 16:45, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Currently, "inline text editing" almost exclusively pertains to editing web page content through a web browser directly on the web page's server. For example, when you click "edit" on Wikipedia, you are using an inline text editor. Linux doesn't really have anything to do with it. The web server could be Linux, Windows, Mac, Commodore... -- kainaw™ 16:57, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

There is something, when you are editing a text document in Linux. There is graphical, there is stuff like nano, and there is "inline text editing". What is inline text editing? Or does it refer to graphical or nano/w/e? Smaug 17:09, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Tell us where you saw this term? SteveBaker (talk) 18:58, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Maybe ed, the "line-oriented editor"? - IMSoP (talk) 19:26, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Re SteveBaker: "1. What are two advantages of graphical and inline text editing?" Smaug 21:45, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh-oh. Now your confessing to having asked us a homework question...which we're not allowed to answer. But if this is indeed homework - then the answer must be somewhere in the books you're working from. Personally (and I've been using Linux since almost the first version - and I've used other UNIX versions since the mid-1970's)...I have never heard this term. It's possible they are talking about "line editors" versus "visual editors" - you can see a 'line' editor in Linux by opening up a text console and running 'ex filename' versus a 'visual' editor by running 'vi filename'. (These are actually different modes of the same underlying program). SteveBaker (talk) 00:27, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

On yet another hand, if vi (which I use heavily!) were invented today it's unlikely that anyone would describe it as "visual", because it doesn't follow the usual WIMP conventions. —Tamfang (talk) 03:52, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Versatile Flash Animation Software

Howdy folks, I've been looking a whole lot lately into animation and the like, and I was wondering what exactly the "Standard" software is for Flash animation. I've been looking at Flash MX, but I've heard there's some stuff out there that's better purely for animation, however I still want a decent amount of versatility. Thanks!

Kenjibeast (talk) 17:10, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

There are different types of web animation, one of them is Flash. Flash animation is any animation made using Flash. Flash MX is an old (though still very good) version of Flash. It has since been followed by Flash 8 and Flash CS3.

I have not used any animation software other than Flash MX and Flash 8, but I find both to be great for animation and great for other stuff. I even use it to make static diagrams, or in place of powerpoint presentations. Smaug 17:46, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Vista track number help

I have a folder with more than 200 songs and I'm giving them track numbers. However, when I try to give a song a track number over 99, I get an error. Can Vista not handle track numbers over 99 or something? How do I fix this; use WMP?--Oldman55 (talk) 17:59, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

You're going to have to edit the id3 tag in a different program. You can do it manually in WMP, but some programs will let you automate something like that...I can recommend Tag&Rename.Louis Waweru  Talk  18:54, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know of any albums with more than 99 tracks! Your problem is almost certainly that you're trying to put a bunch of songs that are not part of the same album into a single album. You need to put them into the albums they came from originally. SteveBaker (talk) 18:55, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Well they're all ripped from a game that doesn't have an OST, and I want them all in one folder and with track numbers following each other so they stay in one spot on my ipod.--Oldman55 (talk) 18:57, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Weird browser glitch?

Hi. This has happened four times already, including three times today. The first time happened a while back, when I was uploading an image of a Northern Cardinal to Commons from my computer. I think I had one Wikipedia window and two Commons windows open in my browser. I use IE. As I closed either one or two windows, I don't remember, new windows started randomly popping up, each an exact duplicate of a window I closed. If I pressed "Esc", the new windows would just come up like 'there is nothing to display'. Today, when I was opening new windows from my watchlist, once while editing persimmon, another time while editing The Weather Network, and another time with Cyclone Nargis, I closed the window I was editing to come back to my watchlist, and the exact same thing happened again! As I closed the window, more windows would pop up of the window I closed. The only way to stop this is by closing all the windows, in which I have to log back in again if I closed my watchlist window. Since my computer is a bit slow, it took a while for the windows to load, so today by the time I closed all the windows only about six or seven managed to stay up at the same time. If left unattended, perhaps it could open indefinitely. I remember with the TWN and Nargis articles, the page hadn't completely finished loading before I closed it. Is this a general browser glitch, or could it be some sort or virus? I'm not asking for professional advice. The problem is, this has never happened without me closing a window and also not without closing a wiki website, or at least I saved something, closed it before finished loading, and this happens. Any ideas? Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 19:43, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia has melted down. See my question below. Powerzilla (talk) 20:43, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Keyboard Problem

Hello, my 'e' key is at the point where it's barely responding. I have to press down on it fairly hard for the letter to appear on screen and it's significantly lowering my typing speed. Is there any quick fixes for this? Thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.236.176.39 (talk) 20:34, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Buy a new keyboard? They only cost about £10-15. Algebraist 20:44, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

It's a laptop... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.236.176.39 (talk) 20:52, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Other option, get a vacuum cleaner and completely vacuum the contents of your keyboard. You would be surprised how much crap collects between the keys and the pad or membrane underneath! :) Thor Malmjursson (talk) 20:54, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Most laptops let you unscrew the faceplate of the keyboard, giving you better access to clean the inside of the keyboard with blowers, wipes or whatever. If you need online intructions, there's a good site for MAcs, ifixit.com, and I'll bet there are guides out there for some PC laptops. — Sam 21:09, 12 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.38.252.83 (talk)

You can buy some "switch cleaner" spray - (you'd get it in any decent computer store...or RadioShack) gently lever off the keycap with a flat screwdriver and spray a good squirt down into the center of the hole - put the keycap back on and tap the key repeatedly. If you've lead a good and virtuous life - your key will gradually come back to life. If it gets a bit better, do it again...but if not...give up and buy a USB keyboard - it should work just fine - even with a laptop. (Although it's going to be kinda inconvenient if you actually use your laptop for mobile computing). SteveBaker (talk) 00:20, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

When this has happened to me, it's been because something solid is stuck underneath the key (on my laptop). I usually just pop the key off and pull whatever it is out with tweezers... but be warned, you can damage the key doing this. I recently had to replace my keyboard, so I had a dummy to test on. Should you decide to do this (at your risk) you usually just lift on the side or bottom of the key and the cap will just pop off... depending on the manufacturer. On my new gateway, you lift from the bottom, on a slightly older gateway, it's the side. Anyway, make sure you don't lose the little squishy plastic piece underneath. To put it back on, just line up half of the key (generally under some hook things), and then push down on the other half to put it back on. (Again, at your own risk! I've broken keys doing this occasionally). DaRkAgE7_[Talk] 04:29, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia Having a MELT-DOWN?!

Is Wikipedia having a melt-down? It is repeatedly malfunctioning. Getting really weird shit on it, disconnects from wikipedia. I guess it finally blew up. Powerzilla (talk) 20:42, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I've had no problems. Can we have a bit more info? What operating system are you on? What browser are you using? --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 21:32, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia sometimes has a little hiccup but it's usually fixed within hours. Just be patient. Seems fine now. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 02:07, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Ignoring Users on YouTube

Is there a way to find out which users are ignoring you on YouTube or how to find out if a certain user is ignoring you?Serpentipes (talk) 21:35, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

You mean users who have blocked you? You can try individually by trying to subscribe to their channel. It won't let you subscribe if they blocked you. ScienceApe (talk) 00:08, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

October 13

Is Windows 7 being released so soon because of the criticisms about Windows Vista?

I actually didn't realize that a successor to Vista was being released so soon. ScienceApe (talk) 00:07, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

No. You can make that claim if you like, but you'll have no evidence to back it any more than you can claim that Windows 7 will be released soon because Tony Gonzalez is looking for a quick trade. There is no cause and effect there. -- kainaw™ 01:55, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Last I checked, he was asking, not making that claim. 98.221.85.188 (talk) 01:31, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

The first, second and eighth times I checked, he wasn't accusing ScienceApe of making the claim... only granting him the leverage to make it, if he should so wish. However on the Seventh viewing I saw nothing but blasphemy, and images of Ninjas lauging at the sight of the Wolfpocalypse. Raise arms, don't let the super wolf get us all. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 01:40, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Why would he want to make that claim? I don't understand that logic. Oh, and please re-review the rules, and act civil on the reference desk. 98.221.85.188 (talk) 13:44, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I think something about my sig tells anon users "Read the preceding statement with as much ill intent as possible." I'm not really certain why, but I'd like to know. -- kainaw™ 01:56, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Don't be rude, and act civil on the reference desk. 98.221.85.188 (talk) 13:44, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Isn't it supposed to be 2010? That's like... 4 years. Windows 95-98 was 3, 98-2000 was 2. that to XP was also around 2. How is 4 years "soon" in this context? Even if it comes out this year its still the same gap XP was to 2000 and Windows 7 will be what XP is to 2000 (ie a small update with a few extra features)Gunrun (talk) 07:58, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Erm... we *are* in 2008 here. 2008 to 2010 is 2 years, which is about average, according to your figures. Or did you mean since Vista's overall release, which the person above doesn't seem to be referring to? --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 18:03, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I was meaning to imply that the gap between releases isn't small at all. Just the gap between XP and Vista was so big. Gunrun (talk) 10:23, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Vista came out in late 2006, Windows 7 could arrive in Q3 of 2009. So it's going to be closer to 3 years. That is fewer compared to the gap between XP to Vista, which was 5 years. I think the interval between Vista and 7 seems so short (at least to me as well) because there probably won't be as many changes in computing from late 2006–2009 as there were from 2001–late 2006. Louis Waweru  Talk  18:20, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Microsoft has frequently said that Windows 7 would ship around 3 years after the availability of Vista. Vista was released twice: October 2006 for businesses, and January 2007 for consumers. Therefore, a release anywhere from late 2009 to early 2010 is possible. There are rumors of a June 2009 release date, which would allow Microsoft to get Win7 on many back-to-school computers. Any feelings that Win7 is being released very quickly is only because of the long time between XP and Vista. Most likely future releases of Windows will be released around 3 year after the previous version. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 18:38, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

• New versions of Mac OS X are released every couple of years, too. (Updates are stopped shortly thereafter.) Linux is the worst, though. Ubuntu, for example, has a new release every six months. There's a "long-term support" release that lasts three years. The bottom line is that us Windows users have been spoiled.--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 02:10, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

What file types benefit most from defragmentation?

Although we have several articles on fragmentation and defragmentation, I don't see my issue addressed. Discussion follows based on 8.3 naming conventions, but answers should easily generalize (shouldn't they?)

• Initially, I thought compacting .exe (and .dll) files would have the most benefit, but now I'm fairly sure that defragging such files only helps once, at program launch.
• There wouldn't seem to be much benefit to compacting document files (.doc, .xls, etc), as they do a WriteToTemp-Delete-Rename sequence whenever they're resaved.
• Savefiles and the like from games wouldn't seem to offer much benefit, as they're really only written once and read a small number of times. I suppose each game designer decides whether to write to a new file or rewrite-in-place.
• Two of my email systems manage their own databases themselves, periodically compacting folders, so there's probably not much to be gained there?

So, although I dutifully cleanup and defrag once every two or three months, I'm hard pressed to know where I would most see a difference for my efforts. Experts? --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 01:45, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, what you are saying is that every operation gets faster - but none individually matters to you. But each one DOES make your machine run faster - programs start up only a little bit faster, they read their initial data only a little bit faster, they write results only a little bit faster...but every disk-related operation is faster - so there is a net win.

• You are right that once the program is loaded, it doesn't read the .exe file again - but lots of programs are starting and stopping in response to who-knows-what going on in the background. Your browser is loading plugins and helpers as you work, for example. DLL's may be loaded, unloaded and reloaded during the operation of some kinds of program.
• Documents and images will indeed tend to defrag themselves 'automatically' as they are written out - but lots of documents are read over and over without ever being re-written. Also, if your disk is horribly fragmented, the system may have to move the disk heads a long way to get to a sufficiently large contiguous free area to write new files out to - which slows things down.
• Game 'savefiles' are typically small - so yeah - not much benefit here. But the massive level files get a huge win from being contiguous...especially if the game 'streams' from disk continually as you move through the virtual world.
• Email systems aren't "defragging" (in the usual sense of the word) when they "compact" a mail archive. They are de-fragmenting within the blocks occupied by the file - but the file itself might still be scattered all over the drive if it's badly fragmented. Even the act of compacting will go a lot slower if the mail file is fragmented badly.
• In general, having gaps scattered all over your file system means that disk heads have to move further on the average...so EVERYTHING goes slower when the drive is fragmented...even operations like using swap-space that use contiguous blocks will run more slowly if the heads start off further away (on average) than they would with a defragged drive.

I don't think there is any one specific place where you'll see a speedup - but every operation gets a small benefit from having a nicely defragged drive, so there is a net win.

As a Linux user, I look in puzzled amazement that Windows STILL needs to have it's drive manually defragged after half a dozen major OS revisions. Linux systems NEVER needed to be defragged.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:13, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about never... every time you save something on your hard drive, it will put it in the first available block of adequate size (according to my understanding). So over time, as you delete files, there come to be gaps. Defragging may not be necessary (as it's not necessary with Windows) but it will stillincrease system performance on badly fragged drives, especially on slower HDD's. Heck, even my iPod could use some defragging from time to time. DaRkAgE7_[Talk] 04:35, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Note that if you have Steam installed on your computer, it will be difficult to defrag it (although you can easily defragment Steam games by right-clicking on the game, going to "Properties", clicking on the "Local Files" tab, and clicking the "Defrag cache files" button). -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Kacheek!)} 18:54, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Qwerty vs Dvorak: why no scientific evaluation?

I taught myself to touch type when I was about 16, and on a portable manual typewriter. It was about the handiest thing I have ever done, because I have always done my own typing, and average about 60 wpm on a computer keyboard. I have often wondered why the outmoded QWERTY is STILL standard, even when everything else about typing has changed so much.

I read many years ago that Dvorak minimised the distance the fingers had to travel by putting the most used keys on the home row, as well as on the keys used by the strongest fingers. Figures I read earlier were that Dvorak cut finger distance travel by about 30% over Qwerty which means you could either type a lot faster, or type at the normal speed but go easier on your fingers, with less chance of Repetitive Strain Injury.

I find it astonishing to read—here and elsewhere—that tests on the merits of the two systems “are inconclusive”. We are talking about entirely measurable quantifiable operations here, which can be researched for next to nothing in monetary outlay, by just about anyone. What, we have a Large Hadron Collider looking at the early universe, but tests on keyboard layout efficiency “are inconclusive’? Bollocks!

My idea would be that someone could write a simple program that begins by randomly allocating a virtual keyboard position to every letter and adds up the distance that has to be covered by moving from one letter to the next in a piece of input text. So the program would generate a particular keyboard layout, and the operator would then input a sizeable piece of text, say about 100 pages, and the program would measure how far fingers resting on home keys would have to travel to type the entire piece of text. If the program also included an average finger movement speed, it could also tell you long a competent typist would take to type that text.

The first thing you would measure would be the performance of Qwerty and Dvorak and the other candidate arrangements. At least such a system would give you measurements on the notional efficiency and speed of one system over another which had scientific and mathematical credibility.

By getting the program to test ALL the possible keyboard layouts, we could well come up with one which is better than any of the other candidates, and would be notionally the most efficient layout of all. Of course, there are other criteria to be considered apart from pure finger movement distance. The stronger fingers should have more work to do than the weaker ones, the work should be roughly equal for both hands, and awkward movements when fingers have to move down a row should be minimised, speed and dexterity measures would have to be adjusted for the different fingers, digraphs should not be adjacent and so on. But the initial program could be rejigged to give weight to all these other variables. Why has nothing like this been done? A program like that could be written by any amateur coder.

Of course the usual anal retentive will now post in and tell me that “this is not the place to canvass new ideas, no matter how brilliant”, so I am going to post this on the Wikipedia Computer Research Desk. As well as here. Myles325a (talk) 02:31, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Short answer: Because it's not "evaluation" that we need.

The problem is that we know that Dvorak (and other) 'new' keyboard layouts are faster...we don't need experiments to tell us that. The problem is that people won't switch - even though we know that we're using an inefficient layout and we know that better layouts are out there. If you made Dvorak keyboards and sold them for $10 each at "Best Buy" - you'd hardly sell a single one. So doing further research doesn't really get us anywhere...what's the point in knowing (even in mind-numbing detail) that QWERTY/AZERTY is a pile of crap if nobody will switch as a result of that knowledge?

Worse still - we're inadvertently training an entire generation into thinking that using a twelve-key telephone number pad is the best way to enter text!! (My grumbling tendonitis twitches in sympathy when I even consider that prospect!) So far from adopting better designs, we're actually heading backwards at amazing speed. I guarantee that by the time present-generation teenagers reach 40 to 50 years old - they're going to have terrible repetitive strain problems due to appalling user interface designs on cell phones. The replacement of the PDA by the up-market cellphone means that our brief foray into handwriting recognition has fallen by the wayside.

FWIW - there is an even better way than Dvorak. We should really toss out the gigantic, bloaded 101 key keyboard altogether and switch to using chording keyboards. In those setups, you mostly don't move your fingers at all - you type by entering 'chords' (like on a music keyboard) with the gentlest of fingertip pressure only.

• You don't move your fingers - so RSI issues disappear.
• You only need one hand to type - the other is free to write with a pencil or turn pages in a book or whatever.
• The "keyboard" is small enough that you could mount it onto a mouse - and move the entire keyboard around instead of having to move your hand off of the keyboard and onto the mouse a bazillion times a day.
• You need almost no desk space for the device. You can sit it comfortably in your lap if you want.
• You could easily adapt the design to work in the confines of a cellphone format.
• With fewer keys - it's cheaper than a 101 key contraption.
• It's SO different from QWERTY that it's actually easier to learn than Dvorak because there is no temptation to slip back into your old ways.

I have a hand-held wordprocessor called "The Microwriter" that dates back to the early 1980's - it has just six 'keys' (there are two 'thumb' keys - one acts as a kind of 'shift' key) and with about a day's practice, you can use it as well as your QWERTY keyboard - and most users get proficient enough to take realtime dictation on the things. (The photo of the Microwriter in the article is actually my machine). It's horrifying that this vastly more efficient technology is not standard - but getting all of the two billion keyboard users around the world to switch is impossible - and doing a 'gradual' change over would be utterly disasterous.

Just about the only problem with chording pads is that you need separate left- and right-handed versions. However, I'm left handed and I learned (by necessity) to chord with my right hand - and the ability to use a pencil in my left hand and do all of my keyboarding with my right is an enormous win. Sadly, the drivers for the Microwriter to allow it to drive a regular PC have long ago ceased to be supported...so I'm back with QWERTY.

But sadly, despite all of the huge gains to be had...it really doesn't matter how amazing the alternatives are - we're effectively stuck with QWERTY into the indefinite future.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:43, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

When I imagine using a chording keyboard, my hands ache at the thought of constantly holding them in one position and moving my fingers in unaccustomed combinations. I wonder how many people stick to it as a fraction of those who try it. —Tamfang (talk) 03:33, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I got tendinitis in my right index finger from mousing. My index finger didn't move at all relative to the button, it just clicked. That was the repetitive strain that caused the injury. I've never tried a chord keyboard (I've known about them for years), but like Tamfang I feel pain at the mere thought of it—especially the idea of putting it on a mouse. It's also hard for me to believe that chord keyboards improve typing speed, since you have to release each chord before pressing the next, and I can press sequences of keys with different fingers faster than I can repeatedly press the same key.

As for Dvorak, I've never known what to think. Simple-minded metrics like distance between keypresses are useless because human physiology is complicated. The way to get useful data on this question is for some corporation that employs a lot of typists to convert a fraction of them to Dvorak and look at the effect on typing speed (which can be monitored with software) and RSI-related complaints. I'm surprised that this seems to happen so infrequently. Hasn't it ever been a management fad?

Claude Shannon estimated the entropy of written English at about 1–1.5 bits per character, so with a really efficient layout it should be possible to type around 3–5 letters per keystroke on a 32-key keyboard, or per chord on a 5-key chord keyboard. It'd be a bear to learn, though. -- BenRG (talk) 10:15, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Just a thought, regarding your suggested program... perhaps you could add a feature to give more weight to common usage? For example, the word "the" is very common, so since this word is very common, perhaps the letters contained in these common words would be on the home row and towards the middle more?

Seriously though, I don't think it would make any difference in the long run, because naturally almost every keyboard on the planet is of the qwerty variety and it will be impossible to change... like America's continual clinging to the imperial system? (On an interesting side note I remember reading that the qwerty keyboard was originally set up in a way so that it would be more difficult to type on... since typing too quickly on a typewriter will jam the lever thingys...) DaRkAgE7_[Talk] 04:44, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

For most uses it doesn't make much difference. It's the human being trying to think best what to say that's the bottleneck. It's like the Heisenberg principle Time x Nonsense >= some constant. Is it a good idea to cut down time when so many people already dash off things they regret? Dmcq (talk) 05:35, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

In fact a far better way of selling things like chording pads than saying they save time would be if they could give extra convenience or a saving in space for portables or as SteveBaker says because it gives a free hand. For instance having one hand chording and the other drawing with a stylus could be very productive. BTW I change sense to nonsense in my little formula above - shows that even a QWERTY keyboard doesn't slow me down enough. Dmcq (talk) 10:18, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I think this is very similar to x86. Just about everyone (who can understand computer hardware) will agree that x86 is a terrible design, but it is used throughout the world, people understand how it works, and there is a lot of software that runs on it. There have been many alternatives to x86, but they have all lost because x86 is so widespread and is so cheap. For the same reason, no alternative keyboard layout will replace QWERTY because everyone knows QWERTY. The benefits of switching simply do not outweigh the cost and difficulty of doing so. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 18:55, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

The niche might grow in the future, though (with the advent of touch screen which makes a new keyboard layout purely to the software designers. Kushal (talk) 02:23, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

there is pretty much no doubt that dvorak is faster. in the caveman days, when computers didn't have screens and were called typewriters, the winners of the typing speed competitions always used dvorak keyboarded typewriters, (which had to be specially built, obviously)

and regarding the chorded alphabet: if you put a microswitch under each finger, that's eight bits, and you can teach yourself to type in ASCII. very handy if you're trying to type while riding a bike or some such.

and re the bad effect of mousing on your index finger: yes indeed. screwed my right hand up good. i've switched over to old IBM keyboards with the trackpoint gadget that sticks up in between the g and h and b keys, but they're getting scarce. at least a few notebooks have them now, though.Gzuckier (talk) 16:41, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Free web hosting request

Can anybody with room to spare on their website/web server give me something to play around with? I want (need) at least a few hundred megabytes of space, some bandwidth, local .htaccess control, Ruby on Rails, PHP (safe mode off by default), and MySQL. All the free webhosts that have the above features that I've seen (believe it or not) have really crappy signup systems. I might use the site as a pilot for a project or simply as a sandbox for educational purposes. --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 05:33, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Would... nearly free do you? I use this host called NearlyFreeSpeech.net which seems to have everything you offer (except the php safe mode off by default thing but I'm sure this is changable) and they're pennys to set up and use especially if your site is low bandwidth. Gunrun (talk) 07:43, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

If you want a totally free and full-service sandbox, just run it off your localhost? You can always migrate to a full server if you want later. Much easier than trying to finagle free hosting. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 14:18, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, setting up a webserver on your local host would not be to hard at all.

XAMPP. x42bn6 Talk Mess 23:26, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I already have a localhost server...I just want some basic hosting. --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 23:57, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Is there a place to request features for Windows?

I have thought of a dozen or so features I think should be added to Windows 7. For one, I'd like MS to give us back the old defragmenter. I don't know why they castrated it in Vista. Is there a place where I can request stuff like that?--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 18:24, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Microsoft Connect is the place. I don't think they castrated the defragmenter, I think the idea was that people shouldn't have to worry about things like this. But if you want to see what's going on try using it with the command prompt defrag/?. Louis Waweru  Talk  18:35, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

The defragmenter in Vista runs in the background, which makes sure that everyone is defragging. With the old defragmenter, people who don't know much about computers most likely wouldn't know to defrag. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 18:43, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. I've used the command-line version, but it doesn't give the graph. I understand the graph doesn't mean much, but it lets me see the progress and how much time is left. Maybe they should add an "Advanced" button to see the old screen? I've always liked Windows for the feedback it gives users. It seemed like, as Waweru said, MS was making a half-hearted attempt to hide things from us like they were Apple. At the same time, they added things like Windows Defender and the Compatibility Assistant that pop up extra messages. They need a clearer mission, it seems.--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 18:47, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Not having used Vista, I'm not sure if the following is entirely correct, but the defrag tool in Windows 2000, 2003 and XP was a cut down version of Diskeeper. As this was proprietary software used under licence, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft finally created their own bespoke defrag software for Vista. A lot of people use a full version of Diskkeeper instead. Nanonic (talk) 22:30, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

The bundled defrag tool was never very good. There are much better defragmenters for Windows 2000/XP/Vista, like the free open-source JkDefrag. Better yet, don't bother defragmenting at all. It's mostly a rain dance. -- BenRG (talk) 23:36, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

There are many better defrag tools than Diskeeper. There are also other reasons to avoid the software. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 02:45, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Good Proxy?

I'm looking for a good proxy to hide my IP address- this means no pop-ups. I've tried a few, but they all have pop-ups and massive, annoying ads, so I figured I'd ask my knowledgeable fellow Wikipedians. Any help? A plus would be if it showed me as in Canada. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 19:28, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

tor? --98.217.8.46 (talk) 19:48, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Anything I don't have to download? --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 19:53, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Hide My Ass! I tried the first one it gave me, worked well from Japan to NY. Forgot to undo the settings and Wikipedia showed me a screen I'd never seen before about being behind a proxy (hahah). Here's the idea in Firefox. So, you'd want to chose one located in Canada. Louis Waweru  Talk  20:23, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

If you have the knowledge and a second computer you can always set up your own proxy, if your goal was to simply avoid getting pop ups. —Preceding unsigned comment added by E smith2000 (talk • contribs) 22:34, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Who are you trying to hide your IP address from, and for what reason? I'm not saying you shouldn't, but it makes a difference as far as choosing proxies goes. -- BenRG (talk) 23:39, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Bit of a long story, but essentially, I'm a spambaiter on occasion. I've used other proxies, but the pop-ups get REALLY annoying when you're actually trying to do something other than get on Youtube while you're at work. Just a bit of a precaution so it looks like my emails are coming from somewhere else other than Michigan, USA (particularly when I'm claiming they're coming from Toronto, Ontario). --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 02:18, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

The good ones aren't free. The free ones are either slow or covered in ads. You can find many pay-services out there that charge per KB of bandwidth. The low-end options are relativity cheep and should be good'nuff for spambaiting. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 02:52, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Make Live USB image with Mondo Rescue

Resolved

I am trying to make an image/clone of a Live USB I have with Mondo Rescue, but it never works, it always end up backing up my PC, even if I choose /media/USB as my root directoy (in mondo rescue)... Does anyone knows if this is suppose to let me create images of USB flash drives (a Live USB in particular)? or it is just to backup my runnnig system? I am going crazy with this... SF007 (talk) 22:50, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

dd (Unix) works for volumes under 2GiB. --antilived^{T | C | G} 03:40, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Partimage. --wj32 ^t/c 06:52, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

dd (Unix) is not an option (only does raw copies, not to mention it is a command line program), and partimage does not backup the MBR properly due to a bug in the software... I tried many programs, none of them worked like I wanted... SF007 (talk) 12:26, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I think what I am trying to do is not possible... (backup a Live USB + bootloader in it and restore to another Flash drive of different size). R-Drive Image and Acronis True Image almost made it... Thanks anyway. SF007 (talk) 16:43, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

October 14

Making a different email client the default in IE

Hello all. I want to have my computer's default email be myname@verizon.net. When I click on "contat us" on amny sites that attempts to openb up an email screen but it openbs up to a default ermail client. I know where to access this to change it: I go to properties in Internet Explorer, and in there, it has a place to change the default. But, unfortunately, in the drop down menu, it gives a host of different services , such as AOl and hotmail. I do not see any way to fill in a new default (like I said, I want it to be my verizon email). Can you please advise how to manually change the field to fill in and remedy this problem. Thank you very much in advance.--68.237.217.229 (talk) 04:28, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

You need to change how Internet Explorer handles mailto: links. I do not have Internet Explorer handy for me. Under Mozilla Firefox, all you need to do is Options > Applications >> mailto and change the setting to desired one. Is there any way for me to convince you to test drive Mozilla Firefox as a replacement for Internet Explorer? Thanks. Kushal (talk) 08:44, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I use firefox pretty much exclusively, and when I'm not, I'm on Safari. This is for a person who is computer illiterate who I would have to train in all new ways if I changed the browser she uses. This "problem" is only a problem if you don't know, for example that you can simply highlight the address copy and go to your own email client. I would be much easier for me to change the default, trust me on this. Can someone help me actual change the email default?--71.249.111.130 (talk) 21:12, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Windows XP SP2 should allow you to set program access and defaults. 69.150.163.1 (talk) 02:19, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

The original poster is confused why AOL and Hotmail appear in the list of e-mail clients, but the verizon.net e-mail provider can't be easily added. You can't just add arbitrary websites or e-mail providers to the list. A program must be installed for it to appear in this list. For example, to add Yahoo Mail to that list, you have to install the Yahoo Toolbar for Internet Explorer. To add Gmail to that list, you have to install the Gmail Notifier.

For a verizon.net address, I couldn't find an answer for certain, but here are some possibilities to try:

• You might try installing the Verizon Broadband Toolbar, but I'm not sure if it adds verizon.net mail to the list of default e-mail programs.
• You can go to activate.verizon.net, select "Configure additional PC or reinstall software", and select to customize the install. There might be a mailto plugin available as one of the things you can install.
• Another alternative is to set up Outlook Express to use the verizon.net address, then select Outlook Express in the list as the default e-mail program. This will allow you to use the verizon.net e-mail address, but will look and feel different from using the verizon.net website.

--Bavi H (talk) 05:26, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Excel VBA query

value in cell "B15": "D" & rwcnt & ":" & "J" & rwcnt

when we read the text in cell 'B15' through VBA code, the code should consider rwcnt as a variable and substitute its value so that the whole text in cell 'B15' becomes a range, like: D6:J6 (if rwcnt=6)

How to do this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.191.2.16 (talk) 07:26, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

You want cell B15 to contain the text "B6:J6"? If so,

Range("B15").Value = "D" & rwcnt & ":J" & rwcnt

works for me. I declared rwcnt as an integer. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 08:00, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

rwcnt is not constant and keeps on changing its value, so we put the text "D" & rwcnt & ":J" & rwcnt

and as the value of rwcnt changes, on accessing the value of cell B15 ie. "D" & rwcnt & ":J" & rwcnt, we can refer to the range contained in B15

eg:

rwcnt=10, then set rng=range("B15").value so this must set rng to (D10:J10) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.191.2.16 (talk) 08:21, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what you're doing but storing a range as text in a cell seems inefficient. You should just reference the range directly for whatever you need it for. Maybe if you told us what you're trying to achieve we might be able to help. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 09:47, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Secure Password

If I choose a sequence of letters like "asdfghj" -following a path on the keyboard - for my password, is that secure? What about choosing the first letter of every word in a sentence like 'wtfe' for "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". Besides being too short, is there any problem in the second approach? Mr.K. (talk) 11:01, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Short passwords are vulnerable to dictionary and brute force attacks. They should be avoided at all costs. Something as short as four letters is also vulnerable to rainbow table hash cracking in a crazy way. Avoid it! "Besides being too short"—that's the be-all and end-all of this particular limitation.

Long passwords are as secure as any other password. They aren't vulnerable to brute force attacks but there are a million other ways they can be compromised with poor user habits or poor technical setups. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 11:27, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

The best passwords involve alphanumeric characters and numbers along with capital and lower-case letters. Here are some randomly generated suggestions from my school's "Change your password" webpage: =HogTwIT2, 4LaB*smuG, %Dug2sPEc, 8*JErkteA, CATbanG5#, jumP}9Yea, moAN&6LiP.--droptone (talk) 11:41, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

• I'd wary of the first approach, as most "dictionary" techniques should include obvious combinations. The second is certainly better, as it is effectively using the sentence/phrase as a mnemonic, and there's nothing particularly wrong with that, so long as the combination itself can't be easily guessed. However, for better strength (as Droptone mentioned) you should probably be combining case and numerals as well, with other characters being cool, too - thus the sentence approach may be limiting in this regard. Perhaps "Wikipedia is the 01 Encyclopedia" giving Wit01E, or something similar, will be more effective. - Bilby (talk) 11:46, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

@98.217: I was not suggesting my password could be so short. I was only exemplifying a concept.

@droptone: "alphanumeric characters and numbers"? Are you sure that you didn't mean "alphanumeric characters and letters and numbers"? I see that there are real words in your suggested passwords: lab smug, dug, jerk tea, cat ban, jump. Would it compromise the security of an encrypted file?

@bilby: couldn't a robot scan for sentences, pick the first letter and build a dictionary of passwords?

Perhaps the best approach is to open 20 pages, takes a random letter and mix it up with random special characters...Not easy to remember... :(Mr.K. (talk) 12:04, 14 October 2008 (UTC)]

Yes, except that the range of possibilities for sentences is much greater than the range of possibilities for words. A seemingly random string of letters that happens to be part of a mnemonic is going to be just as good (to all practical intents) as a random string of letters that isn't part of a mnemonic.

It is part of why there is a push towards passphrases for security, instead of passwords - it makes dictionary attacks much harder, while still making it easier to remember - although the mechanism for brute force attacks changes, rather than is broken. At the same time, obvious pass phrases (such as "This is my password") as still going to be a bad idea. :) So I guess obvious mnemonics are bad, too. - Bilby (talk) 12:16, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Because long passwords are difficult to remember and they should contain letters (both upper case and lower case), numbers, and symbols, most security systems fail miserably once users get in the habit of writing their password on a post-it note and putting under their keyboard, in their drawer, or even on their monitor. Many of the people I work with are not native English speakers, I've found a nice trick. I taught them l33t. It is easy to remember for most people. Then, I tell them to use a slang word in their native language and type in sort of in a l33t way. So, something like "huozipichu" is easily remembered as "Hu0z1P1c#u". I don't know much more than English, so I decided to use slang words I learn from others. My problem is that if I don't use a password for a while, I forget the slang word and then can't remember the password. -- kainaw™ 12:59, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Another approach for passwords you don't enter often is to take a random sentence from a book that you have near the computer. Just remember what page it is on. A passphrase is much more secure than a password, as long as nobody knows what book you used. If you type it often enough it becomes quite easy to remember, incidentally, because it is not just random letters and characters. --140.247.11.9 (talk) 23:13, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Extracting *.rar files in Mac OSX

I have an archive that I need to extract. It has lots of files ending in ".rar", and before the file extension, they are all numbered - like archive1.rar, archive2.rar, and so on. I've tried using The Unarchiver and Stuffit Expander, but neither of them work. Stuffit says "An error occurred attempting to extract... The structure of the archive is damaged (Error #17540)." I hit OK, and it starts on the next file. It continues on to the next file, and keeps on giving me the same error. I'm pretty sure it's not corrupted, because I extracted it once before.

Any suggestions?My name is anetta (talk) 12:20, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Use Puppy Linux for Mac. You can start it from a pen drive. Mr.K. (talk) 12:37, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I'll (try to) run it in VMWare Fusion, and presume it can extract *.rar. From your answer, I'm not sure if you noticed, so I'll make it explicit: this question is about extracting an apparently corrupt archive. If using Linux will help, I'm willing to try. But running Linux isn't the aim, unlike my question further up the page about using Ubuntu in VMware Fusion.My name is anetta (talk) 13:00, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I've never tried it, but assuming that the problem is that the unarchivers you've tried simply failed to handle multi-part rar archives, (rather than a corrupted file), you might want to give UnRarX a shot. - Bilby (talk) 13:05, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I am aware that your files are probably not corrupted. Having extracted them once, however, doesn't mean that they are not corrupted now. Perhaps the easier way would be to use a computer with Windows or Linux on it. 80.58.205.37 (talk) 15:09, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

You can always try the official UnRAR command-line program; scroll down to "UnRAR for Mac OS X - Command line freeware Mac OS X universal binary UnRAR" --71.106.183.17 (talk) 17:48, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou, 80.58, I presume you're Mr.K logged out. The file is extracted anyway, thanks again.My name is anetta (talk) 17:49, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

directional ethernet cable?

after a couple of unsatisfactory days trying to get IT at work to determine why i couldn't log in to the network, i finally got some guy who explained to me that the ethernet cable we use has a little H at one end for the hub end and a little S at the other end for the system and mine might be reversed; and in fact, it was and hooking the H end up to the little connector on the wall and the S end up to the computer fixed everything. ?? The ends look quite symmetrical; it's a crossover cable, but that's still symmetrical. the cable says 568-A Cat 5. i screwed around with serial cabling and breakout boxes and null modems and all that crap for a long time,but i've never heard of ethernet cable being directional. how's it work? how common is that? my home router manual doesn't say anything about it, although it does address the crossover/no crossover issue. what's the deal? thanks. Gzuckier (talk) 16:33, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

These guys say if you're connecting a PC to a hub "you MUST use a Straight cable." Looking at their page for a straight cable, I can't see any way that swapping ends would make a difference. I'm puzzled too. --LarryMac | Talk 19:52, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

My first assumption on reading the original question is that it's a little gentle trolling. But I'll assume good faith...

Ethernet cables are not directional. No ifs, no buts, the concept makes no sense. Whoever told you that was either messing with you, or had a valid motive but a questionable way of implementing it. The rationale is that if I as Helldesk person ask one of my users to please physically check that a given cable is plugged in, and in the correct socket, there's a fair chance that he'll just say "OK", sit there for a few seconds, and then tell me he's checked and all is fine. In his mind this is not the problem, he's sure it's plugged in, and he's not going to go crawling around under the desk to check what he already knows to be true. In a bid to make sure he actually does go look at the connections, I can ask him (on whatever pretext - reversing cable, blow into plug, etc) to remove and replace the cable. If he tells me he's done that (and he didn't see through my request for the sham that it is) I can be much more confident that he actually went and looked at some cables.

It's a well-known ploy. 81.187.153.189 (talk) 19:59, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd considered that the IT guy was fooling around, but what about the alleged H and S labels? --LarryMac | Talk 20:07, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

The 569-A refers to the standard now known as TIA/EIA-568-B. The ends are interchangeable. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:20, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

SMS services that support Primus Canada?

Are there any free services that provide weather updates, or alerts from arbitrary RSS feeds, via SMS and support Primus Canada? (Alerts via e-mail won't help, because Primus doesn't provide an e-mail address for my phone.) NeonMerlin 20:45, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

What would be the best WiFi technology for a very busy and large house/office?

We live in a big Penthouse and use it as an office too. The house is very big and it has 2 levels. Also, we're located at the 8th floor, with 7 floors of offices bellow, which have their own WiFi network. We use wireless phones, which operate on the 2.4 Ghz freq.

I've been reading a lot about 802.11n and a bit about 802.11y. I would like to know if any of these, or any other, technologies would be better for our penthouse.

I must say that it has all kinds of halls, doorways and windows. All made of drywall and some real concrete walls too. Mainly it's a square. Renich (talk) 22:59, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

THIS is a tricky question, but MY suggestion is get a router and a wired network. if you use it for any type of office work just the security alone would be a large benefit. Assuming though you don't want that then that leaves other options. 802.11n is not officially out yet, so any router that claims it is, means it is "pre-n" and for all we know n could change drastically from the state its in now, leaving proprietary issues. Not my suggestion. Likewise, 802.11y isn't out yet, it's just a theoretical band with no actual routers supporting it. So unless this is in the future you need this set up, I can't suggest that. That leaves you down with 802.11a/b/g, and G is a combination of a and b more or less. I would suggest g if you HAVE to use wi-fi. Now for the channel. Basically use whatever you can that's not near other channels. use whatever the floors below you arn't using, and separate yourself from the 2.4Ghz freq. That's the most I can suggest offhand. The problem is the network won't penetrate the concrete walls very well, but the drywall it shouldn't have significant problems with.

In short, Wire your network, If you can't then get a 802.11g router, but if you can, wire it please. cat5e-cat6 doesn't cost THAT much. Forai (talk) 23:07, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply. The problem is that most of the computers here are laptops and that leaves me with setting up 4 routers and putting them around the house, bridged. And, isn't the unfinished standard correctable by a firmware update in the future? Renich (talk) 23:17, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

The unfinished standard MAY be correctible, what pre-n does is it takes the basic premise of what 802.11n is going to be about (dual antenna, bouncing as I understand) and it creates a router that uses that. For all they know they could say "802.11n is HORRIBLE" and turn the standard into an advanced way of creating a unicorn. OBVIOUSLY a stretch of an example but they could say "research has found three antenna are SIGNIFICANTLY better at reducing noise, and increases distance threefold" or something like that, and impliment 3 antenna. BASICALLY I just don't trust a company coming out with a product before the standards say it should. I get what you mean about the laptops being drastically far apart though. My suggestion in that case is 802.11g for wifi, but the point is still wired IF PLAUSIBLE or possible.

in short, 802.11g. Wired is still the PLEASE DO suggestion but wiring does require alot of work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Forai (talk • contribs) 23:34, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Assuming your laptops have support for 802.11n(draft), I'd suggest going with that. I frequently connect to wireless N networks, to great success. While the standard may not be completely finalized, it's close enough that I don't think it will change much. If they do change it, any router you buy now will continue to work in the future. (Honestly, I thought N had been finalized by now.) Anyway, I love the speed and range of N, and I always get really strong signals, even through multiple walls. Of course, make sure to secure your network immediately (not only to protect your files, but to keep WiFi moochers like myself from using Limewire on your connection), using something like WPA (of course, don't use "password" as your password... how many free internet sessions that one has gotten me). Anyway, yeah, I think 802.11n is definitely the way to go... I don't understand why it's not more widespread already. DaRkAgE7_[Talk] 02:41, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Is there a relative to Flash in GNU & Linux?

I've been looking for a while and I can't find a tool or language that does the same things as Flash does. Don't get me wrong, I'm not interested in Flash at all, but, maybe, in the functionality it offers, if it's available for GNU & Linux. I'm looking for some kind of SVG framework or something that enables me to make interactive presentations fast and easy, as Flash or Director would. Renich (talk) 23:26, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

So, let me get this straight: you're looking for both a different language and an easy tool and you want it to run inside Linux? No, of course not. Even the open-source community is embracing Flash with the Gnash player. There are programs to make animated SVGs easily in Windows and there are programs to make Flash easily in Linux, but they apparently wouldn't suffice for your needs. I guess you'll have to code an animated SVG in vi. O'Reilly has a book about SVGs that will tell you how.--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 02:21, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure "embraced" is the word you're looking for. I'd go with "is forced to support". APL (talk) 04:01, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

What capabilities are you looking for specifically? I haven't used it, but depending on what you're looking for this might do the trick : [6] APL (talk) 04:01, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

October 15

Power Supply

I'm looking into buying a new graphics card (and while I'm at it I'll buy a new mansion and a new private island.) Anyway, the one I'm looking at says its Minimum System Power Requirement is 400 Watts. Now, does that mean I can get a power supply that is only 400 watts, or do I need to consider other things when determining that power supply I need? Digger3000 (talk) 06:26, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

It's a rough recommendation for an average computer with that type of graphics card, with an average PSU. So yeah, you need to factor the entire computer's requirements in. You might need more, or less than what they recommend. There are several calculators out there, such as [7] or [8], that will give you a general idea of your overall wattage and 12V current needs. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 06:42, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok, well let me ask you this. According to those calculators, the power supply I have now isn't powerful enough for my computer as it is. (It says I need 430W, I have 268W) And yet my computer seems to be running fine. Am I currently at risk of my computer, like, blowing up or something? And if not, would I even need to increase my power supply for this new card? Digger3000 (talk) 06:54, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. I just tried the first link, and I got a recommended 371 W PSU, whereas the Newegg one recommended me a 445W PSU. Which gave you that rating? If your computer is working fine right now it's not going to blow up any time soon, but without knowing exactly how much it's drawing and exactly how much more a new graphics card would add, it's hard to say if you'll need to upgrade. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 07:07, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

The second link gave me the 430W figure. The first link only wants 208W for what I have now, but I don't know if I chose all the right options on the first link. Digger3000 (talk) 07:12, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Make sure you're looking at the bottom under Recommended PSU (they have a Generic and a Decent Brand section down there too), not the estimated draw. Few PSUs actually give you exactly what they're advertising, at least not for sustained periods of time. That's also a reason that people tend to overdo the wattage when they buy cheap PSUs, and probably why the Newegg one is giving such high estimates. And make sure you're feeding it the right number of USB devices, case fans, PCI cards, etc. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 07:14, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

The recommended PSU wattage is 325W on the first link, still higher than what I actually have now. So, worst case scenario, what would happen if I tried putting a graphics card in my computer that needed more power than my computer could supply? Would it, actually, blow up? Digger3000 (talk) 07:24, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

It wouldn't work. Your computer might fail to POST, the graphics card or some other component might stop while gaming or doing any other stressful task, and it'll generally be unstable. It's generally not going to cause damage; it might cause data loss if it crashes while you're doing something. The only case of damage being caused is if it spikes for some reason. I guess that might potentially happen if you're pushing a low-quality PSU to or past its limit, but it's less likely than the computer simply not booting or crashing while in use. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 07:35, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

So, in your opinion, if my computer is running on a 268W power supply when (according to those calculators) it should be running on at least 325W, could I get away with just using a 400W power supply with this graphics card that claims 400W as its minimum? Digger3000 (talk) 07:40, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, as long as it's a decent quality PSU. Despite what I said in the last one I wouldn't recommend underdoing it, but that sounds like a safe bet. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 07:43, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok, gracias for your help. Digger3000 (talk) 07:47, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

OS X Finder: just one window at a time

A beloved coworker of mine (i) has somehow reconfigured the sole Mac in the office (OS X 10.5.5) so that when you have a window of Finder open and click to open another folder the newly opened window pushes its predecessor off the screen, and (ii) won't be back for a couple of days. This setting is irritating (and as far as I can see utterly pointless). I looked among relevant-looking menu options but saw nothing helpful. (In particular, "Window|Bring All to Front" merely left the one window on the screen. What obvious option have I overlooked? Tama1988 (talk) 10:02, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

If you go into 'folder options' (when on finder should be on the menu-bar in one of the menus) you should be able to select an option setting it "open in new window" - that should return it so that opening a new folder results in a new window (and an old window with the original click). Personally I find folder navigation in OS X to be infinitely worse than in MS Windows (though spotlight is very good) but perhaps that is because i've used MS systems for a lot longer than have had my apple laptops (15 years compared to 5). 194.221.133.226 (talk) 12:32, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Anti-Aliasing in XP Service Pack 3

I just installed Service Pack 3, and everything seems to have worked fine, except that it's now added a rather annoying anti aliasing effect to everything. It's not just a text smoothing effect like Cleartype - everything, including pictures, is blurred. Is there anyway to turn this off? If it helps, I've got a Radeon 9550 card. Thanks, Laïka 13:13, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

That doesn't sound right at all. If you take a screenshot, does the effect show up (obviously you'd need to check with another machine); if so, I'd be curious if you could post one here. Otherwise, have you recently updated your video card's drivers? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 13:32, 15 October 2008 (UTC)