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November 6

OS X Binds

How can you bind a key to do a certian action in OS X? For example, I want to find the F13 key to switch kanas on my computer. Or even do expose. Do I need to use the terminal (which im fine with)? Is their some program that can do this? --Randoman412 (talk) 00:25, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Go to System Preferences and click on "Exposé & Spaces." In the exposé tab things should be there. If you're on Tiger and not Leopard, then the procedure is very similar. Mac Davis (talk) 23:21, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

TIGCC and C programming

I am trying to write a program in C in TIGCC for my TI-89 Titanium, but I do not know how do implement lists in C. My program can be found on my userpage. How would I modify the program to properly handle the list? There are also some other problems with it, such as the DelVar function, indicating that the variable l should be deleted, and the Pause function, indicating that the program should pause there until the user presses the "Enter" button. How should these be fixed? Lucas Brown (talk) 03:17, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm working on this. I've only done TI BASIC development before, so I had to get all set up. But I think I have an idea of where you went wrong. Superm401 - Talk 06:04, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I made some progress, but I got bogged down by compiler problems (functions that seemed documented mysteriously weren't on my system). If you want to implement actual TI lists, then do something like:

push_END_TAG();
short i;
for(i = 10; i > 0; i--)
{
    push_shortint(i);
}
push_LIST_TAG();

Then, to read the list back

short sum = 0;
float cur;
	
ESI pos = next_expression_index(top_estack);
while((*pos) != END_TAG)
{
    //estack_to_short(pos, &cur);
    sum += cur;
    pos = next_expression_index(pos);
}

estack_to_short should work because i's defined at http://tigcc.ticalc.org/doc/estack.html#estack_to_short. However, it does not... If you don't need to use TI lists, just use a C array. The DelVar also requires specifying the variable to delete on the expression stack. See http://tigcc.ticalc.org/doc/bascmd.html#cmd_delvar . For DrawStr, do:

DrawStr(1,1,"x", A_NORMAL);

Finally, for pause use ngetchx();, which will block until the user hits a key. Superm401 - Talk 06:31, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Turing test judging as a Turing test

Can the ability to accurately judge Turing tests be itself used as a Turing test? NeonMerlin 03:20, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, I suppose so. Maybe. That might be missing the point of the Turing test a little, because the judge is not only supposed to try to tell whether he's communicating with a person or a piece of software. The process of that determination is also pretty important: the software needs to convince the judge by displaying human behavior. The judge uses an inherently subjective set of criteria for the test; that's kind of the point. Merely being able to analyze the responses in some other way wouldn't do. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 05:33, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

NO. If you try to use the ability to judge a Turing test as a Turing test then my program,

 print "JUDGMENT: Program being tested has FAILED the Turing test."

Would be correct for the foreseeable present (since we have no programs able to pass the Turing test) which is a contradiction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.214.224 (talk) 05:55, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

No it wouldn't. Your program would fail whenever the thing it was testing was actually a human. Algebraist 10:31, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

• What you're referring to is known as a Reverse Turing test, and there is quite a bit of literature on the subject. So technically, yes - it has been proposed (and tried), and could serve as a type of Turing Test, where "Turing Test" is read to mean "Behavioral (or functional) test for intelligence". However, it does tend to be open to most of the same arguments that are used against the Turing Test, and personally I'd argue that it is likely to be simpler to achieve, and thus less convincing. :) - Bilby (talk) 10:42, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I think it's possible for a non-intelligent program to administer a Turing test and judge the results with a high degree of accuracy. Most programs that attempt to pass the test are easily tripped up by asking questions that simply require more knowledge than a piece of software is likely to have. "How many dwarves were there in that classic cartoon...er..not "Cinderella" - the other one with the cute chick in the long dress?"...the difficulty of answering questions like that is a really major reason why the Turing test is so tough. So all a program has to do is to store a list of such questions - to ask them and to see how many come back with some kind of reasonable answer. I suspect that simple statistical measurements would work pretty well too. Heck - we have software that can tell the difference between Spam and real eMail fairly accurately - I think telling a 'bot from a human should be about as easy. SteveBaker (talk) 14:38, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, on this topic, a CAPTCHA is a turing test - it administers a question ("What are the letters in this picture?") that can presumably only be answered by a human, and then determines whether someone is a human or not based on their response. - Bilby (talk) 14:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Connection problem

My pc is using a linksys wireless usb adapter to connect online. I have a good signal and am connected, but when if i open IE or firefox, I get a page load error. I think this is a settings issue, but I'm not sure what to do. BTW, the pc is running windows xp.24.9.157.26 (talk) 04:02, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

nevermind. i figured it out.97.118.254.230 (talk) 04:23, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Firefox problem

Firefox problem

I just started up and seem to have some sort of FF problem. Basically I'm getting the problem shown on the right across the top of all web pages and not just Wikipedia. I haven't installed any new or updated add-ons since shutting down FF and I have also tried disabling all the add-ons but that does not help. Not noticable in the picture but the address bar is blank for every page and entering text in there works but it's not visible. Any suggestions? CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 05:09, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

maybe you should donate, like everyone else who wants to get rid of that effect? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.214.224 (talk) 05:39, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with the donation bar. The problem appears across all web pages, Google, Youtube, Firefox error pages, and not just at Wikipedia, as I pointed out. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 05:50, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, problem solved using brute force. Reinstalled FF. All is good with the world again. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 06:11, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

If anyone else has this problem, the run-on effect shown in the picture is caused by a style sheet that contains * { display: inline; }. Firefox allows user-created style sheets to modify how websites look and how the Firefox interface looks. You can search online for userContent.css and userChrome.css for more information. You can edit or delete those files to correct the problem. --Bavi H (talk) 03:23, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Just curious but what would cause it? I hadn't changed anything and it just started like that. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 04:08, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

A corrupt installation, probably. Ale_Jrb^talk 22:21, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I can only guess some program or person created malicious or faulty userContent.css and userChrome.css files in the correct place. I recognized that run-on effect from experimenting with style sheets in the past, and since the effect was happening on all pages, I suspected a browser-wide style sheet was in effect.

Playing around with it just now, I was also able to make Firefox's address box text white (and thus invisible unless selected) by putting #urlbar * * { color: white; } in the userChrome.css file. So this further suggests it's possible your problems were caused by these style sheets.

In any case, if it ever happens again, you can might see if the userContent.css and userChrome.css files exist and if there are any clues in them as to the possible source. --Bavi H (talk) 03:20, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I just remembered, chkdsk ran on that reboot so it's possible that it did something that caused it. Thanks for the replies. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 09:48, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Rapidshare

How can you browse through the whole library of files on Rapidshare? 121.219.2.201 (talk) 06:43, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

unfortunately I remember seeing on their faq that for privacy reasons it is impossible to browse or search the files. you have to find someone linking to them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.214.224 (talk) 07:19, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

You can't browse rapidshare directly, but there are several sites which index rapidshare links from across the web. Some good ones are rapidshare-search-engine.com, rapidshare1.com, loadingvault.com and 4chan's /rs/ board. SN0WKITT3N 12:53, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Yahoo

Some downloads on Yahoo require that you first install Yahoo Tools. I have installed that, but the downloads still do not work. Why? 121.219.2.201 (talk) 06:43, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Some secure pages: Use of Back-button = 'page expired'...Why?

Re: above. I've heard it is a 'security' reason, but I was just interested to understand what additional security was provided by this? I guess it is incase you left the screen without closing IE and someone could then come to explorer, click back and get to a secure site you were using, but that could be prevented by a few simple measures (e.g. only expire if the page they are navigating from isn't part of the site, or prompt a re-request for the password). It's most frustrating and beyond what I noted I can't think of any security benefit. Anybody aware of anything more? 194.221.133.226 (talk) 09:09, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Two words: Lazy programmer ... Kushal (talk) 10:38, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

If you do online shopping, sometimes using the back button will place a duplicate order. That's kinda bad if it's a $2,000 pinball machine (yes this happened to me...$4,000 on a credit card is a bad thing...) 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 14:13, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

In the Opera browser, the back button always works. 81.200.82.2 (talk) 18:00, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Well I think that, when you click Back, the browser would either have to (1) remember the state of the page, which involves keeping this page and its state in memory, for all previous pages, which would be a memory drain; or (2) reload the page again, in which case the site might get confused why you are make the request for the previous page again, when its session info or whatever says that you have already navigated onto the next one. --71.106.183.17 (talk) 18:23, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Couldn't the browser keep the information on the state of the page in the hard disk swap? Surely, it takes longer to access it but it is a worthwhile thing. And I still stand by my original words: either the website should provide a way to go back and forth in the page itself or work with the navigation buttons in the browser. Kushal (talk) 10:52, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I think the entire point is to avoid having the page be accessible through history files, duh. Relying on the hard disk swap is not very secure, especially if you are on a public computer. I don't think it is "laziness" that is at fault here. There are multiple ways to make pages rigorously secure, some of which are incompatible with allowing forward and back working. Here's a blog post about one of the more obscure exploits one can do and the sorts of things one must do if one is writing a site in which you are making sure this is not a possibility. I'd be surprised if that particular solution worked with forward and back buttons. Is it overkill? Is the trade-off in convenience-for-security done correctly? I don't know. One could reason different ways on it. But laziness doesn't come into play as a factor, at least not in the way you mean it. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 22:26, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the decision of whether to expire the page must be made when the page is originally transmitted, not when you attempt to return to it. This means you cannot decide "on the fly" to expire the page if the user is returning from outside your secure area. As a site creator, you are severely limited in how you can choose to expire your pages. Even setting a value such as "1 hour" leaves a sizable window and can lead to more security problems if the machine's clock can be tampered with. Dynamic content is another good example of a page that should be expired immediately. (Would you really want your browser displaying hours-old stock quotes?) Add in the fact that websites like to track user sessions (impossible if the web browser simply displays an unexpired cached copy of the page) and there are several compelling reasons to expire all "secure" pages immediately. As noted above, the Opera browser tends to ignore expiration requests when you return to pages using the back button; you might want to try it and see if that behavior is more useful to you--just be sure to close the browser if you don't want somebody returning to see your secure pages.

More Program Help

yes...well the batch file listed in Program Help question (see Program Help above) didn't work. But i did find out how to do it in Visual Basic 2005! Here's the rough code for my program. PS: the Process1.Start command starts the process ssstars.scr PPS: the EventLog1.WriteEntry command writes the listed string to the Application Event log.

Public Class Form1
    Private Sub Button1_Click (system inserted stuff)
         Process1.Start()
         If Process1.HasExited() Then
             EventLog1.WriteEntry("Screen Saver exited at the listed time and date.")
             Application.Exit()
         End If
    End Sub
End Class

For some reason, the Process1.HasExited() command will not acknowledge that ssstars.scr has exited; therefore, the event log is not written to and the form will not exit. What am i doing wrong? 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 14:05, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

You need to check for exit until the process has actually exited, not only once right after it was started. Try replacing if with while. This approach is called busy waiting and generally the easiest but also worst method. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.187.64.186 (talk) 16:34, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

How would i do that? 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 17:00, 6 November 2008 (UTC) Never mind...i got it to work right. Thanks! 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 17:16, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the Process class has an event called Exited or something. Use that. --wj32 ^t/c 06:46, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Collaboration in MS Excel. How?

Resolved

I have Excel 2003 in a small office network. How can I work with the same document from different computers simultaneously, without "read-only" mode? When I open the file on one computer, I can open it on another one only as "read-only". I know this is possible, but I don't know how. I don't have Sharepoint. Please help me! 81.200.82.2 (talk) 17:55, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Why do you claim to "know this is possible"? Ever since the very first version of Excel, I've never seen it have the ability to allow two users to edit the same spreadsheet at the same time. Perhaps you are thinking of Access. -- kainaw™ 18:27, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Because I've seen it. In Excel. 0xFFFF (talk) 20:33, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Hello, found this - any good? And here from MS --3sJJ0Itf (talk) 20:46, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Turn on 'share workbook' (tools > share-workbook) it's not quite perfect but does the job of allowing multiple users in one excel spreadsheet. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 09:51, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, 3sJJ0Itf and 194.221.133.226! That's exactly the option I was looking for. 0xFFFF (talk) 13:53, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

PHP Directory Listing Woes

Resolved

Hi Guys,

I have the following code, meant to list specific files in a directory (documents);

 <?php
$dir = dir(".");
$text = "";
$class = "";

	//List files in images directory
	while (($file = $dir->read()) !== false) {
			 if (preg_match('/\w+\.\w+/i',$file) && ($file != 'index.php')) {
			 	if (preg_match('/\w+\.doc.?$/i',$file)) { 
					$class = 'word'; 
				}
				if (preg_match('/\w+\.xls.?$/i',$file)) { 
					$class = 'excel'; 
				}
				if (preg_match('/\w+\.pdf$/i',$file)) { 
					$class = 'pdf'; 
				}
			 		echo "<span class='" . $class . "'><a href='" . 

$file . "'>" . $file . "</a></span><br />";
			 }
	}
	$dir->close();

?>

It works fine and all, but please help me understand why certain file names, specifically ones with parenthesis "()" dont get listed, and how to get around it.

Thanks in advance PrinzPH (talk) 20:22, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Your preg_match() calls all require that the file name contain a period and that the characters adjacent to some period be word characters (which probably means alphanumerics). --Tardis (talk) 22:34, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

If you're not comfortable with regular expressions, I'd recommend doing something a little easier to follow if you're trying to have control over listing directories, e.g. something like this, which will load files and directories into an array (which can then be sorted, printed, whatever):

<?php
	$self = $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];
	$self = substr($self, strrpos($self,"/")+1);
	$filelist=array();
	$dirlist=array();

	if ($dh = opendir(".")) {
	    while (($file = readdir($dh)) !== false) {
			if(filetype($file)=="file") {
				if($file!=$self) { 
					 $filelist[] = $file;
				};
			} else if(filetype($file)=="dir") {
				if($file!=".") {
					if($file!="..") {
						$dirlist[]=$file;
					};
				};
			}
	    }
	    closedir($dh);
	}
?>

The above code will leave you with two arrays full of files. The only things filtered out are the listing file itself and relative directories ("." and ".."). You could easily modify the nested IF statements to not include other types, or to check the extension of the files if you wanted to filter by filetype. Not necessarily as elegant as regular expressions but it works just as well (if not better, because if you want to make a change you can do it in a modular way, rather than trying to figure out the ideal regex for your purpose). --98.217.8.46 (talk) 22:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for help! The regex is meant to match *.xls(x) *.doc(x) and *.pdf... Silly me: \w+ does not match some special characters. PrinzPH (talk) 00:50, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Right, but you can do that without regex. Regex is a little overkill for something as simple as extension matching (you can just as easily and probably just as quickly use substr+stripos for that) in my opinion, in part because unless one really knows regex like the back of your hand you are liable to make lots and lots of errors. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 01:25, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

proxy server

I'm trying to connect to my university's proxy server, but I am already behind a proxy server at home and when I enter the university's proxy server into the "manual proxy configuration" in firefox it doesn't work. How can I access a proxy server through a proxy server, ie use a second proxy server when I'm already behind the first? I need it to access the library resources which can only be done through the university's proxy server. Thanks.

Firstly, you need to configure your proxy server to use your university's proxy server. Are you running the proxy or is it your ISP's? Secondly, is your university's proxy server actually available across the internet, or is it just on your university's intranet? --wj32 ^t/c 06:42, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Norton Ghost 2003

Will Norton Ghost 2003 (Ghost (software)) work on a Windows Vista based PC? -- SGBailey (talk) 21:21, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

According to [1], you can backup a FAT32 partition containing Vista, but not a NTFS partition (Vista has a new version of NTFS) [2] [3] --wj32 ^t/c 06:39, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Technically, NTFS is NOT a newer version between XP and Vista. They just actually added in-OS junctioning/symbolic linking support and Transactional NTFS (which are added on an application, rather than implementation, level (though junctioning/symbolic stuff existed in WinXP as well)). Washii (talk) 02:30, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

November 7

WTH?!?!

This website http://news.sina.com.cn/437/2008/0701/14.html (warning: do not re-type or copy and paste this URL into your browser, as this website is believed to install Trojan horses and/or other types of malware on computers) , has been popping up each time I open Internet Explorer, trying so hard to install a Chinese language pack on my computer even though it's not my homepage, but it appears as such nonetheless. Even when I go to Internet Options to reset my home page, it will automatically go back to the to the aforementioned site. It's the exact same deal even when I put the website on the restricted list in Internet Options. What the hell is going on? --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 00:08, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

This is the common result of installing a trojan. What did you install? Can you uninstall it (probably not). Get a virus/malware cleaner and hope for the best. In the future, do not install software from strangers on the Internet (and your response will be "I didn't install anything!!!" - so don't install software when you are sleeping or let invisible gremlins install software when you are out of the house). -- kainaw™ 00:12, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

But how do I stop it from appearing constantly as my homepage (or ever again)? And why are admin accounts more vulnerable to those web sites than limited accounts? (I'm talking Windows XP.) And if you click install, and it says "Insert Windows XP Professional CD-ROM", but you never insert the CD, you only clicked install, is it too late? Oh man, I hope I'm not screwed. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 00:31, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

How do you stop it? Remove the trojan. How do you do that? Get a virus/malware remover program (anti-virus, anti-malware - whatever you want to call programs like McAfee and Norton) and hope that the program will completely remove the trojan. Why are admin accounts more vulnerable? Admins are allowed to install programs that limited accounts are not allowed to install. Some trojans need admin access to get deeply installing into the system. -- kainaw™ 00:50, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

It probably is acting through an add-on. Go to Tools --> Manage Add-ons, or Tools --> Internet Options --> Programs --> Manage Add-ons and check. Write down the name of the add-on and search the registry (Start --> Run... --> regedit) for the entry. Also check your C:\WINDOWS and C:\WINDOWS\system32 folder for new .dll files. I usually go into these folders and sort the contents by creation date. If you were infected two days ago, you'd get rid of files created in the last two days.

Of course, limited accounts cannot install many programs, so they are less vulnerable. I run Internet Explorer at a low privilege level using psexec. You could also log in as a regular user and use the fast-user switching feature to improve security.--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 00:53, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Not stopping the trojan in terms of removing it, I have an anti-virus program taking care of that, I meant making sure the web site never appears ever again. I disabled every add-on and I put the internet restrictions to the highest settings, still nothing. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 01:15, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

First, add the site to your hosts file at C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc. As for your "anti-virus program," I would rely on your own two eyes instead of some automated program to clean your computer. It's obviously not very good if it hasn't fixed your browser issue. You're obviously still infected with a virus. Try searching your registry for the URL, too. Oh yeah, and any anti-virus programs you install after you are infected are often rendered useless by the virus.--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 01:40, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Get Spybot and run it. If it still doesn't stop it from popping up, look in the advanced tools—there are ones that let you lock the IE start page and things like that. Additionally, you may want to consider switching to a less-vulnerable browser if possible. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 01:20, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

It asked to clean out hundreds of temporary files and now it tells me getting rid of them may violate some license agreements with some of the programs on my computer. How do I fix that? --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 01:54, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Clean out the temp files. You don't need them. Don't worry about the licensing agreement thing—any licensing agreement that deposits spyware on your machine is probably worth violating anyway. It's just a legal disclaimer—ignore it as you probably do others. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 02:19, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I have Windows Live OneCare as my main anti-virus tool, I wonder if Spybot will catch anything OneCare misses? --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 02:33, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

You could wait about 15 minutes and check. Or you could use Google and you'd discover that Live OneCare is one of the worst anti-virus programs on the market. Sorry, I know you were waiting for 98 to respond, but I couldn't help myself.--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 02:55, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

So you want that website to never appear try this: go to Internet Options, click the privacy tab, click sites, enter the URL and hit block; IMPORTANT THIS ONLY BLOCKS COOKIES SO MAY NOT BE USEFUL AT ALL! But honestly once the virus is uninstalled you should be fine.Xor24 ^{talk to me} 02:55, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but fortunately that annoying virus is gone. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 23:24, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

"Do this when there's time" in C#

Is it possible in C# to cause a block of code to be executed the next time the program would otherwise be idle or waiting for input, but not before then? NeonMerlin 03:15, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

When your application is idle or when the system is idle? If you want to perform a task when the application is idle, you can use the Application.Idle event. That fires every time the message queue becomes empty (which is quite often), so you probably want to have a timer that starts when the event is fired, and after 1 minute or so perform the actual task. If you want to perform a task when the system is idle, use the GetLastInputInfo API function (through a P/Invoke).

You probably want to get your task running on a separate thread, and either suspend it every time the application becomes active and resume it every time the application becomes idle, or have a flag that controls the execution somehow. --wj32 ^t/c 06:36, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

How does Google limit searches to a specific country?

When using a localised version of Google, you can choose to limit the search to pages from that country, eg. when using google.co.nz I can choose to see only pages from New Zealand. How does Google know the country of origin,? In the past (say two years ago) it was very good in picking both pages from the .nz domain and .com domain with relevant content. Lately it has becoming steadily worse with more US pages creeping into the first page, even with specific search terms. For example, searching "electorate predictions 2008 maungakiekie" brings up 3 US sites in the first page. Is it likely that website designers have become better at manipulating the page ranking system? BeamerNZ (talk) 07:00, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I've heard people being advised against using overseas webhosting, as it won't show on google searches for "pages from the UK" (in the case of what I've heard - presumably same for NZ, or elsewhere) which would suggest they use Geolocation to see whether page. Might not be that though... Cheers, davidprior (talk) 21:44, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Google Calendar bug?

Signs: A notice in yellow highlight in the central upper region of the webpage "An error occured. Please try again later."

Steps to reproduce: Create an event in a calendar (lets call it C1) other than your main calendar (lets call it C). Edit the event to make it a repeat itself at least once a week. Set an end date for the event. Save it. Exit. Return to the calendar. Move the calendar from C1 to C. Exit. Move the calendar from C to C1. An error occurs in the last step.

Platform: Web-based, should be platform-agnostic. Intel-based Mac OS X 10.4.11, Firefox 3.0.3

Reproducible always: Yes/No/Not sure

Is it just me or has this happened to any of you too? Is it a bug? If yes, how can I report it? Am I expecting too much from Google Calendar? Kushal (talk) 11:07, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

NO takers? :( Kushal (talk) 16:25, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Please? Kushal (talk) 21:58, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Asus Eee USB fault

I got this Surf 2 GB Linux Eee PC that continually resets my ability to access USB devices. It displays a symbolic link instead of the usual shortcut to the device and says that I don't have permission to access the device. Right now my cyclic solution is to restore the OS to its factory default, but could there be a permanent solution or is this a terminal fault of the manufacture? -- Mentisock 12:02, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

turbo c++

how can we add graphics in turbo C++ to make a software? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.154.12.188 (talk) 13:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand your question, and I suspect that the reason why you haven't received an answer is that no-one else has understood it. You haven't given enough information for us to figure out your level of knowledge, and exactly where you are stuck. Have you read the article Turbo C++? Do you know how to write a simple C++ program? Do you know the difference between a Hello world type of console application and an event-driven application? If you really want to use Turbo C++ for graphics, I remember it had something called the Borland Graphics Interface, which was used for graphics in DOS applications. But I doubt that you would want to program using that API today, it is obsolete. Please give some more information about your level of knowledge, and exactly what you are trying to achieve, and we will be happy to help. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:02, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

TI-83+ malfunctioning buttons

While I read a previous question posted about the TI-8x brand of calculators, it remind me of this. My cousin has a TI-83 Plus calculator, which he has been using for about 2 years now. However, about a month ago, an entire column of buttons stopped working correctly (it was the fourth column of buttons, containing Trace, vars, tan, ), 9, 6, 3, and (-)). Whenever pressing any of these buttons, only the negation symbol (-) would appear, not the corresponding one. So if someone pressed a tan button, the negation symbol would show up instead. Does anyone know why or how this could have happened, and possible fixes? The calculator is no longer under warranty, so any help is appreciated. Thanks! 141.153.214.30 (talk) 16:09, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

It's broke. I had the same thing happen to my TI84 Plus. The TI support people said so. Mine too was not under warranty so it would have cost less to buy another calculator than to fix it. 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 14:33, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Windows registry shapshot and diff utility

I'm looking for a program that can take a snapshot of the Windows Xp registry, and at a later time compare the current contents of the registry with the snapshot, and export the changes in .REG format. Can anyone recommend such a utility? Thanks. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 17:26, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

It wouldn't be very efficient in terms of time or disk space, but you could just export the whole registry before and after and then run a standard tool like diff on the result (which should work fine even for the large output files). It wouldn't quite be a REG format file, but it wouldn't be very hard to turn it into one (include the appropriate header lines, strike the annotations that diff added). --Tardis (talk) 18:14, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I had tried that, but windows fc was unable to synchronize the registry dumps. Tried again now, with gnu diffutils diff. The registry dump contains binary data, so I had to use the --text switch. The resulting output appears to be in unicode, and removing the annotations will be very tedious as the output file from diff is large. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 16:30, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Hm, that's true. It's probably easy enough to write this from scratch, though, since the regedit format is so simple and we can assume the two files to visit the keys in the same order. Give me a bit and I'll have you a Python script. (In the event that you're an Emacs user, it might even be easier in Elisp, so let me know.) --Tardis (talk) 07:11, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Wow, thanks!! I'm not an emacs user (did use it in a previous life, but the keyboard bindings are now long forgotten). --NorwegianBlue ^talk 09:46, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

See User:Tardis/regdiff.py. I vouch for its lack of malice, but not its correctness. (And anyone can edit that page!) --Tardis (talk) 10:56, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Reply on Tardis' talk page. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:59, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I googled "registry diff", "reg difff" and "regdiff" and looked at the first 1/2 doz results for each - only free tool I found within this was regdiff [4] . Hope this helps, davidprior (talk) 21:38, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. The site definitely looks legit, but I'm hesitant about installing an executable from a small website which has few in-going links from external pages. I've tried compiling the program from the source provided, but it appears to depend on a library (gtools) which is available from the same website, but only as an .exe. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 16:30, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I've sent an email to Gerson Kurz, the author of regdiff, about this thread and the lack of complete sources to regdiff. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:43, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

No reply so far, but googling the author's name gives many more links than googling ingoing links to his website, and indicates that there is little reason for concern. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 23:57, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Remove my personal information from google search results

A Google of my name results in many "private" messages to genealogy lists. Some include my e-mail, mailing address, etc.

Is it possible to erase these messages or unlink them from my name? If so, do I send the request to delete to Google?71.142.83.236 (talk) 19:03, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Slim chance as it is pointing to other web pages with content. Have you checked other search engines too like http://cuil.com ? You will have to arange removal from original web pages. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:15, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

You can request removal of posts in Google Groups, which contains a lot of content that originated on usenet. I can't access the page right now, but it should be searchable. --LarryMac | Talk 21:55, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Hm, I think I know you... --grawity 12:16, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

dos games on xp

How can we play dos games with windows xp operating system on dua core processor copmuter .e.g I want to play "prince of persia 2" or " gods". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.154.75.177 (talk) 19:46, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Try DOSBox. --140.247.242.66 (talk) 20:07, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I have got dosbox from internet,but I know nothing obout it .I have read about it ,but I do not know what is meant by "mount" also I do not know where to write"mount C D:\GAMES" .plz help me —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.154.71.251 (talk) 14:32, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

You may also want to try DFend or DFender (I can't remember which) which is a system that works with DOSBox, and has a mounting wizard built in. I never got on with DOSBox, so this really helped -- WORMMЯOW  13:54, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

What is a corrupt list and how do I prevent it from happening again?

My computer kept turning itself off yesterday and displaying an error message on a blue background that said it was protecting itself.

It took a lot of time talking to HP tech support to get the problem solved. The first person didn't realize how serious the problem was because it took a while for it to happen again, and I had decided the problem was resolved, so I said it was and we ended our phone call. But the second person knew it was serious because I kept having the problem again and again.

The one error message I saw that seemed to explain what was happening said something about a corrupt list. This makes sense because nothing specific I did made the problem happen. One theory I have is every time I went to a site, the computer would add that site to a list and once the list got too long it cut off.

The problem was finally solved with a system restart or whatever he called it, to bring the computer back to where it was the last time it worked. When the computer was turned on I had four choices and one was F11. Normally, I let the computer skip over those. Each time it came back after restarting, it would say Windows didn't shut down correctly and I was given choices, including safe mode, which I tried once. One time I was given a choice which involved repairing.

I was told to use the start button, but that kept disappearing when the computer would turn off. I came up with the F11 idea because in college the mainframe used to go down and we would have what was called "recovery files" in some cases when it came back. I chose to roll back to October 31, since HP, Norton and Windows had sent me lots of updates I didn't want to lose.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:38, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean you got BSODs? What is the exact error message? There aren't any "list" errors at [5]. --wj32 ^t/c 22:44, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

What version of Windows are you using? "System restart" sounds like system restore to me. Rilak (talk) 06:51, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I saved a list of information about the computer, but I don't want to put it all on here.

OS Name Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium Version 6.0.6001 Service Pack 1 Build 6001 Other OS Description Not Available OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation System Name System Manufacturer HP-Pavilion System Model KT369AA-ABA a6512p System Type x64-based PC

Was that enough?

Yes, I meant system restore.

[6] does look very much like the error message I got. Is there someplace where error messages I have gotten are stored? I didn't write anything down because it was all too complicated.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:39, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

The Event Viewer should have something. Rilak (talk) 08:43, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. It's Windows Event Log for me, apparently. I'm not on my computer today.

One more thing. The PRN_List_Corrupt (that's how I remember it) message only appeared once, but that was the closest thing I ever saw to a cause of the problem. I only remember that it was something like that, and that I told the man on the phone as soon as I saw it.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:28, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

For some reason I can't find any info on "PRN_LIST_CORRUPT" and I have never seen one myself. What did HP tech support say? Rilak (talk) 05:56, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't recall. I'm not even sure I got that right. I had a hard time explaining the second part was a word and not a letter. The man was Asian. Anyway, the problem was solved with system restore and I haven't had anything go wrong since.

And I'm still not on my computer yet.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:47, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm back on my computer.

I have backed up what was on the computer on a DVD. Some of the help I got last week made it possible for me to do that without the computer automatically telling me to, which it did when I didn't have a DVD. It hasn't since, so I had to find the information.

I don't see the Windows Event Log.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:03, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Unless it was causing more problems, I wouldn't bother tracking down the cause. Windows breaks sometimes and its easier to do a system restore or a reinstall than to find the cause and fix it, as the cause often requires a reinstall anyway. If you want a bit of reassurance, preventative maintenance such as checking the hard drive for problems (the hard drives properties should have options for that), checking the memory for faults (rarely required, use memtest86, scanning for viruses and other malware and frequent backups of your files should suffice. Rilak (talk) 11:24, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

WM6 and different data connections

Hi all,

I have a Windows Mobile 6 (Pro)-based PDA with WiFi and GPRS. Now, every time I am connected to WiFi, apps that want internet try to open a GPRS connection, so I have to switch manually to "My ISP" in Settings>Connections>Connections>Advanced. When I disconnect from the WLAN, then programs are again not cabaple to connect to the internet, and I again manually have to specify "E-Plus Web". Can I have WM6 doing this automatically, preferring WLAN?

Thanks, HardDisk (talk) 22:03, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

A quick thing to rule out... For each connection, you can set what network it connects to (normally "work" or "internet" - sometimes more too) so Windows Mobile knows to use this connection when trying to reach this network. Is the WiFi connection set as connects to internet? (and out of interest, whats the GPRS set as connects to?) Cheers, davidprior (talk) 22:12, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Where can I see this? I can only see some ethernet adapters when in the advanced section of the Wireless settings. HardDisk (talk) 22:18, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh. Now I fucked up something. I went into the program to reload the E-Plus settings. Now, even if the "Set connection apps should use to connect to internet" is set to My ISP, MSN/IE say "Can't connect to the Internet", though I am connected to Wifi :/ Internet via GPRS only also doesn't work anymore. HardDisk (talk) 22:22, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Hope this wasn't 'cos of duff advice... Can't remember how to get in to this setting. My own device is a WM5 smartphone (have various other windows mobile devices at work so could hopefully take a peek on break 2moro) - I go into settings ( \windows\settings.exe) - then the option can be found under Connections->(appropriate connection)->Connects to . Like I say, I dunno if its the same in your version of Windows mobile. Hope this helps (and let me know if you've unkilled your device), davidprior (talk) 22:37, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, unfucked at least the GPRS part by simply again loading the E-Plus Web data. WLAN still connects, but MSN/IE/other apps still want to connect to GPRS, not use WLAN. Now gonna make you some screenshots because apparently Mio baaadly restructured this stuff and the option you (and various google hits) tell is not there :/ HardDisk (talk) 22:42, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

here for the approach via settings-connections, and here the app with the adapter list. all pix are in chronological order. thank you!HardDisk (talk) 22:48, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, it looks like they're set as connect to internet, so that's that cause ruled out. I've thought some more about this, and I think I've had a device auto-select between 2 WLANs, but not between a WLAN and GPRS/etc. So, that's me hit my limit on this one - dunno if anyone else has any ideas. Cheers, davidprior (talk) 21:53, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

November 8

why does VLC sound so much more AWESOME than winamp?

After installing VLC for video on my new computer, I used it for some mp3 files. I prefer and am more used to winamp, so I downloaded that insteaed, but I was shocked to find out that VLC had sounded WAY more awesome. I couldn't believe it, especially since I prefer winamp, so tested very carefully. Hands down, VLC is more awesome. Why could that be? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.214.224 (talk) 00:36, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by "more awesome"? VLC comes with a volume normalizer and a "headphone virtual spatialization" effect. I use Winamp with a normalizer (which uses the DSP studio) and ATsurround (which makes stereo music sound good on 5.1 sound systems). --wj32 ^t/c 01:10, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Winamp uses the DirectShow API for playback whereas VLC uses it's own codecs. This means VLC might sound different from winamp as it is decoding the mp3 file differently. VLC might also be routing sound through different wave or directsound output settings, or winamp could be using an equalizer which would reduce the dynamic range and clarity of the sound, whereas VLC would play it unaltered. SN0WKITT3N 14:42, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

VLC is standard louder then winamp I belive,

With standard I mean not pushing or clicking anybuttons except file > open > .....

A nice little note: VLC is multiplatform, Yet winamp is just for windows (as the name suggests) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.84.198.234 (talk) 23:39, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Unicode weirdness / mystery

I came across this set of characters some jokester posted on a message board recently that messed up the nearby text above and below it, with a series of dots going above and below some of the characters (in fact, I am seeing this effect now in this text box, I am not sure if it will show up when it's posted to the Reference Desk though). None of them look to be any actual alphanumeric characters... here is the string in question, pasted:

ερ҉ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̚ ҉ ҉҉̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚ ̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚̕̚ ̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̚ ̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚̕̚ ̔̕̚̕̚ερ҉ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̚ ҉ ҉҉̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚ ̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚̕̚ ̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̚ ̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚̕̚ ̔̕̚̕̚ερ҉ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̚ ҉ ҉҉̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚ ̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚̕̚ ̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̚ ̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚̕̚ ̔̕̚̕̚ερ҉ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̚ ҉ ҉҉̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚

If I Google search this string, Google returns a "malformed or illegal request" error (first time in my life I've seen Google return an error message instead of attempting to search the web with the given string). If I paste some of the characters into OpenOffice, it won't let me select it (or it might be selecting it but it's 0-width??), or input any further text to the left unless I move the cursor up and down and try again a few times. Set the font size to a huge value to see it better, and individual characters will literally look like scrambled junk just like the string itself, like nothing you'd expect to see in an actual character set -- almost, but not quite, like an inkblot.

So what the hell is going on? --75.165.54.206 (talk) 01:44, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

That is AWESOME!!! :) (sorry, but this is the coolest thing I've seen in a while....) I don't know what that might be... SF007 (talk) 01:59, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the google error, I think it is simply because the string is very big (even a long string with "normal letters" will produce that error), and if we cut this strange string and search it in google, it works! SF007 (talk) 02:14, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I think the key to what's going on here is the unicode character U+202B, which is a right-to-left embedding character (meaning that the stuff you type is reversed). Repeated using of it probably screws with character rendering, or something Belisarius (talk) 04:04, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Just for kicks, I put your search string into some other search engines: Yahoo! returned this page with about 8 results (a couple of links to news articles on KCRG-9's website, some links to 4chan, one link to 7chan and a link to someone's Facebook page; Live.com silently dumped me back to its main search page, without even so much as an error message; and Ask.com found no results and told me my search terms were too long. --CalusReyma (talk) 09:34, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

On my system (Firefox 3 on Windows XP) the rendered page (although not the edit box) clearly shows several instances of ҉ which a hex editor reveals to be U+0489: Combining Cyrillic Millions Sign. Presumably I can only see it clearly because my system's failing to combine it with the adjacent characters. I can also clearly see a couple of instances of ερ (U+03B5: Greek small letter epsilon followed by U+03C1: Greek small letter rho), and there are various other diacritics in there I think.

So there is no rendering error here, just an imaginative use of combining characters - characters for things like accents that are designed to be displayed "on top of" another letter (or symbol). By layering them on top of each other, the jokester has obscured their individual forms and created an intriguing piece of abstract UNICODE art. - IMSoP (talk) 18:47, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Opening OpenOffice.org Math on Ubuntu?

Resolved

How can I open OpenOffice.org Math 3 on Ubuntu? It is installed, but I can't find a link anywere! SF007 (talk) 01:53, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

For an explanation, see [7]. Right-click the main menu and select Edit Menus. In the Office category there should be an item called OpenOffice.org Formula. Enable that. Alternatively, the command is ooffice -math %U. The icon is at /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/ and is called ooo-math.png. [8] --wj32 ^t/c 06:25, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Press Alt and F2, and type ooffice in the box. Open office is a single application: to run open office math, click File, New, Spreadsheet and you'll be at a new spreadsheet in OO Math. --h2g2bob (talk) 11:50, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I made it! SF007 (talk) 15:41, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Feasibilty of buying a Cray CX1 for home use

Could I purchase a Cray CX1 super computer for home use?

[[9]]

Would I be able to hook up my monitor, keyboard, mouse to it? Could I play games and perform tasks that a regular PC could do?

Acceptable (talk) 20:56, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Dunno, but you might want to take a look at [Windows Server 2003#Windows HPC Server 2008]. Though I'd bet you could get a far better price / performance ratio for most "home user" tasks elsewhere. Sorry this ain't a real answer, cheers, davidprior (talk) 21:50, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Your peripherals should work, except your printer XD. Most of the programs won't work, though, since the OS is Server 2008. However, Server 2008 includes Hyper-V, which allows you to run XP and Vista virtual machines inside the operating system. It's like VMWare.--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 21:52, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Its just a Xeon-based server computer. The Visualization Node CV5401 has a fairly nice video card, so it'd probably be good for gaming. Just expensive. Looks like those systems are more intended for HPC uses. -- JSBillings 01:58, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I should mention that the CX1 is an enclosure for 8 nodes. Most games don't aren't parallelized to run across several different computers over a high-speed interconnect, like High performance computing applications. So, the answer to your question is, yes, you could play games and perform tasks a regular PC could do, but it would only run on one node, effectively wasting 7 other nodes. -- JSBillings 02:03, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I found a web site that lists game compatibility: http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/2008/03/08/games-and-entertainment/ . A lot of them have issues. Office 2007 should work, though. But I read that Photoshop won't run inside Server 2008.--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 03:54, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Could I not just uninstall the operating system and install Vista? Acceptable (talk) 05:27, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

No, I don't think you can. The reason why Windows HPC Server 2008 is used is because it supports the hardware. It is a cluster anyway, not a multiprocessor, so I doubt games are programmed to take advantage of it. Rilak (talk) 08:12, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

• Out of curiosity, I installed Server 2008 inside VMware. Firefox, Adobe Reader, Office 2007, and Quicktime work without any problems. Although I read that Photoshop CS3 doesn't work, my pre-release Photoshop and Flash CS4 versions seem to work, too. They warn you when you install, but they work nonetheless.--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 11:03, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

how do I allow XP to physically shut down my computer, instead of just almost doing so?

so this old computer used to have windows 98, which could shut it down all the way. then I installed xp on it, great, but now when I shut it down it goes real quiet and almost completely shuts down, but instead displays the 'safe to turn off your comptuer now' bit. how do I actually enable a complete physical shut-down? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.214.224 (talk) 23:31, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Most likely your computer uses the older AT form factor, where the power switch is directly connected to the power supply, in which case there's no way for the software to control it. This is unlike the newer ATX form factor, where the power switch is connected to the motherboard, allowing software to control the power. See Power supply unit (computer)#AT vs. ATX. --164.67.207.12 (talk) 23:54, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Uh, maybe you missed the part that "this old computer used to have windows 98, which could shut it down all the way. then I installed xp on it" (on the same computer, no hardware changes, and actually it is dual-boot and the windows 98 os can STILL shut down the computer ALL the way). Was your comment some kind of joke? How could installing xp go so far as messing up physical layout and motherboard connections, reverting the computer to an old AT form factor whenever I run it (but back to normal on the old OS)? I didn't say Vista, I said XP. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.214.224 (talk) 03:12, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Because there are thousands of hardware configurations, a specific answer is not easy to give. Check the ACPI settings in your BIOS. Windows is apparently not recognizing that your computer is ACPI compliant. If that doesn't help, it is possible that a driver is failing and preventing XP from shutting down (a common problem with poorly written drivers). -- kainaw™ 03:18, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

It's true that I'm using a wireless adapter, but there is NO other driver loaded, moreover the problem existed even before I installed the wireless card: a pristine install of XP can't do what windows 98 did already. how is that possible? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.214.224 (talk) 04:31, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean "no other driver loaded"? Windows requires a large number of drivers to function properly. Possibly you mean you only installed one driver?

Did you check your BIOS settings to make sure ACPI is turned on? Does the computer shut-down properly if it's started in safe-mode? If so that could hint at a driver issue in regular mode. APL (talk) 07:37, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, before you try messing with safe-mode, try going to the control panel and disabling all power-saving features in Windows. Those can sometimes cause problems like this. I'm not sure why. APL (talk) 07:40, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

As APL said... When you install Windows (3.1, 95, 98, XP, ME, Vista...), it autodetects all the hardware in your computer and installs drivers - tons of drivers. Just because Windows 98 had a good driver for some hardware item does not mean that XP has good drivers (or even that XP has drivers at all - I had a scanner that worked in 98 but wasn't supported in XP at all). -- kainaw™ 15:42, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Windows 3.1 doesn't autodetect any hardware. You need to specify it all manually (including fun things like IRQ lines, DMA channels, and I/O ports). --Carnildo (talk) 22:36, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

November 9

3D Graphics Library

I'm looking into learning a 3D graphics library for Windows in order to ultimately create a game. What would be the best one for an amateur programmer? Currently, I'm leaning towards DirectX but OpenGL seems easier; however, am I correct in believing that OpenGL hasn't been updated for Windows since 1995? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.125.56.9 (talk) 00:02, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

OpenGL hasn't been updated? Of course it has: "OpenGL Now Natively Supported in Windows Vista" [10]. id Software has been using OpenGL for their games which run on Windows and GNU/Linux. --wj32 ^t/c 03:54, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

OpenGL has indeed not been updated by Microsoft since then - HOWEVER, OpenGL has a fancy extensibility mechanism that allows the device driver to offer features that the OpenGL library doesn't provide. This is a little inconvenient - but allows the hardware manufacturers to provide access to newer features despite Microsofts best efforts to kill OpenGL and thereby prevent anyone from doing 3D graphics that work on cellphones, PDA's, Linux, MacOS and Windows. In fact, since MS decided not to release D3D version 10 under Windows XP (you need Vista) - OpenGL is actually more powerful under XP than D3D is. There is no doubt that D3D is much more widely used under Windows than elsewhere - but OpenGL is the only 3D graphics API that runs on almost every 3D-capable hardware on the planet. Even if you're programming (say) a Nintendo DS - which has it's own weird and wonderful graphics hardware - the libraries that support it are sufficiently similar to OpenGL that you feel right at home. So I recommend learning OpenGL - but at some stage you may want to switch to D3D. It's not that hard to do because both API's are supporting the exact same hardware and the core concepts. SteveBaker (talk) 16:04, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Converting XVid to DVD

Hello all,

I recently downloaded the Phillies World Series parade and celebration from Vuze bit-torrent. I would like to put this on DVD for a friend who could not see it (he is in Iraq). It is an XVid file extension. Is there a free program where I can transfer my download to DVD format? I have DVD-RW.

Thank you in advance

--72.78.20.45 (talk) 01:04, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

You will want to use iDVD to burn it to the DVD. You might already have it—check in your Applications folder. If iDVD can't take the XVid format, use ffmpegX to convert it to Quicktime. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 04:25, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't have a MAC. --72.78.20.45 (talk) 04:58, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Well OK. I assumed you did because I thought Vuze is a Mac-only program (I now see that it is not). In the future you might want to specify your operating system to avoid us having to guess and waste our time! --98.217.8.46 (talk) 14:57, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Please excuse us. I am on a mac atm but it seems DVD_Flick might work for you. For a fuller treatment on the topic, please read DVD authoring. Hope that helps and I hope the rest of your weekend goes well,

Kushal (talk) 17:33, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

PS3 Maintenance Update

My PS3 suddenly decided to stop reading DVDs or CDs. The info box reads "Maintenance Update". I've tried searching to see what this means, but the garbage is overwhelming and I cannot find anything that even remotely relates to this problem. Does anyone know if this means the PS3 is actually broken and needs maintenance or is it stuck in some software update that is taking an eternity to finish? -- kainaw™ 02:31, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind. It is under warranty, so I'm sending it in. -- kainaw™ 13:14, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Deleting previous Windows installation directory

I'm wondering how to delete my Vista \WindowsBak folder, which I renamed (from XP) before reinstalling Vista. The folder is owned by "TrustedInstaller" and any attempt I make to delete it says that permission is denied. The folder is over 10 GB in size and just taking up space. Any advice? Thanks. Birchcliff (talk) 07:03, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

a) Start Command Prompt as Administrator, type:

cacls C:\WindowsBak /t /g Everyone:F

del /f/s/q C:\WindowsBak

rd /s/q C:\WindowsBak

Or b) If you have a Linux LiveCD (Ubuntu, for example), start the computer from it and simply delete the folder.

--grawity 12:11, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks grawity, but I still get an access denied message running cacls (or Icacls). I'll have to use the Linux method... Birchcliff (talk) 21:57, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

There's probably an Add/Remove Programs (called 'Programs and Features' in Vista) entry that would let you 'uninstall' it. This was what happened with Win98/2k upgrading to XP.

You could probably use psexec to run cmd as SYSTEM and try those commands again. --wj32 ^t/c 09:02, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Does the at 12:34 /interactive cmd trick still work on Vista? (On XP, it starts cmd.exe with Local Service rights.) 78.56.68.25 (talk) 13:33, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Wireless woes on Intel Macbook

Dear Wikipedians,

I use wireless service from a local provider. My friend can connect to the same router with the same SSID. I can connect to the router but I have no Internet access. Why is it so? I am on an Intel Macbook with 10.4.11 My friend is using an HP compaq prescario. The wireless network itself is not secured but presents an authentication web page before I can connect to the Internet. Any ideas? Kushal (talk) 16:23, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I am online now. Weird. Kushal (talk) 17:29, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Spending $50,000 on a Computer

Since buying a small supercomputer does not appear to be feasible for home use, I am looking to build a custom computer for less than $50,000 USD. I would be using the computer to play games, for video editing, 3D modelling, and bulk photo processing. I would like the computer to be as powerful as possible. It would be running Windows Vista Ultimate. Can someone provide me with a set of technical specs and the resulting component I need to purchase for the computer? Please note, the cost of a monitor and keyboard/mouse is included in there.

Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 18:28, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

$50,000 USD? My current computer, chosen from up-to-date parts, although not specially so with the graphics or sound cards, excluding monitor and keyboard/mouse, cost less than one-sixtieth of that. And I still believe I'm underusing its capabilities. A top-of-the-line gaming and graphics editing computer, considering you're only going to use it for your own personal use, will probably cost at least twice as much as mine, but I still have a hard time imagining it costing more than $3000 USD, monitor and keyboard/mouse included. The only way I could ever envision a personal desktop computer costing $50,000 USD is it either consisting mainly of industrial-grade 24/7 fault-tolerant hot-swappable components, or being made of platinum. What reason do you have for such an upper limit? JIP | Talk 21:26, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Spending $50K on a gaming machine would just be stupid. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 21:36, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

You can buy a Dell Precision with two 3.4 GHz processors, two NVIDIA graphics cards, a 15,000 RPM hard drive and Vista Ultimate for about $12,000: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=en&m_11=VB31E&oc=bwdwjap&s=bsd .--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 21:58, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

And even that... would be a bad investment of $12K. Computers deprecate in value too quickly to spend that kind of money on them. And you could probably build one of your own for a good deal less than that price. Honestly, you could probably get a top-of-the-line machine for $2K without too much difficulty, invest the rest, and then buy another $2K machine each year for the next 20 years. (Probably could sell off each old one for $1K or $0.5K at the same time.) You'd end up with a far better machine, and always be on top of the newest technology. When you blow your money on the latest technology, you're getting the latest technology of 2008, which sounds very nice and new until it becomes 2009, 2010, 2011, and it turns out that lo, there were far better ways of doing things that nobody thought up. Think about it this way: would you be happy today if you had spent $50K on a computer in 2004 or 2005? --98.217.8.46 (talk) 23:49, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

When building a machine yourself, I do not feel it is best to try and spend as much as possible. When I decided to build a 500G fileserver for home use, I looked online and found some 500G network drives for around $500. So, I spent a couple months monitoring parts, rebates, and such. I only built it myself because I was able to get it all done for $300 - even after spending more than I needed on a cool case. So, look for what you want and then see if you can build it for less - if not, just buy it. -- kainaw™ 00:07, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

this is realy not the forum to find this kind of help. if you want help spending more than $20000 on a computer, you'll need better contacts than you would find here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.214.224 (talk) 01:40, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

But please come back and tell us of this $50k mega beast when you build it... Booglamay (talk) - 02:27, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Mac Pro with Intel Xeon processors at 3.2GHz (8 cores), with NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 and Boot Camp [11] --wj32 ^t/c 08:51, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

You can get a high-end Mac Pro for USD 26,689.00 or an Xserve server for 39,194.00 (without software support for OS X server). Why would you want to run Vista on it? Just to prove its scalability (or lack thereof)? Kushal (talk) 12:17, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Since it seems like you want to blow some cash on unneccessary parts of a megabeast computer (which you should DEFINITELY build yourself, Dell or anyone else will kill your price with a dagger made of lava)... I recommend getting liquid nitrogen cooling, 10GB RAM or better, 5TB SSD or better, 3 insane processors, a really insane case like Alienware or something (but not an actual Alienware case because then people will think that it's an Alienware, when it's actually way better), install XPSP3 and Vista SP2 (bribe Microsoft) and Win7 (bribe them even more). After that's all done, you can pay some ubernerd to make it all fit into a laptop. flaminglawyer^c 23:47, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Use solid state drives. For $500, you get 32 GB. For 1 TB of storage, you'll need 32 of them, thus using around $16,000, which means you will only have to spend $34,000 more to meet your objective of a $50,000 computer. Did I say this config is insanely fast? Rilak (talk) 11:25, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

If you want to game for the love of god don't go with a Quadro graphics card. Stick with either Radeon or GeForce. The Quadro cards (and ATIs FireGL) are for rendering and are really terrible at the sort of demands a game will request. Gunrun (talk) 11:27, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that to get a REALLY fast machine - you've got to get away from standard software environments. You can't play games on these super-computer gizmos. Most of the time they don't run Windows - and if they do, probably only one of the CPU's is actually going to do that for you. Getting speed by making the CPU run faster would make your games run faster - but stacking in more and more CPU's and cores will pretty soon give you zero improvement because most software can't take advantage of more than a handful. Plus (as others have explained), your $50,000 will MAYBE get you a machine that's 4x faster than a $5,000 computer - but Moore's law being what it is, that'll only be 2x faster in 18 months time - and in three years - your $50,000 machine will be looking slow compared to the thing your buddies are using. You get MORE overall speed by upgrading your PC regularly than you do by buying a honking great monster box on a less frequent basis. Save your money - go to Alienware - buy their fastest and coolest box - spend maybe $5k - expect to upgrade it every 18 months to stay ahead of the curve. SteveBaker (talk) 02:00, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Alienware? Meh... Get a BOXX APEXX8 with eight quad-core Opeterons, 128 GB of memory, two ATI or nVidia graphics cards and 15 15,000 rpm SAS drives. The price? I have no idea, the APEXX8 is so exclusive the price is not made public, although I have heard rumors that a maximum configuration costs in the region of $80,000 USD. Rilak (talk) 08:39, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Incredibly aggressive virus telling me I need to protect against viruses

Not sure where I got infected from but my computer is being attacked by a virus that every few seconds tell me "I have a security problem" and wants me to scan my computer and download "Antivirus 2009" and when I try to open any new webpage (any at all: this one, Google etc.), I get redirect to a page with the following text:

Internet Explorer Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer!   
Most likely causes: 
The website contains exploits that can launch a malicious code on your computer 
Suspicious network activity detected 
There might be an active spyware running on your computer 
What you can try: 
Activate Antivirus 2009 for secure Internet surfing (Recommended).  
Check your computer for viruses and malware. 
More information

Just typing this message has been laborious as every few seconds I get a new task bar popup which takes my cursor out of this screen. They resemble official warnings from my computer and have the same type symbols. I am aslo getting a screen (not web-based, which says "security center" and looks also like it's my computer but it canlt be; I also just got a popup saying "We have det4ected 43 viruses! download antiviurs 2009 now! Please tell me what it is and how to uninstall or give me a link for uninstall instructions.--19:05, 9 November 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.202.35.71 (talk)

Here are instructions on how to rid yourself of this rogue. Fribbler (talk) 19:12, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Cool, they use Malwarebytes. I use it at least once or twice a week to clean up variants of that virus. SuperAntispyware tends to be a faster scan, with Malwarebytes being excellent at cleaning up the final dregs (which I say because SAS tends to run faster and cleans out the main components with higher frequency). It's main problem is being Windows Installer-based, which is somewhat trivial to block an install, and you can't install it in Safe Mode.

Most of the time, though, you'll need to double-check that you clean out your Temporary directory to ensure it doesn't come back. Also a liberal use of 'msconfig' to remove any extra startup entries it'll include —Preceding unsigned comment added by Washii (talk • contribs) 03:14, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I tried to use that program but then I slapped my forehead and said to myself "why don"t I just try a system restore first?" So I did and that worked great without having to worry about cleaning up any dregs. You have no idea how annoying that virus is. It took me twenty minutes to type the OP with my cursor being taken out of the screen approximately every second letter! Thanks for the advice. (Yes, same guy, different computer as you'll note from the change of IP). --71.247.252.78 (talk) 15:31, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Linux problem and Hotmail problem

I recently had a break in my Internet connection, and was forced to use Mozilla Firefox and Evolution in off-line mode on my Fedora 9 Linux system. Now the break is over, and the Internet connection works fine. The problem is that Mozilla Firefox and Evolution still insist on starting in off-line mode. I can turn them into on-line mode manually, and they work fine, but I want them to get into on-line mode automatically. How can this be done?

Microsoft recently updated their Hotmail service. I don't know what they thought actually needed updating, but they managed to completely break it for me. I can only receive e-mail now, not send it. Well, actually I am able to send e-mail - if people are happy with empty messages. The Hotmail web page no longer accepts any input into the actual message contents. The only way I am able to actually write any e-mail from my Hotmail account is by using the Mobile Hotmail service, which works OK from a normal desktop computer too. Is anyone else having this problem, and does anyone know if it's going to be fixed? JIP | Talk 20:12, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

For the Firefox things... no idea. But for the Hotmail thing, I reccommend Mozilla Thunderbird, thereby eliminating all the browser problems. flaminglawyer^c 21:00, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

possibly helpful: https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+question/31925 and http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=866872 . I don't know about hotmail; I've never used it. Dar-Ape 20:41, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

XWIS online (Red Alert 2)

I don't understand how to login to XWIS, so as to be able to play Red Alert 2 online. Can someone please help me? --AtTheAbyss (talk) 20:59, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Do you already have an XWIS login? If not, do double-check you've got any entries it needs (I don't particularly remember if it needs anything). For your first XWIS login, enter the username and password you want to use in the username and password fields. Afterwards, keep using that username and password you set up.

Voila, you're done. Washii (talk) 03:21, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Where do I enter the username and password. I clicked on internet on the RA2 main menu, but when I try to open anything (profile, quick match, etc.) it says it needs a patch, and then can't find it. I already have RA2 1.6. Do I need a different, custom patch? --AtTheAbyss (talk) 05:24, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

XWIS says that all you need to do was what I provided you (except the exactly 8 character password requirement. I don't remember that). Take a look at the Help Forum linked on that page. Washii (talk) 05:56, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

higher-end graphics cards and PCI-Express versions

I recently upgraded my graphics card to an Nvidia GTX 260 and found that the 3dMark06 score is scarcely higher than my old card, which was in the Nvidia 8800 series; and the score is nowhere near the charts on Tom's Hardware. So I upgraded my power supply, which had been underrated for even my old card, hoping that would solve the problem. It improved the score by a few hundred points, still far short. Now I'm realizing that there is a version 2.0 of PCI-Express and my PC (unexpectedly) seems to be 1.0. Would this be a significant limiting factor in getting the expected performance from a newer card? What a disappointment if I have to upgrade my motherboard too. I need to know not if PCI-e 2.0 "might" help, but indeed if it's a "no-brainer" improvement, almost a requirement for this card, from someone with experience. (The CPU is a Q6600, shouldn't be a factor.) Thanks! Birchcliff (talk) 22:09, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

If you had one of the faster 8800s (an 8800GTX or 8800 Ultra, for example), there's not much speed difference between it and a GTX 260. And no, upgrading from PCIe 1 to PCIe 2 won't make a bit of difference: either version is faster than a single graphics card needs. One thing to check is to make sure that the card is plugged into an actual PCIe x16 slot. Some motherboard manufacturers cut corners to save money and only connect half or a quarter of the signal lines, making it effectively an x4 or x8 slot. --Carnildo (talk) 22:49, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd bet good money that your PC is being bottlenecked by something else. Either your processor or ram. Any chance you could post the rest of your system specs? Gunrun (talk) 11:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah - I agree. Probably your CPU isn't fast enough to stuff data into the new card - possibly not even fast enough for your old card either! It's possible that it's the PCI-Express bus - but I doubt it. I'd also warn you against chasing the benchmarks - they rarely mirror practical performance in real applications. You might not be bottlenecked in the benchmarks - but when you use the card in a computer game (for example) all of the other things the game does OTHER than graphics might slow the CPU down to the point where it can't keep the graphics card busy. It's also possible that some of the clever tricks that games programmers use to squeeze the last drop of performance might result in games running better than the benchmarks predict. There is no simple way to know in advance. SteveBaker (talk) 01:53, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the perspectives. Some more experimentation seems to show that I shouldn't put much stock in the 3dMark06 test. I benchmarked my old card (8800 GT "OC") against the EVGA 260 in both 3dMark06 and the newer "Vantage" which was a free download with the new card. The "3DMark06" frames per second in its four main tests hardly changed; all but one increased by no more than one FPS. In "Vantage", however, there was a real difference in its two (presumably more advanced) GPU tests: 14.9 vs 24.8, 15 vs 24.2. And in general use the better performance is apparent. Birchcliff (talk) 05:13, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

rapidshare contradictions

Why rapidshare has limits on uploader side like max file size and deletion of files and at the same time has limits on donwloader user side like max parallels donwloads and resume of downloads???

I mean, who will pay and use the rapidshare to be their place to upload their thinge to others peoples download, if people that would be downloading their files would be a hardtime to download her files or some restricions???

On the other side, who would pay to downloads more files at the same time, get better download speeds, if the uploaders of the system have many restrictions on how they will upload their files, make more diffilcult to find some kind of files??

What is the idea behind limiting both sides???? WOuldnt be a better idea to choose just one side and limit his actions??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.79.104.214 (talk) 22:31, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, you're right. But I don't see why you would pay at all, when there are things like SkyDrive and FileDen. flaminglawyer^c 22:46, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Or Mediafire... SF007 (talk) 00:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

@SF007, it seems Mediafire has a non-pro limit of 100 MB per file. Rapidshare is 200,I believe. However, it looks pretty good for files under 100 MB. Kushal (talk) 00:05, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

windows xp services

any way to turn off unneeded windows xp services programmatically?

You can stop or disable services using the sc command in the command prompt or by using the ControlService() [12] or ChangeServiceConfig() [13] API functions. As for the unneeded bit, I don't know how you can determine "unneeded" services. --wj32 ^t/c 08:41, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

There are lists online about which ones are really "unneeded" for 99% of users—there are a few in that list that can have a drag on the system that in many cases are totally unnecessary (e.g. services that only are useful if you are having someone remotely control your desktop, which most people never do or even know they can do). I recall there being something that allows you to disable services under the Account Management control panel? --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:22, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

November 10

PNG vs TIFF

I just want to make sure: when storing digital photographs in PNG and TIFF format, there will be no difference between the two right? Both will offer 100% lossless storage of the photos, but PNG files are smaller? If so, what is the advantage of using TIFF over PNG in storing photos then?

As well, when I burn either format onto a recordable CD or DVD, no data will be lost either right?

Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 00:13, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

PNG format can be lossy, it depends on your compression level. PNG can compress in a lossless way, but a standard TIFF will be totally uncompressed. For storage smaller would be better, but it could be easier to write a program to operate on a TIFF or bitmap. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:52, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

TIFF can use either lossy or lossless compression. To see what I mean, save an image inside Photoshop as a TIFF and a dialog box pops up asking whether you want to save it using no compression, LZW (like a GIF), JPEG, or ZIP. Most of the time, though, TIFFs are not compressed at all. On the downside, it's not a sure thing whoever you send a TIFF can view it. Windows is pretty good with them, though. One advantage of TIFFs over PNGs is that they support layers and animation! Many people don't know about that last feature of TIFFs.--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 07:22, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

PNG can't be lossy (unless you mean using a smaller color depth or something). PNG only offers deflate as a compression method (which is better than TIFF's LZW). So, if you really want to store photographs in a lossless format, then use that. I think TIFF supports more metadata tagging than PNG, but I don't really think you would need that anyway. However, for archiving photos, I would recommend using JPG at 99% or "100%" quality - lossless formats don't compress photographs well. --wj32 ^t/c 08:31, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

If he plans on modifying his photographs after he takes them, then he probably should save them in a lossless format, like BMP, uncompressed TIFF, or a digital negative. Every time you save a JPEG, the quality of the image is reduced. Once he is done modifying them, then he might save them as JPEGs if space is an issue. Personally, the only time I make JPEGs is when I upload to the web, since space isn't an issue on my HDD.--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 09:47, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

PNG is absolutely not lossy. TIFF is a bit of a crap shoot - it's a "wrapper" format that can encapsulate other formats and may or may not have added fields that some programs will ignore and others will use in hard-to-predict ways. You could easily have a lossy JPEG-compressed image inside a TIFF wrapper and not the lossless format you hoped you would get! BMP suffers from some of the same problems as TIFF (especially on non-Windows computers) and it doesn't have proper transparency - it's internal structure is a typically Microsoftian pig's breakfast of headers and subheaders with duplicated field that could contradict each other...URGH! I strongly recommend using PNG whenever quality is important. If quality isn't important and small storage space is vital - then use JPEG. If you have super-amazing "high dynamic range" photography (you almost certainly don't) then the RGBE format is the only game in town. All of the other file formats should pretty much "just die" because they don't really have advantages over intelligent use of PNG/JPEG/RGBE. The one kinda-sorta exception is GIF - which is in every regard a sucky format...but it allows a kludgy form of animation that's widely used on websites for small, simple, cartoony, animated/flashing/whatever images. SteveBaker (talk) 01:45, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

And just to make it clear because I don't think anyone addressed it yet, burning the pictures onto a CD makes no change to the file so it can't introduce any loss of data. Assuming the CD burned correctly ;-). Matt Deres (talk) 17:20, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Youtube

Do Youtube videos last just 3 years on the site? Because I can't find any pre-2006 videos on Youtube. JCI (talk) 00:22, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Keep in mind that Youtube was founded in only February of 2005. Acceptable (talk) 04:58, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Here's one from 2005. The #1 reason you are having trouble finding videos from before 2006 is that YouTube did not "take off" until late in 2005/early 2006, I believe, and then you have to factor in how many of that earlier, smaller pool of videos were copyright violations and other such things. As a result the odds are highly stacked in finding post-2005 content, and since YouTube gives you no way to search by date, that makes it all the more harder! I found the above one by searching Google Groups for posts containing "youtube.com" from 2005. It was actually harder than you think it would be -- as people were talking about YouTube then, but rarely was anyone linking to it. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 14:22, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

This is supposedly the oldest video on Youtube. - Akamad (talk) 01:23, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Information on CNC

I'm doing a research paper on CNC, and one requirement is a ridiculous amount of 4x6 index cards (54, to be exact). These cards are meant to contain all the information we cite from our sources. At only 20 cards, I've gotten all of the information I can possibly find. I've cited the only two books from my school's library that had any information on the subject, conducted a lengthy interview with a professional, and cited Wikipedia itself. This site is the only other Web site I've found so far to actually provide information about CNC; all the other sites have been forums for discussion or commercial sites. The local public library was closed, so I'm at a deadlock for information. Currently, I'm scouring CNC Information for what I can, and that isn't going to get me another 34 cards.

I need some online source of information about CNC. Anybody know of any sites?

And by the way, I posted this request here because CNC has to do with computing; anyone knowledgeable about CNC might know of a few Web sites for it, no?--The Ninth Bright Shiner 00:52, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Have you talked to your instructor? In either case, you may have wrote too much information on each notecard. Most instructors will tell you to put one or two key pieces of information on each card, rather than fill it up.

I hated these kind of research requirements for this very reason. I could craft a good research paper from 15-20 cards full of information, where I was supposed to have 60+ with a fact or half a fact each. Washii (talk) 03:23, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, yeah. I originally packed each card to the limit, but of course that didn't work. Currently, I'm placing bullets of information in sentence form on the cards, while not trying for them to be too lengthy. After one bullet, there's a blank space, then another bullet, etc. I get the feeling that only one or two pieces of information would be really fudging it...as if that's not enough, I persuaded my teacher to let met turn in my cards Monday (they were due Friday) for a reduction of 5 points from my total grade. And yet, over the weekend, I've found about two or three bullets of information. So I've pretty much lost five points for nothing. Oh, fate, why hast thou conspired against me?--The Ninth Bright Shiner 04:46, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't have any specific sites to point you to, but the terms NC and DNC (digital? NC) may lead to other sources. I'd recommend searching in combination with other terms such as "manufacturing". -- Tcncv (talk) 05:05, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I have no helpful hints for your quest, but I can say that you should start asking for help with projects before midnight on the day they're due. flaminglawyer^c 20:55, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Using old printers on windows XP

Are there printer drivers around for old dot matrix printers for Windows XP? For example the Epson mx-80 was widely copied, so a driver for this could work on many printers. I remember with win 3.11 there was a manual set up for printers where you gave escape sequences to get bold, italic etc, is there anything like that in XP? These printers could be parallel or serial connected. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:21, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Guess what I can answer my own question, the Epson MX-80 is still there, and aslo the generic printer, which I can set strings under properties. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:26, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Switching between soundcards

I have two soundcards on my PC (running XP), one M-Audio soundcard for recording, etc. and one for ordinary pc use (gaming etc.). I have to switch between these cards very often, so my question: Is there maybe software to easily switch between soundcards. Another solution would be to make icons on my desktop which would execute some (commandline) commands to make the switch to another soundcard for the output of audio. Does anyone know if there's a way to switch to another soundcard through the commandline? Emil76 (talk) 10:02, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I found QuickSoundSwitch, so this question is solved. Emil76 (talk) 19:18, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I can't sign in to MSN or get to msn.com

Other websites and programs work fine.

I tried ping msn.com and all 4 packets timed out.

I tried telnet msn.com and apparently there is a problem with port 23. The connection troubleshooter also identified "key ports" as the problem.

Now how do I fix the port? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.57.48 (talk) 13:59, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Run tracert and see where it gets hung up. It'll tell you if it's on their end, your end, or somewhere in between. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 14:23, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Times out after 5 consecutive Level 3 Communications IPs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.57.48 (talk) 14:44, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Search for someone's MSN skydrive

Me and my friend signed up for MSN live. and uploaded files on SkyDrive. Without knowing each other's homepage's address how can we access each other's sky drive. (without inviting each other to view folders) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Muhammad Hamza (talk • contribs) 17:06, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

This may seem extremely obvious and stupid, but you could just give each other your username/password. I don't recommend it, though. 75.66.48.112 (talk) 20:49, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

What company rates website builders

i have a business that needs a website with domain name,search engine etc.l am ignorant about the process and want to go with the best company that helps build websites for businesses and gets you a domain name,search engine,help with advertising etc.i would like to know about some company s that rate these types of company's to determine which will be best for me like consumer reports rates all sorts of things but not this.please help me. I am going in circles and getting nowhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.162.240.114 (talk) 18:33, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

It has to do with cost. It sounds like you want a publicity firm that includes Internet publicity. A web design company just designs a website and walks away, leaving you with the files and a hope that you know what to do with them. A webhosting company can host your website. There are companies that can do both. -- kainaw™ 19:45, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Since you have a business, I would advise hiring a web developer/designer. If you can get a good one, he will design a good-looking website and find somewhere for you to host it. If you don't want to hire someone, there are free website designs all over the 'net and gazillions of sites like these, along with lots of comparison sites. flaminglawyer^c 22:42, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Automated diagramming for Netware partitions/replicas

Now that Microsoft has killed Visio Enterprise Network tools, is there another tool that can semi-automatically map/diagram servers/partitions/replicas for Netware and eDirectory? Thanks in advance! --198.162.133.101 (talk) 19:11, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

windows games

Hi, my mom called me and is looking for this program on her old computer that she really wants. I don't even know if it is a program. It was on her desktop and I am told it may be an interface. She says it was a livingroom that also had a kitchen you could cook in and a gameroom that you could click on games on a bookshelf and then play them. Has anyone heard of this or even know if it's available out there or is there something like it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruthmetz (talk • contribs) 19:29, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

From a distant memory... Back in the Bob days, there was an experiment for Windows which made your desktop look like rooms, with a desk, file cabinets, bookshelf, and such. It wasn't popular and was killed off (with Bob) - probably to make room for Clippy. -- kainaw™ 19:43, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Some screen shots here APL (talk) 20:23, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

What is BOB and what is clippy? is there anything similar to this available? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruthmetz (talk • contribs) 20:24, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I honestly have no idea what Bob is, but Clippy (the Paperclip) is/was the default "helper" for Microsoft Office on Windows 2000. 75.66.48.112 (talk) 20:46, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Microsoft Bob was the somewhat predecessor of Office Assistant; Clippit or Clippy was the default assistant. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:46, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

More screenshots here. You can see the "family room" with the desk, bookshelf, and such. -- kainaw™ 15:19, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Definately Microsoft bob, I remember playing with it when I was a kid. 66.216.163.92 (talk) 02:07, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Need Excel fundtion help

I'm struggling with a nested IF statement in Excel, and would much appreciate any insight from the RefDesk. Can I actually upload a minispreadsheet for others to look at and work with? If not, you have to use your imagination :-)

Sample:

C	M	N	P
2001	100	0	Pay from NQ
2001	125	500	NQ
2001	275	0	Pay from NQ
2049	50	0	Pay from NQ
2049	100	0	Pay from NQ
2049	400	600	NQ
2049	50	0	Pay from NQ

We are computing client invoices from this data; this sample data contains two clients (2001 and 2049 in column C) who have seven accounts between them, one per row. Column M contains the "raw" number, which may or may not be paid from the account on this line. Column P contains text which drives the test conditions. (Other conditions exist as well, but this is the one that's making me crazy!)

The formula in column N represents this explanation:

• IF col P contains "Pay from NQ", the amount paid from this account is zero; ELSE
  • IF col P contains "NQ", the amount paid from this account is the sum of all amounts in M for this value of C; ELSE
    • (failing both of those conditions) N = M.

The IF-statements aren't really the problem, it's the SUMIF function that's proving obstinate. As far as I can get is:

=IF( P14="Pay from NQ", 0, IF( P14="NQ", SUMIF(M4:M24, C14=C$14), M14 ))

(P4:P24 comes from "Nobody has more than 10 accounts, so +/- 10 from the current row should catch them all")

Problem with this is I still have to go in and manually enter "$14" where needed -- I can't figger out how to parameterize or genericize this. C14=C14 doesn't do it! Any suggestions?

Thanks!! --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 20:20, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Fixed typo in formula --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 20:23, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not 100% certain what you are expecting to achieve so not sure if this is going to be right but it seems like you'd want it to be

=IF(D2="Pay from NQ",0,IF(D2="NQ",SUMIF(A2:A8,A2,B2:B8))) Where D2 = the 'p' cell you are assessing where A2:A8 = the range you are assessing to see whether or not it = the C-column in your row where A2 = the value you want to assess 'c' against where b2:B8 = the values you want to sum (i.e. the 'm' column).

I'm not sure if this is right as not sure what you are trying to achieve. Using the above code the code would result in '500' for the answer to the first row of data 194.221.133.226 (talk) 11:18, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

The SUMIF clause you want in, say, N14 is SUMIF(C:C, C14, M:M). This will sum the values in column M where the value of the corresponding cell in column C is equal to the value in C14. Copy and paste this up and down column N, and the C14 relative reference will be updated automatically. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Resolved

Gandalf, that's obviously a well-chosen handle. After I realized that C14=C14 was just incorrect syntax, I tried =C14 and "=C14". Who'da thunk that -C14-, no equals, no quotes, was a legal comparison expression!

Thanks! --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 21:01, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Numbering in NeoOffice

I can't get the hang of numbering in NeoOffice. When I start a main point, say '1', then press enter, it starts the next main point at '2'. All well and good up to now. But, when I put a subset of points in for '1', such as (1), (2), etc., when I try to start the next main point (which should be '2') it starts off at '1', again. Is there any way to sort this out? I have ended up doing it manually, with the pain of having to delete auto-numbering and auto-tab, etc., leading me to want to switch the damn auto-numbering thing off altogether. Which leads me to my next question. Is this possible, too? Can I switch it off completely (without using the little button AFTER the auto-numbering has already numbered back to '1')? This is really annoying sometimes, because half an hour later, I will start a new main point, and it will number itself at '4' or something else annoying.--ChokinBako (talk) 21:02, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Your second question first - if you turn it off completely, you would have to manually set the margins and stuff, which gets annoying after a while. First question - I don't know, I use MSOffice flaminglawyer^c 22:11, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I can't remember if neo-offic does this but usually when you are in a numbered-list if upon entering from 1 you get 2 but what you want is 1.1/ 1 (1) (or whatever) you usually just press 'tab' and it will indent the numbered list and automatically change to a sub-point rather than the next main number. That's how it works in MS Office anyways. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 15:02, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry i was being daft - it's the "increase indent" button you'd need to press. Here's a forum discussion about indents on Neo-office (http://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=6478&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=) 194.221.133.226 (talk) 15:08, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Using someone else's unsecured wifi

<request for legal advice removed>

Paypal = credit card?

From reading microlot's support's relevant palpal FAQs, I can't come to a conclusion about whether they will or will not accept PayPal as a method of deposit/withdrawal. [14], they say they only accept credit card/bank wire. [15], they say they accept a PayPal credit card. I have a Paypal acc, so I guess my question turns into: Is a regular PayPal account the same thing as a Paypal credit card? flaminglawyer^c 21:54, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

No. The PayPal Plus Credit Card is a credit card that the service PayPal offers. Like most of these "store" credit cards (e.g. Macy's Credit Cards, CostCo Credit Cards, etc.) it is a regular credit card (with a balance of credit you can take out, with interest rates, fees, etc.) except you get some sort of store specific benefit for using it (in the case of PayPal, you get "exclusive PayPal offers" and "Rewards"). It is mailed to you as a regular credit card. I think the reason they have a clarification regarding the specifically PayPal credit card is because they don't take PayPal—and they're just emphasizing that that doesn't mean they don't take the PayPal credit card (which is the same as any other credit card). They even bother to specify that it should have a Visa logo on it (making it clear that it's a real-deal credit card, although I believe the PayPal Plus Credit Card is a Mastercard, but whatever..). --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:15, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Subset symbol doesn't render on Wikipedia

How come the subset symbol doesn't seem to be working for me right now: $\subseteq$ --128.97.245.127 (talk) 23:35, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Server problems/general weirdness? When I view the image by itself it still doesn't work. flaminglawyer^c 00:46, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

It appears to require something following it. "<math> \subseteq </math>" yields "$\subseteq$", but "<math> \subseteq A</math>" yields "$\subseteq A$". The bug seems limited to this particular symbol. Others similar symbols appear to work correctly - for example, "<math> \supseteq </math>" yields "$\supseteq$". (I'll add a cross reference to the Math desk where it might get the attention of someone more familiar with the inner workings.) -- Tcncv (talk) 01:15, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Somehow that particular image was broken. A kind server admin deleted the broken one, and the image has been regenerated. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:33, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

November 11

Hacking into my hotmail account

I lost the password and secret question answer for my hotmail account and I don't have an alternative email to send the password to. How can I hack into my email? --124.254.77.148 (talk) 02:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, can not answer that even if it is your own. Some one may know, but I doubt they will tell you. Rgoodermote  02:35, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Just create a new account altogether. Take this as a lesson, try to remember your password and make sure secret question is hard to forget (but not easy to crack). And create an alternative account just to be safe. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 07:21, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

A similar thing happened to me a long time ago. Here are some alternatives:

1) If the username of your email account is not your real name, you can make your password to be your real name (provided you remain annonymous when sending emails). 2) If your username is your real name, make a secret question such as your grandma's middle name (or some other name which would be impossible to guess unless the person trying to hack into your account knew you really well). Then you can choose any password. Until you get used to this password, you always know the answer to your secret question so you can't 'lose' your account.

However, it is important to change you password every 72 days or so for security reasons.

Topology Expert (talk) 07:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure I believe that changing your password every 72 days is neccessarily a good idea. Changing your password is good if you can you pick a unique secure password every time. My problem with forcing people to change the password at short intervals is that people will resort to picking easy passwords or writing it down somewhere which is no good because the people around you could find it. (who I would suspect would be more likely than anyone else to have a reason to want to get into your account) As long as your computer security is good (i.e. no keyloggers etc) pick a more-than-ten character password with upper and lowercase letters with no dictionary included words, special characters, and numbers not all at the end, and just stick with it. As an example 3I.L1i4k1e5P9i2e --> I Like Pie minus the spaces alternating with 3.141592 (It's faster to type than it looks because you can type ILikePie first and then go back and type in the number skipping a space every time.) 152.16.15.23 (talk) 19:33, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I like that idea (I will have to try something similar).

But do not actually make the example password your real password (since it's already in public view). --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 19:57, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I actually came across that warning in some "what's a good password" guide somewhere (think it was Google). It sounded funny at the time, but I guess there are people who need to be told, just as there are people who need to be told "password" is not a good password Nil Einne (talk) 12:34, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

A fairly simple way to make a really good easy to remember password is to get two words you can remember and merge them, making one uppercase and one lowercase, then append your house number or the day of your birthday to the end. For instance WAFFLE, turnip, 25, which would make WtAuFrFnLiEp25. Appending a symbol to the end makes it even harder while still being rather easy to remmeber! 88.211.96.3 (talk) 13:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Take a 2x2 matrix that you can remember very well (equivalent to a four digit number that you know very well). Use the Hill cipher against a 'simple password' and encode it into a more complicated password. In this case changing your password every 72 days is not a problem. Keep the same 'simple password' (which should be a good enough password on its own that you can remember) and change your 'encoding matrix' each time. This should last for quite a while...

Topology Expert (talk) 13:26, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

SQL Help

Does anyone know what the syntax is for a CHECK clause in SQL? I found information about ranges (e.g., less than value x), but I need a CHECK clause (or any type of statement, really) that limits an attribute to five choices. For example, in the following statement, I create a table with an attribute named LetterGrade that can only hold the values A, B, C, D, and F. Here's what I have so far:

CREATE TABLE "Roster" ( 
   "LetterGrade" VARCHAR(1) NOT NULL CONSTRAINT "LetterGrade_Chk" CHECK (

In case you were wondering, it's not a homework question. Thank you for any help.--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 02:39, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Try something like:

... CHECK ( LetterGrade IN ('A','B','C','D','F') )

Check your documentation for the IN operator. You will find that it can also be used with a subquery that obtains a list of allowed values from another table. For example:

... CHECK ( LetterGrade IN (SELECT Letter FROM AllowedLetterGradeValue) )

By the way, it's usually not necessary to put double quotes around identifiers such as table and column names. They are only needed if the identifier contains special characters or matches certain language keywords. -- Tcncv (talk) 03:00, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

OK. Thank you, Tcncv!--Account created to post on Reference Desk (talk) 03:33, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Also, depending on the RDBMS you're using, you could avoid the explicit CHECK constraint entirely by declaring the column as an enumerated type. For example, in MySQL you could write:

    LetterGrade ENUM ('A','B','C','D','F') NOT NULL

For details, see [16] and/or the manual for your RDBMS of choice. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:21, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Omitting multicharacter postfix in a regular expression

Resolved

I cannot figure out how to build a regular expression that omits a multicharacter postfix. As an example, I would like to match exactly those strings that start with "error" and do not end with any of " not found", " expected", " handled", but matches all other occurances of "error". I would like to make a regular expression like error [^( not found)^( expected)^( handled)]. This does not work, because [] matches a single character.

Is there any way to do this with a regular expression?
Best regards
Søren 212.130.46.190 (talk) 10:46, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Just break it up into multiple matches, each separated with a |. The problem you will run into is that RegEx is not designed to look for something that is NOT there. Your better bet is to look for anything that matches what you don't want and ignore those. For example, if I were using PHP with preg_match, it returns "true" if I get a match. So, I can say:

if(preg_match("/^error.*/", $mystring) && !preg_match("/not found$|expected$|handled$/", $mystring)) ...

Then, the "if" logically matches every line where I didn't get what I wanted. Notice that I had to match error first, to only get those lines, then remove the lines I didn't want. -- kainaw™ 15:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This is called a negative look-ahead assertion. The exact syntax depends on the kind of regular expressions you're using — it's not a standard feature. In PCRE syntax (which is what PHP's preg_match() uses), you'd write "error(?! not found| expected| handled)". —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your answers, quite interesting. I think I will just settle for an easy variation of this approach: replace "(error not found)|(error expected)|(error handled)" with "", and search for "error". (I am using notepad++ to search, so I can't use your method directly).
Best regards
Søren212.130.46.190 (talk) 15:53, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Win XP: Sorting documents by page count

I have abou 60 word documents collected in a folder and I want to sort them by page count. I applied 'details' view to the folder and even found a 'pages' option, but it attributes only 1 page to each document which is inaccurate (so I'm guessing it means something else, maybe page files per object). Is there any easy way to do what I'm trying for without going in and counting the page numbers document by document? --Shaggorama (talk) 16:04, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

audio electronics

plz help i want some good (free)book or some comprehensive article on audio electronics,i mean about sound physics its implementation in electrical components and then their responses in circuits.it means a-z material on sound devices 116.71.180.15 (talk) 16:48, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

robots

i have searched a lot of robot sites but each of them have incomplete materials,is their any web that contains robotic projects with complete reports of concepts,devices being used,schematics,pictures. 116.71.180.15 (talk) 16:51, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

AVG deleted user32.dll!

Hi, I'm trying to restore user32.dll after AVG's last update considered it a trojan and deleted it. (You might guess that now Windows won't boot at all, and that I'm very pissed off right now; you'd be right.) The problem is that I followed the instructions to fix the problem here (under "False positive "user32.dll" (DB: 270.9.0/1777)") but it still won't boot up correctly. I don't know what I might be doing wrong. After the expand command, it says "file expanded", so it means it worked! My first guess is that I'm not selecting the right "windows installation" when it asks. I put 1, but is that correct?? Please help soon!! :( 190.157.120.42 (talk) 16:53, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

UPDATE (:P): I just noticed that the blue screen which said "can't find user32.dll..." now says "can't find winsrv". Now I guess I have to fix that, but how?? I tried doing the same as with user32.dll, assuming that winsrv is a dll too... but nothing. 190.157.120.42 (talk) 17:05, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

NEW UPDATE: I tried using the iso disc that they offered as an alternative but still nothing. It's been 4 hours. Please help. 190.157.120.42 (talk) 18:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

A lot of people had this problem. Try looking here: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/10/2319209 for help. They link to the fix and their may be helpful discussion below the story. 152.16.15.23 (talk) 19:15, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Do you have "T.V. Media"? [17] --wj32 ^t/c 06:23, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

css bug fixes for ie6 and 7

Hi I am relatively new to css and was going to buy a second book dealing with layouts...it kept going on about bugs in ie6, is this book irrelevant now with the advent of ie7?

any excellent sites on layouts that you know of?

thx. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.144.35.166 (talk) 16:58, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Huge numbers of people still use IE6—depending on what your audience is, how accurate your page must be, etc., that may or may not matter (at least 50% of the IE traffic that my sites get is still IE6, and IE in general makes up about 60% of all the browsers my site gets; I am not sure how representative that is but I get a fair number of random hits so that shouldn't be too far off the norm. Firefox for me is in 2nd place with about 22%). That being said, one should not, as a rule, bend over backwards to implement quirks to account for one bad browser. But sometimes it matter. I recently was working on a project that must look good on IE6 as well as IE7, Firefox, etc. (it has to be genuinely cross-platform in an environment where it is not appropriate for me to demand that my audience all use updated browsers), and was running into severe problems due to the fact that IE6 uses a non-standard box model for measuring widths (so sometimes my text boxes would be aligned, but often not in IE6). What I ended up doing was re-writing the code in a way that worked on all of them—there is often more than one way to get the same result, and sometimes one of the ways is more universally compatible than others. This approach is much more sane than making all sorts of special stylesheets and rules that are only implemented in one browser or another. If you are just making a personal site and don't really care about it looking bad for people in some browsers, then you can afford to not worry about it and take a stronger stand about people using standards-compliant browsers. If not—look for a workaround. But again, you ought not try and bend over backwards for IE6 with hacks and fixes—they often make the page very hard to maintain and can have their own unpredictable effects in browsers that are actually standards-compliant. --140.247.248.117 (talk) 17:45, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

All the above, and the fact that IE7 is still far from standards-compliant. If you're interested there's some good info here, and a list of all the IE positioning bugs on positioniseverything.net. Pretzels^Talk! 18:03, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Torrent help needed

Yo, so I'm working on the article Skinner's Room which is undergoing a GA review, but I haven't got access to the text of the story itself, which is very difficult to come by in physical form. However, a pdf of the text is listed as part of this torrent. I have a fried laptop and can't run torrent services except for from internet cafes. Is there someone with good torrent-fu who can tell me whether it would be plausible to download this torrent within say, one hour, at a standard European internet cafe? The torrent size is 32.34mb. Any help very much appreciated, the skomorokh 17:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

If you want the entire torrent it is well seeded. Should take a few minutes. But the story you want is 17.6KB, you can just select the single file from the torrent...the first piece you get would be the entire story. Should take a few seconds. ;) Louis Waweru  Talk  17:40, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Splendid! Follow-up question: what's the smallest (in mb) torrent client that would do the job? the skomorokh 18:01, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

That would be μTorrent. There are browser based clients in case you can't install things at the café...but I can't recommend one. Louis Waweru  Talk  18:10, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Ha! I tried Bitlet, which asked for the "metafile" and rejected the url above as input. the skomorokh 18:22, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

You have to actually download the .torrent file, and then open it with the client. The download link is on that page, or you can change /det in the url to /get. Louis Waweru  Talk  18:45, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, the url change fixed it. It's gone ahead and taken on the whole 32mb, though, at an average speed of about 100b/s (!). Thanks for your patience and assistance! 208kb out of 32.34mb, the skomorokh 19:13, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

A client with an even smaller size would be imageshack's online service.[18] Mac Davis (talk) 22:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Troublesome issue with a shell script

Greetings! In the following shell script, assume $2 is the name of a text file with each line within it containing the names of processes, and $1 is the name of a user on the local machine to email if the process is running.

tmp3=$(less $2)
echo $tmp3
for check in $tmp3 do
	result=$(ps -C $check | wc -l | LANG=C sed 's/\([0-9]*\).*/\1/')
	if [ $result -gt 1 ]; then
		echo "Process is running!" > /dev/tty
		message=echo $check is currently running'!'
		echo $message | mail -s $message $1
 	fi
done

Now, the issue I am having is with result=$(ps -C $check | wc -l | LANG=C sed 's/\([0-9]*\).*/\1/'). I am certain the command itself (that is, without a variable in the mix) works as intended, which returns a single number, then enters the if statement if there is more than one line detected in the process list.

However, upon trying to run it, the shell is stating there is a syntax error somewhere, and I just cannot see it. The complete error is below

[kes@fluffy stuff]$ ./shellScript 2 test.txt
ps ls init gnome-terminal syslogd
./shellScript: line 16: syntax error near unexpected token `result=$(ps -C $check | wc -l | LANG=C sed 's/\([0-9]*\).*/\1/')'
./shellScript: line 16: `       result=$(ps -C $check | wc -l | LANG=C sed 's/\([0-9]*\).*/\1/')'

Any suggestions on how to overcome this confusing issue would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Sincerely, Kesiana. 137.155.37.5 (talk) 18:02, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

The "for loop" syntax goes "for i in a b c; do body; done". Those semicolons can be replaced by newlines, but you don't have either. Also, you should use cat rather than less. --Sean 18:12, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Joomla, LAN, and WAN

HI,

I've setup a small portal using joomla on our lan (on a windows machine running AMP), whose computer name is \\server

when i set it up, the $mos config live site became: http://server/

It's been working well, but now i want to be able to access this outside our LAN, so i did the necessary port-forwarding on our router, and using a proxy, i can see the page, but the css / links are broken (I checked the source, and all references seem absolute. ie: css is linked as <link href="http://server/templates/madeyourweb/css/template_css.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />) so the page looks jumbled up.

Does any one know of a workaround to get our portal to show on both LAN and WAN?

TIA (ps, I've already posted on the Joomla Forums, but i know wp:rd/c peeps tend to be very sharp and quick) PrinzPH (talk) 18:35, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, why are the links absolute and pointing to "server"? Who or what was used to create the page? Either change them to relative links, or change the absolute links to use the external IP address or external hostname (if one exists). --71.106.183.17 (talk) 20:55, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Checking E-mail with Public WiFi

Is it safe to check one's email, hence entering a username and password, across a public wifi, such as one at a the side of a highway or a restaurant? Can a hacker potentially sniff out the password that I am sending across the web? Acceptable (talk) 21:52, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

It's generally not safe. Some traffic send over HTTPS should still be secure, but usually that is only used for the first sending of a password (and sometimes not even then). But anything else... it's not safe unless you are using a VPN. Even if you are using encrypted WiFi (e.g. WPA or WEP, the latter being extremely easy to crack incidentally), there's a chance the the router operator could be sniffing your packets before sending them on. With a VPN though everything is encrypted—no one can see your traffic. But otherwise, you're basically just sending things out in a way that anyone can see them. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 22:14, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah use a VPN if you have one; because I don't have a VPN account but have many SSH accounts, I tend to use SSH's dynamic port forwarding, which allows me to set my Internet applications to tunnel their traffic through the SSH connection. Many email systems these days have secure access though. I know that all the university email accounts I've seen have full HTTPS webmail interfaces, and they require SSL to be used with IMAP and SMTP when used with local email clients. Gmail has an option (Settings -> General -> Browser connection) that allows you to have it always use HTTPS. --128.97.244.146 (talk) 23:54, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

IMHO as long as your entire session is sent over HTTPS. (For example, GMail allows it. Go to settings.) Kushal (talk) 03:42, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Frankly I don't understand why there are still email systems that don't use HTTPS. There would be a big fuss if a bank's online banking website didn't use HTTPS. Yet there are hundreds of times more personal information in my email account than anything you can access on my bank account (they partially hide all the numbers and stuff anyway). --71.106.183.17 (talk) 07:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Wow. First things first. Security is important, but lets not be too crazy. Anytime you connect your computer to a network or the internet, it carries a potential risk of being hacked. It is (logically) likely that hackers will prey on public/unclosed networks more than private/secured networks - so the above is perhaps sound from a 'protection' perspective..the question is now - is that the only perspective? Ultimately - is it more important that you check your email (and open yourself up to a slightly increased chance of being hacked) on these public networks/less secure areas, or can your email checking wait until you are at a more secure network? Personally I would consider the slight increase in risk as worth it for the effort-saving gain of being able to do X now, rather than waiting. That doesn't mean there isn't a risk, just that you have to weigh risk against reward. ny156uk (talk) 15:31, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

November 12

Reducing restrictive NAT on wireless router

Both my PS3 and Xbox360 report that my Wireless b/g/n router is using a type of NAT (type 3) that could cause problems connecting to online games and chat. How do I change my router settings so it plays nice with my game consoles? --69.151.187.196 (talk) 02:10, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

It could be that you need to forward ports and/or enable UPnP on your router. --Rixxin 23:37, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, if your router has it, enable UPnP. It will save you many pains, as it essentially allows devices to forward ports as they wish. 24.76.161.28 (talk) 09:11, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Dell Inspiron 1501 Powerpack issues

If you're curious, I'm writing this on my brother's computer.

I've had my computer and its powerpack for over a year now. Today, I unplugged the computer from the powerpack and moved it into the dining room for a change of location. when it told me that battery was low, I brought the powerpack in and replugged it into the wall and the computer. I continued working, for a long enough period of time that the powerpack must have been working to keep the computer running. At the end of the session, I unplugged the computer from the powerpack and brought it back into my room. I hooked it up onto my printer to print my work. Realizing that that computer should be plugged in, I walked back into the dining room, brought back the powerpack, and plugged it into the wall and the computer. While it was printing, I left the room, and did not return until nightfall, a few minutes ago. I noticed that the printing job was unfinished, because the printer had run out of paper. Also, the computer was off. when I pushed the button to turn it on, it beeped three times and told me "WARNING! BATTERY IS CRITICALLY LOW. PRESS F1 TO CONTINUE." I did so, but there was not enough juice, and the computer soon shut itself back off. It was fully plugged in and everything, so I wasn't sure why it wasn't working. I moved the powerpack and computer into the dining room and tried it in the socket there. It still didn't work. I tried the socket in the kitchen. It still didn't work. In the past, whenever the powerpack was plugged into the wall, a little green light would turn on. These times, no light turned on. What's wrong, and is there a way to fix it? Alternately, if not, can I still get the rest of the printing job from the printer (I've refilled it with sufficient paper to finish the job). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.179.52.204 (talk) 03:14, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Depending on the size of the print job and assuming you haven't powered-off the printer, the rest of your document could be in the printer's memory. If an indicator light is orange or flashing, press the button to print whatever is still in the memory.

I'm assuming you have made sure the powerpack is connected properly (the powercord on my Dell is pretty stiff to insert in the powerpack). IIRC the "little green light" is on the PC and not the powerpack itself, so it could be a faulty powerpack (replacable from Dell or try eBay), or it could be faulty circuits inside your PC (not really replacable - sorry). If it's still under warranty, call Dell tech support - I was pretty pleased with their warranty repair service only a couple of days ago. Astronaut (talk) 06:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

IE6 "Active content" warnings, javascript permissions, blah

IE6 is "busting my balls" as they say. I am on a deadline to develop a product that will ship as HTML files on a CD that people can use (think of it as an online brochure, but off-line and more complicated).

The product uses extensive Javascript. It is mandatory for its functionality because it is offline. It has a javascript search engine and tree browser and all sorts of things.

This is fine in every browser I've used it on except IE6, which is still a bit too popular to ignore. IE6 has decided that it basically won't let the user execute javascript from locally hosted pages without lots of big yellow warnings that say "Internet Explorer has restricted this file from showing active content that could access your computer". Personally I'm dubious that Javascript alone can "access your computer" in a dangerous way, and think basically blocking all Javascript is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but anyway. That's the message.

I've tried using the "saved from url" trick that I've seen on some boards. It does not seem to be working on my testing setup (XP SP2 with IE6 on a virtual drive). For the life of me I cannot get IE to run this product correctly (Firefox is fine, Safari is fine, etc.).

Any suggestions? What are my options? Sometimes it doesn't even show the little yellow bar, it just lists it as an "error" that my page is trying to use Javascript. Really, really unhelpful. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 03:15, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Upgrade to IE7. Here's the link for you to download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9ae91ebe-3385-447c-8a30-081805b2f90b&DisplayLang=en . Personally though, I'd stick to Firefox. Seems more reliable in my opinion. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 23:13, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

The whole problem is that s/he's not the end user and so has no control over what browser will be used to access it. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 23:32, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

This page has some good ideas: http://www.winxptutor.com/lmzunlock.htm . You could change the extension to .hta or you could add change the registry settings to allow active content to run by default using a .reg file or the reg command.--Areateeth34 (talk) 23:41, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Ship a copy of FireFox on the CD. It's free - it works. Write in big, friendly letters: "If IE6 sucks for you - use the free copy of FireFox that we enclosed for your viewing pleasure". That way you have complete control - if your software works great with that exact version of that exact browser - then any kinds of 'support' issues you get that relate to browser incompatibilities can be fended off with "Well, you can always run the copy of FireFox we enclosed on the CD."...obviously you should still seek compatibility with as many browsers as possible - but there comes a point with some of the more ancient ones where you have to give up and get on with life. You could even dive into the Firefox source code and 'hard-wire' the thing to have Javascript always enabled and your 'front page' HTML file be the default page on startup - then make that version of FireFox autostart when they stick the CD in the drive. SteveBaker (talk) 00:34, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

There's really no need to do that. You can actually make a special browser inside Visual Studio using the WebBrowser control. You add your own buttons for back and forward and an address bar. But I'd just make the user run a batch file modifying the registry or rename the HTML files.--Areateeth34 (talk) 01:34, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

You could just put in a browsercheck thing, and if they have ie6, then make the page tell them to use the included Firefox. flaminglawyer^c 04:41, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Sharing the Program Counter

I have been studying for my PhD exam and I hit a question: "Can a thread share its program counter with its parent?" I know the answer is "no", but it got me thinking... Is it possible in any current popular operating system to have a thread create a pointer to the PC register? If so, sharing the pointer with the parent would be trivial. I can create a pointer to the PC register in non-threaded environments (I remember doing it on the Commodore 64). I haven't had any reason to try on any modern computer, so I don't know if it is possible. -- kainaw™ 04:16, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Really the only way to share the program counter is in a 'SIMD' type of machine - the GPU in your graphics card for example. But in any case - you can't take the address of a register...that's meaningless...so a "pointer to the program counter" doesn't make a whole lot of sense in a real, physical computer (maybe in a simulated one you could do that). You couldn't take the address of the PC register on the Commodore 64 - it was a 6502 CPU and there is no such mechanism. Perhaps the "program counter" used by the BASIC interpreter would have been shareable...because it's just an "emulation" of a notional BASIC-CPU. SteveBaker (talk) 05:30, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I think it may be possible in a virtualized machine where the CPU is virtualized also. That gets the registers into memory. Basically like the C64, which I mentioned. The current step (program counter) is all in memory. However, I just realized that I may have interpretted the question wrong. I think it is asking if a thread and parent can use the same program counter. That is obviously wrong since a thread can go off working one thing while the parent can continue working on something else. Of course, it could be read as asking if they can use the same register to store their program counter in when they are processing. That is correct - a single CPU will use the same register for all processes. -- kainaw™ 11:58, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, in a 'real' computer (not a 'virtual' computer or a 'simulated' computer) - the program counter is a single, unique specialised piece of hardware - it tells the computer where the next instruction is to be fetched from. Because the PC changes with every instruction executed - two threads using the same PC would have to run on different CPU's (different cores - at least) and they'd have to run in perfect lock-step. That's not a feature that x86-style hardware is likely to be able to do. One thread runs an instruction and bumps the PC to point at the next instruction - but the other thread probably wasn't executing at the time - so nothing much happens until the PC has been bumped a few more times. Then the other thread might run - but now the PC has moved by (say) a few dozen instructions - that thread would 'miss' the instructions that the other thread had executed. The entire concept is so utterly meaningless as to be almost beyond my ability to articulate the problem! It can really only apply to a SIMD machine where all of the separate 'cores' or 'CPUs' are locked together so they all execute the same instructions (from the same location in memory) in perfect synchrony. In a virtual machine (like the Java virtual machine) - it would be possible to make two threads run in this perfect lock-step - but I don't quite see why that would be useful. Worse still - unless you have the kind of specialised hardware that SIMD machines have - things like conditional execution is going to be very tricky - if both threads say "if ( x > 10 )..." and one thread has x==9 and the other x==11 - then one needs to have the program counter step into the 'then' part - while the other has to have it go into the 'else' part. At this point, sharing the program counter completely breaks any kind of rational programming paradigm. In SIMD machines (such as the shader processor in your GPU) all of the processor threads execute both the 'then' and 'else' clauses - and the hardware simply write-protects the memory and registers in any of the threads that are running instructions that they are not supposed to be executing because of the failure of a conditional test. SteveBaker (talk) 00:06, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Copy Protection

I have an old CD called TriplePlayPlus!Chinese that I dug out this evening and tried to run. It installs fine on Windows 98, but when I try to run it, the computer locks up. According to the task manager, something called CDCops ver 1.27B #3747 is Not responding. I've tried this several times in different ways, rebooting every time since there's no other way to get it moving again. I've also uninstalled and reinstalled it, with no success. Any ideas how I can get around this thing? It can't be the copy protection itself, since this is a legally purchased CD and it accepted the access code when I was installing it. Black Carrot (talk) 07:31, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

If you are running it on a newer version of Windows that might be the problem. The copy protection software may not be compatible with anything but Windows 98. The wonders of copy protection! Rilak (talk) 10:51, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

"It can't be the copy protection itself"—oh, if only it were true. In fact, the odds are it is the copy protection software, put in a new operating system, wigging out and preventing you, the guy who bought it, from using what you bought.

If you're really devoted to using it, I recommend using it with VirtualBox and a copy of 98, if you have one of those lying around. Otherwise... take this as a clear example of why DRM technology is actually extremely problematic for the honest consumer. --140.247.41.106 (talk) 16:54, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm running it on 98, I said so before. On XP it didn't even install. Is there a way to bypass the copy protection without hurting the software? Black Carrot (talk) 17:56, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes: Find a crack for the copy protection. Keep in mind that 1) doing so may not be legal where you live, and 2) cracks sometimes include viruses or other malware. --Carnildo (talk) 22:10, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Merging accounts on AOL

Is it possible to merge two accounts on AOL, so that messages will at least appear in the same IM window? Ideally, the merge would be transparent, so a person IMing me on one account would not know about the other. I say this because I have two accounts, one for real life, the other for the internet where I'm sometimes wary of giving out real life information. And I want status messages/etc. to appear on both. 68.63.171.112 (talk) 08:25, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. There should be a button (on the aim website or on the AIM client, I don't remember) that says Link accounts or something like that. After you do it, when you're on the AIM window, you can see both the acc's at once. I did it, so I know it works (or at least it used to work). And, like you said, I could message you on one acc and have no idea that the other is linked, or that you even have another acc. flaminglawyer^c 04:22, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Yep. It took me a good 10 seconds, but I found a link. (sign in before clicking) flaminglawyer^c 04:25, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Flash not cached

This page at "jedreport.com" starts off with embedded Flash from CBS. I find this chunk of a news show interesting and want to save it for future reference. (What else should I do with my monster hard drive?) However, the Firefox downloading add-on "DownloadHelper" doesn't see it, and more surprisingly it doesn't turn up in the cache: no item anywhere near big enough is in the cache directory as viewed with a file manager, and also it doesn't show up when I view "about:cache?device=disk" (as recommended in this page).

It occurred to me that the cache might just not be big enough at 120MB, so I tried increasing it to 300MB -- whereupon Firefox seemed to stop caching anything. So I brought the size back down again.

I wonder why I can't grab this Flash thing in the regular way (why/how it can not be in the cache), and what other way I can grab it. (I can choose among Firefox, Konqueror, Opera, Safari, Shiira, and even MSIE.) Tips? -- Tama1988 (talk) 08:53, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Random guess, but try using the download manager of your choice on this link: http://www.cbs.com/thunder/swf30can10cbsnews/rcpHolderCbs-3-4x3.swf. I haven't tried it myself though. Rilak (talk) 10:46, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

That file is surely just the "player", not the video itself. The variables of the OBJECT no doubt point to whatever the FLV video itself is: "http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ecbsnews%2Ecom%2Fvideo%2Fwatch%2F%3Fid%3D4586892n&partner=cbssports&vert=News&autoPlayVid=false&releaseURL=http://release.theplatform.com/content.select?pid=4riNJ7D8_f6jKqW60ntgY356PanH9YNB&name=cbsPlayer&allowScriptAccess=always&wmode=transparent&embedded=y&scale=noscale&rv=n&salign=tl". Feel free to disentagle if you are interested.... ---140.247.41.106 (talk) 16:57, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

there are shareware/freeware utilities that will grab and save a flash file. however, as everybody suggests, in this case it's absolutely likely that the flash is just the player of a video file. installing the newer versions of real player installs a popup in flash window players which sticks up a tab when you mouse over it, saying "download this video to real player" which works very well, if it's a real player video, which they almost all seem to be on youtube, etc. Gzuckier (talk) 18:02, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you all for your efforts to help. I got the impression that this URL (an XML file) might be the key. It's got obvious links to "DoubleClick" crapola, and among this also the link "rtmp://cp21928.edgefcs.net/ondemand/?auth=dbEdwdHa5apd2dBbyaCaqaPcHcEbnbnaCbj-bjg5G8-h0-buy-Gc zMjUog&aifp=v001&slist=video/_!/CBS_Production/882/79/60_Obama_1109%3Cbreak%3Evideo/_!/CBS_Production/8 82/79/60_Obama_1109.flv", which looks promising. (I've inserted two spaces in this to avoid the need for horizontal scrolling.) However, Mozilla doesn't know what to do about any "rtmp" protocol, and anyway there are entities in that URL [?] that resolve to angle brackets around "break", so only the last part, "video/_!/CBS_Production/8 82/79/60_Obama_1109.flv" seems to matter. I tried splicing that to form "http://release.theplatform.com/video/_!/CBS_Production/8%2082/79/60_Obama_1109.flv" but that brings a 404 message. I'm pretty sure that theplatform.com is the host, though, thanks to the mumbo-jumbo on that domain's top page, mumbo-jumbo that I only dimly understand but that seems relevant to video hosting for big-bucks corporations.

Some software like this sounds good; I wonder if there's an equivalent for some other OS. Time permitting, I'll explore all the pages [gulp] of this long but useful-looking thread later today. Tama1988 (talk) 03:31, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Having enabled Flash, and yeah, my link was the wrong one... Has anyone noticed that the video has an embed option with a link? I wasn't able to copy the link (Javascript problem on my side perhaps), but it might be worth a quick look. Rilak (talk) 08:39, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Columns in HTML tables

header 1
row 1, cell 1		row 1, cell 2		row 1, cell 3
row 2, cell 1			row 2, cell 2

Hi, if you want a table to have three even cells in the first row and two even cells in the second row, do you have to use colspan like in the example above? Is there a better way? Any help will be much appreciated. Thank you. --Kjoonlee 10:23, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Colspan is the way to go. Use CSS to set widths of each cell to get them exactly the way you want them. An alternative is to embed tables. Make the top row and bottom row a single cell. Inside the top row, add a table with three cells. Inside the bottom row, add a table with 2 cells. You may run into issues with cellspacing and cellpadding, but playing around with them will eventually get you what you want. -- kainaw™ 12:00, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd take Kainaw's second suggestion unless you have a specific reason to not use nested tables. Set the spacing and padding to zero (at least when you start) and then make changes as you see fit. COLSPAN always gets me into trouble, but YMMV. ;-/ Matt Deres (talk) 17:44, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Or you could set a colwidth="33%" thing, which works in wikitext and HTML. flaminglawyer^c 04:36, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

linking iphone to a different itunes account

What happens if, after linking an iphone to your itunes account, you sell it, and the buyer registers it to his itunes account? Does it wipe any data? thanks, 202.89.166.179 (talk) 13:20, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I would like to delete my Wikipedia URL

Madam or Sir:

Please let me know how I may delete my URL. // *****It's a wikipedia URL. I have admin access. **********//

Thank you,

Bill Motsenbocker removed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.184.211.125 (talk) 17:51, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Which URL do you need to delete and from where do you need it deleted? Astronaut (talk) 18:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

PS: These help and ref desk pages are highly visible across the internet and putting personal contact details on your comments is just inviting various spam-bots, crawler-bots and so on to send you even more junk. I have removed your details to protect your privacy.

Are you trying to ask how to delete an article on Wikipedia? See WP:Deletion process. -- kainaw™ 20:17, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Are you perhaps asking how to get your user account deleted? If so, see WP:Right to vanish. All you need to do is to put {{db-user}} on the top of your user page and eventually, your account will be deleted. (It seems odd that someone with admin rights wouldn't already know these things). This question was asked (somewhat differently) on the Wikipedia helpdesk - and referred here because it didn't seem (then) to be a Wikipedia question...O think it really is a Help-desk issue - but our OP needs to explain in more detail - and more clearly. SteveBaker (talk) 23:45, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

 This question sounds more appropriate for WP:HELPDESK

The helpdesk sent him here. APL (talk) 02:56, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

That is just because "delete the URL" makes no sense. -- kainaw™ 13:02, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Vista copy file missing "Do this for the next n conflicts"

When copying files in Vista and there is a conflict, it will show a dialog box asking you what to do. At the bottom it should show "Do this for the next n conflicts" but it is not showing up on my computer. Help? 118.93.12.200 (talk) 03:58, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

cross-vnc

screenshot of mandarin translator

Is it plausible to use 2 different VNC programs with each other? i.e., Bob's computer has RealVNC, and Bill's comp has TightVNC. Bob is at Bill's house fixing Bill's just-out-of-warranty Chinese toaster. He reaches for the instruction manual... and it's written in mandarin orange er, Mandarin Chinese. Bill is paranoid about viruses and whatnot, so he tells Bob not to use an online translator, but to use the Chinese translator that came with Bob's Vista Ultimate package. So Bob uses Bill's TightVNC client to connect to his own RealVNC server, to access his mandarin translator. Is that possible? flaminglawyer^c 04:13, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

All VNC client and server applications should implement the same core protocols developed for the original VNC implementation at the AT&T Laboratories in Cambridge. Later implementations may have extensions that provide different levels of control, security, compression, and encryption, but these extensions will should only be activated if the client and server detect compatible features in the other though some form of handshaking. If the extensions are not supported by both sides, operation should revert to the original protocols. Unless the server is configured to only accept connections from clients that implement certain extensions, any two implementations should work fine together. -- Tcncv (talk) 04:57, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

spontaneous connection combustion?

I recently (within the last 2 months) upgraded my Comcast internet service from 600 to 800 (I don't know what the numbers mean; presumably kb/s?). Since upgrading, my internet connection has been... how can i put it lightly... "on the blink." I'll be doing great with my fast new connection one second, then the next, I'll have the "page not found" button. The no-connection period can last anywhere from a few seconds to 10 minutes. I've noticed that it usually, but not always, happens during periods of high-use, i.e., downloading something or just going to a lot of different pages really fast. This can get really frustrating when I'm on Facebook, in the middle of a conversation, then I just get shut off. Or doing homework at 3 AM. flaminglawyer^c 04:33, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

But what was your question? -- SGBailey (talk) 09:06, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Check your connections, try resetting your router if you have one, bypass your router if you have one, and check to see what the modem is doing when all of this is going on. If all else fails, call tech support; there may be a signal quality issue (can also check the levels on many modems through http://192.168.100.1 if you're on the right subnet, but you'll have to look up how to interpret them). 24.76.161.28 (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 09:10, 13 November 2008 (UTC).

Are you living in an older house? We had a similar problem when our connection speed got bumped up, because the phoneline in the house is about 40 years old, and we solved it by moving the router closer to the place the phoneline enters the house. 88.211.96.3 (talk) 09:14, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

For SGBailey, my question is/was "Why is this happening and how can I stop it?", which has already been answered (but none of which have noticably changed my performance. I will add that I am not on a wireless connection, but I am connecting (with wires) through a router. So that means my cable cord goes to my thingy supplied by Comcast, and my ethernet cord goes from there to the wireless router, and another ethernet cord goes from my router to my comp. flaminglawyer^cwe will never forget 21:14, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

So you've done the router bypass and even the call to tech support? 24.76.161.28 (talk) 23:04, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Mac OS X: How Can I Stop Devices From waking sleep mode?

I have a MacBook Pro with Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger), I carry it with me almost everywhere. At home, at work, and on the go, I connect it with various devices. However when plugging and unplugging USB and FireWire devices, the machine wakes up even when the display is closed, consequently making it harder to wake the computer properly again. Sometimes I have to put my password in twice, and sometimes the "alert sound/flash" will occur once or twice afterword. Is there a way for me to disallow USB devices from waking my computer? There exists an option for bluetooth devices in preferences, but is there a thing for other wired devices? I want my Macbook to wake up ONLY when I either open the display or hit a key on the built-in keyboard. 199.165.98.15 (talk) 06:11, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

iMovie 08 Fast and Slow Motion

Could anyone tell me how to insert clips into an iMovie project in fast or slow motion? Specifically, I have a 7 minute clip of people drawing that I want to speed up so it's possible to see the image unfold rapidly and save the viewer the boredom of watching the whole 7 minutes. So far, I have heard I need a plugin, but am unsure if this is true.

Many thanks Lukerees1983 (talk) 07:48, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I seem to recall there being a little slider that lets you speed things up? A rabbit and a tortoise? I can't remember where it is though. But I think you can adjust the speed of clips. Note that an alternative, perfectly valid approach is to just cut the clip down—that's probably what a film editor would do. Cut it into smaller bites. If you make a few jump cuts it can give the "frenzied work" aesthetic just as well. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 13:46, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Turn off automatic loading

I am (reluctantly) using Microsoft Windows XP. Whenever I plug a memory stick into my USB port, the computer automatically loads all the hundreds of images from the stick. It seems to have mistakenly been told always to do this, but I never, ever, want it to do this. Can someone tell me how to turn off this feature please? I've searched the help files in vain. (I wish there was a magic switch that told every piece of software never to do anything until specifically instructed - sigh.)--Shantavira|^{feed me} 12:34, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Does this help? --Sean 14:31, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. That certainly ought to work, but it doesn't, even after rebooting the machine to try to make the setting stick, it still tries to download all the photos until I click "stop".--Shantavira|^{feed me} 17:21, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

help with seamonkey composer

OK, so I've downloaded seamonkey composer. I added my html text but now I want to see what the html would render as. How do I go about doing so? Thanks! --217.227.100.110 (talk) 20:09, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

PS:If anyone can recommend a better (free) html editor please do. :) --217.227.100.110 (talk) 20:10, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I suggest NoteTab Light, which is free, and pretty sweet. And it has a button to give a rendering of your text (you asked for it). I have only very recently downloaded SeaMonkey, and I'm still getting used to it myself, so I can't really give you any advice there. flaminglawyer^cnever forget 21:21, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I've played with a bunch of HTML editors - and in the end, the one I actually use is 'vi' (or NotePad if you're a Windows person) - in other words, "just a plain text editor". I find it's just easier to learn HTML than it is to fight to get HTML right through a tool that's trying to subvert my every move! SteveBaker (talk) 21:35, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

nvu has been useful to me, even though it's an abandoned project. --LarryMac | Talk 22:11, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean. How did you "add your html text"? SeaMonkey Composer is a WYSIWYG editor, so usually (in Normal mode), you already see and edit essentially what it renders as. You can also use the Preview mode and it will actually render using a browser rendering engine. You can look at and edit the source in Source mode; is that where you "added your html"? I hope you didn't just type HTML into the normal mode.

I typically use KompoZer as my editor; it is an updated version of the abandoned Nvu, which is itself based on Mozilla Composer / SeaMonkey Composer, so the interface and stuff should be similar to what you see in SeaMonkey Composer, but with more features. For more alternatives, you can check out Comparison of HTML editors. --131.179.33.130 (talk) 22:44, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

fastest, lowest-footprint version of Opera browser (no javascript)

So I'm on this like 600 megahertz computer with like a 4 MB graphics card. I installed Windows XP on it and Google chrome works great, and acceptably fast even at this speed. But Google chrome doesn't have a way to disable javascript, and opening dozens or hundreds of tabs is too slow.

So I'd like to run Opera with scripts and plugins disabled at the same time. But the newer versions seem to have way more overhead, like just a single page, all the scripts turned off, can give it a 36 megabyte memory footprint. So I'd like to know if I'm really getting speed for all that memory usage, or just more features? In sum, which verison of the Opera browser is fastest, most lightweight, when all scripting, plugins, etc, are disabled? I can't find any current benchmarks. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.199.126.76 (talk) 20:20, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

No benchmarks, but I've run Opera 5 just fine on a 400MHz computer with 128MB of RAM. You might also try Opera 6. --Carnildo (talk) 22:17, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Recursive Functions in Matlab

Do you know how i would write a function,

function out = gcd_rec(a,b)

where out is the greatest common denominator of a and b, two intergers, where a > b? Thanks, Julia Millon169.229.75.128 (talk) 20:32, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

See Euclidean algorithm. --Sean 20:39, 13 November 2008 (UTC)