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March 1

change camera drivers

I have a HP Pavillion laptop with an integrated webcam, however I really like Dell's webcam center. I was able to download and install the dell webcam center but the webcam driver isn't supported. Where would I get one that is supported and how would I get thoe drivers to replace the ones currently installed? --omnipotence407 (talk) 00:27, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Since your webcam is integrated, it is, of course, and HP webcam. An HP webcam can only work with it's own drivers, and it's own software. Software from different vendors, Dell in this case, will not support the webcam in question. The exact same thing applies to the drivers installed for the webcam.

So, in a nutshell, your stuck with HP's webcam software, and essentially the only way to bypass this is to download a freeware webcam application, or switch to a different operating system, such as Ubuntu. Sorry. Until 01:56, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Manually backing up Hard Drive

I want to back up my Vista and XP machines. Suppose my computers each only have 1 hard drive (let's call it C: in both cases), is it sufficient to just double-click on the hard drive in "My Computer", hit Select All and copy all into my external hard drive? Acceptable (talk) 00:54, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Um, well this depends on what you want to do... Do you want to just back up all of the files on the backup drive itself, or do you want to make the external drive bootable? Until 01:51, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

If you either want to do the latter or want to make a copy within a backup drive that you can later turn into a bootable disk, I highly recommend Clonezilla. (Alternatively, you may feel reassured by a product coming from a conventional corporation, and want to shell out 70 bucks for Symantec "Norton" Ghost; it won't actually be of any additional help, but maybe we should all do our bit to save large corporations.) Clonezilla will ask you lots of questions that you probably won't be able to answer; just hit Enter for the default choice every time. Well, almost every time: don't become too zonked out by the process, as although the program can "read" your computer it can't read your mind, and a couple of the questions ask you what you want to do (back up, restore? to and from a drive or an image?) and of course you have to get those right. Hoary (talk) 04:08, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

If I'd like to just back them up, bootability is not a necessity, just doing what I described is adequate right? EVERY file from my computers will be copied over? Acceptable (talk) 04:20, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I've been running a WinXP program called Drive Snapshot (www.drivesnapshot.de) which claims to address the low-level issues in copying a complete operating system. It allows you to back up while doing other work. According to the company, you can restore a complete, runnable system from backup (including the OS), though luckily I've not had to test that. Drive Snapshot saves a 40 gigabyte XP system to an external hard disk in about an hour. (Both Drive Snapshot and Ghost cost some money, order of $70.) I would not be confident that the simple method of a 'Select All' on the C: drive would do what you want. What happens to files that are in use by the OS? Older backup programs would choke on anything that was in use when you tried to copy it. EdJohnston (talk) 05:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Clonezilla will do what you want, and it will do it for no money. However, you won't be able to do any other work while it is at work. (Incidentally, I'm surprised by your desire to copy every file but lack of interest in bootability from the result; why else back up every file?) -- Hoary (talk) 05:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

To be a little more specific here: generally speaking, you can't just copy the files of a piece of Windows software to another machine and expect it to work. So, typically, unless you're creating a restorable (and bootable) backup of the entire hard drive, it's not very useful to copy anything except the files that contain your work and other files you use for business or pleasure -- typically, the "My Documents" folder and its equivalents on the computer. The rest of the files tend to be largely useless, because the majority of the software on that hard drive won't be much good without the Windows registry entries they require to work. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 08:51, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Well put. Though if copyright issues didn't stop me, I'd grab some of the fonts too. Hoary (talk) 10:28, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure, there may be other things. Browser software bookmark files, your mp3 collection, if it's not under My Documents, game saves, that super secret porn stash... stuff like that. But the point still stands. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 12:37, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

If the OS is running at the same time, you will almost certainly encounter locked files. Copying files to a set of DVDs or external drive will stop dead when it encounters a locked file, leaving you with a big manual job trying to decide where it has got to in the copy process. As Captain Disdain suggests, just copying "My Documents" (XP)/"Documents" (Vista) and some other choice bits that you can't replace or recreate easily, is probably the best way (and it's smaller too, so it might go quicker and it might fit on one DVD). Oh, and don't forget to backup your email files either. Astronaut (talk) 20:20, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

If you're doing a backup in case the drive dies, something like Norton Ghost (or some free replacement) works well. You can also try doing a bit-for-bit copy using a *nix utility like dd, which is also very free and very straightforward. Shadowjams (talk) 08:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

CSS hover

What CSS elements of divs can be changed with the :hover thingy? I tried to change a bunch of things (see testing page; the ads aren't there by any decision of mine), but all I can see that actually changes is the size of the div. What else can you change? (I'm trying to build a website completely without Java and Javascript; I realize that those would make this easier) flaminglawyer 01:29, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Technically, you should able able to change any property of the element using any selector. In practice, there are always a few slips for each browser, especially Internet Explorer, but it's mostly for very obscure usage of CSS. There are two problems with your code, though, here marked in bold:

div:hover {background color:gray; border:5p solid blue; color:white; height:20%}

It's background-color, with an hyphen, and "p" is not a valid unit, so it is ignored. Use pt for points. — Kieff | Talk 01:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, I knew that, just typos... Thanks, my hope in CSS is restored. flaminglawyer 01:45, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

IE is the big difficulty with :hover. It supports it on nothing except anchor (a) tags if I recall. If you are clever about it, you can get a lot of mileage out of the anchor tags, but it is not straightforward and can lead to some somewhat nasty nesting of things. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:59, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Format a disk that refuses?

I'm using WinVistax64 and detected a diskerror when TrueCrypt refused to encrypt my device. CHKDISK comes up with nothing. It won't format with the right-click+format guide, so I tried "format E:" in cmd (as admin), but it came back with something like "You are not allowed to format this volume". I am the only user and admin. I formatted another drive today as well, w/o problems. If you know a solution - great! I have no idea what it could be, since I've never seen anything like this before. Also, as a quick fix, do you guys know any bootable CD's or software that would allow me to format it as NTFS? Thanks in advance! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.231.234.120 (talk) 02:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Did you right-click on 'Command Prompt' and select 'Run as Administrator' to open cmd.exe? If not, do that, and then issue the format command.(Nevermind that, I apparently can't read) Also, I'd suggest trying to run a 'chkdsk e: /r /f' before trying a format. It may tell you how much of the drive has gone bad (sector-wise). (Washii) 63.135.50.87 (talk) 07:31, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Almost any bootable OS CD will allow you to format the drive (not necessarily to NTFS); at which point Windows will most likely jump at the opportunity to format an "unformatted" (read "non-windows-formatted") drive. It'll take a little longer to format it twice, but this way you aren't relying on some reverse-engineered code to NTFS format your drive. – 74  13:20, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

— Ched ~ ^(yes?) 14:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC) ← <* wonders if 74 is making an indirect reference to the good old "Partition Magic" disk *>

<* 74  disavows all knowledge of Partition Magic, citing this interview instead at 15:11, 1 March 2009 (UTC) *>

OP here, tried to format via the Vista DVD. Told me (after reaching 100%) that one sector was "bad". Then it said that the first and second (=all) NTFS-boot-sectors were unwriteable. Format Failed. Now what? 81.231.234.120 (talk) 18:04, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps now would be a good time to replace your failing harddrive with a new one? – 74  18:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

It's 6months old, could it be failing already? Keep in mind that it worked fine before I tried to encrypt and format it.... 81.231.234.120 (talk) 20:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

While not impossible it would be rather unlikely. Perhaps windows is merely confused. You could indeed try 76.167.241.45's suggestion below to NTFS format it using Linux. If that doesn't work, you could try formatting it in Linux with some other disk format, then try reformatting it as NTFS in Windows. If that still fails, it's time to replace the drive. – 74  22:21, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Pretty much any Linux LiveCD will be able to format it as NTFS. You can run "mkntfs" from the command-line, or use graphical programs like QtParted and GParted if available. SystemRescueCD is a good LiveCD which includes GParted and other rescue tools. Knoppix 5 is a good LiveCD which includes QtParted. If you want a more dedicated CD, GParted has a GParted LiveCD. --76.167.241.45 (talk) 21:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Firefox bog

As my link to the past or whatever, I still sometimes use one computer that has Windows (specifically, Win 2k). For a long time I was using Mozilla ver 0.7 or thereabouts on it; this seemed a fine program to me. Then I upgraded to Firefox ver 0.92 or so; this seemed slightly better. Last week, having at long last broadened the band to this computer, I thought that I should kowtow to "virus" hysteria etc via all the "security enhancements" of the latest Firefox. (Also, my beta version of Firefox did have minor annoyances; for example, worldcat.org consistently made it crash. And I even thought I'd read somewhere that newer versions of Firefox ran faster.)

So I upgraded to Firefox 3.0.6 (as of a couple of minutes ago, still the latest). But what a slug this can be! Some days, it's OK. On others, even typing a message such as this is tiresome, as it can't keep up with my typing. When this happens, if I close it down completely (and check in MemTest that none of it lingers) and reopen it, it's often as slow as it was before.

Right now, it's open in a different window. MemTest reports that it's using 56kB of memory; which I don't suppose is excessive. In order to type this, on the selfsame computer I'm right now using Opera 6.03 (yes, your grandfather's Opera; I think it dates from 2002). It's fine; no drag at all. So all in all I don't think the computer has got any malware.

As far as I can remember, I've plugged in no plug-in or extension. (I don't even have Flash.) What stunningly obvious factor might I have overlooked here? -- Hoary (talk) 03:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

What kind of websites are we talking about? Do you have anything open (even in another tab) that's super-AJAXy (like Gmail or Google Reader)? They can sometimes really bog firefox down on low-performance computers (I've frequently noted that on my Eee PC running Ubuntu, Google Reader will spike to 100% CPU usage after using it for a while, bogging the whole browser down). Or does this happen if you only have relatively light-weight pages open (like Wikipedia articles).

One thing you should definitely do is to start monitoring your processes. Install Process Explorer and have it running in the background, it'll give you a little graph of CPU usage in the system tray. You'll start to notice what behaviors that bring the browser to a creeping halt (or if it even is the browser at all. it's possible that it's some other program messing with you). BTW, when you said it takes up 56 kb of memory, you really meant that it takes up 56 mb of memory, right? Because at no point in the history of any universe has firefox taken up that small amount of memory.

I would recommend you install Google Chrome (as it is known in all the lands for it's amazing swiftness), but I don't know if it works on Win 2K. Probably doesn't.

My best guess is that your computer is simply old (btw, what specs do you have?) Software from 2002 is obviously going to be running faster, because it assumes that the hardware it's on is also from around 2002. Your computer may simply be too slow for the latest version of Firefox. If that's the case, there's no shame in just using the version of Opera you have that works (but for God's sake, don't use IE 6!) Belisarius (talk) 09:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, peoples. Er, yes, not 56kB, I meant 56MB. I don't remember the specs of the computer or even how to look them up; of course it's primitive by 2008 standards and it has 192MB of RAM. It's a curiously durable laptop, and since its screen is tolerable even by today's standards and its keyboard is far better than any other I remember trying (not that my experience here is wide), I'm in no rush to get rid of it. (When it does eventually conk out, I plan to replace it with something running Debian.)

No Gmail, no Google Reader.

However ancient the computer is, it's easily good enough to run Firefox ver. 0.9.2 or whatever that was. And no offense to the hundreds of people who've together put thousands of hours into improving Firefox since then, but I see little change to the program beyond increased stability (good!), increased prettiness, and even more desperate attempts at URL completion; there's no obvious reason why it should be slower.

The sluggishness is very localized. I'm using Firefox now, and as I type this autoreferring sentence, it's fine. But when I go to type in the "Edit summary" box of this very same page, I type ahead of what I see -- which doesn't matter, but it's disconcerting (and I'd certainly never experience it in the beta).

I know that WP isn't a RS, but for what they're worth its articles say that neither Chrome nor Safari runs on Win2k. Perhaps K-Meleon, said to be slimmer than Firefox, is for me. Or, after I've treble-checked that it won't zap ver. 6.03, perhaps a recent Opera would be the thing. -- Hoary (talk) 10:21, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You might try disabling javascript and see if the performance improves; I've seen any number of sites that bring my browser to a crawl with poorly-formed javascript. Beyond that, there are a number of features that theoretically could be the source of the slowdown, many of which are controllable using about:config. You could go down the list disabling everything you don't need and see if the base performance improves. That being said, it is certainly possible to install and run multiple copies of Opera (just make sure to choose a new install directory). – 74  12:33, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Those are good ideas all. I'll try them. Consider the matter "resolved"; thank you. -- Hoary (talk) 12:56, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

Restoring deleted files

I have an old Windows 2000 laptop that I recently dug up. It was reformatted about 5 years ago and I haven't used it since. Is there anyway I can retrieve/restore these reformatted files? I have not written anything to the hard drive since I reformatted it 5 years ago. I recall that there are software out there that will do the trick. Can anyone recommend one for an old Windows 2000 Pentium 3 machine? Acceptable (talk) 04:33, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

What filesystem? --76.167.241.45 (talk) 09:53, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I think Windows 2000 uses NTFS. -- SGBailey (talk) 12:22, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd probably try the unformat command with the disk you did the format with first (old-school, may not be an option with 2K). Norton Utilities circa mid-1990's had a direct disk access disk editor (also old-school, and for techs only). I'll see if I can find the website for the Restore program I have. b-back-shortly. — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 14:32, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

This works well: http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/ --Wonderley (talk) 14:46, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

YEP ... that's the one, know I have it in my little toolbox somewhere - just couldn't find it that quick. Good deal Wonderly! — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 15:54, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

If it was a partition issue on top of the formatting, try gparted. It does really well at reconstructing destroyed partitions. If NTFS was reformatted over it in the same spot, I think you'd lose the NTFS tables (since it would put them at the same places) (although could be wrong), and so you'd need to do the more labor intensive file-carving. There are a few good file carving utilities out there, so start looking at that route. Shadowjams (talk) 08:25, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

250W PSU and a new Video Card

Hi all. I was wondering if you could recommend any half decent video cards that would work with a 250 watt PSU. I have a HP A6632F with 4GB RAM, 2.4GHz E220 DuoCore processor, and Vista Home Premium. This computer uses PCIE 2.0 x16. I used to have a ATI Radeon 9800XT for my old HP (200W PSU), and I liked it quite a bit. I'm hoping for something a bit better than that, but an equivalent would be okay, I guess. I'm not sure what else in the way of information I should provide, so feel free to ask. Thanks in advance, --AtTheAbyss (talk) 04:52, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I see that nobody has recommended such a graphics card yet, and I won't either. You've got a pretty good machine, I wouldn't recommend spending money on a bottleneck-esque video card. I'd recommend the 8800GT as good bang-for-the-buck, but you'll need a PSU with at least 400 watts. But if you're going to purchase a new PSU, perhaps future-proof it a bit and get some more wattage. Useight (talk) 20:18, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree - given the amount you're going to spend on a graphics card - it only makes sense to buy a decent power supply and not let such a trivial thing limit your choices. 250 watts is hopelessly inadequate these days. Even if you find a card that'll work - it'll be slow and nasty - and the power supply will run hotter and fail sooner. Then you'll end up paying for a new power supply - and still be stuck with an unnecessarily slow and nasty graphics card. Better to upgrade the power now and have a free choice of which card you can use. Then you can look for the best deal without being limited to a small range of cards. SteveBaker (talk) 03:36, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm. The way the economy is I'm not sure I'll be able to afford a new PSU as well as a new graphics card anytime in the near future, although you both make valid points. The reason I brought up my ATI Radeon 9800XT is because I was able to play battlefield 2 and call of duty 2 (both released in 06) even though the card came out in 03. I was hoping I could find an older card with that kind of staying power. I plan on going into the military soon, so I don't need something that can play games released last year, this year, or next year. I'm just looking for something that can play BF2 and CoD2.--AtTheAbyss (talk) 04:25, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Konqueror, Firefox and openSUSE

Earlier I was updating the Kenn Borek Air article. This involved going to Transport Canada's database and searching for the aircraft registered to Kenn Borek, which gave me a list of 38, with 15 to a page. In Firefox I seem to be stuck on page 1, clicking on the links for page 2 or 3 just reloads page 1. If I use Konqueror I can look at each page but the "common name", "serial number" and "owner regist. since" fields are all blank, with that information on two lines just below the "return to search" and above the "38 matches found" and looks like "Beech B 42 1992-12-03 Dehavilland 311 2000-10-11 Beech BB 7 1992-09-17..." Any ideas why that is happening and how to solve it. By the way it's not a problem with Firefox in Windows. I was able to work around it by clicking on "printable version", so it's not a major problem but it is annoying. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 08:21, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The page is using IE-specific javascript. Specifically, it is manipulating an object named 'frmsubmit' (e.g. frmsubmit.action), where "frmsubmit" is the name= of a <form>. Both js and css (which was evidently an afterthought) is quite amateur.

IE5.0/Wine saves the day; I'll post the contents of the list to your talk page. -- Fullstop (talk) 09:51, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I missed the bit about you already having it. -- Fullstop (talk) 09:55, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. At least I know now that I can't cure it. And I fixed my error above. Just went to work and checked it with Windows to be sure and it doesn't work. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 11:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

When this happens - it's very important that as many people as possible complain to the webmaster at the site. Very often the people who do the job of running these sites have drunk the Microsoft cool-aid and believe that all other browsers are irrelevent. Getting a decent volume of complaints is the only thing that can prevent that. SteveBaker (talk) 03:22, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Don't know why I didn't. But I have now. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 06:56, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Blackberrys, Outlook and Exchange

Hello....what are the different options for connecting a Blackberry to an Exchange Server? There's Web access via a browser, and OMA which I believe is also done via a browser. Is there not a Outlook client that runs on a Blackberry? I keep running into OMA, which I don't think is a client in itself. I don't have a Blackberry here to check and I need to make some recommendations...unfortunetly I'm not super fluent with those devices...69.180.160.77 (talk) 18:12, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Time Zone Software for OS X For Scheduling Appointments

I often need to schedule phone calls in different time zones. While the dashboard world clocks are great, they only tell me what the time is now in a given city. Is there any software for OS X where I can enter any time (e.g. 8:00AM in two weeks) and it will show me when that time is in selected cities?

Thanks --Grey1618 (talk) 18:24, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

MoWeS to Real Server

I have installed MediaWiki onto my flash drive (as a wiki on a stick), as part of MoWeS. That was recommended to me here That includes Apache, PHP and MySQL. Now I am wondering how I would go about turning that into an actual website. I know I need to buy a domain name, like at GoDaddy. What else would I do? Thanks, 99.224.117.66 (talk) 20:53, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You'll need to explain more about what you really want. If you want your MediaWiki install to be used by people over the internet (and not just inside your school or office) then you 're really best to get a web hosting package and install MediaWiki etc. there. While you could host it on a regular home machine, you'd need to use Dynamic DNS or get your ISP to give you a static IP address - and even in that case, I don't know why you'd want to have the software on a USB stick. I'd have thought the only reason you'd install someotng on MoWeS is for purely personal use, with you the only person accessing it. 87.113.100.227 (talk) 21:17, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

SOrry, I should have said that I want to move it off the flash stick. I would like for it to be available over the Internet, to anyone. I had heard about Dynamic DNS, but wasn't sure. I am pretty sure I have a static IP address, as I have the same one now as I did in the previous post (is that correct?). I would use my home machine only to save the costs of using a web-hosting service. Thanks, Genius101^Guestbook 21:42, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You can get some very cheap hosting solutions, from people like DreamHost and GoDaddy; remember that hosting it from your desktop machine means that a) that machine has to be on all the time (24/7/365) burning your electricity and warming your home. And if that machine needs to reboot for software updates, or because it's crashed, or runs slow because you're playing GTA5 on it, then the web service suffers. Worse, that A in ADSL stands for asymmetric - your upstream is much much slower than your downstream, which means that only a few visitors to your site can exhaust your upstream bandwidth and make your site very unresponsive. Hosting centres, by contrast, have high-bandwidth symmetric connections, so they're not handicapped in this way. Now all of this is fine if you're the only user of it (like you're just connecting home when you're elsewhere) but if other people are going to use it they're going to be disappointed in anything that's hosted in your home. If you really still want to host at home, then you'll need a guaranteed static IP address (you rarely get that without asking for it explicitly, and paying extra) or a dyndns (or the like). Then you buy a domain and have your hosting company set their name servers to point to your static IP. Then someone can access your machine at home as easily as if they were in the next room - including all the ports you left open and the services you didn't disable (which makes security a real headache). 87.113.100.227 (talk) 22:12, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

After reading that, I think that I probably will end up going with the paid hosting services. It's just a lot easier. Thanks a lot for your help! Genius101^Guestbook 22:45, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

As for transferring it, if both your stick and the server are using MySQL, you can use a tool like phpMyAdmin to transfer the whole database in one big step. I don't know what other complexities are entailed in a MediaWiki data transfer, though. (Also, paid hosting is pretty cheap, on the whole, and worth it.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:02, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

What is the best web browswer for Windows?

I've been trying to figure it out for a while now. IE 8 looks promising, and it may be even more secure than the other browsers. Opera has always been an underdog favorite of mine with lots of innovative features. Firefox is thrusted towards the top because of its ability for extensions and add-ons. I've never liked Safari, but Safari 4 seems and sounds to be really good. What do you guys think is the best web browser for Windows? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.117.46.229 (talk) 21:02, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Notice at the top of the page: The reference desk does not answer requests for opinions... Do not start a debate; please seek an internet forum instead. --76.167.241.45 (talk) 21:11, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Of the browsers you name, IE has been (for years now) the slowest, buggiest, least standards-compliant, and overwhelmingly least secure browser. Alleged improvements have always been in the next version, whatever than version will be, but it's consistently failed to catch up. Of the others, Firefox has the advantage of lots of extensions, Opera tends to be a bit faster and a bit further up the standards curve. Safari is perfectly good, as is its cousin Google Chrome. Beyond that it's a matter of taste; there isn't a "best" out of Opera/FF/Safari/Chrome. 87.113.100.227 (talk) 21:13, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with that. IE7 is loads better then Safari and to a lesser extent Chrome in most regards even though it's a lot older. And there are a lot of people who share my view, Apple products on Windows are often lambasted. I'm not even convinced Safari is more secure [1] [2] beyond the fact no one targets it due to the tiny market share. Nil Einne (talk) 05:30, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

You may also be interested in Comparison of web browsers and the bunch of comparison articles linked in its see-also section, including Comparison of layout engines (Cascading Style Sheets). 87.113.100.227 (talk) 21:24, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Without any doubt: Google Chrome. It is fast, stable, modern and has a simple and non-ugly UI. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 22:19, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

And we were doing so well at maintaining neutrality (well, except for IE, but that's quite understandable). – 74  22:25, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

My response was neutral, because 71.117.46.229 didn't ask "What browser is the best?" but rather "What browser do you guys think is the best?". There is indeed a subtle difference. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 22:55, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

None of these programs costs any money. Unlike operating systems or indeed plenty of free-as-in-speech-or-beer programs (such as R) for very different uses, getting acquainted with them requires a trivial amount of time of time and effort. Therefore experimentation is free in all senses. Further, it's obvious that what people prefer will depend on their own, well, preferences (notably, on what they're already used to). So why ask? --

I think it's all a matter of opinion - there are features in each that others lack - some people need JavaScripting speed - others need cross-platform compatibility - others want loads of plugins...who knows what else? But if you have a Windows PC, you can download pretty much all of them for free - they don't interfere with each other - you can have all of them installed at once. Play - enjoy - pick your favorite. Mine happens to be FireFox - but your mileage may vary. SteveBaker (talk) 03:11, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I personally prefer FireFox with IE7 a close second. My main gripe with IE is the way it handles content you've typed in (like this) that is it doesn't save it very well so if you visit another website and come back, it's liable to be gone (very annoying when I compose a long response and lose it). I've briefly used Chrome but didn't find that appealing (the individual process was interesting but it had numerous other issues but that was a beta). Safari is of course even worse from my brief experience (to be honest, I don't know of any Apple product on Windows that is worth jack shit). Haven't used Opera in a long while. Security wise, I trust Firefox much more then IE, not necessarily because FireFox is a load better but because it's still targeted a lot less. Safari, and all Apple products like to try and force junk down your throat and keep constantly running crap on your computer (updaters and other bullshit). Chrome and Google products are heading in that direction but thankfully are not as bad as Apple yet. FireFox and IE are a lot better (unless you count the stuff that already comes with Windows, but even that little of it is specific to IE nowadays) Nil Einne (talk) 05:25, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I personally use Firefox, Flock, Chrome, Opera, Maxthon, and Safari, in that order of preference, all for different reasons. I wouldn't touch IE with a shitty stick and I get rid of every application that tries to open it in favour of my other preferred browsers. Why vote for the Tories when you have loads of other choice?--KageTora (talk) 23:19, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Looking for something that says "Ready" when startup finally finished, and requires entering a key code to allow computer use

I have Win XP, set to autologin (*). After startup has technically finished, the resident antivirus scanner and ccleaner keep the computer busy for a few minutes more. During this time the computer is very slow - I prefer not to use it. Is there something I could install that would show a sign on the desktop indicating the computer was now ready to use, all scanning and cleaning done? I imagine it would be put in one of the startup folders. I would also like it to stop anyone using the computer until I enter a secret key of some kind. ((*) Note - you might be thinking of suggesting that I no longer use autologin, and use the password login option instead. But this would be much slower and much more inconvenient as I would have to return to the computer twice - once to switch it on, then wait a long time, then return the second time to enter the login password, and then wait several more minutes for stuff to finish. ) 89.241.154.51 (talk) 21:26, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't know. But have you considered Linux? No tiresome "antivirus scanning" necessary, and startup not only is fast but also can be made to be "verbose", so you get impressive-looking screenfuls of inscrutable technical stuff whizzing past during the short period while you wait. These screenfuls, combined with your dark mutterings about "Linux" and "Unix", will also scare all but the most intrepid of your workmates/chums/relatives away from your computer. -- Hoary (talk) 00:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

"Sorry, I don't know." Then with respect why write anything. 89.241.154.51 (talk) 00:32, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps in an attempt to provide you with alternatives you haven't considered? I realize the answer wasn't to your liking, but that is no reason to insult somebody who was trying to help. – 74  01:21, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm sick of how often people here use the slightest pretext to try to ram a different operating system down your throat. Regardless of its intrinsic merits or not, its very counter productive and in fact dissuades rather than persuades. Contributes nothing to an answer. A misuse of the reference desk. Plus its a daft idea - so I'm going to throw away the months of work getting Windows how I like, and have more months of work finding out to use another operating system and getting it how I like, with its own problems and bugs, just to solve a small problem. Its like having this board haunted by evangelists who try to convert you to their religion at every opportunity. This is not the place. 89.240.206.134 (talk) 20:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I too am appalled by the notion that anyone here would attempt to ram anything down anybody's throat. Has anyone done so? If so, name the author and we'll see what we can do with him. ¶ As it happens, I made a polite suggestion that the original questioner might care to consider a different operating system, a suggestion that was greeted "with respect". ¶ I rather think that you are not interested, but if anyone is interested, I suggest that it usually doesn't take months either (a) to get Windows to work the way one wants (it recently took me one afternoon to do this) or (b) to move from one GUI OS to another GUI OS; after all, they're all designed to look much the same. -- Hoary (talk) 02:00, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

You could do a screen-lock when you walk away. That should keep others from using it (by requiring your password to resume), but won't tell you when it's done with everything. StuRat (talk) 03:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

This is a good idea. With "Fast User Switching" on, you can often times begin login and do Winkey + L early on to go back to the Welcome Screen (or simply 'Lock Workstation' if the Welcome Screen and/or 'Fast User Switching' don't do it for you. It won't help with the 'startup finished' prompt, but will provide the 'keep people from using machine' aspect (Washii) 63.135.50.87 (talk) 06:33, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

But does that work if you use autologin? I don't know as I never use autologin on any Windows computer I use at work, and I run five Macs at home. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 07:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Transfer contributions list to new account

I finally opened a new account after being an anonymous contributer for some time. I wanted to know is there a way to transfer my contribution list that is associated with my ip address to my new account. Does that make sense? Is that possible and if so how? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zramjg (talk • contribs) 22:12, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Just for future reference, questions like this should be asked at the help desk. I believe that it is not possible, but someone else will probably know for sure. Thanks, Genius101^Guestbook 22:17, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I thought that's what this page was. Sorry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zramjg (talk • contribs) 22:18, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

It's no problem. I got confused my first time too. Thanks, Genius101^Guestbook 22:30, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I also believe it to be impossible. SteveBaker (talk) 04:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

You could do the Special contributions list for the IP, save it to a file and then put it as a subpage of your user User:Zramjg/contributions Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:23, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

But then anyone looking for his contributions would use Special:Contributions/Zramjg, so I don't think that would work. Thanks, Genius101^Guestbook 22:24, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

That most likely won't work (without a lot of manual editing); Wikipedia doesn't allow certain HTML tags (like the ubiquitous anchor tag) so you'd have to go through and "wikify" all the links, at which point you're probably better off selecting all the text and just copying it to a new page. – 74  23:09, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the advise folks I appreciate it. Its no big deal I just thought I'd ask. --Zramjg (talk) 07:22, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

March 2

What to look for in a media center PC?

If one is to buy a "mid range" media center PC, what features/spec should one look for? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.114.146.46 (talk) 02:05, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Many people want to play DVDs on their computers; ergo, computers are made for playing DVDs. They'll all do what most people want them to do. (If you have particular requirements on top of these, feel free to state them.)

Let's think dark thoughts for a moment. My office bought three computers just 11 months ago and last month the hard drive of one of the three died. That instantly rendered the computer less desirable than its crappiest competitor. Sure we got a new replacement drive under warranty, but we weren't compensated for the time we then lost in reinstalling a pile of software because we'd been too stupid to make a disk image. So one "feature" I'd look for is the combination of a Clonezilla CD (free) and a large external hard drive (cheap), in order to back up whatever's on whichever computer you buy. Luckily you can do this for any computer. Budget for it.

The rest? Well, it's partly a matter of taste. I happen to hate Apple's keyboards; others swear by rather than at them. Your kilometrage.... Hoary (talk) 16:38, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

If you want, you could simply buy an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. They would serve your purposes as well as allowing you to play games and network with any other PC's in your home (I know this works very well with the Xbox and Windows PCs). If however you're not so much interested in games but need it for productivity, your options are almost endless. You need to tell us what else you plan to use the Media Centre for for us to give you a decent answer. Zunaid 08:35, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

how would i... (in CSS)

Say I have 4 div's, set like this:

<div class="top">
<div class="second"> content </div>
<div class="second"> content </div>
<div class="second"> content </div>
</div>

With a stylesheet that defines the "top" class as the a standard box (nothing special), and the "second" divs are at "display:none".

How would I say: "When you hover over the "top" div, the "second" divs expand to "display:block"? (without Java/Javascript). Thanks, flaminglawyer 03:12, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

See an example here. In your specific case, something like:

div.top:hover div.second { display:block; }

should work in your CSS. – 74  03:32, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Saving in safe mode

With my computer randomly not responding, I forced a shut-down while I had a document open. I decided to restart it in safe mode. I started Word back up, and thankfully enough, all of my work had been autosaved. I tried to save the document, but it wouldn't save. I don't think anything will save...I can't even print it out. I need some way to save it!--The Ninth Bright Shiner 03:23, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

You can obviously access the internet, so why not copy and paste the text to a webpage. You could, for instance, add it to your talk page as a "backup copy" while you try to figure out why you can't save the document. Emailing the text to yourself would also work. You'll lose any fancy editing/formatting, but you at least won't have to retype everything. – 74  03:37, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

0_0 I did not think of that. Thanks a bundle!--The Ninth Bright Shiner 03:40, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Another option would be copying everything into Notepad to see if it would allow you to save it there. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 07:41, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Vista Wireless Connections

Let me begin by explaining that am a network administrator and programmer, but I have not used Windows since Windows 3.0. At home, I have a wireless router. It is secured and does not broadcast. My wife's new laptop has Windows Vista. Everything was great before we recently moved. She turned on her computer and it connected automatically using the built-in wireless connection. Now, we live in an apartment complex. When she turns on her computer, Vista automatically sees 20-30 unsecured wireless connections. It gets confused and refuses to connect to my router unless I create a new connection and type in the entire cryptic security key - EVERY TIME. Is it possible to get Vista to use one and only one wireless connection? Is it possible to tell Vista to completely ignore specific wireless networks? All I want is to have my wife's computer connect to my router when it turns on without any trouble at all, exactly as my Redhat laptop does. 64.251.148.141 (talk) 03:25, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Not broadcasting the SSID is pretty much completely pointless, and as you can see in this case, creates a lot more trouble. I know that some wireless connection management utilities do have the ability to do let you manually create a "profile" for your network that doesn't broadcast SSID, and set that profile as the highest priority or something. I am not sure if Windows Vista's built-in wireless network manager has this ability. --206.72.77.76 (talk) 03:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Address Book in Yahoo Messenger

In Yahoo Messenger 9 there is a new group named "Address Book" in my contact list. This did not exist (or at least not appear) in the version I previously used. What is it? 117.0.62.163 (talk) 12:26, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

If you have entered e-mail addresses for some of your contacts in the "contact details" dialog, they will appear there.--131.188.3.20 (talk) 13:39, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

But sometimes that "Address Book" group disappears. Why? And why some contacts are listed only in the "Address Book" group? I'm still confused. 117.0.22.44 (talk) 12:35, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

My own server at home - WWW/FTP/DNS? - possible?

Hello, Refdeskers. I'm getting closer and closer to setting up my own server at home. I know it will be very convenient, and I know it's useful and possible. I am prepared to dedicate a separate line/IP for it, and I am prepared to spend a lot of time setting it up. The server would ideally be a small and quiet standalone box sitting in the corner, with its own connection to the world, and LANned to my workstation to transfer files to and fro. Now, I know that the basic functionality I need, as listed below, is doable without sweat, but just to make sure I am listing the things I'd need it to do:

1. work as an FTP server to be able to host larger amounts of data easily
2. work as a WWW server to host my websites easily
3. work as a DNS server to keep my domain names on (I'm not that great with DNSs and domain names but I have two that I'd like to keep and use).
4. being able to use it to do my e-mail would be grand but if I manage the above three I'll already be very happy.

So, I know about Apache and that it's easy to install and I more or less know that this doesn't have to be a state of the art machine - my knowledge suggests to me that a Pentium II with a 20 gig hard drive and an ordinary monitor will do.

My questions, basically, are these:

1. Is setting this up really that easy, or are there any hoops that you have to jump through?
2. Is getting the functionality as listed above so straightforward?
3. Is it in effect possible to set up a server with functionality as described above, while at the same time using this computer as your workstation? It may be pointless because the machine would have to be more powerful, but I just want to know.

Brainstorming is welcome. To clarify, I have mastered the basics of Linux and am pretty knowledgeable with computers otherwise too. If there are guides out there or books I just need to buy and read, you can point me to them. Thanks in advance and cheers! --Ouro (blah blah) 13:40, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

If you plan on having other people visit it, see the discussion at #MoWeS to Real Server, above. Mimetic Polyalloy (talk) 13:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I am planning to allow other people to visit my sites. Thankfully those don't require much in terms of bandwidth. And as for FTP speeds, even if they aren't that great, the slow speed will be offset in my eyes by the ease of storage. --Ouro (blah blah) 14:18, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

There are a ton of excellent books out there on this sort of thing, but I usually use online documentation. For FTP, there are a lot of server programs around, and they usually aren't too hard to set up. There's probably one configuration file for you to edit. Apache can be simple to set up, especially if you use a web interface like Webmin to configure everything, but it can also be a huge hassle if you're trying to do something complicated. BIND (for DNS) can also be very difficult to configure properly. The best thing I can suggest is to check out the Linux Documentation Project, which has HOWTOs on all of these subjects. Some are a bit old, but even then they usually still work. Also, look for documentation on the website of your distribution (Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, SUSE, whatever) - they usually also have guides and tutorials that'll walk you through the steps. And to answer your last question, yes, it's very possible to use a server as a workstation. The power of the machine isn't really as much of an issue as the fact that if you mess anything up while browsing the web or gaming or whatever on your workstation, it'll take down your server until you fix the problem. As a result, most people like to keep them separate. Anyway, good luck! Indeterminate (talk) 21:41, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll answer from the end to the beginning: That's one reason to keep those two machines separate. Another one is to set up the server to not be as power-hungry as your usual workstation machine. As for the documentation, I'll have a further look in the documentation when I have a little time. I am already looking forward to setting this machine up. Thanks, Indeterminate! --Ouro (blah blah) 06:53, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

You may be using "FTP" terminology loosely, but I highly recommend setting up SFTP rather than FTP. It is not any more difficult to set up or use, but it will prevent unauthorized data interceptions. Consider reading up on SSL, HTTPS, and other secure protocols as well (in my experience, HTTPS is a bit more complicated to set up, but tutorial/walkthroughs are plentiful). Is security important? It depends on many factors; in some sense, nobody will specifically target your machine, and if you have nothing sensitive on it, the "who cares" mentality may work for you. I don't run a "high-profile" website, but access logs on my personal-use system (open to the internet at large) regularly show more than 100 phishy ssh-login-attempts per minute (from spambots, presumably - with fictional login names from anonymous random source IPs...) - the internet's a scary place! Using naive protocols only helps spambots and network scanners. Standard secure alternatives are a simple, effective way to keep your system safe. Nimur (talk) 07:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Speaking of using terminology loosely, Nimur, check out that SFTP link. At least 3 protocols are commonly called SFTP. :) SCP (or file transfer with SSH) is great, but it's a little awkward with Windows. FTPS (never heard it called that before) is FTP with SSL, which works well, but I'm not sure whether it has a lot of client support. I think it does. And FTP over SSH would probably work fine, but it just seems silly to me. If you're going to all that trouble, might as well use SCP. Anyway, they're all more secure than FTP, so if you'll be sharing sensitive data, they would be a better choice. Indeterminate (talk) 08:36, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I know, I know... What I call "sftp" is actually FTP over SSH, because that is what installs with the openssh server on Ubuntu. Your distributions may vary... my "sftp server" is tightly integrated into sshd. FTP has a long and awful history of non-standardization. As you say, SCP is really a better replacement... Nimur (talk) 17:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Heh, well, I call it SCP, but I'm talking about the same "ftp" functionality that's built-in to openssh. That's what I use most of the time, too. I don't think it actually uses that old FTP protocol, but fortunately most FTP clients have good support for it. "FTP over SSH" is different, it isn't built-in to openssh, exactly... it uses SSH tunneling to encrypt the traffic to/from a regular old FTP server. Anyway, the terminology is really confusing, which I guess is the point we're making here. :) Indeterminate (talk) 21:47, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Woops. I'll modify my earlier statement to: "What I call "sftp" is whatEVER installs with the openssh server on Ubuntu. Nimur (talk) 21:19, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd mostly be planning on hosting my one professional website, which amounts to my curriculum vitae and references, and my hobby website with my photographs. I wouldn't call those really sensitive, but still I wouldn't want any given person to be able to write what they want to my server. As for hosting data (let's call this xFTP, you know what I mean in general), it's mostly going to be things I want to send to other people that are larger than average, which most of the time will mean any photos in bulk from parties or events that I go to with friends. This is the extent of functionality that I'd like my server to take over, and I'd be satisfied if I get this done - this would relieve me of burdens of having to store my data as mentioned above on external services.

It would seem as though it's all simple enough to set up and manage. That's good. Cheers, Ouro (blah blah) 10:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I do this exact same thing. (See www.teraknor.net) That is hosted off my home cable modem and I run my mail server on there (with which I use IMAP over SSL), as well as ftp services so I can get to my files from anywhere as well as using this for hosting images as I post quite regularly on some forums and occasionally you want to put a picture up. I also host my own DNS records from there and there is one gotcha with doing that, whenever your IP changes you must update the nameserver record for your domain, and that usually takes ~24hrs or so to actually update. I also have a DynDNS setup so I can get back to my stuff in the case my IP has changed and I need to get back into one of my machines. If you can get a static IP for it then you wouldn't have that issue, which would be very nice. 204.16.236.254 (talk) 00:36, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Slow Acer

I had installed few games like FIFA and a flight simulator somehow the FIFA was very slow hence i had to uninstall from my laptop and i also removed all the instances from the "REGEDIT" aswell. Now my computer takes more than 10 minutes to start completely which earlier used to take about 2 minutes. Can you suggest some measures to have it run normally. Done the Defrag and scan part. Please advice.Thanks in advance —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.122.36.6 (talk) 14:05, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Editing the registry is a very risky way to remove unwanted programs. You SHOULD have stuck with the Add/Remove Programs facility and left it at that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.232.221.34 (talk) 18:07, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Machine translation of flash websites?

And to a lesser extent, of pdf files.

Any way of extracting the text from a flash website? etc.. ThanksFengRail (talk) 15:12, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I suspect you'd need to take a screen shot, then feed it into some OCR software, then feed the results into a translator. StuRat (talk) 16:16, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

You can translate pdf files if they're not encrypted, but I think you'll need to use libraries from Adobe or PDFTron (you can see the text if you open a pdf file with visual or notepad++, but there's so much meta-info I think just changing this text will break the file). Or is there a free alternative? As for flash files, Google can parse them, so it's obviously possible. yandman 16:24, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

There is a selection tool in PDF viewer that will allow you to select (actual) text and copy it to another document. Note that this will *not* work on images of text, such as scanned documents. – 74  16:53, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Hypothetically you could probably run a SWF through something that would translate the text, but I suspect it would be extremely clunky if it worked at all. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 17:10, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 and Microsoft Office Professional 2007

What are the differences? Which one is better to use? 117.0.62.163 (talk) 15:19, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Enterprise has a few more tools (Grove, One Note, etc) - you can see a detailed comparison here. Hope that help ;) — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 17:26, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

xp installation issues

Hi! So I decided yesterday to reinstall XP on one of my machines, but it keeps crashing during the install. Thus far, it seems to crash at different points. Every attempt but one has been in the "installing windows" stage, with one stalling at "finalizing windows". Any thoughts? DaRkAgE7_[Talk] 18:34, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

First assumption - bad harddrive. Second assumption - bad memory. After swapping those two out, see if it works. If not, third assumption - bad power supply. -- kainaw™ 18:39, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Define "crashing". If the system is restarting semi-randomly it could be an overheating problem. If it's blue-screening, then one of Kainaw's suggestions is the most likely source. If it's hanging then it could be a number of different things (including Kainaw's suggestions). – 74  19:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

A faulty or scratched CD has caused similar issues for me. Try re-burning your WinXP installer disc, if you have a disk-image... Nimur (talk) 07:29, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Memtest86+ is a useful and free tool for testing the memory. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:15, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

OS X DNS/DHCP settings forgotten

It seems that my OSX computer (10.5.4) keeps forgetting the IP for the DNS server and the wireless router in my home network and resets itself to some wrong ones (in the 192.168.x.x range, however). Manually changing the settings and restoring the right IPs seems to help only for a short while. The Airport seems to work fine (ie. no hardware issues), it pings the correct IPs and it even finds all neighbours' networks (I won't connect, of course!). Firewall is not enabled. What could be wrong? --79.129.171.175 (talk) 20:58, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you haven't changed anything, then it should be picking up its DNS and gateway settings (along with its IP address) from a DHCP server on your network (presumably the Airport router). I would check the configuration on the Airport; if that looks okay, check your Wireless settings in OSX - you might be able to manually set them to the correct values; if that doesn't work, hmm. It could possibly be somebody leeching off your wireless who's running a rogue DHCP server, but this is very unlikely. I think it would be more likely that you missed a problem earlier 2 or 3 times in a row. Finally, if this is a laptop, try taking it to a different wireless network to see if the problem follows the computer or the Airport. That'll at least help narrow the problem down. Indeterminate (talk) 21:20, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

stock website

Is there a free website where I can type in the price of a stock issue and it will tell me the last time the stock was at that price? Example: When was the last time CAT was $20 a share? 65.167.146.130 (talk) 21:01, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

UpDown or Wikinvest (and pretty much any other stock-related websites) have a stock history in chart form, so you could just set the time to 5 years or something long like that and figure it out for yourself. In your example (CAT at $20), the last time was October 11, 2002, when its price was $18.29. The next day it jumped to $20.50, and it's never been back below $20 again (although it's getting pretty close nowadays). flaminglawyer 03:24, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Capabilities of netbooks

I need a new computer, but I don't want to spend more than a few hundred dollars on it. I recently thought about getting a netbook, but I don't know very much about them, so I have a few questions before I run out and buy one. First, what sort of capabilities do they have? I know they don't have CD drives (which isn't really an issue for me), but how are they for hard drive space and memory? Are they as customizable (in reference to graphics cards, etc.) as an ordinary desktop/laptop? I play a few video games, nothing too extensive (lately I've been playing Portal and the Half Life series), so would I be able to modify a netbook to run those smoothly? Could I even do it with a basic netbook? Like I said, I don't know very much about them or their capabilities, so I'm looking for some advice here. Any ideas (or even a suggestion of a different computer that's still cheap) would be greatly appreciated! --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 21:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Um... no, you almost certainly couldn't play any recent games on them. Netbooks are great if you want something super-portable that doesn't need to do more than browse the web and check your email, but their processing power is about what desktops probably were 5 years ago. You can't really customize them, either. They are cheap, though: you can get a new Dell Mini 9 for less than $200: [3]

If you want to play games, I'd recommend a cheap desktop. If you already have a monitor/keyboard/mouse, you can usually get just the tower for pretty cheap, less than $500 probably. Indeterminate (talk) 21:31, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Rats, I figured that'd be how it'd turn out, but I was hopeful... well, I guess I'll have to look into desktops, then. Anyone have any suggestions of cheap ones? --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 21:38, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Depending how PC literate you are, you could try to build one yourself. I actually think it's really fun and it ends up being the cheapest way to get a computer with exactly the components you want and need vs buying a prebuilt "closest match" computer. However if you do not have the time or inclination, get your local weekly computer classifieds which should lead you to reputable local computer stores who often have great bargains on inhouse built computers. They are also usually quite happy to configure it exactly to your liking only charging a relatively modest assembly fee. Vespine (talk) 23:54, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Speaking of capabilities of netbooks: I just bought a Lenovo S10e (slightly modified S10). Although its graphics capabilities are miserable, and I won't be playing any 3D games, my mind was blown away by the capabilities of this little 2-watt Intel Atom. I have been working on some computational research, and two-threaded 2D full-wave FDTD propagation simulation clocks in as fast as my 2.26 GHz Pentium 4 (and sometimes faster!) But who's counting megaflops!? Nimur (talk) 16:33, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Change jpeg comments

Hi, are there any Windows programs that will let me change the summary comments (title, subject, keywords, comments, etc) for jpeg images without going right click -> properties summary tab? It's for a computer with restricted user access so can't right click. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 21:42, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Can you use the "properties" option on the "File" menu instead? Or the keyboard shortcut alt+↵ Enter? – 74  23:12, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

No, can't access anything more than the absolute basic user. No properties, no control panel etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 19:03, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

But you can install/run an arbitrary program? That doesn't say much for your system's administrator… Perhaps ExifTool will work. – 74  20:32, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

lol yeah, I can run all my programs from my portable drive, can even use the command prompt! It just blocks programs that need system drivers and all options and settings menus. Anyway, thanks for the link, once again you've come to my rescue! It doesn't seem to show the comment and author stuff like from the Windows properties tab, but lots of cool info about pixels and stuff. I guess the comment settings are Windows specific. Anyway thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 22:26, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Access is Denied (Thumb Drive)

Hello. My teacher asked me to transfer my slideshow via thumb drive to her computer. When I inserted my thumb drive into her computer, a window said "Access is denied". I could however access my files by clicking on the Folders button in the My Computers window. I tried to consult other sources but the first website that Google provided me tried to install a security threat. How could I access my thumb drive normally? It has important files. Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 21:43, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Are you not able to access your files, or are you saying you can access your files but not in the usual way? I take it this is a school computer? They often have restricted access which might prevent accessing USB drives, so they only way to see the drive and files in by other means. If you're able to download stuff, try and download and install 7-zip (this is the portable version so doesn't require any administrative rights to install) which can act as a file manager and will sometimes be able to bypass restrictions set on Windows Explorer (My Computer) folders and drives. Then navigate to your thumb drive and see if you can access the files. Also it's good to know keyboard shortcuts for when right clicking is disabled. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 21:58, 2 March 2009

I cannot access files in the usual way. This problem first occurred in school and is happening in home too. --Mayfare (talk) 02:32, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

PhotoRec. -- Hoary (talk) 02:57, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

If it's happening at home, it has nothing to do with permissions/security. Can you access your files using the Folders button? If you can, check if there's a file named autorun.inf on your USB drive. You have to enable "Show hidden files and folders" and disable "Hide system files". If there is, delete the file. --wj32 ^t/c 09:20, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The icon looks like a folder instead of how Removable Disk should look like. --Mayfare (talk) 15:54, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Uggh. I'm getting annoyed now. I told you to how to fix your problem, and I'm 100% sure that will fix your problem. Show hidden files, Show system files, then delete autorun.inf. Please, try my suggestion or at least respond to it. --wj32 ^t/c 23:51, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

thepiratebay.org

is it just me or is there something wrong with the website? --212.120.245.203 (talk) 23:10, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Why can't it be both?   :-)   According to this article Pirate Bay is currently experiencing a DDoS attack. – 74  23:16, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Any idea how long 'til its back up? --212.120.245.203 (talk) 23:46, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Nope. I suspect the maintainers have other things on their mind at the moment. – 74  00:46, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Yep, the website is down for me. Damn media corporations. I hope they die. --wj32 ^t/c 05:36, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, heaven forbid someone should make money off their own hard work, eh? ;p ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 07:47, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

This is very off-topic, but I blame capitalism. Not that we have a better system though. --wj32 ^t/c 08:24, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com is a great resource for these types of questions.--droptone (talk) 12:28, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

March 3

IE 6.0: don't want to get forwarded to Dell

Whenever my old Internet Explorer version doesn't find a link target, it redirects/forwards to some annoying Dell-sponsored website. It's worst when it's not even about the main URL that I'm trying to open, but just some useless ad. For example, when I'm trying to open Merriam-Webster, I'm getting forwarded to this website: http://www.google.com/hws/dell-usuk-rel/afe?hl=en&channel=us&s=http://ad.turn.com/server/ads.htm?&pub=3817658&code=3817716&cch=3817687&lw=500&lh=20&l=0x0&tmz=5&area=-1&rnd=0.21679996499640325&lmd=1236041915&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.merriam-webster.com%2Fdictionary%2Fbla&ref=

Any way I can convince IE to never redirect/forward to that Dell website again?

I'm probably using IE 6.0 (the "number" is much longer and continues with strings etc.), and run it under Windows XP on a Dell computer. The problem has gotten much worse since I've started using a hosts file to block ads (works beautifully in Firefox and Opera, but not in this old IE version)... anyways, there *must* be a way to switch off the auto-forwarding? Thanks!! --Thanks for answering (talk) 01:06, 3 March 2009 (UTC) PS: Thanks for typing your response slowly--I'm not exactly computer-savvy.

Try editing your Internet Options (e.g. "Control Panel > Internet Options"), Advanced Tab, and disable "Search from the address bar." This is one possible cause for the redirection. Nimur (talk) 07:32, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I've tried and it didn't help. Any other suggestions? --Thanks for answering (talk) 07:37, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Try options > advanced and turn off "show friendly HTTP error messages" or something with a similar name. -- Tcncv (talk) 07:45, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I did a google search on the terms "mistype URL search dell" and turned up several useful pages including this page which instructs users to look for an uninstall a program called "Browser Address Error Redirector". -- Tcncv (talk) 08:00, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

It's to do with Dell branding of their PCs and all the crapware that comes with a new Dell. They have modified the error redirector to take you to their website. Annoying as hell, but it can be by changed modifying your default search engine or uninstalled with a little effort as described by Tcncv above. Astronaut (talk) 17:07, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I just clicked the "What's this?" link at the top-right of the page, and it took me to this page which seems to answer your question. --saxsux (talk) 13:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

NTLM vs LDAP

What is the difference between NTLM and LDAP? I tried going through the Wikipedia article on NTLM, but could not find any information. 203.158.89.10 (talk) 04:58, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

You can't really compare them directly. NTLM is an aging Windows authentication protocol. It's still used in situations where security isn't terribly important for Windows computers. If you're going to compare it with anything, compare it with Kerberos (protocol). LDAP is a specification for a Directory service; almost all directory services are either based on LDAP or compatible with it to some degree. Directory services just provide searchable directories of users, computers, groups, equipment, etc. They can be configured to provide some sort of authentication scheme (like NTLM, Kerberos, or SASL) to verify the identity of users in the directory database. The Microsoft directory service is Active Directory. Apple's directory service is Open Directory, and the most well-known Open Source directory service is OpenLDAP.

But if you simply MUST compare them, LDAP is used in Windows domain environments, while NTLM (mostly) is not. Indeterminate (talk) 08:55, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much. 203.158.89.10 (talk) 08:42, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

PSX Emulator--Issues with Disc Spinning

Hi yet again...

I am using the most recent PSX emulator with a LEGALLY ACQUIRED BIOS. It worked fine for a while, but now my DVD drive seems to stop spinning randomly as i am playing a game (it causes a lot of bad things to happen). I have tried to use a variety of tools to force the drive to keep spinning, to no avail. And, to top it all off, yesterday Windows threw this error at me:

Data Error (Cyclic Redundancy Check)

How can i stop this message and how can i keep the drive spinning at top speed? Thanks.  Buffered Input Output 13:56, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Those kind of CRC errors usually mean that the DVD drive itself is failing; in a sense, it means that the drive read data from the drive that didn't match what it expected to be there. If it shows up a lot, it's a hardware problem. If you have a spare DVD drive, see if that fixes the problem. Indeterminate (talk) 21:41, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe it could also be a scratched disc. – 74  23:11, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The disc isn't scratched, and the DVD drive works fine with everything else but PSone disks. Maybe i should mention this too: ALL other discs, including PS2 and other types, work fine, but PSone discs throw CRC errors after reading *.STR files.  Buffered Input Output 13:46, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like some form of copy protection/DRM. It is possible that many PS1 discs contain an intentional "error" that playstation hardware either corrects or ignores. You might be able to get a DVD drive to do the same, but it's probably a non-trivial modification. – 74  15:48, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Flash in Web Pages

What is the COMPLETE code for inserting flash videos/games into a web site? I know it's out there but i want the COMPLETE code because i don't have flash to do it for me. Help!  Buffered Input Output 14:08, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

There are a bunch of ways to do it but this generally works for Flash 8:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" width="SWF_WIDTH" height="SWF_HEIGHT" align="middle"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /><param name="movie" value="SWF_PATH" /><param name="loop" value="false" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /><embed src="SWF_PATH" loop="false" quality="high" bgcolor="#000000" width="SWF_WIDTH" height="SWF_HEIGHT" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />

The only downside is that it doesn't fail particularly gracefully. Depending on what you are doing with it, that might not matter. --140.247.243.40 (talk) 16:53, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

(Moved from misc) 3gp code for Windows Movie Maker

I have Movie Maker 2.6 on Vista and I'd like to edit 3gp clips - however, I need to get some codec. Where can I find this 3gp codec? 75.169.205.74 (talk) 22:57, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Take your pick. BigDunc^Talk 17:44, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

edit conflict resolved...

I believe that ffdshow can directly work with 3gp, which is not a codec but a container format (a wrapper) for H.264 codecs streams. You can find binary distributions for ffdshow at the official SourceForge webpage. Note that ffdshow is a DirectShow filter, (also not a codec), although it is built against libavcodec. You probably need ffdshow if you are using Windows Movie Maker. Nimur (talk) 17:50, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Why my wikipedia english pages so strange like this

Why my wikipedia english pages so strange like this? JustbeBPMF 10:46, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

This is only occur in Firefox and in English pages? using IE displays normally?

What's wrong? I didnot change any setting?

Here is a image for that I despict that:

JustbeBPMF 10:46, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I've seen this effect before by changing the text size. Try using View + Text Size + Normal and see if that solves the problem. StuRat (talk) 19:35, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

It looks like you are not using any of the standard Wikipedia 'skins' (I don't see any that have that tiny Wikipedia logo at top-left) - that may be deliberate - but if not, click on the "my preferences" tab in the top-left, then click on the 'Skin' tab and check the radio button marked "MonoBook (default)" - then hit the "Save" button. SteveBaker (talk) 01:20, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Standalone virus cleaner

I've been contacted by my system admin and told to take my computer off of the network because they've detected it sending out spam messages (how does it do this? surely not through my gmail accound). I have taken it offline by removing the ethernet cable from the back, and then rebooted into linux. Is there anyway to clean my computer without it being online? I have access to the internet in linux or from another machine so I could download a program to a usb drive. Is there a way to download a cleaning program to a usb drive and have it sanitize my system? Thanks Man It's So Loud In Here (talk) 19:56, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

In answer to your tangential question "how does it do this? surely not through my gmail accound": no, it won't do that. Spambots have their own SMTP transfer agent built in, which they use to pretend (to other SMTP agents) that they're (e.g.) mail.whatever.com Now some malware will attempt to harvest your address book from Outlook or the like, and use that for forged "From:" fields, but hijacking your email client wholesale, or harvesting login info for a web-based email service, is more bother than they need to do. 87.113.86.209 (talk) 21:01, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

In answer to your virus question, you can download the installer for a free antivirus like AVG using the linux box, copy the installer to the USB stick, put the USB stick in the stricken windows box, and run the installer from there. I think the free version will run without an internet connection (that is, it doesn't insist on validating its licence) and while you might be a week or two behind on the latest virus signatures and patches, you'll almost certainly be able to remove the malware. If AVG doesn't find anything, use Spybot - Search & Destroy to scan for more malware. 87.113.86.209 (talk) 21:01, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

This is a little tougher than the old days, when you could just pop in your Thunderbyte, Norton, McAfee 3 /12" floppy and clean up a computer. You may want to have a look at Portable applications. I've found AVG can be problematic after version 7.0 due to registry entries it expects to find (same with Spybot 1.4 and above - although not as bad). Dr. Web claims to have a Live CD that can help, and PC Tools AV is supposed to "run from thumb". The biggest problem, is the rapid changes in the AV world - new strains, morphs, etc. at an hourly rate. Coupled with a more complex file system (NTFS), it can often be tough to find a quick fix. I'd probably buy my system admin a cup of coffee, and ask him what he (or she) recommends. Sorry it took so long to reply, but I wanted to double-check a few things first. — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 17:17, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies, I tried AVG from a thumb but had no results. First off, this virus was nast in that windows explorer wouldn't even load unless there was an internet connection. The only way I could get a gui to load was to do it in safe mode. So I installed avg while in safe mode, but then it wouldn't run. I'm not sure if it was the reason mentioned above or not. So I just backed up my data and reinstalled windows. I am not sure what to do now, as I want protection but every AV I've used in the past slowed down my system. Man It's So Loud In Here (talk) 19:46, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Very tough to tell without eyes on - but sounds like you may have one of those winfixer/smitfraud/MS Antivirus bugs. Maybe try the tool at malwarebytes.org - see if that can get things up and running enough to install a full AV program. — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 20:10, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Bear in mind it may not even be a virus causing this. It could simply be a misconfigured proxy. Nil Einne (talk) 09:21, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

TI 89 assembly

I have been trying to figure out how to disable breaking a TI89 BASIC program by using the "Exec [string]" command. I have found a few things relating to this, but none of them work. Does anybody know a string of op-codes for the Motorola 68000 microprocessor that will do this? Lucas Brown 42 (talk) 19:59, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

March 4

Drive overclocking

My question is as follows: is it possible to override a locked system setup and overclock a drive? If so, is there a program i can use, or a file i can edit, ect. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.7.3.15 (talk) 03:50, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

^{Header added — Matt Eason (Talk &#149; Contribs) 10:13, 4 March 2009 (UTC)}

I'm not really sure what you're asking. Overclocking usually means increasing the frequency of CPUs or GPUs (or memory, etc). It doesn't apply to disk drives. You can sometimes increase the performance of a drive by adjusting some parameters in the OS (see hdparm), but AFAIK it's not realistically possible to increase the physical operating speed of a hard drive (its RPMs, for instance). Did that answer your question? Indeterminate (talk) 22:32, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I doubt there are any hard drive controllers or motherboards which have the capability to alter the hard-disk mechanical speed; it seems plausible that one could overclock the IDE or SATA bus, but I have never heard of this in practice... Nimur (talk) 16:42, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Can I uninstall Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 after I have installed Visual C++ 2008?

I see both in my list of installed programs and am not sure if they are redundant. Will redundancy cause any problems? Can I uninstall Microsoft Visual C++ 2005? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.0.22.167 (talk) 06:03, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure. I suppose if the newer program has been very badly designed, it might stop working, but even if that's the case, you can just reinstall it. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 09:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

electroni signature

Is there any electronic signature software that supports Open Office format that you know of?

If yes, can you please provide me with the relevant company or software that can help me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thembanim (talk • contribs) 11:42, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

GPG will do it (it can sign any file; the format doesn't matter). --Aseld ^talk 12:09, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

what is computer?

i learn that computer is a multipurpose machine, —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tselisehang (talk • contribs) 14:14, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Does our article computer help? Algebraist 14:16, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

My personal definition is: "A computer is a machine for following rules." - but our Computer article covers the ground quite nicely. SteveBaker (talk) 18:40, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

What is Windows Media Format Runtime?

it is in the Add/Remove programs —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.0.7.67 (talk) 16:36, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

As far as I am aware it is an add on that it is required for WMA (Windows Media Audio) and WMV (Windows Media Video). BigDunc^Talk 18:59, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Virus infection

How long would an unprotected PC last on the net without any kind of protection at all before it was infected with a virus BigDunc^Talk 19:58, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, that would depend entirely on what sites you visited. Tracking cookie - 2 clicks, virus/malware- (depending on which sites), maybe an hour or so. DoS? .. tough to tell, a lot would depend on your visibility (web-sites, where your email was posted, etc.) - maybe a couple days if you avoided porn, shareware, hacker sites, shopping areas, etc. In other words? Depends on what you do on the "net". — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 20:07, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Times for Windows XP machines have been given at 20 minutes [4] and 40 minutes [5]. That's just sitting there, not going to all those things Ched describes. Those numbers date from 2004/5; I haven't seen reliable times for Vista machines. 87.113.106.21 (talk) 20:42, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Also depends on the OS. There aren't so many viruses floating about for older or less common operating systems. I ran an old Win95 for ages without virus software and it was fine. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 20:54, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Windows 95? Good heavens - that fella deserves a seat at the head of the table as an honored Senior Citizen ... LOL — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 21:03, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I know dozens of people who haven't been bitten yet. Maybe, just maybe, that's because they had a professional set up their machines, don't run as admin, and don't do porn/shareware/ish stuff. Who knows? ;) -- Fullstop (talk) 22:01, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I suspect a (properly configured) home router helps significantly; if worms cannot get to a computer they have trouble infecting it. – 74  22:09, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Twenty minutes sounds to be about what I have heard for a Windows XP machine connected to the Internet without any service packs or virus protection installed. Useight (talk) 02:48, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

C++

What is the point of having all of the different things in C++? There are templates, namespaces, classes, and probably other things I don't know about. What is the function of one of these compared to the others? Ζρς ιβ' ^¡hábleme! 21:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Each function will have a slightly separate way of working, or will exist because they are in use by a sector of people who would prefer that 2 otherwise identical functions remain separate. Coding is like hand-writing, whilst we might all write the same language everybody has their own style and way of developing. Here is a discussion around Classes V Namespaces for example (http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t456911-class-vs-namespace.html). ny156uk (talk) 22:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Namespaces: otherwise every global name gets thrown into one big pool; in languages like C, without namespaces, you run the risk that you (or one of your colleagues, or one of the myriad of authors of libraries you're using) will coincidentally use the same name as you do, and you'll accidentally refer to the wrong thing. If you're lucky you'll get a type incompatibility error when compiling; if you're not, you'll end up calling the wrong get_count() or whatever, which can be a very unpleasant problem to find and fix. So namespaces are a good thing. Large C projects, and C libraries, often have to adopt a strict naming policy for globally available names (e.g. you're writing the "transaction" module, so all your functions have to be called txn_foo() or whatever. 87.113.106.21 (talk) 22:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Classes: well, that's the core bit that enables object oriented programming. You can do object oriented programming in languages that have no native support for it (I've lost count of the number of object systems I've seen implemented in C) but doing so makes for rather harder to follow code, requires discipline that's hard to keep up, and can be a bit fragile. If you don't want to do object-oriented programming, you just don't bother with classes. 87.113.106.21 (talk) 22:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Templates: templates enable generic programming. That is, say you write code for a linked list of integers. But then you need a linked list of strings, and a linked list of floats, and a linked list of some complex struct. With templates you just write a linked list of <anyoldthing>, which means you've only had to write the linked list part once (for complex data structures that can be a big deal). Now, again, you can do this without templates and generics; in C you'd just have a linked list of void *, but that imposes the burden of casting things to the correct type on the caller; worse, that cast breaks type safety - so you can mess up and put a bunch of ints into a list, but then the code that pulls them out thinks they're something else entirely, and blithely casts the value it gets to the wrong type, which means what comes out is hopelessly garbled and wrong. Try that with templates and you'll get a compile time error (compile time errors are good; run time errors are bad, especially when your runtime is a mars rover or a nuclear missile). Templates give you the advantage of writing a general purpose thing once, but without the disadvantage of having to throw away type information. 87.113.106.21 (talk) 22:44, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

In short, you don't need any of the features that C++ adds to C; indeed, you can do anything in C if you really want: functional programming, lazy evaluation, exceptions, coroutines, tail recursion, objection orientation and inheritance, automatic memory management, generic programming, etc. But you end up with a bunch of scary macros and fragile cruft and some really strict rules for using them (rules that the compiler won't enforce). Frankly that scary stuff is all still there in C++, but you can mostly forget about it. Mostly. 87.113.106.21 (talk) 23:03, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Other posters explained the specific features pretty well. I'll add that the basic point of C++ is to help keep very large projects (with a lot of programmers who come and go and who aren't necessarily familiar with the whole code base) from getting disorganized. All the weird tensions and trade-offs in C++ were driven from experiences in such projects. If you're new to programming or mostly working on small or solo projects, it's not a good language to start with. 13:26, 5 March 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.241.239.70 (talk)

Putting Two .jpg Files Into A Single .pdf

I made a nice looking document on MS Word 2007, with some gradients to make it look nicer, then when I exported to .pdf, I ended up with a .pdf file with stripes all over it, instead of a two gradients. Anyway, I decided to take the original .docx and (with no gradient) and export them to .pdf, then edit them with GIMP, giving me the effect I wanted. Unfortunately, GIMP will only edit one page at a time (it seems - as when I click the option to edit both, it adds them both as layers, which is not what I want). So, now I have two beautiful .jpg pages, but they are separate files. Now, my question is, how can I combine them as a single .pdf file, i.e. with two pages? I don't want to put them both back into a Word file as inserted images, as they will be smaller (because of the page margin, which is of course already included on the new .jpg files). Anyone have any ideas here?--KageTora (talk) 23:08, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

A simple Google search returned PDF Split and Merge. – 74  23:17, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. That's part of the battle. Now I need a .jpg > .pdf converter, as that software won't do anything unless it's .pdf files I am dealing with.--KageTora (talk) 23:30, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

A PDF printer, e.g. PDFCreator, will take care of that. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 23:56, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

[Answer for the next question below - Wikipedia seems to have gone haywire again] Thanks, folks. That all worked.--KageTora (talk) 00:14, 5 March 2009 (UTC) (comment moved to "question below" – 74  03:12, 5 March 2009 (UTC))

March 5

Vista taskbar problem

Resolved

I'm running Windows Vista (Home Premium version 6.0). The taskbar includes a little desktop button that takes me right to the desktop - very handy for me as I tend to work with a billion windows open. A couple of days ago, that handy little button disappeared, and I can't figure out why or how to get it back.

I know how to add items to the taskbar, but the desktop thing is stumping me. I can seemingly drag and drop any other object onto the taskbar, but nothing I have done can get that button back. I'm sure I am missing something simple. Any advice would be appreciated. - Eron^Talk 03:34, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

You can re-create it with notepad: see this site for info. — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 04:16, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Perfect. Problem solved, thank you. - Eron^Talk 04:27, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

We aim to please - glad we could help. — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 06:32, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Find the Maximum of a Set

Given an array(set) of integers, how do the various computer languages go about finding the maximum value? More to the point, if they use a specific algorithm to do it, what is that algorithms complexity class? While on the subject of what certain built in functions do; is there any place where this information can be looked up for Ruby/Python/C++, etc? Phoenix1177 (talk) 04:40, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Obviously, if the array is sorted, it's pretty easy. If it's just an array, then it will take O(n) time. Of course, integers can be stored in a binary search tree, and in that case getting the maximum integer takes O(log(n)) time - it's simply a matter of traversing the nodes to the right. I don't know of any specialized algorithm for finding maximums, nor any special data structure that works with an ordered set of integers to help find the maximum. --wj32 ^t/c 04:54, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Although alluded to by Wj32 above, on a sorted array which includes maxindex (a count of items), the time taken to dereference array[maxindex] would be O(1). Sorted arrays implemented as linked lists and sorted arrays without a count of items would require traversing the array to the final item, with complexity O(n). Such arrays, however, would likely be quite rare. – 74  05:55, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

If it's an unsorted array, all you can do is make a linear scan through it, keeping track of the biggest number you've seen so far. There is a very detailed analysis of the complexity in Knuth TAOCP volume 1, using the method of generating functions, which iirc lets him figure out the probability distribution of how many times the "biggest number seen so far" has to be updated during the scan, etc. But the main point of the analysis is to show how to use the techniques on a very simple algorithm so that they can be used on more complicated algorithms later. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 13:06, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Read from /dev/urandom and convert to binary

In a bash script, what's the simplest way to read 119 bits (or, if /dev/urandom can only be read an octet at a time, 120 bits) from /dev/urandom, express them in binary (in order to work with the individual bits as substrings) and store them in a variable? NeonMerlin 07:46, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I find scripts like that very ugly. It's better to write a program in a more reasonable language, python or perl or whatever. It would probably be a perl one-liner using the "%b" format specifier to get binary out, but my Perl is way too rusty to write it for you, and anyway this sounds a little too much like homework. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 13:20, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

It is homework (for once), but it's a small part of a much larger project. The reason the shell script is a shell script is that it involves a large number of command line invocations, in iterated loops, with lots of options. I don't know how to invoke the command line in Linux in any non-shell-scripting language; even if I did, a shell script seems most logical. NeonMerlin 19:25, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

dd if=/dev/urandom bs=119 count=1 | xxd -b | grep -o '\([01].\{8\}\)\{6\}'

That leaves the hex-offset at the begining, but you should be able to figure out how to remove that pretty easily. Shadowjams (talk) 10:29, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Fire suppresor for computers/servers?

Do dry-chemical/clean agent fire extinguishers really leave no damage to computers? Argonite can be (and it is) used on servers and other sensitive equipment, but my professor argued that such extinguishers can still damage them.

Is my professor right about that, or not? Blake Gripling (talk) 08:56, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, there may well be reactions I'm unaware of, but I don't see how argonite gas it could damage computers. It's inert, and anyway, computers don't require oxygen to operate (unlike fire). In any case, a fire is bound to be far, far more destructive to a server room than argonite. You professor didn't offer any explanation as to how it would damage the computers? -- Captain Disdain (talk) 12:31, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

He only said that it is ineffective (perhaps based on his own experiences), and so do other types of extinguishers, practically leaving me and my mates with nothing to use for our defense/thesis. It is obvious that we can't treat a fire in a sensitive area such as a courtroom or a server as inevitable, right? Blake Gripling (talk) 13:07, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, if argonite isn't an efficient fire extinguisher -- and I'd bet that has as much to do with how the system is set up as it does with the gas in question, because properly used, the argonite is going to replace all of the oxygen, and the fire pretty much has to go out -- that's a completely different thing; in that case the computers aren't damaged by the argonite, but by the fire that isn't going out. I'm not sure what his point is, beyond "fire bad" -- I mean, I don't think any fire extinguishing system is going to be 100% effective and prevent all damage. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 13:53, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

They don't require oxygen, but they do require air cooling. The environmental requirements specs for some server/comms grade equipment specifies a minimum air pressure, as lower air pressure means there's less air into which a heatsink can shed excess heat (and thus the cooling system is less efficient). Some high-end Sun servers, for example, ship with a barometer, and will shut down if air pressure falls too low (in practice this is only rarely an issue - only when the machine is installed in relatively high-altitude locations like ski resorts). Now I wonder what the specific heat of the extinguisher gasses is (I really don't know). If it is considerably lower than that of the air it has displaced, then that might compromise the cooling of the densely packed equipment, and maybe lead to dangerous or damaging overheating. Now I guess the power will be automatically switched off by the same fire alarm that triggered the extinguisher, but some will be held up by UPSes (and will still be engaged in the rather hot process of an ordered shutdown when the extinguishers go off). 87.115.143.223 (talk) 20:38, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, the argonite atmosphere isn't going to persist for very long anyway, though. It's only there to extinguish the fire... and frankly, I'm pretty sure that in most cases, any overheating problems involved are probably not going argonite-related, what with the fire and all. Still, fair enough. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 09:00, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd be more worried about people than a bunch of servers. I remember some carbon dioxide being used in a server room and these firemen rushed in and promptly fell down, they had to be dragged outside into the fresh air to recover. The computers weren't affected but the pressure caused some damage to the ceiling.Dmcq (talk) 13:38, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I've seen server rooms with gas-fire extinguishing setups, and they have panic cut-off buttons for people who would happen to be trapped in the room. I don't remember what the gas was, but argon seems plausible. Another pressure issue, aside from heat-transfer, is that most hard drives require normal atmospheric pressure to operate. As the drive spins it creates an air-bearing that the drive-head floats above. If you were to use your drive at 40,000 feet without pressurization, the drive head would crash into the platter. That's a far-fetched scenario, but another one to consider. Shadowjams (talk) 10:23, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Reverse a diff file

In Linux, do any utilities exist that can reverse the direction of a diff file (i.e. turn the output of diff file-a file-b into the output of diff file-b file-a) without having either of the input files? NeonMerlin 09:16, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Don't know offhand, but maybe what you really want is the "patch -R" command. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 13:59, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

No, that requires the second input file. NeonMerlin 19:22, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't know of a way to do what you want using just one command, but here's an idea:

1. Create a fake file-a using the information in the diff file, call this fake-file-a. (The idea is that fake-file-a will have the same lines as file-a where patch would change in the next step, so that patch won't choke)
2. Patch fake-file-a using the diff file to produce fake-file-b
3. diff fake-file-b fake-file-a

--98.114.146.46 (talk) 03:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Unless I'm not catching something complicated, wouldn't this be a rather simple script to write? The logic is:

• If the line begins with >, change it to <
• Else if the line begins with <, change it ti >
• Else if the line has a d in it, change it to an a and flip the numbers (ie: 1,10d3 becomes 3a1,10).
• Else if the line has an a in it, change it to a d and flip the numbers.
• Else, the line must have a c in it. Flip the numbers.

The results will not be identical to what you'd get if you ran diff on the files in opposite order, but it should work for running patch. -- kainaw™ 04:13, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Emacs has delightfully good support for editing diff files. To reverse a diff, all you need to do is open the file in emacs, press control-C then control-R. 84.239.160.166 (talk) 17:25, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

mobile broadband (1)

Thinking about getting mobile broadband from mi laptop but I do not have a credit or debit card. How exactly does one pay for mobile broadband such as those listed here: http://www.broadband-expert.co.uk/mobile-broadband/ ? I'm in the UK. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 09:35, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

bump —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 12:58, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Generally all of those on that site are contract only and have to be paid by debit card, credit card or by direct debit. Some Mobile ISPs do have Pay-as-you-go options where you would top up the connection in the same way as a mobile phone - but you would have to buy the USB dongle outright at the start for a cost of between £30-150. See for example the Mobile Broadband Pay as you go packages on 3. Nanonic (talk) 18:00, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Applying column width changes to every sheet in Excel

Is it possible to make a change to a column's width in Excel be applied to every sheet contained in a single MS Excel document? Thanks. 213.13.148.4 (talk) 10:47, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Do you know visual basic in excel? If so, use the following (it resizes column D in all the sheets):

Sub Macro1()
   For i = 1 To Sheets.Count
      Sheets(i).Columns("D:D").ColumnWidth = 12.43
   Next i
End Sub

Zain Ebrahim (talk) 11:19, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Or, without macros, control-click on the "tabs" (at bottom) for the sheets you want to change, control-click the column headings you want to change, right-click on one of the column headings, and enter the desired column width. Jørgen (talk) 13:44, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

want to save HTML of current page from Firefox 3

I'm looking at a particular web page and want to save the HTML of the page I'm looking at from the browser into a file. "View page source" does not do this--it sends a new request to the server which can send back different contents than it did for the first request. I want to save the stuff that's already in the browser's memory (I know it's there because Firebug can see it). I could take a screen shot but that loses a lot of information. Any other ideas? (The screen contents are a crash dump from an intermittent server side bug that I want to report). Thanks. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 14:13, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I assume that "Save Page As" (Ctrl+S), and then "Web page, only HTML" does not work? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:02, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like faulty behavior; I would not expect "View source" to return a new copy of the page. I tested this in FF 3.06 with a page that I know has changed and it displayed the source of the version already loaded (not the most recent version). On the other hand, *updates* since the page was fetched may or may not appear (some type of Ajax/XMLHTTP modifications). Presumably you could select that which you wish to save and copy it into a text file—again, you'll lose some information (the formatting) but the actual text should remain. If the error report contains diagnostic HTML comments (like the Wikipedia rendering statistics) then those will be lost, however. – 74  17:25, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, you could always just save the page, but that might send a new request to the server, too. Although I'm not sure if you're right that "view source" sends a new request. Well, anyway, the only sure-fire way I know to capture the exact HTML that the browser was displaying is to manually browse to your FF cache directory. Your page will be in there, but you might have to search through the files for a phrase that was in your webpage. There might also be FF plugins to do this, but I don't know of any. Indeterminate (talk) 09:16, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm certain that you're wrong, view source does not send a new request to the server, it shows you the page that it has already downloaded. I've tried it on a number of pages that generate automatic time-stamps and random numbers and the like, and it's always the same in the source as on the page (this page for instance generates two lottery tickets randomly, and if it did send a second request to the server, the numbers would be different in the source, but they're not. It also contains a time-stamp showing you exactly when the page was generated, and that doesn't change either). Another way to check this is to simply temporarily turning off your internet connection, and try viewing the source again. See, it works just fine. If it needed to send an additional request, using "View source" wouldn't work if you went offline after a page was loaded.

Using "view source" in Firefox gives you exactly what Firefox wanted in its original request. I'm curious to find out why you thought otherwise? Did you happen upon some page which look different in the code compared to how it looked layed out? Belisarius (talk) 23:35, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

internet on the go

what is the cheapest way to get the internet on the move with a laptop? i'm in england —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 15:30, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Look for unsecured wireless hotspots - I used one in a pub in London a couple of months back. All it cost me was a couple of pints that I would have had anyway. If you want access "on the road", you are probably better off looking for a mobile phone contract with an inclusive 3G data package. All the mobile networks offer such deals (though not to pay-as-you-go customers). However, the deals are pretty expensive once you go over the download limit. Also, your laptop will need a HDSPA slot in which you stick a SIM card, or a bluetooth facility, or you will have to get a USB dongle from network. Astronaut (talk) 16:36, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

The mobile network three offer mobile-broadband on pay-as-you-go basis. They sell 1gb for £10, 3gb for £15 etc. the biggest problem it has is A) Your credit runs out 30 days after topping up regardless of whether you use it all and B) It is rubbish. I have had it for the past year in my apartment (didn't want to pay for a phone-line just for casual internet usage as never use home-phones) and it was constantly slow, regularly struggled to connect and frustratingly picky about where in the apartment you sit. Still it's pay as you go. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 10:11, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

People in our office use a Vodafone 3G service (in the UK); we pay monthly (quite a bit, for unlimited), but I think they do lower plans and pay as you go. While not as bad as the service 194.221.133.226 has had, you regularly miss 3G anywhere but cities and fall back to the painfully slow GPRS, and the international roaming rates (which aren't part of the unlimited usage plan) are exorbitant. I'd recommend it for a genuinely mobile business professional who absolutely must check email and deal with attachments on the road (someone like a salesman); for someone who needs to do basic mobile email a decent mobile phone should be sufficient; but it's not cheap and it's not fast and it's certainly not a nice replacement for a wired home broadband service. Prices on different mobile carriers vary a bit, but their tariffs are fairly similar and the underlying technology is common. Bar the inconvenience of camping on public wifi connections, I don't think there's a nice, cheap way to do mobile internet. Mimetic Polyalloy (talk) 11:59, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

thank you for the answers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 13:31, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

serving SVG to FF and png to IE?

Hi all!

I have some nice logos that look great in SVG, but when I turn them into small png's (either by shrinking them from their original size in a program like Paint.NET, or by having the browser shrink them on the fly), they lose lots of detail. I would like to have some way of displaying the nice SVG to non-IE browsers, and the png replacements to IE, but I can't find a way of doing it. Wikipedia's solution is to create a png every time there is a svg file and display that to all browsers. Can anyone help me? --richardmtl (talk) 16:26, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

A simple javascript function can change the "src" of an image. I'd suggest something like:

1. use HTML to set the image to the png (works for everyone)
2. use javascript to detect non-IE and modify the "src" by switching to svg

This has the advantage of failing gracefully if javascript is disabled. You could also make use of CSS to show/hide alternate images, or use a hypertext preprocessor to create "customized" versions of the page based on the client's browser. – 74  17:09, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Server-side content negotiation should be more reliable than detecting the type of browser. MTM (talk) 17:33, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I found a decent solution: use <object> tag (sometimes called the "object fallback" technique). The only problem I have is that the object is not clickable in FF, still looking for a solution to that, though for my puruposes, it's not a big deal. Any clues for that?

--richardmtl (talk) 18:09, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Honestly you are practically guaranteed to have something hacky that only works 1/10th of the time and looks totally wrong if not broken the rest of the time if you try to dynamically serve up SVGs to a browser. You're better off trying to find a way to export your SVGs to a raster file in a way that looks good to you. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 23:08, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

excel macro help

I've never even tried to use a macro before, so i'm stumbling quite a bit here. I'm working on a project that requires that I input 0s and 1s into thousands of lines of a spreadsheet as one phase of an audit of documents at my office. To make things visually easier to handle, I would like a macro that automatically turns the font green in a box containing a 1. I found this code, but I can't seem to make it work. I tried replacing (1, 1) with (ActiveCell), still no good. Help? 208.73.108.118 (talk) 20:35, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't have my compiler on hand so I don't know if this will work but try:

Sub Example()
    With ActiveSheet.Selection
    For i = 1 to Selection.Cells.Count
        If .Cells(i).Value = 1 Then 
            .Cells(i).Font.Color = vbRed
        Else
            .Cells(i).Font.Color = vbGreen
        End If
    Next i
    End With
End Sub

You have to select the cells you want to format before running. If it works, it will make all the 1s red and everything else green. You can also try conditional formatting. Hope this helps. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 22:16, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

As Zain Ebrahim briefly mentioned, conditional formatting will do this easily. (These instructions are for Excel 2002) Select the cells you want to conditionally format, then select the "Conditional Formatting..." option on the "Format" menu. Set condition 1 to "Cell Value Is | equal to | 1", then click the "Format..." button and change "color" to a green. Click "Add>>" to insert a second condition and set it to "Cell Value Is | equal to | 0", then click "Format..." and change the color to a red. Click "OK" to apply the changes. Note, however, that font color makes only a small difference; you might want to color the background shading instead ("Format..." → "Patterns" on the conditional formatting menu) for a clear indication of the value. – 74  02:24, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Spam using anothers address?

I just got some junk turn up in my junk box, pretending to be from HSBC bank. It said I had a message waiting for me and to click the link. Before I deleted it I had a look at the link out of curiosity. It was www.letraset.com.ar/novedades/IBlogin.html so I went to Letraset.com out of curiosity, and as I thought it's the actual website of the company Letraset. Except this specific address shows you a page that looks just like the HSBC login page.
So is somebody using the Letraset address as a host or what? How does this work? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.111.64.177 (talk) 22:36, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Somebody probably broke into their webserver and set up a fake login page. --Carnildo (talk) 23:08, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Note that the phishing domain is letraset.com.ar (do not visit - the homepage contains a trojan) - it's a completely different domain to letraset.com. .ar is the TLD for Argentina. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 23:15, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

March 6

skype to irc (or similar) gateway?

I use two computers, A and B, both running linux. They are at separate locations but both have reasonably fast internet. Computer A has a Skype client installed. Computer B is under a software policy that forbids installing a Skype client on it. I want to participate in a certain Skype chat, from computer B. It's a text-only chat--I don't care about voice or video for this purpose. I'm wondering if there is some kind of program that lets me run an IRC or Pidgin client on computer B, and proxies the conversation through the Skype client on computer A, or a straightforward way to set one up. Even better would be if Pidgin could talk to Skype directly, but my impression is that Skype is a closed network.

Hmm, it occurs to me that the simplest approach may be to tunnel an X window connection by ssh between computers A and B, so that the Skype client on A can open a window on B that I can type in. A and B are both behind firewalls and can't connect to each other directly, but if necessary I can use a third computer C (which is directly on the net) as an intermediary. Should that be straightforward to set up with ssh port forwarding on the three machines? I've always found the ssh docs confusing about things like this.

Thanks. 76.195.10.34 (talk) 02:01, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

There are third party instant messaging programs (most notably on the iphone) that do have skype interfaces. This makes me think there is some skype API, or open standard, similar to what AOL has with AIM, but I haven't looked into it beyond that. That would seem to be the most straightforward solution, although maybe more work than setting up an x tunnel (although that is wrought with problems too). Shadowjams (talk) 10:17, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Current processor offerings

Can someone give a very quick breakdown of high-end, mid-range and low-end processors currently offered from AMD and Intel? As I'm looking for a pc I have become familiar with the names of different families but am not sure how they relate to each other. Specifically I'm looking for something midrange for a laptop that doesn't choke on photo management and post processing, but doesn't need to do gaming, 3d rendering etc. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.154.31.121 (talk) 03:02, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

High end = Intel Nehalem and Core 2 Quad, AMD Phenom. These are 4-core cpus that aren't in laptops yet because they use too much power. Midrange: Core 2 Duo, AMD Turion X2 and some follow-on whose name I've forgotten. This is probably what you want, if by "post processing" you mean you want to run photo editors. I think the Core 2 Duo is mostly dominant now because of higher performance per watt compared with the AMD counterpart. Low end = Intel Celeron and Atom, AMD Geode, and similar. These are used in netbooks for convenient email and web browsing, but will be annoyingly slow if you're running Gimp or Photoshop on large images. 76.195.10.34 (talk) 03:29, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Sort order in Windows explorer

On Windows XP, when listing files sorted by name, what is the sort order used? My observations are that numbers come before letters. That upper and lower case are treated the same, that "-" is treated as a non-character. But where and what order are other symbols and punctuation? Are they asciibetical? I've read lots about numbers being sorted numerically or alphabetically and that isn't a problem. I would like to find a symbol that comes before numbers though. -- SGBailey (talk) 09:14, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I haven't tested it but my hunch is that it's the ASCII character table (in other words, the hex equivalent). I use an ( or a ! for the purpose you're talking about, and that works almost all of the time. XP also has some sort of intelligent sorting, they have some term for it, that will put 3 before 10. Shadowjams (talk) 10:12, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Truely unlimited broadband

Many broadband services say unlimited but actually have fair usage policiles that limit it to 4 gig a month or something. Are there any truly unlimited broadband services in the united kingdom that are really unlimited? thanks you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 13:29, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

No. All policies have a limit. Even if it's a 'hidden' or 'soft' limit.

If there was a truely 'unlimited' broadband plan, then Google would use it and save a fortune.

(Four gig a month seems painfully low, however.) APL (talk) 19:04, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

You can get a T1 or other leased line that is truly unlimited, but it's going to cost you -- figure several hundred pounds a month. --Carnildo (talk) 00:42, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

MS Excel cross-reference help

In MS Excel I can read the value of another's sheet cell by using the following string in the destination's cell value: ='ORIGIN_SHEET_NAME'!A1 (supposing I wanted the content of the A1 cell)

This, however, still means that I have to manually type the origin sheet name every time I want to create a reference of this kind. Is it possible to read the name of the origin sheet from the content of a cell in the destination sheet? Something like: ='B9'!A1 (This won't work) That would be useful, as I wish to automate the process. I would just type the origin sheet name in a cell and the values I wish to transport from one sheet to another would automatically show up. 213.13.148.4 (talk) 13:33, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe you want Excel's INDIRECT function. This function evaluates a text string as a cell or range reference. Using the example details you provided:

=INDIRECT(B9 & "!A1")

Note: the ampersand concatenates strings together. – 74  14:05, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! But when I drag the cell over the adjacent cells in order to apply the rule to them it doesn't work. I'm trying to read, for exemple, the value in Q1, which is the name of a sheet, and then pick the Z9:Z26 values in that sheet and put them in a column with 17 rows. How would you do that? 213.13.148.4 (talk) 14:28, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

There are two potential problems here. The simplest is that the sheet reference changes when you use autofill. To prevent a reference from changing, add '$' before static values. So, to make your B9 reference entirely static, use $B$9 instead.

The more complicated problem is that a text string *doesn't* change when you use autofill (so all your references point back to A1 in the other sheet). Fixing that requires a little more indirection:

INDIRECT($B$9 & "!" & ADDRESS(ROW(A1),COLUMN(A1)))

This results in a formula that can be autofilled and will pull corresponding cells from the specified sheet. – 74  15:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

That last part of the formula (the address part) doesn't seem to work, or I didn't understand it. 213.13.148.4 (talk) 16:07, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Can you be more specific on how it doesn't work? – 74  16:09, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

It just lacked a semicolon (: <- that thing, semicolon, right?) a ; instead of a comma and its fine now! Thanks a lot! 213.13.148.4 (talk) 17:38, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Ultramon Wallpaper (Vista)

Ultramon advertises that it supports having different wallpapers on each monitor, and their web site shows screen shots of it in action, and how to set it up under Windows XP. But I have Windows Vista (violins) and have been unable to figure out how to set up multiple wallpapers in that context. What I've tried:

• Google--many articles that tell me that the feature exists, finally gave up on finding one with how-to
• Ref desk archives
• Ultramon web site

Ma^t_chups 13:40, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

You might find this page helpful (it's not Ultramon, but it may be an alternative). – 74  13:58, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually configuring it on Vista is exactly the same as the way you configure it on XP (I use it myself). Right-click the system tray icon and select Wallpaper. Click the "New wallpaper" button to create and give the new configuration a name. Make sure "a different background/image for each monitor" is selected and then click/select a monitor in the preview. The selected monitor will have a square round it and then you can just use the "Browse" in the bottom right corner (of the same form) to select and image. Click another monitor and then browse to another image for that monitor and so on. Hope this helps! ZX81 ^talk 16:49, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Question on ACID

There is a question on Talk:ACID that basically asks "What does Atomic mean in the realm of Transaction Management?" After answering the question twice, I suggested that the user ask here. However, if anyone wants to jump over to the ACID page and answer the question there, I'm sure the person asking the question will appreciate it. -- kainaw™ 13:59, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I added a comment. Atomic does mean isolation when you discuss test-and-set systems. So, I see the confusion. Youth in Asia (talk) 14:07, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Don't bother. The questioner does not want an answer. He wants an argument. -- kainaw™ 22:47, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Just to clarify, User:Kainaw isn't saying that he himself wants an argument, but rather that User:Water pepper, who posed the original Q on the ACID talk page, does. StuRat (talk) 15:08, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

How do I capture live webcam from livejasmin

OK there's a hot chick and I wanna capture the live video as a flv. file or something how do i do it? Im missing some good stuff right now. THANKS!--Tripping Over The Stones (talk) 18:28, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft Word "bugs"

Typing "=rand(x,y)" onto its own line, and then hitting [ENTER], in a Word document gives x paragraphs of y copies of "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Does anybody know of any other such "bugs?" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucas Brown 42 (talk • contribs) 19:59, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

This type of feature is more commonly known as an "Easter Egg". We have an article on Easter eggs in Microsoft products, and you can Google for more. Note that not every version has the same things built in. --LarryMac | Talk 20:06, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft calls it a feature. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 09:35, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Blogger layout 100%

Can someone tell me how I can get the wide layout in my blogger as Google sites http://googlesitesblog.blogspot.com/ does? Thanks. Kushal (talk) 20:27, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Vista Enterprise vs Windows 7 Beta

I just got a new laptop and don't know which operating system I should install on it. My MSDNAA license allows me to get some free operating systems and other microsoft educational programs. The latest OS's on the website are Vista Enterprise Edition and Windows 7 Beta. So which operating system is the best in terms of compatability/performance? 70.171.29.89 (talk) 21:09, 6 March 2009 (UTC)newLaptopGuy

The one that isn't a beta version. yandman 21:25, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the Windows 7 Beta will cease to function some time later this year (August, IIRC), so Yandman is exactly right. That aside, I found that most programs that function under Vista will function under 7 (with the exception of some firewall/antivirus software). Your mileage may vary. Hermione1980 21:28, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Can vista be installed from CDs which hold vista iso cd files which were split from a vista dvd iso file? 70.171.29.89 (talk) 04:29, 7 March 2009 (UTC)newLaptopGuy

For the first post, it's the kind of question that is generally IMHO. For me, I'd put the stable (Vista) on the new computer - and throw Windows 7 beta on an older computer (nope - haven't done that yet myself). As far as the actual Vista DVD, I'm not sure of the makeup of the disk - but I would guess that it would be difficult. Naturally, just copying an *.iso file to disk isn't going to get you anywhere, but if you did write the ISO - perhaps it would function. My doubtfulness stems from the fact that Microsoft has and does use their own particular way of doing things - including file compression (see *.cab files). It would be pure conjecture, but I would think that you would be continually bouncing back and forth between disks in an effort to get the install to work properly. That often leads to install errors. You might be better to just invest in a DVD reader. — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 05:03, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Also, if you have a 4GB USB flash drive, you can (probably) install Vista from that, too. The specifics of how to boot from usb vary from bios to bios. Indeterminate (talk) 09:03, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

And not all computers support booting from a flash drive. StuRat (talk) 15:00, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

OpenGL

I'm trying to get OpenGL running on my computer (Windows XP, Visual Studio 2008) but I'm not very familiar with C. How do I get all the libraries in the right places so I can compile something? Right now, whenever I try to build something (eg sample programs at [6]) I get build errors on the "include" lines. Black Carrot (talk) 22:24, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Are you using Visual Studio? If so, those headers should work right off the bat as described in that article (so long as you've made a normal project and not messed anything up terrifically). If not, you're going to have to make sure you get the right headers and libraries and whatnot; ie. if you're using GCC on Cygwin [7]. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 09:07, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that was dumb of me. Make sure you're #include-ing windows.h first, and not #define-ing anything too strange before the includes. Other than that, I'm not entirely familiar enough with visual studio yet to be certain. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 10:01, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

If you're unfamiliar with C, maybe you should consider using another (easier) language? There are frameworks that let you do OpenGL in .NET for example, which is far, far easier to configure (the opengl framework integrates with VS). yandman 09:06, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm using Visual Studio. It fails on the "#include <gl\glaux.h>" line. If my computer doesn't have that preinstalled, how do I get it? Black Carrot (talk) 17:51, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Layout Issues

I am currently using Safari version 2.0.4 to view and edit wikipedia. However just yesterday I noticed something odd. When viewing/searching for pages on wikipedia, sometimes the layout of the page isn't right. The text appears smaller and the header and the text are all centered. The search bar on the left is pushed down towards the bottom of the page. Any suggestions on how I can fix this problem? This does not happen everytime but it happens every 3-4 or 5-6 searches/viewing of a new page. Thank you. JayJ47 (talk) 22:27, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

It might just be that you're running into memory errors and it drops the layout from memory. How much RAM does your computer have ? Do you have several other applications (or Safari tabs) open at once ? Does this happen more often when viewing large pages ? Does the computer also occasionally lock up ? What's your O/S ? StuRat (talk) 14:55, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

March 7

SSD comparable to Intel X25-M

Are there any SSDs with capacity (80GB) and performance (0.1ms access and better than HDs read/write) similar to the Intel X25-M that cost less (its $350 on Amazon now)? I know there are some cheaper ones that don't perform. 66.91.255.120 (talk) 00:23, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

counting blocks in aurocad

can anybody tell me how to count blocks in an autocad drawing? are there any commands? thank you.124.43.43.22 (talk) 07:13, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Music in PC

Is there any freeware that can generate stream of musical notes from the recorded sound file and vice versa. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.89.118.53 (talk) 12:09, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean you want it to generate sheet music from an audio file and vice-versa ? If so, generating audio from the sheet music seems far simpler. To go the other way you'd probably need very simple music, like just a piano, playing single whole notes. Trying to decipher all the sheet music for an orchestra would be far more complex. StuRat (talk) 14:45, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I think I remember either freeware or more likely commercial that can a) convert an audio file to .midi and b) other program(s) that can convert a midi file to a textual representation, possibly even to sheet music. See Music sequencer, List of scorewriters, List of MIDI editors and sequencers. You do not have to have any extra hardware for midi - most midi files can be played through the computers speakers. 89.240.206.60 (talk) 23:44, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Program refuses to completely uninstall

About a month ago I tried to remove and reinstall a BETA version of Windows Live Messenger (I can't remember the exact version number) and did so through the usual route of Add/Remove Programs. However, it soon became apparent that this hadn't completely removed the program and despite me removing all components of the program, eventually resulting in deleting the Program Files/Windows Live Messenger folder, it refuses to accept it's fully uninstalled. Since this didn't work, I tried to use a program that tries to delete every aspect of a program from your system, including the registry entries. However, this hasn't worked either. Until it's uninstalled, I can't reinstall as it insists I have "a newer version installed on my computer". Anyone have any ideas, short of reformatting my hard drive? —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 16:59, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Hey cyclo, i suggest you download a registry cleaner and run it once as a reference of few files does not get deleted manually. Let me know if that works ,i believ it should.Vikk

ccleaner might work, if you've not already tried it. I had a similar problem to op and eventually had to delete the registry entries manually, but be careful if you do that as you can potentially cause massive errors in Windows if you delete the wrong thing.

Thanks, EasyCleaner seems to have done the trick. Thanks to you both. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 20:04, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Using Clonezilla

I have been recommended here on the Comp RefDesk to check out Clonezilla as a means for backing up my entire computer. Just to clarify, on my external hard drive, I can create a folder named, for example, "Upstairs Computer" then then back up my entire C: drive on my Upstairs Computer into this folder? Will I be able to boot from the external hard drive should my internal hard drive crash? Acceptable (talk) 18:26, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Reload a web page every x seconds

Resolved

I've probably asked this question before but I really can't be bothered to trawl through the archives so I'll ask again. I'm looking for a simply bit of html that will reload a set url every two mins. I'd edit the html file in notepad to set the url and then open the file in the web browser and it'll do it. Many thanks.

This should work as long as the page doesn't break out of frames:

<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Reloader</TITLE> <META http-equiv="refresh" content="5" /> </HEAD> <FRAMESET cols="100%"> <FRAME src="http://wikipedia.org"> </FRAMESET> </HTML>

Change the "content" for the # of seconds, the "src" is the page to reload. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 19:23, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks a lot :D

Both Firefox (perhaps requiring a plugin) and Opera support reloading webpages automatically at a set interval. – 74  21:17, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Computer programming for chatterbots.

Can someone advise me on a learning path to creating my own own chatterbot/ artificial conversational entity? I glanced briefly over pages about natural language processing, but I'm left wondering so can one use Java or C++ etc computer languages to create these? Can someone outline briefly the steps to take? Thank you in advance.

The programming language doesn't matter much (Java or C++ will be fine), although you'll find a lot of the material you'll find on the subject expresses itself either in Lisp or Prolog, these traditionally being the languages AI and NLP have been done (Prolog much more so in Europe than North America). Simply put, you read in a line from the user, parse it into syntactic units. Then you perform some kind of semantic analysis (to try and figure out what the sentence actually might mean); simple bots just dig out a noun or verb or two and parrot them back ("tell me more about <insert item here>"), smarter ones do a more thorough job. If you want the bot to behave in anything more than a toy way, it'll need state - that is, it remembers a bunch of things that have been said, and uses this as a frame by which to "understand" the conversation as a whole (so if we were talking about trains a few questions ago, and you now started talking about the engine, I'd probably infer that you meant an engine that is somehow related to you, or to trains). To really make something worthwhile, a bot would need "domain knowledge", that is it's been programmed beforehand with some knowledge of the "real world", or some department of it. So you might tell it that cars and bikes and trains are vehicles, that cars and bikes have engines, that horses and bikes can be ridden, and that people and horses eat food. This is where everything gets very difficult, as writing useful information about even a trivial domain takes a lot of effort, and can produce relatively little result. Anyway, back to your bot. After it has "understood" the sentence (I write "understood" in quotes, because it mostly hasn't really done anything of the sort, just formed a very primitive model of the sentence and the knowledge it might possibly contain) the bot must compose a reply; naively it just parrots words or ideas found in the submitted sentence (or based on the knowledge frame it has built up). To make it behave a bit more like a person you might build it with a set of conversation patterns (e.g. the beginnings and ends of conversations, asking directions, discussing something we like or don't). Now writing a general-purpose artificial conversationalist is doomed to failure (if you follow the above prescriptions) because the thing's understanding is so primitive that it quickly becomes like talking to a drunk idiot. Writing a conversation-type and knowledge-domain specific bot will be a lot more likely to succeed, and will probably be a lot more fun. For example, write a bot that the human (pretending to be a police detective) must interrogate about a crime. 87.115.143.223 (talk) 21:06, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Urgh, I forgot about ambiguity. Consider the sentences "John said he and Peter had gone to the pub. Then he went home". Who went with Peter to the pub (was it John, or someone else)? And who when home (John? Peter? the unnamed other male?)? While your bot's internals will function with some kind of rather formal system like first-order logic, vexingly people rarely write in unambiguous logical statements. Figuring out who went to the pub with Peter is hard enough for people, with better equipment and lots of real-world experience. Your bot will make a lot of (probably rather amusing) errors in this regard. 87.115.143.223 (talk) 21:14, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Using an existing sim card in a new iPhone?

I have just received a new, though rather cheap, phone from a family member. It is an AT&T phone with a 3G sim card, and the family member is paying for the service. I also just received my tax return, and would like to get an iPhone. I have not found a consistent answer online, so my question is this: If I got an iPhone 3G, would I be able to just put in the AT&T 3G sim card I already have, thus bypassing having to sign up (and pay) for new AT&T service? I know the sim cards are removable, but, as noted, I have yet to find a consistent answer on whether or not I would be able to activate the device without purchasing a new plan. Thanks. --Abin Sur (talk) 23:37, 7 March 2009 (UTC)