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May 17

Who would win in a fight generator

I'm looking for a program or something that (without any programming on my part) would predict the outcome of a fight between video game characters and other fictional creatures (I.E. Link vs. a Vampire). Me and my girlfriend are at a stalemate and would love to just know the outcome and figure SOME ONE had to have done this. Rgoodermote  00:49, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

How do you expect a computer program to do that? The question isn't well defined. You would need to have information on their fighting capabilities in a way that can be compared - that information doesn't exist for characters that exist in different fictional universes. In most cases, it won't even exist for characters in the same fictional universe. --Tango (talk) 01:26, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

I expect some one to have already done it for me. Probably in Javascript or PHP. Rgoodermote  01:29, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

But how? It's impossible. The information needed to compute the result doesn't exist. --Tango (talk) 01:33, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Not a gamer? The stats exist. Open up a game guide and they have em right there. As for the stats of a vampire, those exist as well. Rgoodermote  01:39, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

The stats only exist in a way that allows for comparison between characters in the same game (you may be able to compare height and weight, but not skill and certainly not any special powers). And what stats are there for a vampire? You need to be more precise about what you mean, do you want Dracula? A D&D vampire? A typical Buffyverse vampire? Only D&D has any real stats and, again, they are only useful for fights against other D&D characters. --Tango (talk) 01:45, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

They have specials in em. Plus, if that isn't enough. There are enough fan sites to make the hunt easy. As for vampire...the essential..which is Dracula. Rgoodermote  01:49, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there are stats for the specials, but not in a comparable format. You can't compare "4/10" in one game with "5/10" in another since they are completely difference scales and there is no meaningful conversion factor. I've read Dracula, there were no stats in it. You would have to base it on stats that someone other than the author has made up, so it isn't really Dracula. --Tango (talk) 01:56, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

The question and attitude indicate a probable troll. Tempshill (talk) 03:22, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Gentlemen, the answer is obvious. The vampire would defeat Link. You don't need a computer to tell you this. Although, you can set up Smash Brothers to play by itself, matching AI characters against each other. We even have the complete list of possible match-ups. This may be the closest that modern technology can deliver. Nimur (talk) 02:20, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Obvious? I think not. The Light Arrows from Zelda would be a formidable weapon against a vampire, since you've basically got sunlight and a stake through the heart all in one blow. Even in the Zelda universe, the Light and Silver Arrows are supposed to be able to stop or kill immortals, so there you go. Link's definitely got a fighting chance. Indeterminate (talk) 07:33, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

The Internet never sleeps. Anyway, this goes to Link, no contest. He has a huge bag of tricks (let's not forget the Stone Mask), while vampires have, what, fangs and charm? And they can turn into bats? Link eats bats for breakfast. As if that weren't enough, if Link did die he would just restart the area with three hearts. Eventually the vampire is going down. -- BenRG (talk) 23:08, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Fight generators are for pussies. Throw them all into a Blendtec, press the button; and at the end all you'll have will be Chuck Norris and bad guy smoke. RESOLVED -- Hoary (talk) 08:47, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

This video answers any questions you might have on the subject. No Javascript needed. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:12, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

There's no way you could make a computer program that does this in any useful way. You're probably thinking of all the hit-point stats available on the internet, but it doesn't work. How do we know the hit points are compatible? If I base a game on a hitpoint scale of 1 to 10,000 then all my characters will slaughter characters from a game that runs from 0.0 to 1.0!

The more fundamental problem is the incompatibility of the "universes" the fictional characters come from. In a Zelda game, Link is virtually indestructible as long as he is holding up his shield. Does this mean that Master Chief doesn't have any weapons that could punch through Link's medieval shield? Even if Master Chief's weapons can't pierce the shield, can he use a sniper rifle to shoot Link's head? (It's never fully behind the shield in the animation of Zelda games.) Even assuming that Link survives Master Chief's attack and launches a counter attack, does the Master Sword effect MC? Zelda fan's will say "yes" because it's magical and can kill anything. Halo fans will say "no" because it's preposterous that the MC's armor is vulnerable to such ancient weapons wielded by such a small person.

There's no way a computer program could decide this sort of stuff on its own. If a program like this exists, it's only because someone has put in his opinion for all the variables. APL (talk) 16:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

http://www.googlefight.com/ </thread> CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 16:18, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks CaptainVindaloo, that's close enough to what I was asking. Rgoodermote  03:15, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I am not a gamer, but if scores already exist, then could he not just try 1) converting the different scores into a z score or failing that, a percentage, then 2) decide which of the scores from the different websites are more or less equivalent, then 3) decide what the weighting of the various scores would be in relation to the characters fighting prowess, then 4) calculating a weighted average fighting score for each character? 89.242.109.25 (talk) 12:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, such a simplified scoring system would not work. The set of all things which can fight each other do not form a total ordered set, which is why all of these games have such complex scoring statistics to begin with. (In plain english, consider this simple example, common in many games: infantry can defeat rockets; rockets can defeat armored tanks; armored tanks can defeat infantry. Which has the highest score?) Complex interactions between combatants' unique abilities result in the need for a nonlinear combination of capabilities which cannot be mapped to a single linear statistic. In the pathological case, N different statistics are required for N different participants, with a unique match-up outcome for every possible combination. If time-variation is permitted, or if there is an element of indeterminate (random) outcome, then those must also be parameterized. The more realistic the model, the more sophisticated such parameters must be. Nimur (talk) 14:30, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

A lot of academic assessments are done in the same way as I've suggested: does it mean they are nonsense? 78.146.18.113 (talk) 18:37, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

You don't generally use academic assessments to predict which of two individuals will do better at a specific task and they really aren't very good at that. They give you a broad idea of where in the population a person is, but you can only compare individual scores if they are either very far apart (that's why you generally just look at grades rather than actual percentages, the percentages aren't particularly more meaningful than the grades) or the task you are trying to predict the result of is very similar to the task they were assessed on. But none of that is really relevant - you can't compare z-scores from different populations without directly comparing several members of one population with several members of the other. The only way to compare them would be to get a character from one game to fight a character from another game and you simply can't do that. --Tango (talk) 18:56, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

There's always Googlefight. SpinningSpark 19:16, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Using Google

I think there are ways I can improve my google searches by using speech marks and plus signs and other stuff, but I can't find a page to teach me these things. Any help?91.109.232.157 (talk) 08:45, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Google search basics: More search help (it's linked on the "Advanced Search" page). --dapete 08:58, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

This cheat sheet (http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html) is also very useful, I use it myself. ny156uk (talk) 12:46, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Inkscape banknote tutorial

Hi, guys. I'm interested in finding the full version of this tutorial, but it appears it costs! Does anyone know of a free version, alternative (or does anyone have it and is willing to email it...)? Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 09:13, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

They are called spirograph images colloquially. Google "Inkscape spirograph" or "Illustrator spirograph" and you can find lots of different ways to make them (like this one or this one for Illustrator, but I suspect Inkscape can do similar things). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:17, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

May 18

Printing separate/different files

So at work, I have to print the same two worksheets every day. They are Microsoft Excel files and one is read-only while the other is not, so I can't combine the two files or anything. I always gotta print them on two separate sheets of paper. Any one know if it's possbible to print two separate files onto one page? TravisAF (talk) 02:24, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

If the other file is not read-only, can't you copy and paste the content of the first page into that file? Nimur (talk) 02:47, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

They're heavily modified files with all sorts of tables and borders and etc. Everytime I try copy and pasting, it distorts everything in both files. TravisAF (talk) 03:18, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't copy and paste. Use Paste, Special and choose the options for pasting Formatting and Values. Your borders etc will transfer correctly, and any formulas on the page will be transcribed into the current value, not pasted as the formula (which of course would refer to different cells in the new location).

If that fails, mark the print area in Page One, and reduce the scale if necessary, to make it fit half a sheet of paper. This will be the top half of your print-out. Page Two set up with half a page of blank cells above it,included in the Print Area. Feed the used paper back into the printer, and Page Two will print below the Page One material. To avoid the Page Two spacer over-writing the Page One stuff with gridlines, turn off gridlines in Printing Setup. If you need gridlines showing between the tables, set the thinnest black or grey border around those cells.KoolerStill (talk) 11:14, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Or get yourself a PDF printer like PDFCreator, print both files to the same PDF (which will then be 2 pages), then print the PDF with a "2-up" setting that prints two pages on the same sheet of paper. I'm no guru at scripting, but I'd make a VBA script that opens one Excel file, prints it to PDF, closes it, opens the other, prints to PDF, closes it. Then I'd hope that my pdf print software supported command line, and make a .bat file that first combines the two PDF files into one, then prints them. That makes for 2 clicks each day (first VBA script, then bat file) but still quite automated. You could rescale the Excel files so that they look neat when they occupy half a sheet of paper each (possibly scaling up font sizes, etc). Jørgen (talk) 13:39, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Or copy the area you want to print from each spreadsheet and paste them as pictures into a Word document. Enhanced metafile format works well in my experience - it produces readable images over a generous range of re-sizing. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:02, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Is the objective to print both on one sheet to save paper, or to print one spreadsheet on top of the other (like a printed form), or to simply reduce the clicks needed?

To print both with one click, select both in Windows Explorer then right-click and pick "Print". Excel will open twice and each will be printed in turn. To print one on top of the other, put the first printed sheet back into the paper tray. To save paper, turn the paper over before putting it back in the paper tray. If you want either of these last two to be done with no manual intervention, you will need to look at the many suggestions provided by the others above. Astronaut (talk) 18:12, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Website causing internet to appear to disconnect

Whenever I visit xtube.com (so far the only site that causes this problem), my internet connection appears to completely drop. I get logged out of my messenger programs, downloads cease, and I can't open any new webpages for roughly a minute after I try to load that site. But internet only stops on my computer, and not the others on the network. I stopped going there several months ago when this started happening, but I just got the urge to visit it again and the problem still occurs. Other people I have asked don't have any problems. Anyone know why this would happen? 74.230.240.144 (talk) 03:04, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

That type of video site used to, in dial-up days, disconnect you and switch you to a premium rate service, which you'd find out about on your next phone bill. Now this doesn't apply, there may be associated viruses hogging your bandwidth to send data back to their home base. Or it could be redirecting you for fake clicks on numerous pay-by-click sites. How does you machine stack up (OS, RAM) with those that don't get the problem? Do a virus and spyware check on your machine before you use the site again.KoolerStill (talk) 10:31, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

My first assumption was also spyware, but scans have always come up empty. Unless the program is so obscure that major anti-malware programs don't pick up on it, I don't think that's the cause. My OS, RAM, and bandwidth are similar to others who don't have the problem, so I doubt that's an issue either. 74.230.240.144 (talk) 00:05, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Good gaming mouse that work on glass?

What is a good gaming mouse that will work on a glass surface (smooth top and frosted underside)? I have a glass desktop and have been thinking of getting a new mouse. I've tried one of the Logitech G-series (forgot which) which didn't work, and I'm quite clueless on gaming mice in general; so any help would be appreciated. Wireless would be a plus (less of a mess on my desk) but not essential. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:05, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

A laser mouse like a Logitech G5 might work but you should just save the bother and get yourself a mousemat. The problem is all gaming mice now use LED or lasers to read movement, and they don't work well on seethrough or reflective surfaces, so a mousemat is your best option. 212.219.8.233 (talk) 09:04, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Boy - if you had to pick a maximally mouse-hostile surface, glass would be it! Optical mice work by pointing a tiny camera down at the desk and tracking how the picture it sees moves as you move the mouse. But the focal length of the lens is very carefully set - and the glass will screw that up for sure - it's also too uniform to have an image the mouse can track. The alternative is a clunky old mechanical mouse - but those don't grip worth a damn on super smooth surfaces like glass. So either way, you're going to need a mouse mat - and at that point, any mouse should do. I guess you could try a trackball - some people love them - but many can't stand them...it's a matter of opinion. SteveBaker (talk) 03:39, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I personally use a Logitech Trackball. This type of mouse works on any surface, It will even work with a complete lack of surfaces. It does take a little time to get use to it, and some people never realy do get use to it. Some will say that trackballs are not gaming mice, let alone FPS mouse. As i said, its not for a everyone. I hope this helps. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  15:20, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I've flipped the glass over now and use the frosted side as top instead. It was too rough but then I covered it with transparent book cover film and now it's like having a giant icemat! That opens up a lot more options... --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:39, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Two questions in one

1. I'm switching my anti-virus software. I'm torn between G-Data, Avira, Kaspersky and Symantec. Which one would you recommend?
2. I'm also buying some new headphones. I've found a few selections to my liking and I would also like an opinion on these: 1, 2 and 3. I know these have customer reviews, which I've read, but last year I bought a pair of $50 Sony headphones that went out on me after only a few months, so this time I don't want to get screwed over again. Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 05:22, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

"The reference desk does not answer requests for opinions" TravisAF (talk) 05:45, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

"Or predictions about future events. Do not start a debate; please seek an internet forum instead." The "no request for opinions" has mainly to do with polarizing questions that are completely subjective, to which no factual answers can be given. Asking for an opinion on the quality of a product is an entirely different story. Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 06:20, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Of the anti-virus products you list, I only have experience with Symantec, which I found to be a resource hog and difficult to remove from my machine once I had decided in favour of other anti-virus software.

I now use Bit-defender, which is far from perfect (among other things the firewall conflicts with my network card), but my machine is more responsive than before I switched. --ChrisSteinbach (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:50, 18 May 2009 (UTC).

(ec) And it's not legal or medical advice being sought. Anyway; Whipit - I can't offer any suggestions on the headphones, but I'll take a stab at the AV one. Looking over the Feb. 09 results at .av-comparatives.org I'd probably opt for the Kaspersky (of the ones you've mentioned). I see that G-Data also rates very high, but I haven't tried it so I'm not familiar with it. I wasn't happy with Avira (just a personal observation, nothing wrong with the product), and Symantec is only now getting back up to the upper-ranks with its 2009 improvements. Kaspersky has been around, and a top-notch AV proggie for a while, and if I didn't have Nod32, I'd prolly be running it. Of course, the decision ultimately is yours; have a look at some of the reviews and comparatives - then just grab what you like best. ;) — Ched :  ?  06:59, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Are you experienced with operating system internals? If you are, I would recommend that you use HIPS software instead of AV software (try the free COMODO Internet Security, which includes an AV as well as a firewall and HIPS). I personally can't stand the fact that AV software has to scan everything you try to use, which slows down your computer considerably. Most AV software is very bad at self-protection as well - see the Matousec leaktest results. --wj32 ^t/c 08:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Exploiting Google Safesearch

Suppose, a program does a google image search with Safesearch on, and another search with the same query, but with safesearch off. Now it finds the intersection of the images found and subtracts them from the second set, and voila! You have your own porn search engine, thanks to Google! Can this really ever work ? And if it does, isn't it some sort of a concern? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.248.80.114 (talk) 10:49, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

What a lot of trouble to go to. Leave Safesearch off and just type p o r n (without the spaces). Optionally add 'online', 'free', 'images' or 'video'. Optionally be more specific. Click GO. That's it, your own porn search engine. KoolerStill (talk) 11:29, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

The exposure (no pun intended) is that you could potentially infer the exact requirements to fall into the 'safesearch filtered' category, and then possibly use that to keep your images showing up in all results. If that's any use to you. --66.195.232.121 (talk) 12:35, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Presumably you tried this yourself, already. What occurred? Tempshill (talk) 15:38, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Why would it be a concern? SafeSearch exists to keep material you might not want to see away from your eyes. It can generally be disabled with a few simple clicks of a button. Its purpose is not to make it impossible to view porn, but to make it more unlikely that you view porn by accident. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 18:56, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

MySQL table creation

Resolved

Is there an easy way to automatically generate the "CREATE TABLE ..." SQL command from an existing table? -- Toytoy (talk) 10:57, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I got it!

SHOW CREATE TABLE tblname; -- Toytoy (talk) 11:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

LOL. Wonderful how putting a problem into writing helps point you in the right direction. Good luck with it.KoolerStill (talk) 11:28, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

An idle wondering...

Totally random question that I've been kinda curious about for a while now: what's the default size for the TTL on an IP packet sent from a personal computer (Windows, Linux or Mac)? It's an octet, so the max size is 256, right? Is it set to that? Is there any guidance from an RFC or something? 90.237.196.83 (talk) 12:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

128 seems pretty typical, but you are right that the max is 256. RFC 791 explains the function of the field but does not set an explicit starting value. --66.195.232.121 (talk) 12:32, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I suppose it's rather inconcievable that you'd need to make more than 128 hops if everything was working like it should. Thanks! 90.237.196.83 (talk) 13:08, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

TTL is even more esoteric than that. It's actually intended to represent the number of hops or the number of seconds since creation (whichever is greater, basically a hop counts as no less than one second.) So the original intention was that a packet would be killed off after either 255 hops or 255 *seconds* spent being routed, whichever came first. Considering how long it's been since a packet (around 1400 bytes) could traverse the global network from one side of the planet to the other multiple times in one second, it just baffles my mind that at one point we thought to ourselves "so, how about giving the packet over 4 minutes to find it's way to the destination..."--66.195.232.121 (talk) 16:40, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Store and forward over a congested overseas link, or from a spotty connection in the middle of nowhere, or over a satellite uplink, can add appreciable amounts of time. Granted, even then 4 minutes is probably a long time to wait for a connection, but a 15-30 seconds latency may not be unheard of. Once you've assigned a full byte for the purpose, there's no reason to arbitrarily limit the max value. -- 128.104.112.117 (talk) 18:32, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Depending on the OS it will vary, but if memory serves, Windows machines use 128, and hop in some predictable pattern. Linux uses some other starter an hops in a linear, but non-sequential fashion. Open BSD, for instances, uses a random start and random pattern (maybe)?). Shadowjams (talk) 09:49, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Open-source alternatives

I am trying to find open-source programs for following tasks:

• simulate optical components
• simulate fluid flow
• speech recognition

Normally, I am quite satisfied with open-source alternatives and regard them usually as superior. There are just a couple of fields where I can't find an alternative.--Mr.K. (talk) 12:04, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Have you see POV-Ray? It's an open-source ray tracing program. You really need to be more specific about what you are looking for - you have mentioned three huge fields, and there are certainly open-source programs in all of them - but what exactly is it that you're trying to do? Nimur (talk) 14:53, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

OK. I need speech recognition to dictate texts. The other two are only out of curiosity. I would like to know how different sets of lenses work and also how the aerodynamic of different virtual car/plane or whatever works.--Mr.K. (talk) 15:09, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Have you looked at our article? Several open-source items are listed there for voice dictation and control. Nimur (talk) 15:33, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) http://www.osalt.com/ seems to be a good website. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  15:33, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

• Osalt is amazing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 15:54, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

• There are some open-source programs for speech recognition, however, how realistic is it to use them in a office environment (that means, if you want to really work? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 15:54, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I would assume that by "simulate optical components", Mr. K is looking for something like Zemax or CODE V, which you could use to (say) design a zoom lens for a camera and accurately predict its optical performance. POV-Ray isn't really suitable for that job... even if it knows something about refraction and reflection, it would be like using Adobe Illustrator instead of AutoCAD to design a jet engine. You could sorta, kinda, imagine doing it, but only as a painful exercise... -- Coneslayer (talk) 18:57, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Exactly, but these two are not open-source. Could it be that there is no open-source equivalent?--Mr.K. (talk) 11:15, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Not that I know of. When I was in grad school, we mostly ran on open source, but we bought those two. I'd love to be proven wrong. -- Coneslayer (talk) 17:14, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Change the default view for 'file open' dialogue box

When I am working I usually am interested in opening the most recently edited files which is easy if I need one of the files listed at the bottom of the "File" menu but otherwise a pain. I hit ctrl-O to get the dialogue box, change the view to "Details" from "List", then click twice on "Date Modified" to get the most recent files at the top. You can call me lazy if you like, but I hate going through the above every time I open a file.

I am running windows xp sp3 if that helps. mislih 18:02, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, I hardly ever use the "Open" command anyway, I generally select the files by double-clicking on them (or dragging them into the application from) Explorer. All that tends to take is Alt-Tab to get me to the Explorer window, and with that one, I don't need to change the view settings every time I use it. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 18:53, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I guess it is impossible to do what I want to do, sad. mislih 14:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Selling Old Computer - Value and best way to clean it up?

Hello all. I realize that Ref Desk is not the place to ask opinion-based questions, so I may be splitting hairs here...

I'm going to attempt to build a computer (my first build) and if all goes well, I plan on selling my old computer. Two questions: 1. what's it "worth" and 2. what's the best way to clean up the hard drive so someone does not recover/steal my personal info/files.

Machine: Dell Dimension 8400 purchased new in 2005. Works like a charm, not a thing wrong with it, I just want to try to build my own machine.

Comp Has:

• 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 with Hyper Threading Technology
• Windows XP Pro Media Center Edition
• 2 Gigs of PC 5200 RAM
• Nvidia 6800 256 MB Video Card DVI/VGA and a TV Tuner
• 120 Gigs harddrive
• CD/DVD RW drive
• Floppy Drive
• 8 USB ports
• Comes with a 15 inch LCD monitor, and standard keyboard/mouse set
• I would keep Office 2007 installed

I see there is an auction for a similar 8400 on eBay that just ended at $202. However, that computer did not have a separate video processing card or a TV turner card. I was thinking about just putting $250 on it and seeing what happens, but I'd appreciate any advice.

I would try to sell this on eBay, Craig's List or through the local paper - whichever will yield the highest amount.

I want to ensure my files are completely gone. I was thinking about using the File Shredder program bundled with Spybot Search and Destroy. Any ideas?

Thanks for the time! :) Rangermike (talk) 19:05, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

File Shredder should do the job. As for the computer, I would not be surprised if you could do better by breaking it into component parts. The monitor itself could probably fetch you $80. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 19:17, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Why get rid of it at all? You could keep it and use it as a second machine, a media server (with another hard drive), a tool to mess around with Linux, etc. You could give it to your parents, your kids, your grandparents, or you could give it to a charity. As for wiping your data, there are plenty of commercial and free disk cleaners and some reasonable suggestions in this previous discussion. Astronaut (talk) 20:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Here is the same link, but should remain useful even after the post drops off this page —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.172.159.131 (talk) 20:10, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

File shredders are nice, but if you want to make sure you've eliminated ALL your personal data - I'd format, and re-install the OS. Just to be on the safe side IMHO. — Ched :  ?  20:21, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't trust file shredders. I'm sure they have good intentions, but secure file shredding is an unsolvable problem because files can be relocated, leaving bits of themselves behind, and the filesystem doesn't keep track of all the places the file used to be. Shredding free space (after deleting all sensitive files in the ordinary way) works in principle but is very difficult to get right in practice. I don't think it can be done at all on a mounted volume while Windows is running because the filesystem drivers don't provide the necessary support. And all of these techniques will fail if you overlook a sensitive file. The only way to be sure is to shred the whole drive, and the easiest way to do that is using TrueCrypt. After doing that you would have to reinstall Windows and Office if you wanted those to be available for the buyer. If you want to shred files or free space on a regular basis without reinstalling everything every time, SDelete is probably as good as it gets. -- BenRG (talk) 20:57, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Eh, really, it depends on the data. We're not talking about nuclear design codes here, I imagine, just old homework and the like. A file shredder is better than just deleting it. Whether it is better than nuking the whole thing, well, probably depends on how important the data is. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 02:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate all the suggestions and thoughts on cleaning it up. I was planning on selling the machine and using the proceeds to purchase the components for my new build. But astronaut got me thinking ... maybe I'll use it to tinker around with Linux or some of the other open source OS out there. I've never used any other OS other than Windows. Now is a good time to learn/try something new. Thx! Rangermike (talk) 20:44, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, really. Or re-reconsider. Assembling your own computer these days, when you already have a perfectly good computer is less reinventing the wheel than paying handsomely for the unexciting "privilege" of removing a wheel from your car and bolding it back on. I mean, these days most of what you need is anyway on the motherboard, and the stuff you want that isn't is attached via unambiguous cables. (It's ages since I bothered with a floppy drive but I think that you can actually misattach it. Whereupon no mushroom cloud will arise; the FDD simply won't work.) Now, if you want to be adventurous you'll get some ancient monster paperback on how to assemble computers and dig around for an old case, an old motherboard, and some funky old stuff to attach to it. Don't forget such essentials as an I/O card (for RS232C and Centronics). The SCSI card may or may not work with your full-height DDS backup drive and the rest even after you've set the DIPs for the right ID numbers. My favorite item is the Hercules Graphics Card Plus; this works like a charm with either XyWrite or Sprint. I wouldn't skimp on memory: go for all of 2MB, and good luck accessing what's above 640kB! ¶ Alternatively, realize that you have a perfectly good computer already, one that's probably got (or can easily be given) bags of space for an additional OS. For which I'd recommend this advice (despite its title, not Ubuntu-specific). -- Hoary (talk) 03:21, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this, in part because old computers just aren't worth much. Your monitor will still be worth something for awhile because an LCD screen, even a small one (or especially a small one—not everyone wants giant ones!) will work basically the same three, five, however years later. Having an extra machine around can be quite useful if you do any sort of programming—I have a Dell from 1999 that I keep around to every once in awhile use for batch work (e.g. running OCR on a slew of files—something I can let running for days if need be). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 03:02, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

What happened to my Internet?

The information about my computer is somewhere in the history of my computing reference desk questions.

In short, it's an HP with Vista.

Friday, I couldn't get the circle to stop rotating. The lights on the modem didn't indicate a problem. I finally got the screen saying either I couldn't get to the site or I wasn't connected to the Internet. It had a place to click to "diagnose connection problems" and for one site where I was, doing that said that the site had a problem. There was a place to click to "repair" and I was able to go back to that site.

I was also able to go to Wikipedia. At first, I thought it was because the pages were in my history, though some of them didn't come up after CTRL-H even though I had been to them. Then I was able to go to other pages I hadn't gone to.

But on two other web sites, all I could get was the circle rotating and rotating. This wasn't just a Yahoo problem because it was happening to two sites. I couldn't get into my Yahoo email. I couldn't send the email that was on the screen. I saved it, signed in to another email account, and sent it. Then I turned off the computer. When I turned it back on, both sites were working again.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Rebooting is often the simplest way to solve networking trouble in Vista, as they've managed to move the networking information behind two or three additional screens when compared to XP's Control Panel. You may want to try launching a command prompt next time it happens and type ipconfig /flushdns to clear out any possible DNS resolution issues, and consider installing another browser such as Mozilla Firefox to isolate whether it's a general networking problem, or something specific to Internet Explorer. Coreycubed (talk) 21:11, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I like Internet Explorer and don't want to consider Firefox. I go to a library where I have to use Firefox and that's just a nightmare.

I have instructions written down for how to get to "ipconfig" or "flushdns" but I don't have the problem right now. I'm in the process of searching for the specifics of my computer.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Here [1] are the details of my computer. I keep a link to how someone told me to search for my Help Desk questions, and substituting what appears in the URL when you search the Computing Reference Desk archives in the URL I was told to use for the Help Desk gives me my Computing Reference Desk questions. I'll keep all three of these.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:15, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

XPath: Equality match on list-valued attribute

I'm building an application that allows the user to flag elements within HTML documents for subsequent text processing. To future-proof my application, I have chosen to use XPath/XQuery syntax to identify the elements, but instead of incorporating a full implementation of XPath, I am currently hand-rolling support for a handful of forms of XPath rule. One thing I'm hung up on is the correct form of a rule to match one token in a list. At least one version of the HTML standard[2] defines the common class attribute to have value type NMTOKENS. As I understand it, this means that the value of a code attribute is a list, tokenized on whitespace. What I want to be able to do is specify an element/attribute/value triple (for the class attribute), e.g. (div, class, print) and have it match an element like:

<div class="foo print bar"/>

but not one like:

<div class="noprint"/>

By my reading of one source[3], I should use:

   div[contains(@class, "print")]

but from another[4], I should use:

 div[@class="print"]

I have been scouring the standards[5], and I can't see that this question is answered explicitly one way or the other, but I think the answer may lie somewhere in the way that the characters are assembled into collation units. Can anyone shed some light on this for me?

Thanks, Bovlb (talk) 21:24, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Phone location device/site

I remember hearing about some kind of facility a while back, where you could find out the location of a mobile phone. I seem to recall that you had to send a text message to a certain number so that they had you on their system and then you could go to a website and tap in your number and it told you where that phone was. Anybody know about anything like this?Popcorn II (talk) 21:36, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Sounds a bit like Loopt. Bovlb (talk) 21:52, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

There are plenty of services that will find the location of a mobile phone. They are usually aimed at worried parents trying to keep their kids away from crime hotspots or hanging around in the park drinking with their mates. The owner of the phone has to consent to this (unless the requesting party is the police/etc.) That is pretty easy to do if the phone is your's or your kid's and usually involvs relying to a text message. Accuracy is limited to the location of the nearest phone network antenna (ie. about 500 metres in an urban environment?) and of course the phone has to be switched on. A Google search offers up lots of possibilities. Astronaut (talk) 14:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

May 19

Strange Japanese plug

I have a Japanese mate and he used to connect his external CD drive to a plug that resembles a USB. The difference was that the plug was a square with a smaller square at its side. It was as broad as a USB. What is that?--80.58.205.37 (talk) 11:32, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

There are multiple types of USB plugs - If you live in Europe you will probally think of the Type A plug as "The USB Plug". However, there are several other USB plugs (Image). From your description i think that you mean the middle one in this image - a plug type B. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 11:48, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Or maybe Firewire? Jørgen (talk) 13:16, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

A photo/drawing would be nice. F (talk) 13:22, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Probably Firewire, but maybe eSATA? APL (talk) 16:28, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Did you read our article? Universal Serial Bus? Oda Mari (talk) 04:54, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

autostart a crashed program

Resolved

If a windows program crashes (and they often do) is there any way to have the computer restart the program automatically? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 11:56, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Nope. You'll have to restart it manually. The only exception to this rule is explorer.exe that automatically restarts if it crashes.  Buffered Input Output 12:43, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

To refine the answer by BufferedIO: There is no build in method to do this, but software (and freeware) is availible that will restart a program once it crashes. That type of software works trough minitoring the running processes. If a proces is terminated or unresponsive it will restart the proces. Some applications (Mostly security related though) have such functionality build in into them. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 12:56, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this is exactly what I am looking for. Any suggestions for good programs to try? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 12:58, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Just found something, seems to be working well. Thanks

My friend says the plural of "mouse" is "mouses" when referring to computer accessories.

I say he's full of crap. Who's right? What Is Moe? (talk) 13:04, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Both Mice and Mouses are acceptable, see Mouse (computing)#Etymology and plural. Nanonic (talk) 13:10, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

ahh ec damn —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 13:11, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

How admirably succinct. If you want a longer and more involved arugment, with academic references and all, ask on the Language RefDesk. BrainyBabe (talk) 15:59, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

GNU Software

Where can I download a precompiled version of GNU Chess thats ready to work after installing. When I d/l the files from GNU sites you have to have a compiler to install. So where can I d/l the program so that its already compiled and I can just install and play. Thank you. --Mudupie (talk) 14:03, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that you can't take a program compiled for one system and run it on another system. So, you must state what system you are using to ensure that you are getting a program that will run. -- kainaw™ 14:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, since this is not The Year Of Linux On The Desktop, I'm going to guess Mudupie is running Windows, and will want to visit the first link that appears when he Googles gnu chess windows download, which is this link at Sourceforge which has a Setup binary. Tempshill (talk) 15:21, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

This is the link you want: [6]. It's not from the GNU people, but I've used past versions myself. I never bothered to get Xboard running though. I normally would suggest googling for it too, but I remember it being hard to find. Shadowjams (talk) 20:01, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

English.dat

Hi....I'm finding files called english.dat spread around some of my folders. What is this file for? Any worries? 69.180.160.77 (talk) 15:00, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Which OS? Which folders? In C:\WINDOWS, C:\Users, or C:\Program Files? It sounds like a file with English strings of an application. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:21, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Try to open one of the files in a text editor (e.g. Notepad). Then you might be able to infer from the strings which application created the files. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:22, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, yes...Windows XP...and they seem to be placed pretty randomly. There's some in the My Documents folder, some in Program files. When you open them they contain: 28.03.09 09:56:08 passed .\HttpFunctions.cpp, 54. The content seems pretty static except for the last 2 didget number which seems to increment. 69.180.160.77 (talk) 16:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

The number appears to be referencing time, so the last number would be the seconds. My guess is that they are used by some program to keep track of time that has passed since an event. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 00:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Google Earth Resolution

hi, just out of interest where in the world is the highest resolution on Google Earth? thanks,--Abc26324 (talk) 16:02, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Can you please clearify your question? Do you mean the resolution of the program that is called Google Earth? Or are you asking where the highest resolution picture of earth would be? – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  16:12, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

If you mean best quality images, they tend to be cities and large urban areas. Countryside is usually poor quality —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 16:13, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

What place(s) in the world have the best resolution, i know its likely to be urban areas, but is there anywhere which has the most detail (i heard that Prague is quite good?)?--Abc26324 (talk) 16:29, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

My vote would be for Cambridge, Mass. Matt Deres (talk) 16:51, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I've always been under the impression that 37°25′18.33″N 122°5′3.46″W wins. Cycle~ (talk) 18:49, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't know whether 15.298542°N 19.42974°E / 15.298542; 19.42974 wins, but it's awesome. Explanation here (also check out the locations in the comments). -- BenRG (talk) 07:47, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Load pre-installed windows in VirtualBox

Is there anyway to take a hard drive with windows XP pro already installed and run that under VirtualBox Without the BsoD? Or to at lease startup my own copy of winxp with the user profiles/settings/SAM files/programs from the windows on the hard drive? – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  16:08, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Forgot to mintion, the host system is Ubuntu 9.04– Elliott(Talk|Cont)  16:25, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

What's the error message? I believe the problem is that windows xp makes a hash out of the hardware of your computer, and if that changes significantly such as moving to a completely different computer or vm it refuses to run as some sort of copyright protection —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 16:18, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I dont remember the exact error, but i do believe you are right, is there a way to remove or reset that hash? – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  16:25, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Windows licensing restrictions wouldn't cause it to BSOD. --wj32 ^t/c 10:40, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, I heard a different explanation for this phenomenon. If there is significant hardware change, the drivers may not match up so Windows does not work. You can try an on-top reinstallation of Windows. (That's what I usually do after changing motherboards.)

Java: Reading from a File

In Java, how can I read in a portion of a file beginning at byte number x of the file and ending at byte number y, where x and y are two numbers the user specifies? I need to extract information from a star catalogue, but can't read the whole thing into a byte array because it's much too large.

I'm a Java novice, so please keep your answers easy to understand. Thanks in advance. --Bowlhover (talk) 16:49, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I dont know very much about java, but would it be possible to cut down the file with python first? – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  17:31, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

That's a very unhelpful answer. --Sean 17:51, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

_{sorry – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  18:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)}

You want to use a RandomAccessFile, seek() to x, then read y-x bytes with read(). There's also a readFully() call that will do it all for you in one go, but the previous instructions will work in most any language. --Sean 17:51, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Never mind about readFully(); its offset is into the data, not the file. --Sean 18:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

evolution email misbehaving with linux

Hi, I use linux, and evolution for my email. Some time back, I expunged my "Trash" folder (and my "Junk" folder), and for some reason they haven't been the same since. When I click on a message in my inbox and try to move it to a different folder, I can move it anywhere except "Trash" or "Junk". When I try to move the message, I get a list of available destination folders, and all the folders appear correctly, including "Trash" and "Junk", but when I click on either of those two, there's no response (the other folders work fine). Furthermore, when I delete something from my inbox, it stays in the inbox as a deleted message. I can choose the option "Hide deleted messages", and then they don't appear, but if I click "Show deleted messages", they appear with a strikethrough. I've tried googling the problem, and tried hunting through the "Preferences" list (and other places), but can't find anything. What's going on, and how can I fix this?? Thanks in advance, It's been emotional (talk) 17:02, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

If it's really confused itself, you could move ~/.evolution aside and re-import your mail. --Sean 18:00, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

repair cracked glass screen ipod touch with glue

Can someone recommend a glue or paint like substance to seal cracks in the glass screen of an ipod touch ? so far as i can tell, the device (my sons) works; but I'd like to seal the cracks to keep water out and prevent further damage. Their are some car windshield repair kits that look close; any suggestions ? Judging from the number of internet sites offering repairs, a fair number of people have cracked glass on their ipod touch devices. The cost of repair is around 100 dollars, or you can buy the part and diy for around 40; however, the instructions available on the web , the repair is pretty difficult the first time you do it, when you don't know exactly what to do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.220.64.105 (talk) 17:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, cracked glass usually means the death of LCD panels - especially touch-sensitive panels. I would be quite surprised if there was anything much you could do to repair it. It's not just a matter of keeping water out. The system uses the glass in the screen as a capacitive layer that makes the touch interface work. It's hard to imagine how it could keep working if any of the cracks propagate all the way across the screen...and LCD display panels usually die completely after they get cracked. SteveBaker (talk) 23:39, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I cracked my cell phone screen and put one of those stick-on screen protectors over it, which was good enough that I didn't bother pursuing a more complicated and expensive repair. However, you can also buy ipod repair parts from many places online. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 02:46, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

No wireless Internet even with strong signal

Hi. A customer of mine has an antenna on his roof that he uses to get wireless. (He lives in the middle of nowhere and pays someone to share their wireless) The signal from the antenna is piped into his Dell desktop computer via a coaxial cable. That works great, but he also has a Gateway laptop that his wife uses. There's a crossover cable that runs from his desktop to a Belkin wireless router. Now, the laptop sees the signal from the router, and it can actually log into the router (192.168.2.1). The signal is strong, too, and the Internet and wireless lights on the router are solid green. But every once in a while, even though Windows says it's connected, the laptop stops loading web pages and it can't ping anything beyond the router. There's only one other wireless network in the area, and it has almost no signal. He says he's gotten it to work by just rebooting the desktop computer. I got it to work today by disabling and re-enabling the connection inside the desktop. Rebooting the router doesn't work. Changing the channel doesn't work, either. It has no encryption. He has two connections listed in the Network Connections folder on the desktop. One is wired and the other is wireless. I think the wired one is the connection to the router. One of them uses a static IP -- I think that's from the antenna on the roof. He actually expects me to fix this problem. His computer is acting weird (really slow, etc.) so I was thinking of re-installing Windows. Any other ideas? Thanks for any help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by WinRAR anodeeven (talk • contribs) 19:31, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like you have enabled Internet connection sharing on the desktop computer. In my experience that is unreliable. It also sounds like you have a wifi card in the desktop computer, i am guessing that the coaxial cable is connection to that wifi card. What i think you might need, that will simpify things a little would be to get a wifi repeater[7][8], and have that connect directly to that antenna, then have both the laptop and desktop connect wirelessly. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  20:07, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I have another suggestion. Turn of the wireless router's DHCP. Then unplug the cross-over cable. Replace that with a normal ethernet cable but instead of plugging that in to the same plug on the wireless router, plug it in to a different plug, any plug but the one labled "WAN"(unless you only have one plug, in that case; same plug). See, the way i think you have it set up is that the desktop will give your router an ip address. Then the router, acting as a DHCP server will give your laptop an ipaddress. In by-passing the router's DHCP i hope this will fix it for you, If it does not then you might have to do the first thing i suggsted. Best of luck! – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  20:07, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

ok. Thanks Elliott. I will try your suggestions tomorrow. Right now, the crossover cable is plugged into the "Internet" jack on the router. I have a spare CAT 5e cable that I will connect to one of the other jacks. I will also disable DHCP in the router.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 20:21, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

From what your describing; that might or might not fix the problem. If i where in your place, before i bought a repeater, heres what i would do.

• Disable Internet connection sharing on the desktop.
• Assign an ip address to the wired connection on the desktop. (leave everything blank except the 'IP address" and 'Subnet Gateway')
• keep the DHCP turn off on the router.
• Download, install and setup privoxy on the desktop, and bind it to the same ip address that you choose for the desktop's wired connection.
• Assign an ip address to the wireless connection on the laptop in the same rang as the desktop but set the 'Default Gateway' as the ip address you set on the wired connection on the desktop. (leave everything blank except the 'IP address', 'Subnet Gateway' and 'Default Gateway')

This would be done after you re-configure your router to pass DHCP requests to the desktop (my second suggestion)

This is just what i would do. Its kinda complecated if you dont know excatly how to do it. but it should work reliably. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  20:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

And by all means, do not rule out reinstalling windows. It is a good idea if the computer is running slowly and acting weird. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  20:49, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm worried that his ISP has assigned him only one IP address. Hence the static configuration for the wireless connection on the desktop. So, could I give the wired connection on the desktop the same IP address as the wireless one? And could I tell the router to use that same IP address, as well? I used to use Privoxy to filter ads (I now use IE7 Pro). I would start it and configure the browser to use the local host as the proxy. But, are you suggesting that I route all network requests through it? Sorry for the confusion. I don't know much about Privoxy beyond browser applications.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 07:03, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, i am sure that his ISP only gave him one ip address. The only modifications i am asking you to do is to the wired connection on the desktop, and the wireless connection on the laptop. As for the ips, If you assign the ipaddress to the wired connection on the desktop as 192.168.1.3 then set the ip address on the wireless on the laptop as 192.168.1.4, then set the ip on the router to 192.168.1.5. On the laptop set the default gateway to 192.168.1.3. This is a complex setup. Without being there poking the computers myself it is hard to say that this will work or not.

This is how i think you have it set up right now. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  16:03, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Just to clearify, I think that you should try to reinstall windows first. If the problem continues, then remove the cross over cable and replace it with a normal cable as i said above. If that does not work then reconfogure the setting on the desktop, and laptop. If that does not work then you need to set up a wifi repeater and place that closer to his neighbores house. If that does not work then the problem is with his neighbores setup. _{By the way, McGyver is my hero :)}– Elliott(Talk|Cont)  16:14, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

How to use a Windows Mobile 6.1 Cellphone as a modem for a Windows Mobile 2003SE PocketPC

A few days ago, I got a hold of a Fujitsu-Siemens LOOX 720 PocketPC running Windows Mobile 2003SE, and because this PocketPC lacks a GSM module, I want to use my HTC Oxygen smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.1 (flashed it myself) as a Bluetooth modem. Can anyone please tell me what must I do, so I can use the HTC as a modem for the PocketPC? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.113.188.222 (talk) 19:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Mouse issues

Hello, i seem to be having some problems with my mouse. Here is some background information, the mouse is a logitech cordless trackball model number Y-UT76. The mouse pad is a 11.5 inch X 8inch World of Warcraft mouse pad, very flexible but not very stretchy. I am working on a Dell notebook running windows vista business, dual core 1.2GHZ with 2 gigs of ram (and a 4 gig flash drive acting as readybost). I have a 3Mb connection through Comcast. My office is 13 feet X 13 feet X 15 feet. I have a 22inch monitor. There is a ESI phone sitting next to my computer and it seems like it is plugged in to the network cable. My problem is this: My mouse courser is on the far left side of the screen, while my mouse has reached the right end of the mouse pad. I cant move my mouse any more to the right. I have no idea what to do. my secretary suggest that i need a mouse pad upgrade but i really dont want to spend the $800 for a new mouse pad. What can i do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.172.159.131 (talk) 20:59, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

WP:Troll? As i must WP:AGF i will suggest that you stop by your local eletronic store, talk to a rep there and see if he can help you find a cheeper mouse pad to meet your needs. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  21:07, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

use the table —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 21:30, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

You'll need a longer mouse cable too. SteveBaker (talk) 21:58, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Lift up the mouse and replace it on the middle of the pad. But if you really want to buy a new mouse pad, I will sell you one for half that $800. SpinningSpark 22:27, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

We really need to know the motherboard type before making rash suggestions. Either way I recommend switching to Linux, you can control the mouse "courser" with your mind. 161.222.160.8 (talk) 22:52, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Your secretary is clearly trying to stiff you. Go organic! Instead of spending money to help big corporations pollute our children's air and water, use recycled materials such as wastepaper or used napkins. Remember, it's for the children! --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 00:36, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried rebooting without saving your files? — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 03:27, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you'd be happier with one of these special graphics-laptops that don't even need a mouse? SteveBaker (talk) 14:00, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Everyone complains there is not enough data provided for technical questions. Finally someone gives details, and what happens? I am glad to see the size of the office mentioned. That might be the problem. Such a small space may not have adequate cross-ventilation, causing dust to settle. (1) unplug, wipe and replace the USB plug for the mouse receiver. (2) wipe down the whole unit, with isopropyl alcohol or a cloth just dampened with window cleaner spray. Do the mouse pad, too, while you're at it. (3) remove the trackball and clean it, as above. Blow out the socket. (4) overnight, invert the mouse pad over the mouse, to keep both the mouse and the top surface of the mat protected against dust. KoolerStill (talk) 19:28, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Programming language help

I'm looking for a proceedural, and imperative programming language (capable of being compiled). It looks like I have many options to choose from - that isn't my main question. The problem I have is graphics output - specifically as part of what I'm doing I would like to output some 'results' graphically, specifically to Windows (XP) so probably through the windows API - all I need is the ability to open a window and 'plot' pixels to it. (Any other features such as directX or openGL support would be good but not essential).

So what I'm asking is for suggestions - I don't really want (or maybe even need) to learn a lot to do this - so as simple support for this as possible would be good. I don't even know where to begin to look for this, or how exactly the windows API would be integrated - maybe I just need to learn a small amount of the windows API, plus having the ability to call a windows API 'call' through the compiled code.

Is that clear? (I would pay for the program - though cant afford the thousands or many hundreds for the professional products such as the Intel Fortran compiler. Thanks.77.86.67.245 (talk) 23:28, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I am a fan of Microsoft's XNA Game Studio. You write your code in the C# programming language. Technically, the code is not compiled into machine code; it is compiled into a .NET assembly and then that gets run with a JITter. But I don't think that will impact what you want; the end user will still double-click a file to run it. XNA GS has plenty of interesting graphics calls, as it has an emphasis on game development; but you can write any kind of software with it. It sounds like you need 2D output and doing so and plotting pixels is easy. The whole thing is free, also. Here is the download link and if you Google "XNA Game Studio" then you'll find out about available resources, sample code — you should start by taking some existing sample code and modifying it. Note that XNA GS can be used to build games for the Xbox 360; you can ignore all that sort of content and just write your software for the PC, running in a window. Tempshill (talk) 23:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

If you just want to draw pixels then GDI+ will do fine. Also, why would you care about what programming language you use? The standard for Windows programming is C, and if you want something easier to use try C#. --wj32 ^t/c 10:39, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I care what programming language I will use because I will have to use it, and I find simple languages designed to be proceedural easy to use. In other words - FORTRAN, proceedural versions of BASIC, maybe ALGOl, and Pascal where the types I was thinking of - all of which are available with compilers.

Can someone point me in the right direction as to where to begin as to incorporating graphics calls into compiled programs.? GDI+ sounds right - so how would I incorporate it—Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.86.67.245 (talk) 11:16, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

If you like Basic, then look through this List_of_BASIC_dialects_by_platform#Microsoft_Windows and decide what suits you best. 89.242.109.25 (talk) 13:07, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

OK I'm not really getting an answer - let me ask another way - suppose I choose Free Pascal or any other compiler language - is there a standard way of incorporating graphics routines into the program - does this depend on the compiler what will or will not be possible - and is there a standard way to access openGL/DirectX commands independent of what programming language I'm using - ie what is the most basic 'wrapper' for graphics commands and routines that can be used independant of whatever language I'm using? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.86.67.245 (talk) 13:43, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I think your confusion revolves around the idea that graphics "commands" are a part of the programming language - and therefore the compiler. In fact, (other than in ancient BASIC interpreters running on Sinclair ZX80's and such) the graphics interface is just a set of functions in a library that you link to. These things are generally written in C or C++ - so unless you want to program in those languages directly (which isn't such a dumb idea) - you'll have to find either a set of wrappers for those libraries in your chosen language - or you have to find out how to call C/C++ functions from inside the language of your choice. But if you were to choose C++ as your compiled language - then it's simply a matter of including the definitions of those functions into your code:

  #include <GL/gl.h>   // Include OpenGL function definitions

...and linking to the OpenGL library. Precise details of how you do that would depend on your choice of C++ compiler and what operating system you use. In Linux, with GNU's g++, it's as simple as sticking '-lGL' on your compile command. Generally, you'll have to jump through some hoops to open a window and set up and event loop - and that'll entail dragging in more header files and libraries but those kinds of things are well covered in example programs you can find all over the Internet. SteveBaker (talk) 19:00, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I think that what the OP is missing is the concept of an API. Just about any development environment that runs under Windows will incorporate the API for Windows graphics calls. When using this API, you'll use the exact same logic no matter what language you end up using. By the way, I still think you should use C# and XNA Game Studio. Tempshill (talk) 20:09, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't most modern languages usually have many graphics commands of various kinds built in already? As far as I recall, even with ancient gwbasic you could draw lines on the screen and so on. 78.146.198.122 (talk) 21:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately no. Modern GUIs have terminal/console windows that emulate ancient text-only screens and almost all languages can run in the terminals and have built-in equivalents to PRINT, but they skipped over the GWBASIC full-screen graphical days. Which is a shame, because it was fun to switch into graphics mode with one command and draw lines with the second. To draw graphics in a windowed application you have to create the window, run a message pump so that it responds to events (like resize, close, repaint), and handle repaint requests by redrawing everything in the window. It's a fair amount of busywork. GLUT might be a good choice; it's a very simple library that just creates a blank window that you can issue OpenGL commands to. Most people think of OpenGL as a 3D library but it also has a full set of 2D commands, and it's easy to use, at least for simple things. This sample program just opens a window and draws a triangle in it (and redraws the triangle whenever the system requests it, and recalculates the coordinate system when the user resizes the window—you're still responsible for that stuff). I've only used it from C++, but a search for "glut bindings" turned up a bunch of hits. -- BenRG (talk) 10:36, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

So things have gone backwards regarding graphics? That's bad. There must be some Basic variants somewhere that offer simple graphics commands. I hate these split-pane things. What about Logo (programming language)? 78.146.67.27 (talk) 11:41, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

It's NOT backwards - it's forwards!! With gwbasic, the ONLY way to draw a line was with that command. If you wanted to draw a line that's 'depth cued' (foggy) or whose color varies from one end to the other or which has rounded ends or use your 3D graphics hardware to draw 20 million lines a second...bad luck - that's not what gwbasic did - and that's that.

With graphics being an external library that's called using the language's standard function call syntax - you have a choice of API's and you can add new graphics features without having to rewrite your compiler and add new syntax. Think about it: The C language was invented in the 1970's - 3D graphics hadn't even been invented then! We didn't get 3D graphics in hardware until the 1980's - and not on PC's until the 1990's. If we were stuck with some kind of built-in graphics commands in C, we wouldn't be able to use it to write super-modern stuff like computer games and web browsers.

The single biggest innovation in C was to abstract out the I/O "commands" into libraries that could be added or removed as needed. In Pascal (for example) you use a special 'command' (that the compiler has built-in) to print a string to the screen - but in C you typically use 'printf' - which isn't a part of the language at all - it's a 'stdio' library function and it can be replaced if needed. The version of C that I use to program my Arduino single-chip computer doesn't even have a 'printf' because there is no screen attached to it (and printf would take up too much valuable memory).

Besides - what does it really matter that you have to say "#include <GL/gl.h>" at the top of your program and add "libGL" to the list of libraries you link to? That's two lines of extra 'stuff'. Then you have functions with parameters that you're already very familiar with - rather than special syntax that you have to learn. How would you (say) render a textured, Z buffered triangle using vertex and fragment shaders in gwbasic? You couldn't - it simply didn't have the syntax for that - yet I can do it with the OpenGL or Direct3D libraries (I even have a choice!) in a language that's WAY older than gwbasic.

Furthermore - look at it from another perspective - there are literally hundreds of programming languages out there. When a company like (say) nVidia adds a major new concept like shaders to their graphics hardware, in your world, they'd have to go to the authors of all of those hundreds of compilers and interpreters and tell them "Hey - you need to add a dozen new commands to your languages to take advantage of this major new feature"...versus adding it to one library that any of those languages can link to with zero change.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:54, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Being able to choose a library is a step forward, but having no standard graphics is a step backward. The standard library is part of the standard. I wish C did have some basic graphics support in the standard library, where you could rely on its always being there. After all, it has fopen() and printf() and the like, and they aren't necessary—you could always write your own I/O library on top of open() or CreateFile() or whatever your OS provides, or use one of the zillions of mutually incompatible cross-platform libraries that would inevitably spring up—but it's awfully convenient to not have to do that when the support included in the standard is good enough, which it frequently is. Well, maybe OpenGL is standard enough to qualify here. The other thing is that it's much harder to "clear the screen and draw a line" in OpenGL than it was in GWBasic. In GWBasic it was two commands, one to clear the screen and one to draw a line. Now you have to worry about the message loop and redraw events. I think there's a niche for a "just create a window and draw in it" library. -- BenRG (talk) 18:48, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

May 20

Confusion

I dont Know if i am in the right place but how do you insert a Info Box on a new page you have created!?!? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Colee Andersonn (talk • contribs) 02:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Probably the Wikipedia help desk is the better place. But let's give it a shot anyway. If the info-box already exists (it should be a 'Template:' page) then simply stick its name between doubled curly brackets. eg {{myNavBox}}. If you need to write your own template/NavBox - that can be a fairly daunting task...the best thing to do is to find one you like and copy it into your user-space. Change the parts that you need to change - and when you're happy with it - move it into Template: space. SteveBaker (talk) 03:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Shrinking vector images in inkscape

I've traced an existing map of Asia in order to paint the various countries a certain color based on predetermined data. I've saved it as an svg image and colored it in. However, whenever I try to shrink the image down to fit a piece of printer paper, the tool only shrinks the outline and leaves the color the same size. How can I shrink both at the same time? I hope I don't have to shrink each individual country in order to do this. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 08:44, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Did you try select all (Ctrl+A) and then shrink them? If you save your file as normal svg (not Inkscape svg) everything should be in a group already, but won't be if you just saved using the default settings. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:53, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Saving it as a normal svg did the trick. Thanks. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 09:20, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

A language that replaces HTML, XHTML, CSS, Javascript, Apache, PHP, and MySQL?

It seems I need to learn HTML, XHTML, CSS, Javascript, Apache, PHP, and MySQL to create a website. Is there any reason why someone has not or never will invent one language that can do all the things that these different languages are required for? It may make creating a website more accessable for the average user. 89.242.109.25 (talk) 12:59, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Would not this superlanguage need to have all the complexities of all the things it replaced? If so, the existing mode is better — you can swap out, for instance, Ruby for PHP or Glassfish for Apache without having to change any of the other things. Sometimes one or more of these is used outside the context of a web page entirely: JavaScript is used in VRML, HTML is a common format for (even local) documentation, and MySQL can serve data to anything, not just a webserver. All these things really do have their own purposes: (X)HTML is content, CSS is style, JavaScript is browser-local computation (which has low latency but is slow and unreliable (as the server sees it)), Apache is the browser's server-side counterpart shared by all pages, PHP is server-side computation (which can access any data on the server efficiently), and MySQL is storage of and access to (potentially) massive datasets.

It's also worth pointing out that it's not quite as bad as you say: HTML and XHTML are not really different things, and you certainly don't need both. CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL are all optional (although many kinds of site will do well to use all four), and Apache isn't a language you have to learn (unless you're counting .htaccess files). --Tardis (talk) 14:45, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure COBOL could be extended fairly easily to do all these things too, sounds the obvious choice to me. ;-) Dmcq (talk) 17:26, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

COBOL doesn't get enough props. It's the only language where PERFORM ORAL_SEX UNTIL ORGASM is a legit line of code. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Bah! You're just not sufficiently determined. C++ can do it...you just need to stick this at the top of the program someplace.

 #define ORAL_SEX =
 #define ORGASM ;
 int PERFORM ORGASM
 int UNTIL ORAL_SEX 96 ORGASM

Cobol needed to just die already back in 1978 when I had the misfortune to learn it. SteveBaker (talk) 18:44, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

#define??? Jeez, I forgot about those. I do .NET development and MS ripped them from C# years ago. Anyway, coming from a QBasic background, I hated curly brackets so much I once #defined them out of my code with something like this:

 #define endif }
 #define endwhile }
 etc.

Anyway, I've since came to terms with curly brackets mostly but they still annoy me. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:39, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and it's the same reason why no one has come up with one tool that replaces a screw driver, hammer, saw, pliers and a tape measure. Each one is designed to perform a specific task. As Tardis points out, XHTML and HTML aren't two completely different languages. XHTML is simply a version of HTML that conforms to the more rigorous standards of XML which has to be well-formed in order to be considered valid. HTML isn't required to be well-formed. CSS compliments HTML in that it provides information on presentation (colors, fonts, etc.). MySQL isn't a language, it is a relational database. It does however use SQL which is a language. Apache is a Web server, not a language, although it might use one. I've never used Apache so I can't say and I'm too lazy to look it up. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

To be fair - HTML, XHTML and CSS are markup systems - not programming languages - and HTML/XHTML are essentially different revision levels of the same thing - if you learn XHTML, there is little need to bother with HTML. Apache is an HTTP server - it's not a programming language either. MySQL is a database system - and although there are elements of programming related to it's query language - it's really only borderline "programming". That leaves you with just PHP and JavaScript which are actually programming languages. I agree that it's unfortunate that these are not the same language - but they are VERY similar. The problem is that once you've been programming for a dozen or more years, learning another programming language is really no big deal - I learned PHP over just a few hours while writing a program using it! This is unfortunate for beginners - but if you are that new to the art, trying to put together a web site that uses XHTML, CSS, MySQL and both client and server-side scripting - then you are undertaking something that's well beyond your abilities. Start small. Get Tic-Tac-Toe working in a local directory using just XHTML and JavaScript. When it works, figure out how to install Apache and make it serve to the web. When all of that works, use some CSS style sheets to jazz it up a bit. Then write some simple PHP code to keep scores on the server. Then, install MySQL and figure out how to put those scores into a proper database. But if you're a newbie, this process could easily take you a year to do...it's a major chunk of effort! SteveBaker (talk) 18:44, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Links (programming language) is a language of this type, and I think there are others. None of them have really caught on, but it seems like a reasonable idea to me. Maybe it's not the right tool for every job, but what is? -- BenRG (talk) 19:26, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Would that language be worth learning? Could it create a website that does not seem to be done by a beginner? 78.146.198.122 (talk) 22:03, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Probably not, without at least as much effort as it would take to learn PHP and HTML at beginning-level. Can I also just point out that if you learned this Links language, you'd actually know a lot less than knowing all the component pieces? Because knowing each of those can in itself be useful and lead to further ideas, projects, whatever. As others have pointed out, in any case, really a knowledge of some HTML and PHP could get you pretty far by themselves—they would allow you to sensibly use pre-existing classes and content-management systems (like WordPress) with some confidence. In such an approach you wouldn't have to worry about the raw SQL end of things or the Javascript end of them. If you are trying to do something bigger than what WordPress or a CMS would allow, then you're going to have to make a major time investment anyway, and it's better to learn the component pieces (which all do somewhat differnet things) that learning a single language that then writes the other languages themselves (which puts you perilously far away from understanding your own code). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:21, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I take your point about understanding things in detail allowing the discovery of other possibilities and opportunities. But I'm not intending to become a career programmer, I do other things as well and running my website(s) would just be a sideline. I would like to find the easiest quickest way of creating a website-with-database-of-user-content that does not look as if made by an amatuer. If I used something like KompoZer, would it be possible to add MySQL usage to it, and avoid having to learn all the languages above? I do not mind paying for an editor if that will do what I want. 78.146.67.27 (talk) 10:08, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

last modification on basic network topologies

hi, my name is kennedy. i used www.en.wikipedia.org as a reference on basic network topologies.

please i need to know about some few important facts: 1.the year of last modification of en.wikipedia.org 2.publisher of en.wikipedia.org

i will be grateful, if i am given an urgent reply. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.73.60.12 (talk) 16:17, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

See this page about citing Wikipedia. Matt Deres (talk) 16:29, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

If you are going to cite just Wikipedia as an organisation, the time of last modification be about 1/2 a second ago (my own OR suggests Wikipedia recieves over 100 edits per minutes). If citing a particular page, every page has a "This page was last modified on ..." at the bottom. Astronaut (talk) 15:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

You can solve that by clicking on "Permanent link" in the toolbox to the left of the article. That gives you a link to the specific version of the document you are looking at. If you use THAT URL in your citation then you can be sure that anyone who uses your citation will find the exact article you were looking at - without any subsequent changes. Then you have a definite date at which THAT VERSION OF THAT PAGE was last modified. SteveBaker (talk) 17:41, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you should take a look at the 'Cite this page' link on articles in the 'toolbox' area' Washii (talk) 20:27, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

A question about Twitter

I'm thinking about getting a Twitter account, and I'm wondering if people are expecting you to update it constantly, or can you update it whenever? Thanks for your time.

Americanfreedom (talk) 17:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

From what i understand, You can just update it whenever you want to. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  18:05, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

What're they gonna do, come to your house and refuse to leave until you update? You can absolutely update as often or as rarely as you want. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 19:36, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Twitter fanatics may expect you to update frequently; other people are more annoyed by the folks who use it as a shared IM cloud instead of an answer to Twitter's question, "What are you doing?". I used to update frequently and don't quite as much anymore. You may find that you lose followers by updating infrequently, or you may find that you lose followers by updating too much. There's really no rule to it. You'll find yourself sharing and communicating with like-minded people after a while, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. Coreycubed (talk) 21:26, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

can GPS find my stolen mobile phone???

My smartphone Samsung Finesse was stolen, I downloaded the app. MetroNavigation(gps). Is it possible to locate the phone? If so how? The carrier is Metropcs, and Customer Service Reps haven't been very helpful. The operating system is Symbian, wuld that be an option?Justjeena (talk) 17:50, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but I doubt you're going to get very far with this idea.

My understanding is that a GPS device receives signals and determines where it is - it does not broadcast any signals advertising its location. Unless your phone has an application which explicitly broadcasts / publishes this information somehow (and that application hasn't been disabled by the thief), the fact that your phone knows where it is is no help to you, because you can't ask it.

A standard mobile phone connection obviously is 2-way, and can be used to locate the handset based on which base-stations it is connected to. But for obvious privacy reasons, this is something that the phone company has to do, not you. It's also likely that the thief will attempt to re-program the phone so that it cannot easily be recognised by the phone company as the same phone you reported stolen. - IMSoP (talk) 12:55, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Can you really know you're blocked using AIM (AOL's instant messaging?)

Someone told me they were blocked by a few people on AIM - AOL's instant-message system. But, I've looked at the setup, and it looks like you can't see if you're blocked, because you can set the settings so you're invisible to the person you're blocking. In other words, if A blocks B, B can never see if A is online.

So, is this person talking out their hat? It seems really rude for someone to say they're blocking you - and if one would be that mean, I can't imagine numbers of people being that rude. (Then again, this is the Internet.) Or, is it really not possible to make yourself invisible to the person you're blocking, and they can tell you're blocking them? (Or, might the person A block B and just not put on the "iinvsible" cloak.)

Just curious. Thanks.209.244.187.155 (talk) 22:14, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Often times people will say they're going to block you. But you could probably figure it out. If someone who was on every day suddenly stopped showing up, and you were sure they weren't dead you could assume you've been blocked. In addition you might have a friend who can tell you if person A is online right now, or you might have a second account for that specific purpose. APL (talk) 22:50, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

He probably has a different account that those users did not block so he can still see them log in. They would be shown on the one buddy list but not the other. --Peppage^tlk 22:53, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Right. You can tell if you are blocked by seeing if someone else can see them. This can be done with extra accounts or with the collaboration of a mutual contact. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:15, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

On Windows Live Messenger, a person's personal message will not change if they've blocked you. So if you (somehow) find out what that is, you can compare it to the one you have on your contact list. A similar system may exist for other chat programs. Vimescarrot (talk) 10:00, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

May 21

Word 2007 - automatically populate document property using document contents

Hello,

I am a teacher & have to create a standard layout lesson plan for my management's occasional perusal.

I'd like the box (cell in a Word 2007 table) which they have called "Keywords" to automatically populate that document's tag (the metadata that is visible in Explorer and is made available to Vista's search via "tag:pythagoras")

Can anyone help? I assume I need to set that box to be a field, but then how to write the file's metadata, and how to capture multiple values into multiple tag values.

pythagoras; geometry ; proof

I'm in Word 2007 and about 5 years ago was a reasonable coder in VBA for Excel 2003 if that's any use at all!

Cheers Rob —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.127.178.85 (talk) 00:49, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Computer shuts down during high-load applications even after replacing power supply

Hello,

Recently, my computer started shutting down during high-load applications, such as 3D rendering and when playing video games that ran fine in the past. In these cases, the power supply was quite warm to the touch after the shutdown (the air being expelled by the power supply fan was also quite warm just before the shutdown event). As such, I replaced the power supply with one of a higher wattage (500W continuous for the new vs. 380W peak for the old) and roughly equivalent current allocation (e.g. 22A for +12V in the new power supply vs. 18A for +12V in the old power supply). However, the problem has persisted, even with the new power supply. Is it possible that there's some other problem unrelated to the power supply causing these issues, or is it possible that my new power supply is actually inferior to my old one despite its specifications being higher?

Any suggestions would be appreciated - I'm a tad annoyed at having purchased a new power supply and having the problem persist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.68.50.215 (talk) 01:12, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Check the temperature of air coming out of the CPU and graphic chipset fans. There may also some system status info you can look at, to check cpu temperature. Maybe those are causing the system to shut down. But yeah, power supply specs (especially on cheaper ones) are often exagerrated, like car stereos. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 03:04, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

And try to look for busted capacitors on your board or some other critical components in your system. Chances are that the reason why your rig gives up after heavy loads is because of a fried and/or damaged motherboard. Blake Gripling (talk) 05:29, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I think overheating is your next most likely cause. Check the temperature inside the box when you aren't doing heavy CPU/3D work - then again when you are. Possibly you have a dead fan...probably the one on the GPU. It's possible that the power supply may be a contributory factor to overheating - when you run a power supply close to it's limits, it runs a lot hotter than a higher capacity power supply running well below it's limits. But still - I bet it's either a dead fan or a clogged filter or lots of fluff accumulating inside the case someplace. SteveBaker (talk) 13:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I've checked the aspects mentioned above, and:

• all the fans (CPU, power supply, and graphics chipset) are running
  • during routine operations, the fan on the CPU is the loudest
  • during high-load operations, the power supply fan and the CPU fan are both pretty loud, and the air coming from them is quite warm
• I cleaned out some dust from the top of the CPU heatsink and fan assembly
• the capacitors on the motherboard look fine; there's no evidence of leakage or bulging

So, it seems like either the new power supply I got had inflated specifications (and is actually inferior to my previous one, which didn't even have this shutting down issue until a month or so ago), or there's something wrong with my motherboard that's not immediately visible. For the record, my (new) power supply is an Antec EA 500, my graphics card is an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, and my motherboard is an ASUS P5K. Any further thoughts on what might be wrong (especially with the motherboard) would be welcome, but either way the assistance so far has been quite helpful. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.68.50.15 (talk) 16:59, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

EDIT: I was just going through the Windows event viewer (another shutdown happened today), and I've got a message from the application that monitors the graphics card saying that a "System shutdown due to graphics card overheating" occurred. I guess this mean the problem's due to the graphics card, which seems kind of strange given that I've never had any issues with it in the past. Well, somewhere to start, I suppose. Thanks to all who offered advice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.68.50.15 (talk) 17:11, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Then I'm definitely sticking with my claim that the GPU fan is the problem...you say that the fan was running - but perhaps not fast enough or something. Do you have any other boards plugged in next to the graphics card? If so, can you relocate them to a slot further away from the graphics card? You could try getting a can of compressed air from your local computer store and blast air into and around the fan to make sure there is no fluff or dust fouling up the bearings. Some of those fans have inlet and outlet holes that can get clogged - again, get in there with the canned air and blast it out. With some graphics cards, you can carefully unscrew the fan and pull it off - that would give you another way to make sure there is nothing fouling it up. Theoretically, you could replace the fan - but I'd be surprised if you could find a replacement. You may have to resort to a new graphics card. :-( SteveBaker (talk) 17:28, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

One way to be fairly sure that it's an overheating issue is to pull the side off of your PC and get a box-fan or a desk fan and point it into the PC and turn it on on full-blast. If your machine runs OK with that HUGE amount of airflow - then you know it's overheating...if it crashes still - then it could be something else. SteveBaker (talk) 17:32, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

modern sorting algorithms

Anyone know a good reference for modern sorting algorithms, where Knuth vol 3 doesn't count as "modern"? I.e. I have a few hundred million items to sort on a multicore 64-bit x86 computer with several GB of ram (the internal sorting phase of a much larger external merge/sort). Where can I read up on algorithm selection and implementation, that utilizes the multiple cores, takes into account cache locality and possible NUMA memory setups, etc.? The current Wikipedia articles on sorting don't have much discussion of this stuff. Thanks. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 02:50, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

See Sorting algorithm and associated articles (if you haven't already). If this is a one time sort, I wouldn't spend too much time on finding the absolute best algorithms. I'd suggest you partition the data into manageable chunks small enough for in-memory sorts, and then merge the intermediate results into a final sorted list. A few hundred million records might take hours or maybe days, depending on the size of the key and data. I'm sure there are commercial and free software packages to do this. You might load the data into a database and sort it using a query. Any database worth its salt should use a reasonably efficient algorithm – possibly one that runs multiple threads and dynamically optimizes itself based on available memory. -- Tcncv (talk) 03:44, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I did look at that article but it mostly discussed older, single-processor algorithms. E.g. it didn't mention Burstsort (maybe I will add a mention). I have 100's of billions (maybe trillions) of records and will be doing this operation a lot, and anyway I'm interested in general in how the "big boys" approach sorting now that everything is going multicore. 100's of millions is just for the internal phase. The external phase will be controlled by something like Hadoop, probably. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 04:00, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

You mentioned Hadoop — did you see this announcement from 9 days ago where Yahoo says they broke records by using Hadoop to sort a petabyte in 16.25 hours? They appear to have used a very large cluster, and each machine has two quad-core Xeons. Sortbenchmark.org is probably going to be useful to you as well. Tempshill (talk) 04:54, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Well, if you have that much data, I think you will find that you will be mostly I/O bound, meaning your biggest limitation will be how fast data can be transferred between the processor memory and external storage (disks). I suspect that all of the "big boys" will take the partition-sort-merge approach. The key is calculating the maximum amount of data that can be efficiently sorted in memory in one chunk. That will define your partition size. The overall process will be to partition the data, load and sort each partition, and write it back out to storage. Once all the partitions are sorted, the merge phase begins, There is even an art to the merge process. For maximum efficiency, you should write the sorted partition data out to as many different devices (physical disk drives) as are available, and then structure the merge process so that it reads a maximum of one partition per drive at any one time, which allows the drives to operate at maximum efficiency. This will likely require a multi-pass merge operation. (If you recall the 60's and '70's Hollywood view of computes as a bank of spinning tape drives, that was not too far from the truth. Sorting large amounts of data was typically done this way.)

For more information, a google search of "sorting large data sets" seems to yield promising results. My opinion is that your best bet will be to select a commercial sorting package. -- Tcncv (talk) 05:15, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

After looking at Tempshill's references, it appears I may have been off by a couple orders of magnitude on my initial guestimate. I guess I'm showing my years. I just ran a test on my two-year-old laptop and had SQL Server sort 100,000,000 random numbers in about 20 minutes. -- Tcncv (talk) 05:55, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Tempshill: Yes I saw the slashdot story about the sorting contest. My dataset is large by the standards of typical desktop PC users but very small compared to "big boys" like Yahoo (they used a 3800 node cluster to sort that collection; I may be able to use around 5 nodes for my stuff). Tcncv, yes, I'm familiar with external sorting, I'm primarily wondering how to do the internal phase. Commercial software isn't an option. Re using multiple disks, hmm, I've never been able to keep more than one SATA channel full at a time (on linux), but I guess there are some tricks I can try. Realistically if I can sort a TB of data in 12 hours then I'm happy. I think Yahoo did it in under a minute. Thanks both of you for the url's, I'll see what they say about s/w and algorithms. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 07:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

iTunes movie archiving?

Hello, I'd like to free up some hard disk space by archiving some iTunes movies to another drive. Can I do that without losing one of the authorizations that iTunes' DRM allows? Thank you. LovesMacs (talk) 06:06, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

The authorization only applies to this computer, and if you only move the movies to a different disk iTunes doesn't care - as long as it's the same PC. --grawity 11:27, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Cannot access google

Intel Core 2 Duo, Ubuntu 8.1.0, Firefox 3.0.10. When I try to access www.google.com, Firefox will stay at "Connecting to www.google.com...". I can ping Google fine. Konqueror works fine. IE/Firefox on Windows XP works fine. The weird thing is that www.l.google.com works fine in Firefox+Ubuntu. How do I fix this? F (talk) 07:18, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Check your proxy setting, and possibly a firewall block. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:24, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Make sure you've not got some website blocking software installed that might have accenditly been set to block google.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 11:30, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Nope, if it is proxy/firefall, Konqueror wouldn't work as well. I don't have website blocking software. F (talk) 02:39, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

XP default file sort order

In Windows explorer, files sorted by name are listed in some "alphbetical" order I would like to find a character that I can prepend to a file name to cause it to get listed AFTER the alphbetical files. So we might have "@first.txt, alpha.txt, zeta.txt ?last.txt" where ? is what I'm looking for. I've tried (!£$%^&*_+=@'~#;`¬- and am running out of ideas. Does such a character exist? Is there a list anywhere of XP's sort order. (Please do not mention the XP numeric sorting thing - I understand that and it isn't relevant to this question). Thanks -- SGBailey (talk) 08:55, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what algorithm they use but it might be this. Empirical testing indicates that nothing in Windows-1252 sorts after Z. If you widen your search to the whole of Unicode then you have lots of choices because all non-Latin alphabets and syllabaries sort after Latin. For example, Α (Greek capital letter alpha) sorts after Z if you want to be maximally confusing, as does circled katakana tu if you're in a whimsical mood. (Font support not guaranteed.) -- BenRG (talk) 11:25, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I think that in Windows 2000 and older, the sorting was purely ASCIIbetical - based on the ASCII codes of the characters. --grawity 11:26, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

æ, ø or å would work with a Norwegian locale, but I do not know how that sorts if your location is set to an English-speaking place. Jørgen (talk) 23:39, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

If it's ASCIIbetical - then you want the highest numbered ASCII code - which for English/US-English is '~'. I have no clue whether that would work though - I'm more of a Linux guy. Failing that, '{', '}' and '|' are also higher than 'z' in the ASCII code sequence. If you are using some internationalised setup then you may have multibyte characters and all sorts of other horrors - and all bets are off! SteveBaker (talk) 01:01, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I thought of the curly brackets when the question was posted, but no, they sort before "A". Characters that are not in the standard ascii range, such as "æ" "ø" "å", cause all sorts of trouble if you dual boot linux and windows, or try to use a portable disk that was written on a Spanish pc on a Norwegian PC, etc. So I've gotten into the habit of writing these as "ae", "oe", "aa" in filenames. I think the safest solution is to prepend "zzz_". --NorwegianBlue ^talk 13:35, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

What is an API in simple terms?

I do not really understand the idea of an API. Could someone explain it in simple terms please? For example, a graphics API: many language implementations already have graphics commands built in to the language. So why do you need a graphics API? Or is the graphics API there but hidden, so that the ordinary user writing code is not aware of using it, even though its there? Or does an API only mean something that requires the user to write special code within their programs to access it? 78.146.67.27 (talk) 10:19, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Hey. The problem with APIs is that the whole idea is kind of abstract. As the name suggests, an API - Application Programming Interface - is an interface (duh) that allows communication between stuff. Unlike, say, a GUI (Graphical User Interface), this communication is not between a user and a program - it's between a program and another program.

Here's an analogy. Imagine you are a program. You sit in your office, allocated to you by the manager (the operating system). Your whole point of existence is to perform calculations for customers (users). Of course, customers want you to tell them what your results are, but they want you to do this on the big screen on the side of the office building (the monitor). The problem is that you have no idea how to do that, and the control room (graphics card) is on a different floor that you don't have access to. So what do you do? You call up the switchboard, tell them you want the graphics people to do something, and they'll pass the message along.

In that complicated (and a bit rubbish) example, the switchboard would be an API. It allows one program to call functions and pass messages to a different program, even if they don;t have direct access to each other. Consider the Wikipedia web API ([9]). Programs don't have access to the Wikipedia database, but using the API, you can make calls, retrieve info, and even edit, just by sending requests to the API. You aren't directly calling a function as such, but it still happens.

On to graphics APIs. Put it this way: do you know how to make a graphics card do something? Not using a built in graphics function. Directly. Hm? Probably not. Programs do not directly interface with a graphics card - instead, they send a request to the graphics driver or operating system (using a graphics API) and the driver/OS does it. In-built graphics functions in high-level programming languages are simply pre-packaged and ready-to-use API calls, so you don't need to worry about opening requests to the driver, handling feedback, managing the graphics memory etc. so much. Lower level programming languages, like C, don't have this - so instead, you get a library of functions which does exactly the same thing.

DirectX and OpenGL are graphics APIs. High level programming languages hide their calls to DirectX/OpenGL under fancy function names. Low level programming languages have libraries that hide the calls. Of course, you can make calls directly if you want to , and know how - but there's no point.

Hope that massive essay clears it up - I got a little carried away :-). Ale_Jrb^talk 11:21, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. So in summary if I'm using a recent variant of basic, for example, I can include one of the language's graphics commands in the program code, such as drawline(x1,y1,x2,y2), and it interfaces with the graphics API without me having to do anything more. But if I am using something like C which lacks graphics commands, it is much more complicated and I have to explicitly communicate with the graphics API. Is that correct? 78.146.67.27 (talk) 11:34, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Essentially, yes. However, there are millions of libraries for graphics commands for C and other low-level languages, so if you get one of those, it will be little different to using in-built commands in BASIC. Ale_Jrb^talk 11:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

API = Application Programmer's Interface. It simply means that one group of programmers have written some code in which other groups of programmers will use. API is a reference to how these other groups of programmers will call the code. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 11:59, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

There must be some language with "built in graphics" that you're thinking of - it might help us to help you if you told us what that was.

An "API" is just a term for the interface between the application and some kind of support library (in your case, it's a graphics library - but it could equally well be an MP3 player library or a library that loads JPEG images for you). Generally, the API consists of some constants and some functions - and perhaps some classes and such. The API is defined by some header file ("GL/gl.h" in the case of OpenGL, "d3d9.h" for Direct3D) - that lists what these functions, constants, classes, etc are...and the actual code that is run is in the library file - which (in Windows) is probably a ".DLL" file and in Linux/UNIX is a ".so" file. When you compile your program, the compiler looks into the header file to figure out what functions you're allowed to call - and when the program is 'linked' to the libraries, your program is simply calling functions inside the library file.

Some languages may have graphics commands built into the language itself - but these days that's largely frowned upon because it limits the language to use just that one way to do graphics (or sound or whatever). Most modern languages don't do that - they merely allow you to link your program to some external library and to call it via the API. So, in C or C++, you can link to the OpenGL library and call functions like glEnable(GL_ALPHA_BLEND); - or you can link to the Direct3D library and call SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE,true); Neither of those functions are built into C++, the compiler has no idea that they have anything to do with graphics. It just knows that you told it to call some function or other that's in a DLL/so file someplace.

That's different from some of the more old-fashioned languages such as the BASIC that came pre-loaded in your Amiga/Atari/Sinclair that had actual graphical commands that were a part of the language itself - and which gave you no choice. Removing those kinds of 'hard wired' commands from the language specification and making them library functions was a major step forward because it removed limitations of what the language designer thought was good for you. Neither OpenGL nor Direct3D existed when C and C++ were invented - so the designers of those languages had no concept of drawing polygons or applying textures. When C was invented, 3D graphics didn't exist at all - nobody had ever tried doing that!

If there are any languages that still have that stuff built into the syntax of the language itself, the compiler (or interpreter) is undoubtedly calling some graphics API or other 'under the hood' to do the actual work...but because that's a fixed choice, you have no flexibility to choose how you want your graphics done.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:25, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Fantastic explanation Steve - but I think your Computer Graphics history is a bit wrong ("When C was invented, 3D graphics didn't exist at all - nobody had ever tried doing that!"! When C was invented, in the 1970s or so, guys like Paul de Casteljau at Citroen and Pierre Bézier at Renault and General Motors had been doing 3D computer graphics to model sheet-metal for automobiles for almost 20 years! You might be interested in The Origin of Computer Graphics within General Motors, (IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. Vol 16, No 3, 1994). Not only do some of these 3D graphics predate the C programming language - the earliest work predated the computer monitor by a few years! Take a look at DAC-1 - there's a nice History section in that article. Nimur (talk) 14:44, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Well - just barely. The car designers couldn't interact with their designs in realtime - they mostly had plotters and techtronix storage tubes, and they really only had wireframe. It certainly wasn't 3D graphics as we'd recognise it today. SteveBaker (talk) 00:57, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't be so hard on them! This video from the early 1960s shows some impressive graphics in real-time! I'm certainly not going to call it modern, and it clearly had some limitations, but it is recognizable 3D graphics! Nimur (talk) 02:07, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

The Whirlwind (computer) had real time 2D graphics in the 50s. Seemingly it had its origin near the end of WWII in an idea to build a flight simulator using a digital computer rather than an analogue one. Dmcq (talk) 09:24, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

The advantage of a graphics API in its simplest form, is to separate your program from the specific display device differences. So, for example, you don't have to work out how to draw a circle, you just call circle(center_x, center_y, radius) and a circle is drawn. For each physical display device, the internal workings of the circle function may be very different to support a normal screen, a pen plotter, or a character cell terminal; but it is always accessed the same way within your program.

Another example: I want a shaded 3D surface on the screen. I don't need to work out what colour to draw each pixel, the graphics API lets me specify all the details about the surface (its shape, its position, its colour, its reflectivity, etc.) and it works out which colour each pixel should be. Astronaut (talk) 15:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Too many icons and shortcuts on desktop to see

I use Windows XP, in classic mode. Currently I have so many icons and in particular shortcuts on my desktop, that the desktop screen is over-full and they have disapeared off the right of my screen. Is there any way to see these icons, by for example getting the desktop screen to scroll left? 78.146.67.27 (talk) 11:48, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Change to a higher resolution. Right-click on the desktop, select display properties, on the right tab you will see a slider. See if you can slide it further to the right. The higher the resolution, the more pixels you have on the screen, and the more icons you can show. They just get much smaller. -- kainaw™ 11:59, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you use a LCD (as most do), there is only one appropriate resolution, so this will not help. You could try to install ant third-party software that lets you use a number of (often four) virtual desktops. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 12:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

(simultaneous edit:)

Depending on your display hardware, you may not be able to get a higher resolution. However, you should be able to get the desktop up as a regular folder: click Start, then "Run...", type "shell:Desktop", and click OK.

My recommendation would then be to delete some of the shortcuts (if you can't see them all, they're not exactly easy access, are they?) and re-arrange the remainder onto the screen - right click the desktop and look in the "Arrange Icons" sub-menu.

Also, I've never used it, but Windows XP has a "desktop cleanup wizard" - again, right-click the desktop, and it's under "Arrange Icons". - IMSoP (talk) 12:40, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I use small icons on my 2K desktop by using this free ware. Try it! Oda Mari (talk) 14:26, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Double-click "My Computer", then "Documents and Settings", then your username, then "Desktop". The window that opens will have all the contents of your desktop, but in a normal Windows XP window that you can view by icon (and hence scrollable), or view by List, or Details, or whatever - perhaps that will be useful. Tempshill (talk) 14:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

You don't even need third-party software for the multiple desktop management. Microsoft released a PowerToy for Windows XP, Virtual Desktop Manager, available here. Nimur (talk) 14:33, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Just to put my 2 cents in; Just clear off some desktop icons, right-click on the desktop, highlight 'arrange' and click on 'auto arrange' I hope this helps. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  16:35, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

now what i do is i have one folder on my desktop called "stuff" and everything goes in there. desktop stays clean and free and all my icons and other things are just a click away —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 18:37, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Desktop is not a good place for icons, because you'd always have something open covering them up. A few things you need frequent and fast access to, eg email client or Office, you can put on the taskbar by dragging their shortcuts to it. One "stuff" folder or the Desktop folder is not very efficient. Make desktop folders to sort your icons by type, eg Office, Graphics, Security, Downloads etc. Drag shortcuts to these onto the taskbar as well.The three most important items will show with their own icons. The folders will show on a small pop-up menu,which you can sort by dragging the items around.These will open on TOP of whatever else you have open. The desktop itself need never show at all.KoolerStill (talk) 20:08, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

You could get a bigger screen. I've now got a WUXGA screen with 1920x1200 pixels and I haven't even filled a third of the screen with icons but I'm sure I'll soon be lusting after a WQUXGA screen with 3840×2400 pixels! The laptop will have to be a pretty big for me to see them all though :) It's a no brainer and you should always get the hardware to do the work rather than doing any thinking yourself (umm perhaps that is a bit over the top!) Dmcq (talk) 09:42, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. After reviewing all the suggested options, I have put the shortcuts in a 'Stuff' folder as 82.44.... suggested. A simple and effective solution. 78.146.162.232 (talk) 13:41, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

PAL / NTSC

Hi

Not exactly a computer question but I know someone here should be able to help me out. I dug up and old ps-one (the rounded-edge smaller version) which happens to be PAL, and our current tv is NTSC. Whats the best way to get this setup working? (all my games show in black and white).

TIA PrinzPH (talk) 18:17, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

You need a PAL to NTSC converter. You won't get it working just by fiddling with the wires. Some are good, some are crappy. So, you'll get what you pay for. -- kainaw™ 18:27, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Hm. Unfortunately, all PS1 games were, I believe, region-locked, so you can't simply buy an NTSC PS1 and play all your games on it. I don't believe it'll work, either, if you take a region-locked-for-Europe PS1 game and try to play it on an NTSC PS2 or PS3. You can do as Kainaw suggests, though that is expensive. Some televisions will take either PAL or NTSC video input. If you Google "multi system tv" then a bunch of them will pop up. If you have a fancy big screen LCD HDTV of some sort, it may take PAL input, too. Sorry, it looks like you're going to have to buy a new TV. Tempshill (talk) 22:25, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't excactly know, but perhaps a TV tuner card with video-in would work? If it supports both PAL and NTSC you could then use the TV-out from your PC to connect to the TV again (if you think your computer monitor is too small). Jørgen (talk) 23:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

(this would be one example of such a card ($20 at Newegg).) Jørgen (talk) 23:34, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

chmod and App Runner "security risk"

Can anyone tell me if it is dangerous to do "chmod a+x" to a file instead of "chmod +x"? I know "a" stands for "all users". the problem is that someone said this was a security risk with App Runner: [10] Is this really a security problem? I think not, but I just want to be sure... This would just allow any user to run the file, right? where is the security problem in there? (the root password would still be required to run this as root) __ Hacktolive (talk) 23:09, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

The problem is not so much with '+x' but '+s'. That flag is the 'setuid' flag that causes the application to be run with the permission set of the file's owner. If the file is owned by 'root' then adding the 's' permission allows ordinary users to run this program as if they were 'root'. This is the cause of many exciting loopholes for the bad guys out there. Adding just 'x' only allows the user to run the program with his/her existing privilages - the program can't do anything that the user couldn't do some other way...so that's usually benign. However, for the security minded - turning off as many permissions as possible is clearly the smart move. SteveBaker (talk) 00:49, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

But... I don't use the "+s" flag... I was refering to the "+a" flag... does the "+a" has the problem you just mentioned? (Thanks!) Hacktolive (talk) 02:21, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it will make problems. Any user could easily copy the file to their home directory and make it executable, so "+a" flag is not going to prevent anything.

Baeksu (talk) 08:13, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

May 22

iPod Data Recovery?

Help! I lost all my files on my iPod USB storage. How can I recover them? Is there any free software to solve this problem? Any solution, any at all. Please wikipedia, rescue me! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.75.106.183 (talk) 01:07, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Have a look at our article undelete. It lists a few programs that should help. I hope this helps– Elliott(Talk|Cont)  18:56, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

.SDF file

How do I open a .sdf file? All the websites I've visited keep asking me to download a registry cleaner, which is irrelevant, as far as I am concerned. Does anyone know? --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 01:10, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

See if any of these match what you think the file should contain. Xenon54 (talk) 01:24, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

The file extension does not uniquely define the file type or the program you need to use (in fact, the file-extension may not even match the true file-type). What is this SDF file and where did you get it / how did you make it? If you open it with a text editor or hex editor, do you see any sort of header or description? (Often the first few bytes of a binary file will be plain text to help identify the file). Nimur (talk) 02:09, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

IE7 / Google "Find" function

I'm running IE7, version 7.0.5730.11 as I write. I also have the Google toolbar installed. I generally do MS-Win autoupdates as they come in, and a month or so ago I relented and let the Google toolbar notifier past my firewall so it could play.

The "Edit->Find on this page" function in IE changed to a very cool method. Instead of popping up a sub-window that had to be closed, a searchbox appeared at the bottom of the window in the non-client area, and when I started typing my search text, the browser page showed text matches immediately. Then a week or two ago, it all vanished and I'm back to getting the Find dialog box again.

I'm relatively sure the very useful Find function was something Google did (MS only "innovates" when they have to destroy a competitor) and I'm not really sure why it went away. But I want it back. Any ideas on how I could recover that cool functionality? Thanks! Franamax (talk) 04:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

You could try Internet Explorer 8, which has this functionality built-in. Short of that, try uninstalling then reinstalling the toolbar. If that doesn't work, they've probably "updated" the toolbar and deleted this functionality. 144.138.21.37 (talk) 06:36, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, that's a good point. I kinda thought that one of the MS automatic updates a month ago was to move to IE8, so maybe that's where the new functionality came in. If that's the case though, how it got removed again is a complete mystery to me. I'm definitely running version 7 ATM. Franamax (talk) 08:01, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I work in a computer shop, and that Automatic Update for IE8 caused a lot of problems. I saw quite a few computers that still reported and basically looked like IE7, but had the IE8 files. Washii (talk) 20:37, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Washii, I've encountered this problem as well. I had tried out Internet Explorer Beta 2 and later installed the Release Candidate after it was released and then finally installed the Release to Web version when it was released. With the RTW version, I left the option to download and install updates automatically checked. (As a test of what the option did; I had unchecked it for the previous installs, thinking it might cause the install to take longer) This caused problems. After reboot, I started up Internet Explorer. It looked like Internet Explorer 7 and it even gave me the Internet Explorer 7 welcome page! Clicking on Help-->About gave me an error message. Reinstalling with the option to install update updates automatically unchecked allowed Internet Explorer 8 to install just fine. As it is, Firefox is still my preferred Web browser. :-) Due to these problems, I'd recommend that users download and use the Internet Explorer installer from the Microsoft website, rather than install Internet Explorer 8 through Automatic Updates. Internet Explorer 8 is, as as I know, more secure than Internet Explorer 7. (Additions like the SmartScreen filter [Which is surprisingly effective] mean I recommend Internet Explorer 8 as pretty much the only Internet Explorer version you should be using if you absolutely insist on using Internet Explorer.) As for searching for a phrase or word on a web page, pressing Control + F will bring up a search-box at the top for Internet Explorer 8 or a search-box at the bottom for Firefox.--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 02:37, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

"...recommend Internet Explorer 8 as pretty much the only Internet Explorer version you should be using ...": I can't help but disagree with Xp5431. The new search is pretty nice and I appreciate the gesture to adhere to standards, but I still regret updating IE7 to IE8. Simply put, it has made editing Wikipedia more difficult, with difficulty placing the caret where I want, and random scrolling of the edit window (though this seems much reduced compared with how it was just after the update). I can think of some reasons to move to IE8, but IMHO there are some pretty compelling ones to stay with IE7. Astronaut (talk) 08:45, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Samba file permissions

I have a directory on a Redhat box that I want to set to permissions 666. Every file in that directory (and all subdirectories) must be 666. With sticky bits, I have no problem with local users or NFS users. No matter what permissions they try to set, the result is 666. In Samba, even if the user specifies that it should be completely public, the permissions are set to 600. Short of writing a cron job to chmod -R 666 every couple minutes, what can be done to force Samba to work properly? -- kainaw™ 12:07, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

In your smb.conf file add in: create mask = 0666 (either to the individual share or to [global]) and that'll do what you're asking. Also if you want to do the same with directories (probably?) you'll want to add: directory mask = 0777 - Hope this helps! ZX81 ^talk 15:00, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I had create mode and directory mode, not "mask". I changed them to mask to see if it helps. -- kainaw™ 15:06, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Winme

Can you run Windows ME in DosBox? All earlier DOS-based and 9x-based versions of Windows can run in the emulator, so why haven't I found any mention of ME? And, only half-joking, can DB run NT-based operating systems? 143.238.237.25 (talk) 13:30, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I dont see why it would not work as Windows ME was the last to include real-mode MS-DOS subsystem. As for an NT based OS, i don't know. I say give it a try and let us know :) But if your looking to run multipliable Operating Systems consider having a look at VirtualBox. I hope this helped. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  18:50, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm just guessing here, but there's probably not a lot of interest in supporting ME because there are (as far as I know) no games that require it, whereas there are 95-only games and 98-only games. Win9x is an extremely complicated software system and there are insanely many little details involved in emulating something as complex as a PC running DOS, so just because 98SE (kind of) works doesn't mean it's easy to get ME working also. Support for NT seems unlikely to me since it's too far from the project's goals. You could probably get a better answer at the DosBox forums. -- BenRG (talk) 21:44, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd suggest using Microsoft Virtual PC. --grawity 12:50, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Youtube

How can I turn off that annoying "time-teller" that appears when you highlight a particular point on a Youtube video's seek bar? 143.238.237.25 (talk) 13:36, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately YouTube does not allow you to configure this option. It is possible but extremely difficult to stream the original source video file to a different player of your choice (web-based or otherwise). Maybe you could write a message to the YouTube feedback teams. If your complaint is common enough, they may include an option to change this feature. Nimur (talk) 16:30, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Free webcam recording program

What is a good free program I can use to record videos with my webcam and mic? --124.254.77.148 (talk) 14:42, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

...Sure your webcam didn't come with one to start with? What's the make and model of the webcam? Vimescarrot (talk) 15:35, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

You will find that a lot of video editing programs offer the option to capture video from a Webcam. On that note this website offers some free programs, I have no experience from this website so i can not vouch for the safty of these programs. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  18:44, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Port forwarding

Amongst my modem/router setup pages, there are two related to port forwarding. The first page is titled Single Port Forwarding and lets me forward a single external port to a single internal port on a specific internal IP address in the 192.168.1.0 - 192.168.1.255 range - I think I know how this works and for example how it lets me run a webserver that can be seen by the rest of the internet. The other page is titled Port Range Forwarding and is similar to the Single port version but has a "Port Range" (start and end) instead of "external port" and "internal port".

If I was to setup a range, forwarding ports 20 - 23, would that provide the same facility as having four entries on the Single Port Forwarding page, forwarding external port 20 to internal port 20, external port 21 to internal port 21, external port 22 to internal port 22, and external port 23 to internal port 23 (all to the same IP address)? ie. for each port in the range, is the forwarding between the same external and internal port numbers? Astronaut (talk) 14:58, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

That is typically how such firewall management utilities work. What type of router or NAT translator do you have? Nimur (talk) 15:05, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Based on the information provided i'd have to say Yes. Using the range would be the same as entering in 4 sepreat entries in the single area. Try it, if the range does not work then try the single option, If that does not work then you might have some setting to fiddle with in your firewall. Good luck! – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  18:41, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

It's the same with my linksys router. The two pages achieve the same thing. Who knows why they therefore bother to have two pages. Rjwilmsi 23:03, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia and the GFDL

I asked a question at the Humanities Desk about why the Wikimedia Foundation is able to use the "or later" clause of the GFDL to change the license under which Wikipedia editors have, to date, made their contributions. I wanted to point there from the Computing desk because this is also a clause of the GPL. If you're knowledgeable, please comment over on that desk. Thanks - Tempshill (talk) 16:12, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

May 23

C++ question

I have some objects of a particular class. I want some way to call a specific function of all those objects without making a loop. By using base class,virtual class,etc. Please suggest a way to do that! 218.248.80.114 (talk) 01:47, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, the easiest way to achieve what you describe is to make a loop, or use for_each, but the latter is hardly an improvement. Consider:

#include <algorithm> // for_each
#include <functional> // mem_fun_ref

struct C { void f() const {} };

int main()
{
  using namespace std;
  C c[10] = {}; // array of 10 C objects.

  for_each( c, c + 10, mem_fun_ref(&C::f) ); // call f() for all C objects.
}

If you could describe your problem in more detail or show some code it will be easier to give more detailed advice. decltype (talk) 03:11, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

class C {
  virtual void exec();
};

class A : public C {
  void exec();
};

int main() {
  A  a1,a2;
  a1.exec();
  a2.exec();
}

Instead of calling exec() for both a1 & a2 or by using a loop, I want to use the property that exec() is derived from the same base class and execute all the derived exec()'s by a single function call. Thanks for the response. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.248.80.114 (talk) 03:31, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I see. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to do that that doesn't involve a loop or recursive function call somewhere. decltype (talk) 03:45, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Why do you want to avoid loops? — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 12:18, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

A LaTeXnicality

I used \renewcommand to make the "enumerate" environment label each item with a capital letter followed by a period, thus:

\renewcommand{\labelenumi}{\Alph{enumi}{.}}

\begin{enumerate}

\item so there

\item and so on

\item blah blah

\item \label{thisgap}

\end{enumerate}

We will see that any gap of the kind described in (\ref{thisgap}) corresponds to a 

I expected a sentence that says

We will see that any gap of the kind described in (D) corresponds to a

but instead I got this:

We will see that any gap of the kind described in (4) corresponds to a

How can I get it to show a (D) rather than a (4)? Michael Hardy (talk) 02:19, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I would use \renewcommand{\theenumi}{\Alph{enumi}}. MTM (talk) 18:09, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Recovery of SATA drive on PATA computer

I have a SATA HDD of my friend's computer in which the power supply failed. They bought a new desktop, but I don't have access to it. All I have here at my house are PATA computers. So, is there anyway I can go PATA to SATA for data recovery without any extra equipment (I have permission to take the computer with the messed up powersupply so I could sacrifice some parts of it.)? TIA, Ζρς ιβ' ^¡hábleme! 03:27, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Nope. You couldn't even hook up the SATA drive to any connector that your computer has, if it lacks SATA support (which you can add to a PATA computer by purchasing a SATA PCI card). Tempshill (talk) 03:31, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Tempshill is right, There is no way that you can connect a sata HHD to a computer that lacks sata ports without getting new equipment. But, the equipment to do so is reletivly cheap. This, this, this and this are all about the same price depending on where you go. Personely i have one of these and i have to say it is very usfull. I got mine at Frys for about $14. Hope this helps. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  05:08, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Thought. Have a thumbdrive? (aka flashdrive). Take your (good) power supply out, install to friends (dead) PC, dump data to usb, revert P/S - copy said data to desirable location. Any value to that thought? — Ched :  ?  05:28, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Telnet/SSH2

Following on from my question about port forwarding, I have succesfully set up the forwarding of port 22 (and port 80) and tested that my webserver serves up the pages of my test site and I can use SSH2 to connect a telnet window to my webserver for remote admin. It all works well - at home. So now I've left the webserver running and gone to my sister's for the weekend. The webserver is still serving up the pages, but I cannot get the SSH2 window to connect before it times out. So is there anything obvious I have failed to consider? Astronaut (talk) 09:17, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Your client side (e.g. your sister's home network or internet provider) might be blocking certain ports. Have you tried accessing from other locations? Nimur (talk) 12:01, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I tried a neighbour's unsecured wireless connection and had the same problem, but it is quite possible that they are with the same ISP as my sister. Then again, perhaps the port blocking is a feature of all ISPs here in the UK. It did get me thinking that perhaps it might have something to do with the multiple firewalls somewhere in the route between my sister's network and my own (my ISP, my sister's ISP, and perhaps some more). One other thing also occured to me, would I need to set up some kind of VPN to make this work properly? (if so, why?). Anyway, I'll call my ISP next week and see if they can help. Thanks. Astronaut (talk) 16:34, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Your server side ISP could also be blocking the inbound connection. Or your firewall is blocking it. Or your router might be blocking it because it's set up to be configured through ssh. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  16:33, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

My modem/router is definitely configured to forward ports 22, & 23 (SSH and Telnet, respectively) to the server. My tests at home consisted of accessing my server using SSH2 via both the internal IP address of my server (to check the SSH2 was working) and the external IP address of my router (to check the port forwarding was working). Both tests were successful. I'm definitely getting the feeling the problem is firewall related (perhaps the external IP test manages to avoid my ISP's firewall?), but I just wanted to check that I hadn't missed out something really obvious to a networking expert but not at all obvious to me. Astronaut (talk) 16:52, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

FSB vs. memory speed

I am comparing two laptops: [A] has 667 Mhz FSB and 800 Mhz dual-channel memory, whereas the [B] has 800 Mhz FSB and 667 Mhz dual-channel memory. Which would be faster? And why? Thanks! --Masatran (talk) 09:46, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Some more details: [A] is Pentium Dual-Core, while [B] is Core 2 Duo. Intel Core 2#Synchronous memory modules recommends synchronizing FSB and memory speeds, but does does not say what happens when they are not in sync. --Masatran (talk) 10:11, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Core 2 > Pentium Dual-Core. In general memory clock isn't much of a factor in determining the performance compared to other things (CPU speed, GPU, amount of ram, etc.). --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:16, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Antilived is correct that your CPU choice here will have a much greater impact than your memory timing choices. This chart from Tomshardware from January 2008 compares FSB and memory speeds from 1066 to 1600, and shows that the differences using different FSB and memory timings when playing Quake 4 and F.E.A.R. are tiny, and are probably exceeded by measurement error. Other benchmarks in the same article, other than raw, synthetic memory bandwidth measurements, show even smaller differences, or no differences; from a practical point of view you will most likely not notice a difference, unless, possibly, your laptop tasks involve all memory access and little calculation, as though you were just sorting gigabytes of data all day. To answer the question about memory timing, I believe system (A) will actually clock the memory at 667MHz, so you will simply have memory that's rated for a higher speed than your laptop will drive the memory at; and system (B) will detect upon bootup that the memory is 667MHz, and underclock the FSB accordingly. In both situations you'll be running your memory at 667MHz. Tempshill (talk) 14:48, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

external hard drive problems

Got a bit of a problem with one of my external usb hard drives. The problem only began about an hour ago. The drive has two partitions, a 198GB fat32 one and a 40GB NTFS one. When I plug the drive into the usb port, only the 198GB fat32 drive shows up, but after a few seconds the entire computer freezes and becomes unresponsive. However, as soon as I unplug the drive the computer resumes working like nothing is wrong. The system is Windows XP. I've tried on another WinXp computer and exactly the same thing happens. The drive is not making any clicking sounds, I've not installed any new software and my other usb drives are working fine, so it's not a problem with the usb port or the usb cable either. Any ideas? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 10:43, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a hard one. There could be any number of things wrong (failing sectors, wire in side the case could be lose, control board could be fried. ect...). But from the details you have given i'd have to say that the drive might be bad. The only way to really see if that is the case would be to restart your computer using a Ubuntu live cd. See if you can access the drive from that live CD. IF you can try to get rid of the partitions, formatting the hard drive and reforming the partitions. If after doing that you still cant access it from windows then consider that drive bad. Let us know how it turns out. I hope this helped – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  16:29, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. It's working perfectly under slax, so I'm at a complete loss for why it's not working on windows :/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 19:15, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

what is the algorithm behind online maps?

For example, a map of a city is viewed online and I move across the road using the mouse. If it is magnified, one can see that parts of the maps are only loaded as required. Can you please say how it is done? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.220.46.25 (talk) 12:04, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The algorithm is actually very simple. You have a current (x,y) location, and a current zoom level. The algorithm simply retrieves the images which represent areas near that (x,y) location (i.e. load everything in the range x-3 to x+3 miles). The efficiency comes from an effective data structure, storing the map image files for quick access. A more interesting algorithm is a query for driving directions - a complex web of interconnected streets must be searched to find a minimum-cost path (by distance, travel-time, etc). Nimur (talk) 12:20, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The general technique that is behind these maps is Ajax. Traditionally, when you interacted with a web page, your actions, such as filling out a form or clicking on a link or some other hot spot, caused the browser to send a request back to the server for new page content. That new content would replace part of all of the current page and the process would repeat. Generally you had to wait for each update. With Ajax, updating of the page is more finely controlled using JavaScript , which responds to your actions and, when needed, requests additional page content using a function called XMLHttpRequest. The difference is that the browser does not wait for the response and you can continue to interact with the current page. When the response does come back, another piece of JavaScript code is executed that takes the data and updates the appropriate portion of the display.

In the case of Ajax driven maps, popularized by Google Maps, the map starts out at some initial position and zoom level. The initial map is likely downloaded with the initial page. As you roll your mouse wheel, the JavaScript code performs several actions: First, it re-sizes the existing displayed image, which may initially have a low resolution appearance. Next, it determines what new images are needed to provide the higher resolution presentation for the new zoom level. If it already has some or all of those images (from earlier activity), they are immediately displayed. For those images that are not available, one or more calls are made to XMLHttpRequest to request those images. A short time later, when the requested images are received back from the map server, the JavaScript will replace portions of the current map display with the higher resolution images, eventually updating the entire map.

For efficiency reasons, those image requests are typically broken down into multiple sections or tiles. It is likely that the map server stores each tile as a separate image in its database. The images themselves come from several sources. Lower resolution images are based on satellite photos, while the higher resolution images are based on a aerial photography. Adjacent photographs are blended together to give the appearance of a continuous image, but you can often see discontinuities in color, lighting, and perspective where this has been done.

Panning works similarly. Typically, the web page already contains image data for areas of the map lightly beyond the displayed area, so slow panning is often seamless. As you pan, the JavaScript will use XMLHttpRequest to request new images to fill in missing parts of the map and to maintain a small buffer of surrounding the displayed map. Overlays such as streets, borders, labels, and other information is retrieved and processed similarly. -- Tcncv (talk) 15:37, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

C# and Bluetooth

Hi. I am trying to write a C# program that can receive files over Bluetooth (OBEX PUSH), and display transfer progress. Currently I'm using the InTheHand.Net.Bluetooth library from 32feet.NET

ObexListener listener = new InTheHand.Net.ObexListener();
listener.Start();

while (listener.IsListening)
{
    ObexListenerContext context = listener.GetContext();
    Application.Run(new RecvProgress(context));
}

but GetContext() only returns after all data has been transferred.

Is there any other way to receive files over Bluetooth? (Windows XP Pro, Microsoft's Bluetooth stack)

--grawity 12:57, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Mount folder on Ubuntu (Linux/GNOME)

Resolved

Anyone knows how I can "mount" a folder on Ubuntu, so that it appears like this? I tried "mount --bind" on /media/myfolder_name, tried creating symlics, etc... nothing seems to work... is this even possible? I think some apps do it with FUSE, but I just can't figure out how... __ Hacktolive (talk) 18:02, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Nevermind, I solved it with some FUSE utilities _ Hacktolive (talk) 18:20, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I want XeTeX and I want it now...

I need to install XeTeX (and probably LaTeX as well) on my Windows Vista PC. But I'm not really comfortable with command-line based stuff with .tars and .bz2s and such, which is what all the distributions I've found offer. Is there somewhere on the Internet where I can get a nice big .zip containing all the necessary files and an installer that will do it for me? 137.205.74.169 (talk) 18:05, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Try MikTeX. MTM (talk) 18:12, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Ipod

So, my Ipod is broken.

Neither my computer or laptop notice it when I plug it in, it doesn't recharge, plugging it in to one of the usb ports in my computer managed to set fire to part of it, and it now just shows the recharging message and does nothing else.

It stopped working the same a few weeks ago, and I sent it to be fixed, and it came back recharged, but now the battery has run out again, it's back to how it was, and it seems the free repair thing is about to run out. And when I got it back, all the music had been wiped off and without being able to connect it to my computer, I can't put anything back on, even if it did work.

Oh, and the wire to plug it in has gotten itself a bit broken too now, so I can't use that any more.

What do I do?

148.197.114.207 (talk) 18:50, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

You say the warranty is "about to run out", so presumably it hasn't run out yet. That makes it simple - you just send it back in. --Tango (talk) 18:58, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

But they didn't actually fix it last time. What happens if it comes back just the same as it did before, just with the battery recharged again? 148.197.114.207 (talk) 19:09, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Screen going blank during Windows XP installation

I am installing Windows XP from a CD (onto which I bundled service packs according to this guide) and it starts out just fine (much better than without the service packs, because without them, Windows can't handle the large hard drive (300 GB)).

It formats the hard drive and copies files over to it and then it wants to reboot, but when the CD boots again, the screen turns black and all CD and hard drive activity stops. It just sits there. If I disconnect the hard drive and boot with the CD, the installation program starts as normal, but not when the hard drive is connected. Since the installation isn't finished, the hard drive itself isn't bootable.

I would appreciate suggestions on what to do. —Bromskloss (talk) 19:34, 23 May 2009 (UTC)