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August 7

PHP/MSQL assist

This is one of those days where things avoid me and my ability to describe is subpar, so excuse me and try to bare with me.

I am trying to make something similar to a poll but for the life of me I can't remember how to do this, so I come to you guys. Here is a basic layout to give you an idea of what I am working on doing. There are two textareas, one of which is a multiple line and the other is a single line. Below the multiline is an Add Button, Subtract Button and the singe line (not in that order). So you write a value..in a numerical fashion...like 2 and hit add, I want that value to be checked against the existing in the multiline box and then redisplayed as the outcome number. So let us say the multiline number is current 6. I'd like it to go "Alright, so you are currently 6? I want you to add 2 then display the outcome.". I would like for the new value to replace the old one inside a MYSQL database...which I have also managed to forget today, perfectly able to add a new value as long as the old still exist..can't remember for the life of me how to make a new value and remove the old one...anyways, if you need anymore clarification just ask, thanks guys. Rgoodermote  01:33, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Quick clarification, the question is, what is the code or the functions needed for this? Rgoodermote  01:34, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

S/PDIF

HELP! I just bought a 3.5mm to digital optical so that I could plug it in my soundcard (Creative Audigy 2 Sound Blaster) into my receiver and listen to music from iTunes via my surround sound. The problem is that I plugged it in both of them and no sound came out! I tried it on Vista and XP, it didn't work on either :(. Thanks for the help! --71.117.37.217 (talk) 02:39, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Well at a guess, there would be some setting where you have to enable the digital output.. Have a look through the "sounds and audio devices" settings in control panel, and if you still can't get it going then RTFM. ;) Vespine (talk) 05:07, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I've already tried enabling S/PDIF out, then made sure it was un-muted on both OS's. If I had the manual I wouldn't be asking here... --71.98.18.213 (talk) 18:50, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, here's the Audigy manual. I noticed on one of the web pages at Creative's site that SPDIF output is not supported on sources protected by Microsoft's DRM. Not sure how that would affect output from iTunes. Have you tried just playing a system sound via your receiver? Is there any setting on the receiver to enable digital input for whichever source you've chosen? If you have the cable connected to the Soundblaster, can you see a red glow at the optical end? --LarryMac | Talk 19:11, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Windows security blocking my Safari downloads

Everytime I try to download a file in Safari, I get a pop-up from my Windows security system (or whatever it's called) that says something similar to "Windows found this file to be potentially harmful" and blocks the download, how can I disable this? • S • C • A • R • C • E • 02:43, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

May I ask what OS you are using (XP? Vista?)? Also you ever tried to download from IE or Firefox? It could be that your Windows Firewall..or Windows Defender..or whatever the call it today is set too high and just blocks everything or this is some new form of denial of service attack by windows (ignore that paranoid statement). Rgoodermote  03:14, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I currently have IE8, Firefox, Safari (of course) and Opera, because it seems like some browsers give you different features or because I don't feel like transferring my content I have saved when I try a new browser :). I do all my downloads from Firefox but Firefox is rather slow to load and I shouldn't have to do that. I disabled my security system and it still blocked it. I use XP Professional • S • C • A • R • C • E • 03:20, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Um, well could it be that just maybe it is an actual virus? I know Windows Defender can be wrong..often...but how about trying to download it from IE (Microsoft's baby) and seeing what it does? If it does it in IE, it isn't MS blocking Safari. Rgoodermote  03:34, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Every single download I attempt gets blocked. I downloaded Opera and it got blocked, I doubt that file is a virus, and the warning says "potentially" • S • C • A • R • C • E • 03:50, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Are you on the latest version of Safari? I have the same OS as yours and the same browsers (and then some!) and have never had this trouble. Of course I have the built-in Windows security system turned off. That may be what you'll have to do, too. Use the firewall from your anti-virus instead. But if the problem is in Safari only, it could be a glitch in the particular minor version WebKit it's running on. Download the latest updates (to Safari, not WebKit) and see if that works. - KoolerStill (talk) 10:16, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Unless you are downloading .exe files Windows Defender won't normally alert. Have you got any internet security settings turned up to 11?83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:11, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I have a suspicion it's related to this - [1] - it may be that MS has decided to block downloads to protect you the use...

Are you using third party firewalls or anything like that. Also are you using any other browsers? Has the problem just started (windows update?) or always been like that.

I'd recommend uninstalling and reinstalling safari, make sure internet options are set to default.83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:26, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

There's another possibility - are you getting this message "File download - Security warning - do you want to open or save this file" every time - if so go to preferences (press the cog button top right hand corner, select preferences) then in the dialog box, select general, in the section "save downloaded files to" uncheck the "prompt before downloading box" ie no tick. Then close.

Once you have done that when you try to download a file the warning box will still appear at first - but with a new item "always ask before downloading this type of file" - if you uncheck that box (no tick) - the next time you download a file you will go straight to the "save to" dialog.

You'll get the box for each type of file eg .jpg , .pdf , .doc , once only - and it will only appear if you try to download a type of file you haven't downloaded before. Hope that helps.83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:55, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Microcomputer I/O before the TV Typewriter

Before the TV Typewriter kit became available, what did home microcomputers use for input and output? NeonMerlin 06:15, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

On things like a Altair 8800 you toggled switches on the front and little lights went on and off. As most people who owned such machines were electronics hobbists, or at least knew some, they might rig up some fancier arrangement of lights or switches to a serial or parallel port. If someone had a lot of money, they could hook up a teleprinter, which was the way minicomputers and mainframes did human IO until the VDU. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:27, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Learning C

What's a good book/website for learning C (NOT C++)?
The problem is that I'm not new to programming, I can program in Java, C++ and few more languages. all the books and websites I've found are aimed at novice programmers with little or no programming experience or are about C++ (Obviously Bjarne Stroustrup wasn't aware of how hard it is for search engines to distinguish C from C++, since there were none back then). I want to learn C without C++ because the linux kernel and alot of open source projects are written in pure C. And I find the combination of C and C++ quite confusing.

To rephrase: I want to migrate from Java to pure C. What books or websites do you suggest? 95.84.72.151 (talk) 10:15, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

As an aside to search for "C" type C -"C++" into search http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=c+-"c%2B%2B"&btnG=Search&meta= or more specifically tutorial c -"c++" -"c#" -"hepatitis" -"objective-c" -"c-sharp" (edited) 83.100.250.79 (talk) 10:31, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

"THE" book for C is "K&R" -- the original book by Kernighan and Ritchie who wrote the whole language. Slim and simple and all you need, especially if you have programmed before.

This online/downloadable tutorial claims to be specifically for experienced programmers. Your C++ compiler should be able to handle pure C, if you set it up appropriately. If you work through the examples in the book, you'll have it down, by the time you get to the end. Don't be fazed by it being a lot more cryptic than the object-oriented languages. That is the beauty of it; you can get on with telling it what to do,not worry about spelling a 31-character name. - KoolerStill (talk) 10:34, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Searching for "C tutorial" also misses most of the C++ eg "c+tutorial"&meta=&aq=f&oq=

In fact it turns up this [2] , (note the disclaimer) , by Brian Kernigan, which should be a good intro, despite being out of date.83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:06, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

There is an excellent book called "C for Java Programmers" - $70 at Amazon. If, as you say, you are a proficient java programmer, then you need some "translation" about some fundamentally identical concepts, and some "transformation" about some fundamentally different concepts in pure C. One of the biggest things that I had a hard time with was that C is much less standardized than Java - while Java had Sun Microsystems' rigorous specification, C evolved, flourished, contracted, and reflourished, several times over the last decade. A few "versions" exist, and you probably want to stick with ANSI C or the slightly expanded version supported by the Gnu C Compiler. (Or possibly, you want to use one of the Microsoft compilers, but for a beginner, you will have a hard time learning what is a language construct and what is a part of the Windows and MFC API).

Obviously, as you know, C is not object-oriented. There are no classes; there are no instances; but you can use struct and pointers to "fake" some object-like behavior (or at least keep your code modular). Scope of variables still exists, but you will probably need to learn about the "extern" description, because there is a difference between "declaring" and "creating"a variable in C ((e.g. declaring vs. allocating stack or heap space - this concept did not exist in Java). C language uses static in a totally different way than Java - it has to do with locally scoped, globally present variables. Threading is not natively supported but is widely available using standard thread libraries. Memory is not automatically allocated; you must explicitly allocate heap memory; and you need to learn the difference between Heap and Stack (which also existed in Java, but you probably ignored). You need to understand the role of the C Preprocessor (and learn to use it just enough to get the job done, and not any more). You should learn about linking, because this part of the compile process never got your attention in Java (not in Java SE, anyway, unless you played with the runtime classloader for fun and profit). C does not natively support Exceptions, nor try/catch blocks. If you get stuck on any of these specific concepts, please feel free to post specific questions; I'm just trying to point out some major conceptual obstacles you might encounter so that you realize you've hit a "weird different thing" you never realized would be different. Nimur (talk) 15:03, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Old Website URL

Hi, my company migrated to a new website, however some pages on the new website still have the old URL. Note all the content on those pages is correct and up to date. Any idea how to stop the old url from getting displayed in the address bar of the new website?

Thank you for any assitance.217.17.248.45 (talk) 14:38, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

What you mean by "some pages on the new website still have the old URL" - surely if they have the old URL, they're in the old website? Or do you mean that search engines like Google are still finding the old site, and you'd like visitors to be redirected to the new one? -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:41, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

What i mean is when i click on a subpage, im taken to the desired page, but the url displayed in the address bar changes to the old website address. 217.17.248.45 (talk) 15:36, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

The browser merely displays the URL of the page it was told to go to. So if a browser is displaying an old-site url, that's where you really are. It sounds like links inside your new site are defective; that they should be pointing to new-site pages, but are still pointing to their old-site equivalents. So the fix is to fix those pages. There's a chance, depending on how your web server is configured, that you've added url-rewrite rules to the server configuration (which point certain incoming urls to the old site); the fix for that is to alter, or remove, the url-rewrite rules from the server's config. Some other possibilities: your browser, or some intermediate cache, is storing old versions of pages, so clear your caches (a good way to tell is to have the scripts that build web pages put timestamps in html comments - if you're seeing a page that should have been fixed, check its source to verify that it's been generated since you made the switch). And lastly you might have some non-obvious way of doing navigation, like a flash-menu, whcih has URLs embedded in it, and which you've neglected to fix. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:42, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Can you give an example?83.100.250.79 (talk) 15:48, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

It's very likely that they redirected the old DNS name to the new server (for in-transition compatibility) - you say that the old URLs are delivering updated, new content. So either the old server is still alive, and automatically mirrors the new server; or the old DNS name is now pointing to the new server. Hopefully the web administrator will eventually update the hyperlinks in the pages and completely remove the old DNS name. Are you the responsible person who needs help with this updating/transition process, or are you just curious why your web administrator has not finished the transition yet? Nimur (talk) 17:29, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

hi, im the Techie who works for this organization, and assigned the task of fixing this mess. Our new website is www.rvis.edu.bh, and the old one(which btw is still active, can this be deleted now?) www.riffaviewsschool.org. You might get a clear idea by visiting the new website and navigating to its sub pages. The website is managed by finalsite not me. Not sure who i should be contacting to fix this. Appreciate your help. 217.17.248.45 (talk) 19:44, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

It looks like most of the links connect to the new website, but the news links connect to the old ones - I'd suspect this is because the news is from an archive prior to the new website? Assuming you had a redesign I'd suspect that the old links were kept so that links from external sources did not become broken.

The obvious solution would be to contact whoever does your website design and get them to update the news stories so that they are on the new site. At least that's the answer if I've understood correctly.83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:56, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

It also looks like you should be asking to redirect all traffic from the old name to the new name.83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:57, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

That shouldn't be necessary, but it couldn't hurt either. All you really need to do is go through the News section and change all the links that start with "http://www.riffaviewsschool.org" to "http://www.rvis.edu.bh" and everything should work just fine. I'm not familiar with Finalsite, so I can't give you an exact walkthrough - if you have any trouble, you could ask those guys for help. Indeterminate (talk) 11:35, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you guys for all your help.RVIS Techie 80.88.241.94 (talk) 08:10, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

real time processing?

When you convert Kbs to Mbs on this site, you get results real quick. Is this real time processing? Apparently, it is not the server where the page is hosted doing the calculation. Where is the calculation done then? Is it performed using the resource of the client side computer? The page uses javascript. Can python do the same function?--Clericalmonk (talk) 16:59, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

It's javascript running in your browser. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:02, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

It is probably not real-time processing. Real-time processing typically refers to a computer system running an algorithm that is guaranteed to complete operation in an exact amount of real clock-time. This requires, among other things, total control of the operating system scheduler (or lack of a scheduling operating system), as well as a known hardware configuration. Javascript, Windows, Firefox, "personal computers," and most of the stuff that you work with (including this example that you posted) strictly do not fall in to this category. They may be called "very fast and responsive processing" but they are not "real time computing." Nimur (talk) 17:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Python can do the same calculations, but won't run in a browser (normally) - there are work arounds to getting python code to run in a browser, but in general it doesn't currently happen (as far as I know)83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Follow-up question

Referring to [3], this may explain why I couldn't get on once I plugged the modem back in. I've been told to unplug the modem when the phone company had problems but the Internet was back. I mentioned what happened when I made a phone call in hopes of hearing there might have been such a problem that needed solving.

Why is it that if the computer is hung up causing the circle to just go around and around, it can't just find the web site it is looking for when the Internet comes back?

And what does it mean if the cursor turns into a circle going around and around too?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:52, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

If the cursor goes round in a circle it means 'waiting' or 'processing' - in this case it may be waiting for a connection or for a download of a page to finish. I'm sorry I can't answer the rest of your question.83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:59, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I see you stated in the earlier thread that you have DSL. That's good. In the future, you'll need to mention DSL every time you ask a question here, because if you just say "modem" then we're all going to assume it's a dial-up modem instead of a DSL modem. When your computer just does nothing and the "waiting" circle goes round and round forever, it may be waiting for a number of different reasons. I think the most likely one is that your computer has not connected successfully to your ISP (the phone company). One thing I always try is to click Start then in the "Start Search" field that appears, click and type "cmd" and hit Enter. A command prompt will appear. Type ping www.yahoo.com and hit Enter, and tell us what happens. Tempshill (talk) 20:50, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot I had even asked a question.

Yeah, once when I was unable to get on the Internet I was told how to type "cmd" and I think I have that written down somewhere too. I think that's what I was expecting from tech support. In that other situation, the light on the back of the computer wasn't working and they couldn't help because that involved calling the manufacturer, whose tech support people said do a system restore.

Thanks.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:50, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

anonymous free (or low cost) email service?

This is not to disparage the free email services by companies like Yahoo!, Google, MS (Hotmail), et al. I just don't want to choose between (a) giving information like my name, birthdate, or ZIP code on the registration form; or (b) lying about such--however easy it might be. I'm not too worried about the computer I'm using--this one is in a government office. I'm not a terrorist. I'm well over 18. I'm not a spammer. (Pity those in China or Iran who have to face lying even more.) I just want something were I can (a) get an address, (b) require only a password, (c) type out the funny looking words to prove I'm a person. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.179.108.25 (talk) 19:52, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

They exist - ireland . com only requires your age (not date of birth)- no address, dna sample etc, there must be others, have you tried all the ones in the Comparison of webmail providers , Comparison of e-mail clients 83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:48, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Why not just put gibberish in for the Gmail registration for First/Last Name? The only other stuff you seem to have to put in is the e-mail address you want (what an idea!), your password, a location (set it to Canada?) and the CAPTCHA. Washii (talk) 07:31, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

He said he didn't want to lie, even though he knows he can.

Looks good.

I've thought of the gibberish idea too. I also thought of blantant lies--such as gibberish, emailing the very service--telling them what I've done and why, and waiting a few months. The problem is, the deed would be done (the lying), I'd have to wait a few months, and I might get an email from them telling me the answers is "no."68.179.108.25 (talk) 15:50, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Though, for all practical purposes, the lie is pretty white. I mean, it's not like the services are actually going to care all that much. I know—obviously for you it's about "the principle of the thing" but still, the principle of the thing is about not wanting to give obvious bogus data to free e-mail providers, and that's a pretty small principle. I assure you that nobody—NOBODY—actually cares if you lie on those forms. In any case, Gmail's prompt asks only for "First name:" and "Last name:". If you put in "First name" and "Last name" as the respective fields, you'd technically be telling the truth ("First name"="First name"), and thus not technically lying. (Perhaps you were just confused.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 19:29, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

It's still "technically" a lie if you intend to decieve - by the dictionary (SOED) definition of "an intentional false statement" or "Something that deceives", or by the Wikipedia article definition of "a type of deception ... especially with the intention to deceive others". Although you could argue that an obvious withholding of information (eg First name="first name") isn't a lie, because you are not deceiving, you are instead overtly not providing the information. Mitch Ames (talk) 00:22, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Well ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law etc... But the OP already stated that he didn't want to lie (no matter how creative; the "address=address" idea was funny :)

They've already got one email provider that matches - but I know that they don't do POP/IMAP for free - can anyone suggest one that does do everything for free and without any personally identifyable details?83.100.250.79 (talk) 00:27, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Setting up spell check in Opera

How do you set up spell check for Opera? I already installed GNU Aspell and the English dictionary (aspell-en-0.50-2-3.exe). Yet it doesn't seem to be working, did I miss something? • S • C • A • R • C • E • 20:55, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Did you check the instructions (we've all got to) [4] - maybe you didn't check the spell checking option - if that doesn't work something is seriously wrong.....83.100.250.79 (talk) 21:23, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Did you fix the download problem with opera you had before?83.100.250.79 (talk) 21:52, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

It won't check as you type. Right click in any text field and choose CHeck Spelling to check the whole field. To check one word or phrase, highlight it first. - KoolerStill (talk) 22:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

"Restart Opera" oops! Works now, thank you. • S • C • A • R • C • E • 03:04, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

August 8

Context T9?

Do any existing T9 predictive text entry systems take previous words into account to help decide which word is most likely (e.g. interpret 46 as "in" if the previous word is "come", but as "go" if it's "let's")? NeonMerlin 06:03, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, most predictive text systems only use lexical analysis, so they don't do any analysis on the syntax level. They certainly could, but it'd drastically increase the size of the "dictionary" database, since the developers would have to add data about which words would be likely to follow or precede each word in the dictionary. Right now, size of the predictive text engine might be more important than relevance of word suggestions, but that'll probably change as phone memory keeps increasing. Just my two cents; there are probably lots of opinions. Indeterminate (talk) 10:57, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

No-cost spreadsheets that reference data by name rather than by cell address?

I understand that Lotus Improv, Javelin of Javelin Software, and Quantrix could do this, although Quantrix is the only one still available. Are there any freeware or other no-cost spreadsheets that can do this please? 84.13.197.233 (talk) 15:02, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Would the ability to name addresses do ie naming A1 as "tax" and then being able to use tax as a variable? Both calc and excell can do this. (calc is the free one) (You could put the variable cells somewhere 'off to one side'..)83.100.250.79 (talk) 15:17, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Master Pages in InDesign

When I create a 10 page document in CS3 for the PC, I place a text frame into the master page. I want to see an editable text field in each of the pages I can flow text into. However, when I go to the document, although the pages pallette tells me each page has a text frame (the little blue dotted line) none of the text boxes are selectable. Obviously I can select them in the master page, but if I type anything in, the text will appear on each page.

So how do I get editable text boxes. The master page text frames were created in the Doc Setup dialogue with the Master Text Frame option, so don't bother suggesting that!

Thanks

80.229.160.127 (talk) 17:05, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

You're using master pages wrong, me thinks. You can't create an element on a master page and then edit it when you are out of master pages. Master pages are for things like page numbers, headings at the top of each page, etc. They aren't for putting editable text fields, they aren't for putting things that vary with each page. I don't use Master Text Frame myself; googling it shows it to be a somewhat curious and tempermental feature, which might be related to your problem as well. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 18:06, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

So if I make a document with 100 pages, I have to draw a new text box for each one? 80.229.160.127 (talk) 19:54, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi. Just hold down the the CTRL and SHIFT keys while double-clicking on the frame with the type tool, and you will be able to type into each frame individually.--IndexOutOfBounds (talk) 22:19, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I should have known it would be something like that. Although none of them threaded, I still had to load them all individually, but no great chore, I suppose. Thanks 80.229.160.127 (talk) 01:12, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

php ereg_replace

I'm looking for a way to convert a string into a html self link using the php "ereg_replace" expression. So for example, if I wanted to convert:

--link

into

<font color="red"><a href="#link">--link</a>

where "link" can be anthing, such as

--cats

and it will convert to:

<font color="red"><a href="#cats">--cats</a>

Thanks so much for your help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 17:12, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

It would probably help if you can guarantee that the "link" is always followed by a space or newline or something - can be assume a space> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:38, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know PHP, but the regex (in Perl) you would be:

s,--(\w+),<font color="red"><a href="#$1">--$1</a>,g;

so it's probably similar. That assumes "anything" means alphanumeric characters plus underscore. --Sean 20:28, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I've just tried and it doesn't work :( But thank you anyway. I'm really clueless with php, if someone with some php knowledge could convert this to php or something I would be eternally grateful —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 23:53, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't really know PHP, not sure if \w even works on PHP

I think quotes need to be 'escaped' eg \"

string$ is the string$ containing your html file..

This will only replace the first instance, I think the function ereg_replace returns 0 if it didn't find a string to match. So you might need to do it several times in a loop until the function=0 - if so this creates a problem since it will be attempting to replace the second --name after the href.

I think it will be something like this:(corrected 3 times)

while ( ereg ( "--(\w+)" , string$ ) ) {
string% = ereg_replace ( "--(\w+)" , "<font color=\"red\"><a href=\"\\1\">--\\1</a>" , string$ ); }

The while replaces all the instances of --name (several times in a loop until the function=0)

this may create a problem since it will be attempting to replace the second --name after the href. If this is the case you need to do something like this:

ereg_replace ( "--(\w+)" , "<font color=\"red\"><a href=\"\\1\">GG\\1</a>" , string$ )

for all instances of --name, followed by a second loop of:

ereg_replace ( "GG(\w+)" , "--\\1" , string$ )

for all instances of GGname (if you don't do this you can see why it can go wrong)

Surely someone will be along soon who knows PHP, what I suggest it experimenting, and building up until you can do the whole thing eg start with try seeing if you can replace "--file" with "--newfile" and build up from there. Remember that PHP doesn't do "lazy matching" (see manual), also get a PHP manual (online somewhere) and check the control codes it uses for regular expressions.83.100.250.79 (talk) 00:23, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

---

OK, I'll be the "someone who knows PHP", since I program it for a living.

1. As the user above says, reading the manual can be a good head-start. In PHP's case, go to php.net; there are often useful tips from other programmers on the "notes" section on each page. A handy trick is that any function can be looked up by going to php.net/some_function - e.g. php.net/ereg_replace.
2. PHP has (at least) 2 regular expression engines. I would recommend you use the PCRE ("Perl-Compatible Regular Expressions") functions, which are often faster and more powerful than the "POSIX Extended" type. It's possible, though unlikely, that older versions of PHP won't have the PCRE regex module installed, but in the latest version the POSIX functions have been marked as deprecated.

Using the PCRE function (preg_replace), your code would be something like this:

 $foo = 'a b c --link d --foo e';
 echo preg_replace('/--(\w+)/', '<a href="#$1">--$1</a>', $foo);

Where the pattern /--(\w+)/ means "match 2 dashes, then 1 or more 'word' characters, capturing the word characters" and the replacement string '<a href="#$1">--$1</a>' references the captured characters as $1.

The equivalent using ereg_replace would be this:

 $foo = 'a b c --link d --foo e';
 echo ereg_replace('--([0-9A-Za-z_]+)', '<a href="\\1">--\\1</a>', $foo);

Where the only real differences are that there's no handy "word" short-hand, so I've put in the equivalent [0-9A-Za-z_] (which would work for PCRE as well), and the format for backreferences is \\1 rather than $1.

Hope this helps. -- IMSoP (talk) 18:14, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

YES!!! That's perfect! THANK YOU!

Yes, thanks, it was starting to niggle me what the answer was too :) I've added a resolved tag

Resolved

wglUseFontOutlines

I use the Windows OpenGL function wglUseFontOutlines to create characters to display in my three-dimensional world. However, it takes more than one second for the function to return. Is there any faster way to draw three-dimensional text in OpenGL in Windows? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:33, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

You could try calling GetGlyphOutline and converting to 3D yourself. The WINE source of wglUseFontOutlines might be helpful. -- BenRG (talk) 10:59, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that might be a way to achieve better performance. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:42, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

HP Pavilion dv6386: Forgot BIOS logon password

I have forgotten the BIOS logon password on my HP Pavilion dv6386 computer. I have tried to disconnect the CMOS battery for a few seconds, but then I was surprised to learn that the computer's BIOS still remembered the password. Perhaps the password is stored in a non-volatile memory, or there might be third power source somewhere. Or, perhaps it wasn't the CMOS battery I disconnected, after all (although it sure looked like a battery...). Is there anything I can do? I am afraid that HP has been careful to design a secure system, so there might not be much to do. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:45, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

This page [5] says remove the battery for 700 seconds - maybe it's worth trying again.83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:30, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

The same page also mentions 'master bios passwords' - probably time to ring up HP (or the bios maker)?83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:31, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

If you still get stuck it's worth mentioning - the motherboard manufacturer, and the bios manufacturer.

There's a lot of advice via "bios forgotten password" search, but all mostly useless with out knowing the bios type.83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:36, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Unplug the system, remove the laptop battery if relevant, and remove the button battery on the motherboard for like 15 minutes and your BIOS password will have been removed. You won't need to contact the manufacturer. Rjwilmsi 08:46, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I will try to have the battery disconnected for a longer time. Thanks. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:41, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

To help make it go a little faster, disconnect all those things, then hit the power button. This should force anything that's holding power to drain a lot faster, but I'd say you should wait a minimum of 5-10 minutes. 63.135.50.109 (talk) 22:30, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I always do that. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 23:49, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Now I disconnected the battery for half an hour, and the BIOS forgot everything! Thank you! --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 14:53, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

.NET Framework SDK Folder

I'm running Windows Vista and I have the .NET Framework v3.5 with SP1. I seen a lot of sites talk about different tools and resources in C:\Program Files\Microsoft.NET\FrameworkSDK or some location like that. The thing is though I cannot find it. Can someone tell me where it is located, if I need to install something extra, or if the location of the resources has been changed and they've been moved. --Melab±1 ☎ 20:13, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

The chance is that you have the ".net runtime", which lets you run ".net" programs, but not the ".net software developement kit" which lets you create programs as well. For free you can get http://www.microsoft.com/express/ "visual studio express edition", or pay and get a more expensive version.

There are also separate products for c++, c# etc. which you can download.

(aside - I know you have Vista)If you're on XP there's a chance you don't have the .net framework either - it can be got via windows update, but if you download the sdk it's automatically included.83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:24, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft Visual Studio83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:30, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

alternatively just do a search for "SDK" to see if it's in there. (I mean search your hard disk drive using the search tool) 83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:37, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I did but it didn't find it. --Melab±1 ☎ 01:19, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

You need to download one of the Microsoft Visual Studio development kits then, if you want access to it.83.100.250.79 (talk) 01:21, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

See [6]. --wj32 ^t/c 06:16, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Windows Mobile Open Source or not?

Please resolve a dispute between friends! Rixxin (talk) 22:53, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

No, it's not; see Windows Mobile. Bar a few odds-and-sods, nothing Microsoft has produced is open source, and WM is becoming one of their crown jewels, something they're going to keep a tight grip on. Google's Android system, an equivalent to WM, is a combination of open source and free software. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:30, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

August 9

Programming Languages as Intellectual Property

Are programming languages patented or copyrighted? --Melab±1 ☎ 01:18, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

It's possible to patent a programming language, copyright the documentation, and trademark the name.

See software patent for all the problems involved.

For example r++ has patents applying to it. In general whole programming languages are not patented since it's difficult to invent one that doesn't involve a lot of prior art.

You asked a similar question before [7]

There's nothing to prevent an individual or organisation attempting to protect its intellectual property rights on new inventions. That's one of the reasons why license agreements exist.83.100.250.79 (talk) 02:09, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I actually don't think the above is correct. I did not think languages themselves were patentable or copyrightable. Certainly you could patent the compiler if the compiler has some novel features that are patentable. Could someone provide actual citations for these claims? (The software patent article is silent on languages.) Tempshill (talk) 03:02, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Obviously in practice it's totally impossible to invent an entirely new programming language that doesn't use stuff that's already been invented.83.100.250.79 (talk) 12:37, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

This isn't legal advice, just the understanding of a coder and open-source advocate:

Copyright applies to expressions, not ideas: the source code of your compiler, or the manual that describes the language, can be copyrighted -- not the syntax or the concepts behind it. So copyright cannot prevent someone else from independently implementing it. Patent law requires an original inventive step that goes beyond the prior art -- of which there is really quite a lot in the thousands of languages that have been devised in the past fifty or so years.

The name of a programming language can be trademarked, which can restrict competitors from branding their implementation under the same name. (See Visual J++ for one example: the trademark license for "Java" allows others besides Sun to use it only if their implementations are fully compatible. Microsoft's isn't, so they couldn't call it Java.) However, trademarks don't prevent someone from advertising their system as compatible with yours (think "100% IBM-compatible" from the early days of PC clones: "IBM" is a trademark, but Compaq can still call their product "IBM-compatible", if it is).

One question is whether it would ever be useful to try to restrict others from implementing a language you've devised. The biggest barrier to the adoption of new languages is the network effect: few programmers want to learn a language that is not already popular, since there are not many projects (or jobs!) that use it. Trying to block rival implementations is unfriendly to the user community and suggests vendor lock-in. This sounds like a recipe to ensure that the new language does not become popular. --FOo (talk) 07:46, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes that seems 100% correct

However there is one good reason to have some form of illectual property control over a language - which is to ensure that other implementations stick to a standard eg see Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine#Sun_vs._Microsoft (many companies do not restrict the use of or charge for the use of their inventions). 83.100.250.79 (talk) 12:59, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I think you've just illustrated why the expression "intellectual property" is intellectually bankrupt: when you say it, people have no idea what you mean -- since copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade-secrets, and other so-called "intellectual property" are all very, very different. --FOo (talk) 05:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Eh! Apart from everyone who read the question ? ,and a phrase such as 'intellectual property' can't be intellectually bankrupt (except in the obvious sense that it has no intelligence) only a person or group of people..83.100.250.79 (talk) 09:19, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Windows Live Mail

I have just been assigned a new e-mail address that will be used by my college, Lees-McRae College. It is a @email.lmc.edu account, but I believe it is somehow run through hotmail or windows live. But when I try to register it on Windows Live Mail on my laptop, I can't figure out what to put for the servers. Help? ~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hubydane (talk • contribs) 03:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it's "Live@edu" which is run through Windows Live (which runs Hotmail now). Here's the POP server settings:

Incoming Mail Server server name: pop3.live.com protocol: POP3, using SSL port: 995

Outgoing Mail Server server name: smtp.live.com protocol: SMTP, using SSL port: 25 username: enter your full email address

Found here, under "end user features". Hope that helps. Indeterminate (talk) 04:22, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hubydane (talk • contribs) 13:20, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Anyone wouldn't happen to know about a @ymail account? I know it's through Yahoo! but I can't get in configured right... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hubydane (talk • contribs) 13:26, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

It uses POP3, but yahoo only supports that for paid subscriptions, apparently you can bypass this using the YPOPs! free program. If you have a paid subsription try the yahoo mail site, select help and follow the links.83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:46, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay, so I used the server settings for the @email.lmc.edu and I received emails just fine, but when I try to send I get a message saying that the server was not able to connect and send or something like that. Came across like the outgoing server was wrong. Any help? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hubydane (talk • contribs) 14:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Targus AMW26US mouse

I have a Targus AMW26US mouse and after pushing one of the buttons on the USB wireless connector yesterday, a red light on the mouse began to blink. It has been blinking ever since. What is wrong with the mouse? As I no longer have the manual and the website has no download available, what can I do to stop the blinking red light? --Blue387 (talk) 07:07, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I have a similar mouse, albeit Logitech rather than Targus. I believe this is the wireless device trying to negotiate a connection to the mouse. Try unplugging the USB dongle, powering off the mouse, plugging the dongle in, and then powering it back on. --FOo (talk) 07:48, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

It's almost certainly the 'bind' button that binds the wireless dongle to the mouse - what is supposed to happen is that the button is pressed on the dongle and at the same time you press a button on the mouse. Look on the bottom of your mouse for a tiny button.83.100.250.79 (talk) 12:21, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I have pushed the button underneath the mouse and unplugged the dongle and the red light is not going away. The light goes away if the mouse is not moving but blinks every time I move the mouse. I have decided to contact the manufacturer tomorrow. --Blue387 (talk) 19:53, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

You're supposed to plug in the dongle, and push the button on the mouse and the dongle!

This way the mouse and dongle can 'mate' since both are in a special mode at the same time, and can get identification information from each other (important if you work in an office with lots of mice and dongles)

Also a red light on the mouse may mean flat battery>83.100.250.79 (talk) 21:41, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I have switched the batteries for fresh ones and the red light is gone. I was promised that this would not need batteries for six months! --Blue387 (talk) 00:36, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

USB stick between Mac and PC

I've got both a Mac and a PC and I usually copy stuff between them using a USB stick no problem, although I think it depends on what stick you use, I've had some trouble with certain sticks. Anyway, I recently had to copy quite a large file (7gig) and so I bought a new stick (16gig). Both Mac and PC seemed to recognise it (empty). When I tried to put the 7gig file on it, the Mac came up with an error because the file was too big. So I had a look on some forums and found a solution. I essentially reformated the stick in the Disk Utilities function of the Mac, (I selected the 'Mac OS Extended(Journaled)' option), it then allowed me to copy the file onto the stick. So far so good. But now I've formatted the stick for my Mac, my PC won't read it. Does anyone know how I can format the stick so that both PC and Mac recognise it and I can put a 7gig file on it?Popcorn II (talk) 08:32, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I assume the initial problem you are referring to is the 4 GB file limit on fat 32 file systems. You are correct that to copy a 7 gigabyte file you need to use a different filesystem. If you look at the article comparison of file systems your options are either to use NTFS by installing the NTFS--3G driver for your Mac, or to use HFS and install one of the third-party Windows applications that provide Windows support for this filesystem. In that article the table on operating system support provides some useful links for such applications. Rjwilmsi 08:42, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

If you don't want to install system software on either system, and you have a degree of intestinal fortitude, then the following will work. The following is written for Linux->Windows (because I don't have a Mac), but the only change should be changing the disk device name (I think Mac disks are called /dev/disk0, /dev/disk1, but maybe some kindly Mac person can confirm this).

1. insert the USB disk into the unix machine, and unmount it (we're going to be trashing its contents entirely)
2. assuming the usb disk is /dev/sdg and we want to store a local folder called copyme do the following tar c copyme | dd of=/dev/sdg Note: make very sure you know which disk you're outputting to - get this wrong and you'll wipe our your system disk and trash your system (hence the instinal fortitude)
3. note down how many blocks dd reported writing - in my example that's 80, for you it'll be a lot more
4. install dd on Windows (I used the chrysocome.net one)
5. move the usb disk from the mac to the window machine
6. check to see which disk device the usb disk is, using dd --list - in my case it's \\?\Device\Harddisk2\Partition0 which is Windows' obscurantist way of daying "disk2's raw surface"
7. on windows do dd count=80 if=\\?\Device\Harddisk2\Partition0 of=foo.tar where that 80 is the number of blocks the dd reported above, and the if= parameter is the windows name of the usb disk device.
8. that creates a windows file called foo.tar which archivers like Winzip, 7Zip, TugZIP etc. will read.
9. if you want to use that usb disk normally, you'll have to reformat it

But yeah, do what Rjwilmsi said; my hack is only for the mad and the desperate ;( -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 09:54, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

You don't need a different file system or dangerous direct device access, you can use a file splitting program or a multivolume archiver that supports large files. You also don't need to buy a new USB stick this way. For example, using dd, type

   dd if=bigfile of=bigfile.part1 bs=1M count=3800
   dd if=bigfile of=bigfile.part2 bs=1M skip=3800

then move bigfile.part1 and bigfile.part2 to the other machine one by one on a USB stick of 4GB or more, then do copy /b bigfile.part1+bigfile.part2 bigfile on the receiving side. I'm not completely certain that copy will work with large files, in which case you can use dd there too:

   dd if=bigfile.part2 of=bigfile.part1 bs=1M seek=3800
   ren bigfile.part1 bigfile
   del bigfile.part2

Or, using 7-Zip, do 7zr a -mx=1 -v3800m archive.7z bigfile on the sending side, then move archive.7z.001 and archive.7z.002 to the other machine one by one, then do 7z x archive.7z.001 on the receiving side. That's a bit more reliable since you get a free CRC check at the end, but 7-Zip is less likely to be already installed on your machines.

I think it's a bad idea to use journaled filesystems on a USB stick as it will wear it down faster, so you should probably reformat to FAT32 when you're done with this in any case. -- BenRG (talk) 10:52, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I suspect Windows will be unable to read something formatted as 'Mac OS Extended(Journaled)'. You might have better luck with a linux Live CD reading it. Astronaut (talk) 02:38, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all your answers. It seems pretty complicated to me, I'm no expert. Is there no simple solution such as buying a USB stick that will work with both Mac and PC and allow files above 4GB?91.109.210.22 (talk) 13:23, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be any such ready-made stick. But to use NTFS, all you have to do is follow [these instructions] on your PC to format the stick, and then install [this program] on your Mac. Then large files on the stick should "just work" on those two computers, and probably also other PCs. On other Macs you will need to install the aforementioned driver. 84.239.160.214 (talk) 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It's not the USB stick's fault, so buying a new one won't help. It's a deficiency of FAT32, one of many - FAT32 also has issues with character encoding in filenames, path lengths, and with file ownership and permissions, all of which are an issue if you're hoping to use FAT32 as a platform-agnostic transfer or backup format. Frankly there isn't a viable platform neutral disk format. So you're stuck with FAT32, or with installing an NTFS driver. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Thought I'd let you know how it went. I formatted the stick on my PC for NTFS (I got an error message from the PC saying it hadn't formatted it correctly but I ignored it) then downloaded the Mac NTFS 3G driver thing and installed it on my Mac. Then I put a 5GB file from my Mac onto the stick and put the stick into my PC and copied it over. It seemed to work ok. I will try a few more files, but for now it seems to have worked, thanks guysPopcorn II (talk) 15:11, 12 August 2009 (UTC) but its is not like dat

iTunes Library Transfer?

My old computer has officially kicked the bucket, but it went south while I was away and I couldn't make a back up of my iTunes Library. How can I get all the stuff (Apps, Music, Pictures) from my iPod Touch to my new laptop? I googled stuff like this but it all seemed to cost something. Help! Hubydane (talk) 13:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Try to copy all files from the ipod (mounting it as a disk, then copying the files) and then start iTunes and choose to "import" all those files. I think that worked for me once, but that was an ipod 5.5g and I think it only had music (no pictures and stuff) Jørgen (talk) 20:43, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Another thing you can try is a program called Senuti (iTunes backwards). It looks and works just like iTunes, but in reverse. I used it once to do what you describe and it worked very well. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 21:56, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

heterogeneous linklist

How to implement a heterogeneous link list in C/C++? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chetan496 (talk • contribs) 13:45, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Are you familiar with homogenous linked lists? - the principles are the same except that you will probably want to precede each data item by meta data describing the data type. It's probably that different data types will take up different amounts of space - so some data elements may be spread across more than one data cell (unless you use data cells the size of the largest element by default) To reference these you will probably want to use a void pointer (a pointer that doesn't have it's type defined), and use type casting to get the data from the dereferenced list data to type cast variables. You don't really need to use a void pointer assuming you know the lengths of the various data types, and don't have a problems chopping or sewing data together - it's probably easier to use the pre-made functions mentioned below though if that doesn't appeal to you. Potentially the compiler writers may or may not be doing it better than you...

An alternative is to use a linked list of variable sized cells.83.100.250.79 (talk) 15:03, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

In C++ you could use std::list< boost::variant<...> > or std::list< boost::any >. -- BenRG (talk) 16:53, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

This is probably a homework problem. Go read about tagged unions. --FOo (talk) 05:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Problem with mounting in Linux, can't edit files

I've tried mounting the file with the options -o rw and -w but I still can't edit anything on the hard drive. I can mount the drive easily, I can read the files as well but I can't cut, delete, rename... or just write in general. This is my fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0005bb2c

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1               1       60801   488384001    b  W95 FAT32

and I mounted the drive using sudo mount -o rw /dev/sdc1 /media/500gb. Any idea what's wrong? It worked perfectly yesterday. --BiT (talk) 15:53, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Questions:

1. with the above mount done, what is the output from just typing mount
2. ditto, what is the output from touch /media/500gb foo
3. ditto, what is the output of ls -al /media/500gb
4. have you tried fsck on the disk

-- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:06, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

This is the output from mount

baldur@NYuu:~$ mount
/dev/sda5 on / type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
/proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
lrm on /lib/modules/2.6.27-11-generic/volatile type tmpfs (rw,mode=755)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
/dev/sda1 on /media/disk-6 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/esko/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=esko)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/baldur/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=baldur)
/dev/sdc1 on /media/500gb type vfat (rw)

touch /media/500gb foo gave no output, and ls -al /media/500gb simply gives me a of the files... wait, the owner and group is root, is that the problem? Because when I use sudo chown baldur * it says that the operation is not permitted- even though I'm root! --BiT (talk) 17:19, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh an another thing, since I'm Icelandic some of my files had Icelandic characters (take for example a directory named 'Elín'). How ever since the drive became read-only, all of the Icelandic characters have turned into black diamond question marks (so 'El�n'). Why would that happen? --BiT (talk) 17:28, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I would try scandisk on the usb disk on your windows machine (I've seen cases where a corrupt FAT32[vfat] disk mounts okay on linux, but then behaves strangely). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:42, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I formatted the drive with GParted but then it still wouldn't work, but everything was ok once I restarted the computer for some reason. Thanks for your help though, I didn't know about the "just mount" command. But for future references (since I've had the problem of a drive being read-only) what should I do if want to mount a drive as read, and writeable? Should adding the option -o remount,rw to the mount command work? --BiT (talk) 19:43, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

The remount thing means "if there's an error, here's what to do", and the line there reads "mount it read only". That's the safe thing to do, so you're not blindly writing to a bad drive with more stuff that might be making it more bad. So leave the remount at ro. That doesn't seem to have kicked in for you: the drive was mounted rw, which means the system hadn't seen an error. So it seems you hit a bug in the vfat driver. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:47, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah I see, I dislike the auto-mounter in Linux because I keep getting errors. Unless it would mount my drives properly I would much rather use the fstab or just mounting the drives by CLI.. --BiT (talk) 20:41, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Fat32 doesn't have full unix permission sets, unlike NTFS, for instance. Try mounting it with a umask. This might work: mount /dev/sdc1 /foo -o umask=000 Shadowjams (talk) 03:09, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Windows XP: folders with 32-character hex-digit names and a file called "$shtdwn$.req"

In the root directory of the largest disks of my windows PC, folders with 32-character names like "67b339f88b71042416304788faad5263" tend to accumulate. They contain a single binary file called "$shtdwn$.req", which is about 800 bytes, the first of which are "Sdwn", followed by a few binary digits, and the rest is just binary zeros. The folders are mentioned here, but the question remains: is there any reason to keep these, or are they just junk that can be deleted safely? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 17:25, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

From this discussion, it seems that the files are created by the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, but they shouldn't be left on the system, they should get deleted. You may wish to follow the instructions in the final post to that thread. Do you regularly run Windows Update and other malware detection/removal tools? --LarryMac | Talk 13:01, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. The logfile shows that Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool is being run about once a month, see dump:

Dump of mrt.log

Started On Fri Dec 12 22:48:09 2008

Results Summary:

No infection found.

Return code: 0
Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool Finished On Fri Dec 12 22:49:40 2008

---

Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool v2.6, January 2009 Started On Wed Jan 14 23:56:36 2009

Results Summary:

No infection found.

Return code: 0
Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool Finished On Wed Jan 14 23:58:12 2009

---

Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool v2.7, February 2009 Started On Tue Feb 17 23:12:41 2009

Results Summary:

No infection found.

Return code: 0
Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool Finished On Tue Feb 17 23:14:46 2009

---

Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool v2.8, March 2009 Started On Sun Mar 15 01:40:28 2009

Results Summary:

No infection found.

Return code: 0
Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool Finished On Sun Mar 15 01:42:03 2009

---

Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool v2.9, April 2009 Started On Fri Apr 17 23:22:46 2009
Security policy adjusted. Engine requests reboot and try again, ignoring.

Results Summary:

No infection found.

Return code: 0
Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool Finished On Fri Apr 17 23:24:50 2009

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Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool v2.10, May 2009 Started On Thu May 14 01:04:23 2009
WARNING: Security policy doesn't allow for all actions MSRT may require.

Results Summary:

No infection found.

Return code: 0
Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool Finished On Thu May 14 01:06:27 2009

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Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool v2.11, June 2009 Started On Thu Jun 11 02:27:05 2009
WARNING: Security policy doesn't allow for all actions MSRT may require.

Results Summary:

No infection found.

Return code: 0
Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool Finished On Thu Jun 11 02:29:10 2009

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Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool v2.11, June 2009 Started On Sat Jun 20 17:53:52 2009
WARNING: Security policy doesn't allow for all actions MSRT may require.
->Scan ERROR: resource process://pid:2456 (code 0x00000005 (5))
->Scan ERROR: resource process://pid:5224 (code 0x00000057 (87))

Results Summary:

No infection found.

Return code: 0
Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool Finished On Sat Jun 20 17:57:23 2009

---

Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool v2.12, July 2009 Started On Fri Jul 17 23:37:21 2009
WARNING: Security policy doesn't allow for all actions MSRT may require.

Results Summary:

No infection found.

Return code: 0

Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool Finished On Fri Jul 17 23:39:31 2009

I wasn't aware that it was being run, as I cannot remember having requested this explicitly. I use AVG 8.5, which tends to start scanning when I'm not actively using the PC (maybe AVG invokes Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool??). I usually have to abort AVG's scans, because scanning the entire system takes more than a day. The logfile shows that the security policy was adjusted sometime between March 15th and April 17th, 2009, and that after this date, the logs report "Security policy doesn't allow for all actions MSRT may require.". When sorting the Program Files folder by date, I find that the only installations performed in this period are from Microsoft:

Relevant folders from C:\Program files

11.04.2009 14:24 <DIR> Microsoft SDKs
11.04.2009 14:28 <DIR> Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition
11.04.2009 14:28 <DIR> Microsoft Synchronization Services
13.04.2009 21:52 <DIR> Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0
13.04.2009 21:56 <DIR> Microsoft.NET

13.04.2009 21:57 <DIR> Microsoft SQL Server

The dates of the folders with the random-seeming names do not correspond to the dates that mrt.log reports that the Malicious Software Removal Tool was run. The only file in the folders is "$shtdwn$.req", none of the more ominous files mentioned in the thread you linked to are present.

Oh, one more thing that might be relevant, come to think of it... The disk where I've found the files is an ext3 volume, accessed from windows XP with the Ext2Fsd driver. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 18:13, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

August 10

Mac OS X under Ubuntu via virtualization

Does anyone know how to run Mac OS X in a virtual machine with Ubuntu as its host? Most VM software available seems to have no support for Mac OS X. --Belchman (talk) 00:24, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I've had some success running it with qemu (at least it got through the installation, unlike VirtualBox), and there are reports of success using VMWare. But either way support will not be complete since OS X isn't meant to run on PC's. --antilived^{T | C | G} 03:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Additionally, the OS X EULA specifically forbids virtualization of OS X on anything other than OS X. Whether that is legally enforceable, I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if that aspect of it was somewhat related to why these virtualization programs aren't really trying to get it to work. Apple has filed at least one lawsuit relating to this sort of thing that is currently pending. (OS X can run on PCs, with some work. See Hackintosh. There are EULA-related issues.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 15:41, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

wireless laptops interfering with eachother

I currently bought a new router, only to find that when i try to access the internet from more than one computer, the internet for every computer gets disconnected (example I am on laptop 1, try to connect on laptop 2, both get disconnected from the internet) is there a way to stop this from happening? I am using a motorola modem and a linksys router, model number wrt110. If anoyone has any information that can help me stop my computers from interfering with eachother, I would greatly appreciate it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pianoman880 (talk • contribs) 00:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

What does your IP assignment setup look like (LAN side)? Off the top of my head, I would try hard resetting your router by holding down the "reset" button for 15 seconds and trying stated scenario again. --74.79.174.192 (talk) 02:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

There is a setting inside Linksys routers that limits the number of people connected to the router at one time. Click here: http://192.168.1.1/. The password is admin. On the home page, there's a setting for the "Maximum Number of DHCP Users." Check that.--IndexOutOfBounds (talk) 03:42, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Washed a Micro SD adapter. Am I screwed?

My phone has a micro SD card in it, which it uses to store photos/etc. It came with an adapter, so I could plug the phone's SD card into the adapter (which would then fit into my computer's SD slot). Except it was in the goddamn washing machine. It wasn't in for very long, but there was detergent. No visible damage to the exterior of the card, no sudsing or anything like that. As soon as I got it out of the washer (halfway through the cycle) I rinsed the hell out of it with cold tap water. It's drying on my shelf. What's the deal? ZS 02:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Probably ok . Make sure you let it dry completely (including any cavities). 83.100.250.79 (talk) 02:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

If it has a short in it because of contaminants (or some other horrible problem) and I plug it in, will it destroy my computer/microSD card/both? ZS 02:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Tap water contains minerals that conduct electricity. Rinse it with distilled water, instead. If it is dry, it will not harm your computer. You can purchase distilled water in jugs at a grocery store.--IndexOutOfBounds (talk) 02:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

These adapters are cheap -- so cheap they are given away when you buy a new MicroSD card, that costs less than $10 these days. Consider whether it might be cheaper / safer to just replace the adapter. --FOo (talk) 06:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Program structure - Derive all possible combinations of an arbitrary number of elements

I'm trying to derive all the possible combinations (not permutations because order doesn't matter) of an arbitrary number of elements. For example, if I have ABC then I want [A, B, C, AB, AC, BC, ABC]. I can generate the pairs, but how can I generate the second and third order combinations, let alone the n-th level combinations? The size of my input list will vary and I can't really predict its length ahead of time, so it has to be dynamically able to handle a list of any length.

My question is what program structure would be the usual, or what would work? I'm doing this in perl, but that shouldn't change the answer. Shadowjams (talk) 03:05, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like you want the power set of a set of elements. Do you just need to find the number of possible sets? In that case it's 2ⁿ. If you actually want to list all the sets it's not really necessary to store them in memory; the binary numbers with up to n digits represent the sets by letting the kth digit represent whether the kth element is in the set or not. Rckrone (talk) 03:31, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I am precomputing the number combinations in my program, although it's less than 2ⁿ because I throw out the single element and empty sets. 3 elements gives me 4 matches not 8 (AB AC BC ABC), or the sum [nC(n, n-1, ... 1)]. But I want to generate these pairs so I can run an operation on them. I'm comparing lists from each element for matches between the lists, and I want to do this for all combinations of elements. But aside from putting n loops for each n-th number of elements in the set (which wouldn't permit any number of elements), how can I do this?

I'll take a look at power sets here too... thanks. Shadowjams (talk) 03:58, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I think I've got a workable answer. The power set is exactly what I'm working with.

I am going to map my elements to a binary number, run through each set of the powerset, and then run each selected element through my function. If anyone has any ideas of an easier way I'd like to hear it, but I think this will work. Thanks again. Shadowjams (talk) 04:38, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

There's two old discussions here

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2008_July_13#optimise maybe interesting but not in order - see below
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2008_July_10#Efficient_Programming

which might be of interest - these examples refer to numbers (ie the digits 0-9), but could easily be converted to characters.

The methods only generate the longest combinations - but it's easy to generate the shorter ones provided you use one of the method that generates the combinations in order eg ABC, ACB ,BAC ,BCA ,CAB ,CBA - it should be fairly easy to see how you can truncate these to varying extents to get the rest - when truncating by more than one field you need to skip the number of 'permutations' that are possible in the truncated part to avoid repeated results.

If this sounds interesting to you ask if you get stuck on the 'permuatations' part (it's simple but not necessarily obvious)

The non truncated case is also covered at Permutation#Numbering_permutations (mentioned in the above link, see links from this link for more.. may be of interest.)

If this is equivalent to a method you have already considered then ignore. Good luck.83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. This is all pretty helpful. The one thing I didn't make clear is that I'm not just trying to just list all the combinations, but do something with those known combinations (each element is connected to a list I want to compare). The dirty hack way (and what I think I'm going to do) is make a table of combos, and use that table as the input into a function that will then go grab the appropriate lists, and do the comparison. I think this is what the previous question you referenced did.

What I can't figure out is a simpler way to do it. It feels like a long way around a simpler solution that is eluding me. I have nightmares of seeing a 3 line solution moments after I finish 50 lines of code to do the same thing. Shadowjams (talk) 21:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure I totally got the second part - for each combo eg ABC does this mean that A is pointing to a list, as is B and C - so you're actually combining lists? If that is what you are doing then you are doing it the sensible way.

Don't worry about the 50 lines (well not much) - better solutions always exist, and in my experience don't appear until you've written out the long one.. People publish there best stuff and don't tend to brag about the kludges. Better finished than not all. I think others (excluding a few lucky geniuses) will have had the same experience.83.100.250.79 (talk) 22:40, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

You can post your solution here, I imagine someone will be willing to look at it, assuming it's not too long, and has comments (or is simple enough the be obvious). Probably not really what the ref desk is for, but others do it.83.100.250.79 (talk) 22:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Will Bluetooth prevent wear and tear on phone's jack?

My experience with MP3 players is that the headphone jack wears out first. I'm looking at buying a smart phone and using its MP3 functionality. Will a wireless stereo headset reduce or eliminate the wear and tear on the jack versus a corded one? NeonMerlin 08:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Does a wireless headset use the jack socket??!! 83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Molasses in January

Is there a problem with the new version of Firefox (3.5.2)? Wikipedia is slower to respond and it's especially troublesome on TCM, where I'm having trouble getting movie info to load. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:53, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

One identified problem is specified here -- "Microsoft.NET Assistant" is identified as a possible culprit. SunSw0rd (talk) 19:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Check your Plug-ins and Extensions. Try loading it in safe mode and see if that goes any faster. Also, if the files it needs to load are splattered across your hard disk, you may see an improvement if you defragment the disk. 71.67.139.110 (talk) 17:34, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

iPhone vs BlackBerry for power users

What are the pros and cons of the iPhone compared to the BlackBerry for a user who wants to jailbreak and unlock the phone and run alternative firmware? NeonMerlin 11:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea which of those two would be best - but have you considered an 'Android' phone? You can buy them as a 'developer' in a completely unlocked state [8] and have all of the source code for almost all of the software on it. Since anyone can be a developer - anyone can do this. These phones have generally similar functionality to iPhones and Blackberries but without any of the risks of having your phone 'bricked' if the manufacturer decides to get upset about 'jailbreakers'. You can even download and run an 'emulation' of the Android phone that runs on your PC so you can try it out before you buy. SteveBaker (talk) 02:07, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

GIS-like image rectification possible in Photoshop or Fireworks?

Hey all,

Years ago I was a GIS guy and did a lot of image rectification. I now find myself needing to slightly tweak a few map scans that weren't quite aligned. Because the scans overlap, I could have them perfectly rectified in only a few minutes.

However, I haven't used ArcGIS in years and really don't want to fire it up & relearn it for such a simple project. I'm thinking there's gotta be a way to do this in Photoshop by now? I have CS4...

Thanks in advance.213.146.164.143 (talk) 12:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Record multiple inputs on a (vista) laptop - how?

I am currently using Audacity 1.33 (the beta version) and am trying to record more than 2 tracks at once. I have heard that on Apple Macs it is possible to set up some kind of software based ethereal mixer on the computer, and use this as an input for audacity - can this be done on vista? At all? I have also looked at adding a better sound card with more inputs, or a USB interface. I am using a laptop, and only have a small space (about 0.5cm x 5cm) for a sound card - can anyone tell me what this type is called? And can the 7.1 output soundcards be configured to record 5 or 6 tracks? Or are outputs strictly used for outputting? I ask because I have one line-in and two headphone jacks on my laptop, and if I could somehow (software?) configure the headphone jacks to act as line-ins, this would solve my problem - has anyone heard of anything like this?

Sorry for asking so many questions - any help is appreciated! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.241.117.47 (talk) 12:16, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Output means output but you could try using USB microphones. Dmcq (talk) 15:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Your options are more limited with a laptop, but you can try to find an external USB soundcard which can do multi-track acquisitions. Nimur (talk) 16:38, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree that USB devices are probably better for you, but you also asked for the name of the "internal" card type - it seems to fit the description of PC Card. Jørgen (talk) 21:27, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Google tools

Is there a Google tool for searching my own media - including word documents, PDFs, and all? I'd also like to add tags to videos and pictures to make them searchable. Basically, I want Google limited to my computer, but I want to customize the code to optimize it specifically for my needs. -- kainaw™ 18:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

There's Google Desktop Search for Windows, Mac, and Linux. For companies, who want to extend this index-my-stuff approach to a private network, there's Google Search Appliance]. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Google Search Appliance is what I was looking for and all my searching kept coming up with Google Desktop Search. -- kainaw™ 18:31, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

GSA is much more sophisticated (it's really much of google's index and search capability), whereas GDS is very basic. Because it's a (tamper-evident, I believe) hardware device, they feel more confident about putting some of their fancier search software in there. But then GSA is (reportedly) seriously expensive. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Google Mini starts at £2400 (~$3960). It's certainly not intended for home users. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 20:03, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Problem with iTunes + QuickTime on XP

I'm trying to install iTunes 8 on XP, but I can't get it to work. At the end of the iTunes + QuickTime install, it said "The installation of QuickTime did not complete successfully. iTunes requires QuickTime" and "The installer encountered errors before iTunes could be configured." When I tried to use Apple's standalone QuickTime 7 installer, it said "The installer encountered errors before the requested operations for QuickTime could be completed." Then I removed QuickTime from the computer with Windows Install Clean Up and tried the whole thing again. I finally got iTunes and QuickTime to install successfully, but when I try to open iTunes, it says "Some of your QuickTime software is out of date. You can fix this by updating to the latest version." I keep going back to the QuickTime 7 download and clicking on "repair", and it tells me that it's installed successfully, but iTunes keeps telling me that QuickTime doesn't work. What do I need to do? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 21:23, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Are you looking to get iTunes or Quicktime to function? QuickTime Alternative is a free software codec which will let you decode QuickTime .MOV files, without installing iTunes or QuickTime. This will probably not help at all with regards to iTunes, though. Nimur (talk) 21:27, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm only concerned with getting iTunes to work. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 21:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like you need to update rather than repair quicktime - try looking for an update button on quicktime, or go to quicktime help and search for "update" - quicktime usually searches for updates on start up - so I recommend restarting the computer, and waiting a bit so quicktime can download updates. (Then hopefully it should be up to date and itunes will work)83.100.250.79 (talk) 21:31, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Specifically: open quicktime, select edit , preferences , quicktime preferences then select the update tab (select automatically update if it isn't already is a good idea) then press "update"

That hopefully should fix it.83.100.250.79 (talk) 21:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It's worse than that - I can't even get the QuickTime Player to open. When I try to open it, it says "Some of your QuickTime software is out of date. You can fix this problem by updating to the latest version." I proceed to press "Do it now", and then I get an error message saying "QuickTime is not properly installed. Please reinstall QuickTime." --Lazar Taxon (talk) 21:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

You've already tried uninstalling? erm. In "add and remove programs" - uninstall all apple software - there should be quicktime, itunes and something called "apple update". Then restart. And install just quicktime and see if it works. If that doesn't work or you've already tried I'd suggest restoring to a point (use System Restore) before you started with apple and try again.

I don't use itunes but I've installed quicktime into XP quite a few times without a hitch.

There's some advice here [9] which suggests using http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;290301

Assuming you manage to save the installer file to your hard disk I can't think of anything else obvious to go wrong.83.100.250.79 (talk) 22:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

If not fixed then maybe list software you're using -eg browser, firewall, anything on top of standard XP, and hope someone else spots the problem.83.100.250.79 (talk) 22:54, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Do you use AVG Anti-virus? A little while back it was mistakenly targeting iTunes and Quicktime, and completely breaking them. I don't know if that has been resolved yet. —Akrabbim^talk 12:38, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

windows task scheduler

Hi everyone, Does anybody know anything about windows task scheduler? I have set the task scheduler to start a program at a specific time but I would like this program to close itself at a different time. I can not work out how to set the task manager to close programs, does anyone know much about task scheduler? or can recommend a completely different free task scheduler of a different sort. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.90.149.102 (talk) 23:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I've used Task Scheduler probably a dozen times and have never known that it had the ability to close a program — just launch a program. Tempshill (talk) 23:36, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

If you are using Windows XP, you might try experimenting with the taskkill command. For example, I created a text file with the following line

taskkill /im notepad.exe

and saved the file as "close-notepad.cmd". Now I can set up a Scheduled Task to run the close-notepad.cmd file.--Bavi H (talk) 01:36, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

There's an option in the "Settings" tab for the task to "Stop the task if it runs for (some amount of time)". AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:12, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

the case of the intermittent Option key

I use a Mac. Sometimes as I'm writing here, I find that the Option key has stopped working, at least in this here editing panel. (Typically I notice it when I'm trying to make the dash in my signature.) And then a little while later it may come back, as it did a little while ago. Do y'all know an obvious reason for this phenomenon? —Tamfang (talk) 23:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried tapping the Option key, hard, a few times in a row? It may be a hardware issue. Tempshill (talk) 01:46, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe it affects both Option keys at once. —Tamfang (talk) 03:10, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Try refreshing the page, sometimes things just get stuck. --Kraftlos (Talk | Contrib) 11:30, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Huh? The failure lasts through more than one edit session. —Tamfang (talk) 03:10, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

August 11

Quick ASP Question

Hi,

I was just wondering why this code keeps failing:

<%
dim conn, db
set conn=Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
conn.Provider="Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0"
db = Server.MapPath("myDB.mdb")
conn.Open db
conn.Close
set conn = nothing
%>

The MDB file is in the same directory, and I didn't set any password on it. The error my host is providing is not very helpful, just a generic HTTP 500 - Internal server error. Any thoughts? Thanks in Advance PrinzPH (talk) 03:39, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know a lot about ASP (though it looks a lot like VB), considering you're getting the internal server error, it might be good to check and see if other things are broken. This looks like it might be a configuration problem on the server or database, rather than a code error. Just a thought. --Kraftlos (Talk | Contrib) 11:29, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, HTTP 500 could be anything. Check permissions of all of the files, check the encoding of the page. HTTP 500 is the most unpleasant of all the HTTP messages, in my opinion, because of the wide, wide range of things it could be. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

First (assuming you're using IE) check you haven't got "Friendly HTTP error messages" checked in Tools/Options/Advanced. This often hides useful information from the server. Second, try adding some error checking to your code - something like this (untested) may give more clues (I'm guessing the conn.open is causing the error - if not you'd need to check other statements in the same way:

<%
dim conn, db
set conn=Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
conn.Provider="Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0"
db = Server.MapPath("myDB.mdb")
on error resume next 
conn.Open db
if err <> 0 then
 Response.write "Error opening connection: " & Err.Description
 Response.end
end if
on error goto 0 ' reset error handling
conn.Close
set conn = nothing
%>

AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

Thanks a heap Andrew! This definitely pointed me in the right direction. I got an actual description of the error: Error opening connection: "Provider cannot be found. It may not be properly installed.". So I guess I'll have to take it up against our provider. Thanks again! PrinzPH (talk) 17:12, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Do be aware that the "provider" is the provider of your data - in this case the mdb file. The error is telling you it can't open the file for one reason or another. --Phil Holmes (talk) 14:34, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Glad to help! Another idea you might try is to use a connection string to open the connection - see here for examples of the syntax for Access. The code would then read (e.g.)

conn.Open "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:\mydatabase.mdb;User Id=admin;Password=;"

AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:48, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Wordpress

How much maximum space (how much MB or GB) does Wordpress allow in a free personal blog? --InternetTraveller (talk) 10:56, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

"You’ll get your own WordPress.com address (like you.wordpress.com), a selection of great free and customizable designs for your blog (we call them themes), 3 gigabytes of file storage (that’s about 2,500 pictures!) and all the other great features listed here. " - Features You'll Love. APL (talk) 12:53, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Please tell me one more thing. How do I know how much space (i.e. how much KB or MB) is used in a post? For example is there any tool by which I can measure the size of an article or a paragraph (KB or MB) posted in the blog? --InternetTraveller (talk) 13:34, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The text is almost nothing at all. One printed page of text, by itself, is less than 2KB even with formatting. Images are what take up the real space. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:57, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Three final queries. How many personal blogs can I create in Wordpress? Can I moderate the comments made by visitors in my Wordpress blog? Who will be the owner of the copyright of what is written in my blog - me or Wordpress? InternetTraveller (talk) 14:54, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

1. There is nothing in their terms of service that says you can't make an arbitrary number of them. 2. Yes, of course. Wordpress (the software) has quite sophisticated moderation capabilities. 3. You own it though you grant the company a license to use it for displaying and promoting your blog. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 16:10, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Linked accounts

Some major websites have been offering a feature that links one account with another. So that now if I sign into my Gmail account, I can also be logged into Youtube and Facebook. How does this work? Does Facebook read the cookies of Gmail to check if I'm signed in? Or maybe it checks with the Gmail server?

And also, is a security issue for people who are paranoid about getting hacked everyday? --Yanwen (talk) 12:55, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

See OpenID. -- Coneslayer (talk) 13:46, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

There are ways to make such an authentication system crypotgraphically secure, such as kerberos (protocol). Kerberos works by granting an authorization ticket from a canonical server; other servers who want to verify your identity use public-key cryptography. No password is ever transmitted over the network; if a malicious third-party server wishes to obtain your authorization, it will not be able to decrypt your transactions with it. However, both OpenID and Kerberos requires a centralized administrator; for Kerberos, I trust my university IT people; but I am not sure I trust the guys at Facebook (or in general, anyone who is outside of my organization). This trusted third-party is a required element of the protocol - to determine which servers have the right to request authorization; I am not convinced that OpenID's method of "trusting Facebook and Google" is actually a sound security choice. By the very nature that it is intended to work across organizational boundaries, I don't see how it could even be possible to guarantee a reasonable level of trust in the providers. This seems like biggest conceptual limitation of OpenID. Overall, though, I am not convinced that OpenID is as secure as they claim it to be - and I'm still confused why I would want to access my financial institution and my email with the same login authorization. It certainly qualifies as a single point of failure, if compromised; this is inherently a security risk. Nimur (talk) 15:52, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Numeric keyboard not working over SSH

I'm logging into a Linux machine from a Windows machine using SSH with PuTTY. When I use e.g less or vim, pressing any key on the numeric keyboard produces some kind of operation codes enclosed in angle brackets. No such problem exists when I use the numeric keyboard on the command line, in the same SSH session. Can anyone help me diagnose the problem? 193.40.37.168 (talk) 13:06, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Try choosing "Change settings" from the PuTTY system menu, going to the "Keyboard" panel (under "Terminal") and choosing something different under "The Function keys and keypad". "Linux" might be a good bet. If that doesn't work look at the output of echo $TERM to see what Linux thinks the terminal type is. -- BenRG (talk) 14:16, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

You can do that by echoing:

echo $TERM

as BenRG suggested. Nimur (talk) 20:07, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Ctrl-NumLock often helps. --grawity 10:28, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. I tried setting "the function keys and keypad" from the default "ESC[n~" to "Linux" and "Xterm R6". ($TERM is "xterm"). However. nothing ever changes, the numeric keys always generate ESCoq, ESCor, ESCos etc.

Ctrl-NumLock helps though, but I have to press it again each time I restart vim. What does this do exactly? 193.40.5.245 (talk) 11:14, 13 August 2009 (UTC) (the original poster)

Implementing a priority queue

The article about priority queues gives two possible implementations:

• Insert items as normal. When removing items, search through the entire queue to find the one with the highest priority.
• When inserting items, search through the entire queue to find a correct place for them. Remove items as normal.

Isn't there an entirely different way of implementing them, as follows? Assuming priorities are discrete and there is a finite number of them, don't even bother putting everything in the same queue. Instead, maintain a separate queue for each priority. When inserting, insert the item to its correct queue. When removing, find the non-empty queue with the highest priority and remove an item from it. Would this work? JIP | Talk 19:18, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Sure, that works, but may not be a good idea in practice. It's inefficient (in both time and space) if the number of priorities is more than a few, as you have to pay for (storage, search time) the queue even if it has 1 (or, depending on your implementation, 0) elements in it. I've certainly seen implementations of things where there is a high-priority and a low-priority queue. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:26, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Basically, you have a hash table where the index is the priority and each index is either null or has an item. You still have the problem of finding the highest index in the hash table that is not null. You have to search through all the indexes until you find one. Even if you keep a separate variable of the "highest not null", that is only useful until you pull that item. Then, you have to search for the next highest not null. The result is a lot of space used without solving the "search through the items" problem. -- kainaw™ 19:42, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually what you've described is in the article Priority_queue#Usual_implementation and the section after that (sort of). What you're describing is a heap with n (the number of priorities) nodes at the first branch (that's a slight misrepresentation of a heap - it's more a tree - but who cares?) But yes it would work. I've no real experience of priority queues myself - but the idea is general - if you had many priority levels it's obviously a good idea. I'd imagine having a set of n pointers to the beginning of n lists. No reason not to do it if it's sensible in a given case.83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:39, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The usual implementation of priority queues is using a heap implemented in an array, as when doing heapsort — which does not involve any kind of searching for the item with the highest priority. David.Monniaux (talk) 10:33, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Cut/coped text not appearing in MS Word Clipboard

Not sure what version I have - it's maybe a couple years old - but I'm suddenly unable to cut and paste. When I cut, the text in a document disappears, but it doesn't go to the clipboard.

I did have a large (over 2 MB) document open recently, but I hadn't copied it. In fact, there is nothing in the clipboard, so it's not at the limit of 24, or at the size limit. I did try copying a page or so from it and it wouldn't do it. (It was as a .txt file, I'm trying right now in .doc files.)

I tried restarting the computer, I could copy from a test page after that, then tried again after opening that large .doc file but couldn't, once again.

Any ideas? Thanks.209.244.30.221 (talk) 19:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I figured it out; my text file had something incompatible with MS Word, it seems; when I told the computer to save it int he latest version of MS Word I have, the problem was solved. (Y'all are so good, you've got ESP, I guess :-) Wait, no, I'd be the one with that 209.244.30.221 (talk) 19:56, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Search Engines

Is there a way of finding out which internet searches achieve few results and how many times the search criteria are used? 90.198.147.123 (talk) 20:17, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure - but there is a 'game' called Googlewhack which people play (popularised by Dave Gorman who did a - brilliant - comedy tour on the subject). Basically a googlewhack is where you input 2 words into a search (no speech marks and must be underlined in the google result as being in the dictionary) and are returned only 1 result. There are some side-rules too, but basically the idea is to put 2 unusual largely unrelated words together to find one. E.g. (off the top of my head) a search for scrupulous aloe returned 8,510 results - a terrible effort. ny156uk (talk) 22:11, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I got 2,190 for "turbulent orangutan" (no speech marks). Not great, but first effort lol. Back to the point, does anyone know the answer to my question? 90.198.147.123 (talk) 22:42, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

1,050 for sexy tobogganist lol 90.198.147.123 (talk) 22:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Also, if you want to pitch one Google result against another, try Googlefight. Fribbler (talk) 00:01, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

chromodynamic antidisestablishmentarianism...55. If you tell Google not return hits for "chromodynamics" and only for "chromodynamic", you get just two hits...I don't know whether that's legal. Tough game! SteveBaker (talk) 01:57, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

So to answer the OPs original question, there is no way besides just guessing. As for how many times the terms are searched, I don't think Google Trends would have any data on searches that obscure, since that is only useful for comparing searches like 'star wars' and 'lord of the rings'. —Akrabbim^talk 12:20, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Deleting History

How do I delete my browse history and my address bar history(WindowsXP Professional)? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.116.161.170 (talk) 23:55, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Your browser is more important, which one? Fribbler (talk) 23:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Internet Explorer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.116.161.170 (talk) 00:04, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Tools, Internet Options, General, "Clear History" button Sandman30s (talk) 11:00, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I recently was told to download Internet Explorer 8, which I did. For me, "delete browsing history" is under "Safety", which is to the left of "Tools".Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:25, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

August 12

Bulk listing of books for sale on Amazon

Are there any free third-party tools for listing books in bulk for sale on Amazon? NeonMerlin 00:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

You mean other than the Amazon provided Book Loader tool? SunSw0rd (talk) 17:59, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, since I don't have enough items to justify becoming a Pro Merchant. I'm just trying to sell 45 books in preparation for a move. NeonMerlin 18:49, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Bluetooth screwups.

I have a cheap AT&T cellphone that's "paired" via bluetooth to my car's audio system.

At work (I'm a computer game programmer) I recently switched from a USB XBox360 controller (plugged into my PC) to a wireless controller.

I notice that when my cellphone is placed on the desk, the XBox controller will periodically flash all of it's lights...which I think means that it's lost radio contact...even though it's just 18" from the radio transmitter 'dongle'. This doesn't particularly surprise me, with the controller, the dongle and the phone so close together, interference is pretty likely.

However, since I switched controllers - on three separate occasions in 10 days, my cellphone refused to talk to my car until I turned it off and on again and went down into the BlueTooth menu and turned on the 'pairing' again.

Needless to say, I'm going back to using a cable-connected Xbox controller...but I'm curious. Is it my imagination - or is the Xbox360 controller somehow screwing up my phone's bluetooth interface? If so, what's the mechanism here?

SteveBaker (talk) 02:16, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

What frequency does the Xbox controller use? Have you had the same issues with the phone's Bluetooth disabled (or, if that's not possible, a phone without Bluetooth on the same cell network)? NeonMerlin 03:11, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Xbox uses 2.4 Mhz according to "Xbox 360 Wireless Headset" just like bluetooth#Air interface.--OMCV (talk) 03:27, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh - so it uses the bluetooth frequency - but not the bluetooth protocol?! I didn't know that. That's a typically microsoftian trick! Ohhh - look! There is a perfectly good standard here. Let's ignore it and invent something worse! <sigh> Well, I suppose that explains the interference. Is it reasonable to assume that the phone shuts down its bluetooth interface when there is too much random garbage on the frequency? SteveBaker (talk) 12:33, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

This is not on your main point, but I assume you've ruled out the possibility that the controller was flashing its lights because it was low on battery. Anyway, I'm surprised you didn't switch back to a wired controller after day 1. How many times a day did you reach over for the wireless controller and have to hit the big (X) and then wait for 5 seconds while it powered up and established its connection with the dongle? Tempshill (talk) 04:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah - swapping out the batteries was my first reaction - but it only gets into that state when the cellphone is nearby. Certainly the 'waiting to power up' thing is annoying - and you can be assured that I'm going back to a USB controller ASAP. This is more a matter of curiosity than practicality. SteveBaker (talk) 12:33, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm surprised by this, too — you would think that Xbox players would possibly own a cell phone and that they might be carrying it around in their pocket within, say, 10cm of the controller. Tempshill (talk) 16:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Cellphones cause quite a bit of RF interference. For a low-tech solution, you could just wrap some tin foil around the phone, although that might interfere with your reception. Indeterminate (talk) 03:35, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Merging software

I was wondering how many programmer years it would take to merge the following pieces of software into a functional integrated system?

1. A program to process NMR spectra (Fourier transform and other manipulations): SpinWorks written in C# (GPL).
2. A program to draw molecule and possibly annotate NMR spectra: BKchem [10] written in Python (GPL).
3. A management system that can handle/synchronize distinct clusters of files as a single unit across most platforms through a simple to use webbrowser plug-in: Zotero [11] written with JavaScript + SQLite (ECL).

Furthermore if you have a prediction of the the required effort to get a basic system working, can you substantiate your answer with with a reference that could be used in academic article.--OMCV (talk) 02:31, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Can you clarify what you want the integrated system to do? Without further programming I can't see any connection between 1 and 2 (except that they are both scientific)

Similarily 2 only produces drawings, whereas 3 manages references.

Also program 2 only creates 2D diagrams - for nmr spectra three dimensional structures are practically a neccessity.

Basically, there doesn't seem to be any data that can be shared between the three programs - making integration meaningless. What functionality did you want the final product to have?83.100.250.79 (talk) 10:24, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

A plugin environment like (3) that allows the program to function on many machines with minimal user known how would be good, (3) is especially ideal since most NMR data sets start are a collection of files (similar to web pages). Once data is transferred to the plugin's storage environment a user could process the NMR data with (1) in the process producing at least one more file for (3) to manage. Once the NMR data is processed the user would be able to annotate the spectra with (2) probably producing another file. Once all this is done (3) would be able to synchronize and backup this data to an online achieve allowing access from all the user's computers (instrument computer, work desktop, home laptop, ect.) all the while retaining the ability to analysis and manipulate the data with (1) or alter adjust the annotation with (2). This is where it it gets a bit my hypothetical since I think (3) is still refining its full functionality, but ideally one user could share their data sets with select colleagues who are also use the plugin. The next step in the project would be to allow the publication of data sets to a data repository that can be searched by the public; but that step would be phase two of the project well after the successful merger and tweaking of the software described above.--OMCV (talk) 12:17, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Note:Synthetic chemist have very little use for 3D structures in their day to day activity of synthesis. In most cases stereo chemistry is more easily interpreted from a 2D projection than a 3D projection. In the 7 years I've conducted NMR based research I've only wanted a 3D model on a couple occasions and it both it was easier to produce a physical ball and stick model. Its true that software that can model molecules in 3D is a minimal requirement for computational chemistry such as modeling a molecules interactions with another molecule but those projects are usually conducted by an individual other than synthetic chemists.--OMCV (talk) 12:28, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Annoting nmr spectra with images should be fairly trivial, c# can do this, either as an overlay, or combining the images. Do you want the process to work entirely in a browser without installed programs, or is the download of an application acceptable?

So really you want it (1) to work in a browser, with online storage. The use of (3) still isn't totally clear - Do you need the citation finding aspects of zotero, or do you just need a browser based database system? Do you want zotero modified so that it automatically extracts nmr meta-data (samples,field strength etc) from a page for storage in a database?83.100.250.79 (talk) 12:55, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I think I should ask - do you want compatability with any of the NMR spectra databases mentioned in the linked article?83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:34, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Also out of curiosity from your stated other interests - does the name S.Ebbens mean anything to you?83.100.250.79 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:42, 12 August 2009 (UTC).

Right now the most common way to handle NMR data is to collect it at a central facility and then ftp to the facilities computers to move the NMR data folders onto a group or personal computer for further processing. In theory a plugin like (3) could have the ability to manage a personal database over several computers (no need for tedious FTP). A system like (3) would also be nice since it can handle clusters of files behind the scenes, right now: reference meta data, web pages, pdfs, notes, attachments. In the case of NMR data the date behind the scenes would include: FID (the actual raw data), acquisition log, two other files (in the case of Varian NMRs), once processed by (1) there would be another a file for processed data, once annotated by (2) there would be some sort of structure/annotation file, then there would be a need for a meta data file(s) useful to the personal and/or public database, attached notes useful for the chemist, probably things I haven't thought of each getting their own file but all presented to the user as a single cohesive data set through a user friendly interface analogues to (3). As I understand it all of this data handling couldn't be done through a webpage (since we don't give webpages direct access to our harddrives) so the final program would need to be a plug-in or stand alone program.

I wrote most of NMR spectra databases, and those databases are either proprietary and/or rather useless. The idea behind combining the three pieces of software is to develop a tool that is useful to synthetic chemists in its own right but can easily become the front end for a user-modified NMR database. As far as annotating with (1) or (2), I don't know much about 2D chemical structure files but I know that they are more than image files and contain connectivity data. Any spectra structure annotation would best connect the peak(s) or spectral range to one or more atoms based on the connectivity data. My ability to write code is nonexistent so I have no idea how what you said about using writing something with C# to annotate is reasonable or unreasonable.

Sorry I don't think I know Ebbins, I'm state side and have only visited England once.--OMCV (talk) 15:04, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

It's probably worth asking how much of a full 'database' you want - I assume there will be multiple copies of spectra eg by date, operator, batch, etc? Would you want to be able to say - search for spectra by operator/date acquired/machine used. If so I think it would be best to start by finding a 'cloud database provider' something with a structured query language - then attach the actual 'ping' data to that. (You could use a simple data storage provider, there are no issues with attaching a database program via the net - most online retailers do it).

If that's not needed then one folder per spectra containing all the data would do just as well.

Are all the spectra expected to be in the same format? or are different manufacturers machines used - giving different file ouputs?

As far as programming goes there's no real difference between storing the data locally, or on an external server.

Thinking about it the actual programming work to join up data, meta-data, store it somewhere, and create a simple interface for accessing.displaying it isn't that great. The bigger problem is accurately defining the types of data set, the variants (if any), future extensibility, and specifically what you want it to be able to do. The main issue that I can see is the format that the machines output their data - to get a reliable and accurate automated system for extracting that could be the most time consuming part - do the machines emit their meta data in a standard format (eg CSV, or other accessible by a spreadsheet or database)? - a programmer would really need a systematic description of the way the data is to be presented before being able to start. Particularily the format in which machine readable meta-data is output. (extracting it from human readable form would be problematic) eg [12]

Also was the spectra annotation to be done manually, or were you hoping that the machine would automatically assign peaks to molecular structure based on connectivity and atom type data?83.100.250.79 (talk) 16:04, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I wish I could comment on your database concerns and ideas but I really don't know enough about databases. The itunes type interface of (3) would be a really nice way to access NMR data, before an external database is considered.

I realize there is no difference between storing data locally or on an external server but for users to be comfortable with the system they will want to backup their data themselves. I wouldn't risk my data by storing it exclusively with a cloud service. The users would also want access to their data when their off line. I think syncing would in the long run take less bandwidth then uploading data to a server and than pulling data when ever its needed. Plus the less a user needs to do the better, no need to make them upload their data all the time if it syncs automatically.

The big advantage of working with or starting from (1) is that it contains translators for the spectra files of the major NMR producers. Thankfully NMR software technology evolves very slowly and formats don't change often. Independent handling formatting issues would be a major selling point for the system described above.

I would envision manually annotation since I wouldn't expect a computer to do a decent job. With that said I'm sure the user would want a system that allowed a great deal of control over the annotation and how annotations are displayed. A feature that I haven't mentioned is the ultimate desire to export an image for use in publications, posters, and presentation that contains a a) processed spectra, b) 2D molecular image, c) annotation, and sometimes d) a text box listing conditions. The user will want a huge amount of control over the formatting of this image: the text, aspects of the spectral scale, integrals styles, peak labeling/lists, line weights, molecule styles, positions of all the elements, annotation (a color coded system, table, arrows from atoms to peaks, ect.). Features that control some of these variables can be found in (1) and (2) but fine tuning the production of this image will involve a lot of original work.--OMCV (talk) 17:15, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

.rar files

Can someone suggest a one stop program that will seamlessly play .rar files? I downloaded a video in this format, couldn't open it with windows media player or real one or quicktime, so then I searched the web and found some free "splitting" program which would supposedly help in some way, downloaded that, had no luck with it. Running windows XP on a Dell. Thanks in advance.--68.160.243.210 (talk) 03:57, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

The .rar file format is a lot like a .zip file: it's a file that contains one or many compressed files and folders. You need WinRAR to decompress it. WinRAR can save its .rar archive files while "splitting" them (for example, you might want five 4GB files instead of one 20GB one, so you can write the five 4GB files onto five DVD+R discs), but the splitting is optional. I don't know of any software that will "seamlessly play" a video or music file that's stored inside a .rar file; normally you would decompress the .rar file and then you can do whatever you want to the contents. Tempshill (talk) 04:11, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I just downloaded WinRaR but I'm not sure I understand what to do with it. Say I download a .rar document. So I use WinRaR to decompress it right? But then what format is the video in? I still have to use a program to run it right? So either WinRaR saves the video in a new format I can choose? or it has a play function? Or if it just decompresses, how do I ever know what file format the compressed file is in so I'll know if once decompressed it will be in a format compatible with one of my video playing programs?--68.160.243.210 (talk) 04:35, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

If you have winrar then you can simply open the file and you'll see the file inside (unless it's split up). Then you right click the file and do "uncompress to XXXXXX". then you have the video file. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.184.21.210 (talk) 05:01, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

That's right. WinRAR doesn't know from video files. It doesn't convert video formats or have a play function. Its main purpose is to compress any kinds of files into a smaller archive file (the .rar file). Whoever created that .rar file of yours (let's call him Bob) originally started with a video file - maybe it's an .mpeg, or an .avi, or whatever - and they compressed it into that .rar file. After you decompress the .rar file, you'll have the same .mpeg or .avi or whatever sort of file Bob started with. Tempshill (talk) 06:07, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay I think I understand now. When a file is in .rar there's no way to tell what format the contents inside are in until you do the decompression. Anyway, I just tried to uncompress the file using WinRar and it got near the end of decompression and then told me I don't have sufficient "volume". I "only" have an 8 gb drive but this doesn't seem right.--68.160.243.210 (talk) 10:11, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

No, you can open the file with WinRar and view the file listing inside. I think you might possibly have missing volumes, such as .r01, .r02, etc. as your source might have been split into multiple rar files. Sandman30s (talk) 10:50, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

How much free space do you have, and how big is the compressed .rar file? What operating system do you use? (Win XP) --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 10:44, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

RAR volumes are often made up of multiple files. They might be named yourfile1.rar, yourfile2.rar, or they might be yourfile.rar, yourfile.r01, yourfile.r02, etc. You can't uncompress the files INSIDE the RAR volume unless you have all of the files in the volume. So if they say you are MISSING a volume, then you need to make sure you have ALL of the RAR files for that RAR volume (and keep them all in the same directory). (It sounds complicated, but once you get it working right, it'll make sense.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:42, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Sony CLIÉ PEG-TJ35

Hi wikimates! By any chance, do you know the maximum size of a Memory Stick a Sony CLIÉ PEG-TJ35 can read? Thank you in advance --Ulisse0 (talk) 12:41, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

The manual, on Sony's website, talks about Memory Stick media on page 124 (as numbered on the manual pages). It is thick with Sony jargon and unnecessary repetition of stock phrases, and there is no simple table with this information; but it looks to me like you can use 1GB, 512MB, or 256MB Memory Stick Pros. It looks to me like you can also use Duo cards with an adapter but the manual is silent on the supported capacities (maybe it's the same). Tempshill (talk) 16:15, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Guess the dictator/sitcom character

I remember playing Guess the Dictator/Sit-Com Character when I was at university in around 1995. Just how long has it been online? --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 12:51, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

The www.archive.org archive shows that the home page of the site you linked began linking to this unfunny and unfun game starting on March 9, 2001. It's possible you played it at some other website. Tempshill (talk) 05:03, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Bluetooth Marketing

what is meant by bluetooth marketing???where is it used???I would like some details about it please.thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gd iitm (talk • contribs) 16:30, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

See Proximity marketing. -- kainaw™ 16:33, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

larger checkbox on python pages

Can the checkbox be made to look larger using python scripts and clickable area expanded? Any online source for sripts for this purpose? Thank you. --Clericalmonk (talk) 17:02, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Which graphical toolkit are you using? Python supports several. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:06, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

tkinter--Clericalmonk (talk) 17:25, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

On p37 of the Tkinter 8.4 reference manual here there is a list of attributes for the Checkbutton widget that includes height (defaults to 1 line) and width (default determined by size of label). You can also use the font attribute to change the size of the label text. Gandalf61 (talk) 10:02, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Font identification?

Can anyone identify either of the two fonts on this logo for me? Thanks :) ╟─TreasuryTag►voice vote─╢ 17:28, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

That server is not set up right and clicking on the logo tries to download it. Here is the page with the logo: [13]. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 18:01, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

The font is very similar to Tahoma and Frutiger, but the serifs are a little more jaunty, like ITC Officina Sans. Hmm. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 18:01, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Try these sites:

• http://www.identifont.com/
• http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:24, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

...though it'll almost certainly be a waste of time. Those sites are seriously lousy at identifying fonts. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 18:28, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Create a transcript from an audio/video file

I recently recorded my grandfather as he told me about his life from childhood and the about the wars he served in. It would be great to have a transcript of this recording, as it is somewhere around 3 hours long! What is the best software available (free or other) to do this? Can it distinguish between voices? Jared (t)  17:29, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

You're probably best off just transcribing it by hand. It'll be far more accurate and save you a lot of time cleaning it up. It doesn't take as long as you'd think it would; maybe 6 hours total for all of that, spread out over a few days, it isn't so much. You'll spend more time trying to find software for it than that, and spend even more time fiddling with it and fixing it up. This is the kind of thing that a human does infinitely better than the software does, at the moment. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 18:30, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree that doing it yourself may be the most practical thing for a one-off like this. Other options include using a Template:Websearch, which charge US$1-2 per minute. Running the recordings through speech compression first might save you some money. --Sean 15:30, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

If you have windows 7 or dragon naturally speaking - listen to the tape in one ear and repeat.. I use that method for my transcripts and it's much quicker than typing. --Cameron Scott (talk) 15:45, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Repainting on different threads in Java

Hello! I'm working on a Java program that needs to be able to handle multiple repaint() calls on high-quality images as quickly as possible, so I'm thinking about running the repaint() calls in a thread pool, but I'm concerned (with my incomplete knowledge of the Swing repaint() mechanism) that this simple strategy won't do any good because I think calling repaint() fires a PaintEvent that ultimately ends back on the event-dispatch thread. So, my question is what additional steps do I need to take to make sure the painting takes place entirely on its designated thread? Thank you!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 18:34, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi again el Aprel - hopefully you have read the documentation on the Swing paint process? It seems like it will depend whether you are using heavyweight or Java lightweight (Swing) components. You can also apparently override the default RepaintManager with your own implementation. This is not something I've done; usually I use one of the javax.media advanced 2D drawing packages... Nimur (talk) 20:21, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe what you want is to implement the

paintImmediately()

function and use it appropriately. See Synchronous Painting in the same document I linked above - and notice the important caveat about overlapping requests. Your thread pool scheduler will need to handle those intelligently (since you are overriding the default scheduler used by the standard

paint()

function, with its event dispatch model). You might also want to read Threading and Swing - your threadpool threads should be Swing Worker Threads, and obey the conventions for interacting with the on-screen GUI elements. Nimur (talk) 20:47, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Nimur! Your advice and linked documents were very helpful.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 18:44, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Math AutoCorrect Shortcuts

Hello. How can I print a full list of Math AutoCorrect shortcuts from Word 2007 equation editor? For example, typing \div in equation editor produces the division sign, ÷. I found this PDF on the Web: http://bakins-bits.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/word-2007-equations-and-mathematical-symbols-math-autocorrect-symbols.pdf. My printer could not print some of the symbols. I unsuccessfully tried searching Microsoft's website. Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 23:33, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

August 13

Compositing doesn't work when using dual monitors

I'm using Linux-x86 with an NVIDIA driver 180.44- I don't know particularly much about drivers but compositing worked perfectly back when I had one monitor. Then when I dual-monitor (with something called Xinerama it seems) all of a sudden I can't use desktop effects. What gives? It isn't possible to have desktop effects on two screens with a NVIDIA card? --BiT (talk) 04:08, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

excel calculations

how can I place preceeding zeros before 1-99 in an excel sheet to look alike with 100-999? thank you```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.43.40.114 (talk) 04:23, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

In Excel 2007, select the cells you want to format in this way, make sure the "Home" tab is chosen, then from the popup menu in the "Number" area choose "Custom", then there's a field under the word "Type:". In that field, type "000" and then click OK. I don't have a previous version of Excel handy but would expect it would be in the Format menu under "Number" or something similar. Tempshill (talk) 04:57, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

In Excel 97: Format, Cells, Number, Custom. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:37, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that if you put an apostrophe ' at the start of the cell it will display whaever you input into it (e.g '0800800800 will display as 0800800800 rather 800800800 without changing the formatting). This is particularly useful if you want to 'show' a formula e.g. '=sum(A3:A6) would usually display in the cell the sum value of A3:a6, but with the apostrophe it would show =sum(A3:A6) 194.221.133.226 (talk) 13:55, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

It should be further noted that using the apostrophe makes the cell a text item, so it can not be used in calculations (unless you use the VALUE function). --LarryMac | Talk 17:30, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Is there software available that shows how a person looks when they wear different spectacle frames?

It looks to be such an obvious application. The person who needs glasses tries on the frames but having vision difficulties cannot see themselves properly. So you get a digital photo of the person’s face, and then the software adds different spectacle frames to that image, for the consideration of the customer. OPSM is Australia’s largest supplier of spectacle frames but there is no mention of any such application on their website. If such a computer program does not yet exist, I would like some feedback from those who eventually write it. By “feedback” I mean 5% for the first 10 years. Myles325a (talk) 05:34, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

There is a cheesy little Flash app where you can do this on goggles4u.com (lower left, "virtual try-on"). It doesn't work very well, in part because it's hard to actually match up the size. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:13, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Linear-time Fibonacci generator?

Heya,

After reading dynamic programming, I am wondering why the algorithm on that page for calculating terms of the Fibonacci sequence is O(n). The algorithm:

   function fib(n)
       var previousFib := 0, currentFib := 1
       if n = 0 
           return 0
       else if n = 1 
           return 1
       repeat n − 1 times
           var newFib := previousFib + currentFib
           previousFib := currentFib
           currentFib  := newFib
       return currentFib

Isn't that pseudopolynomial time? Linear in the value of the input (n) but exponential in the size? I don't understand the difference between this example and those given in pseudo-polynomial time. Can anyone explain this?

Thanks a lot, --Aseld ^talk 10:52, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I would say, in this example we aren't really concerned about the number of bits (since in practice, finding the 2^1000000'th Fibonacci number with this algorithm would take forever anyway; we only ever give it inputs with not much more than 30 bits). So we call the algorithm O(n) if it's linear in n. This is widespread practice. You could imagine a (physically impossible) computer that takes a constant amount of time to process any integer, and then this algorithm runs in linear time. 193.40.5.245 (talk) 11:29, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. That use of big-O is standard then? --Aseld ^talk 15:56, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

In computer science it is standard. In mathematics, it is something completely different. So, since this is computer science, you base big O on the worst case scenario. If the input is n and n is not zero or one, there will be n-1 calculations. So, it is O(n-1). However, when n is huge (say a trillion or so), who cares about that "-1" on it. So, we just say O(n). -- kainaw™ 19:09, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

It is O(n) but not linear-time. On that page it does not say "linear-time." n is understood to be the n that is the input to the function from the pseudocode given. n does not mean the size of the input. --Spoon! (talk) 18:58, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

There's always some ambiguity. It's linear time if the input is encoded in unary, which is reasonable enough in this case since that is effectively how it's consumed. It's O(n²) if the output is an arbitrary-precision integer as opposed to a machine "integer" (integer mod 2^k). It's O(1) if the input is a machine integer, since there's an upper bound on the run time in that case. -- BenRG (talk) 19:24, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Fantastic, got it now. Thanks Spoon! - for some reason I thought the two were synonymous. In retrospect, as so often happens, my mistake seems obvious. Thanks for the responses everyone. :) --Aseld ^talk 16:34, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Making videos

How can I make videos like this which has no moving image, but only a series of photographs with an added background music? Is there any software for making videos like this? And if I compose a video consisted only of photographs, will there be any problem on the copyright of the photographs? Can I use copyrighted photos in a video? Please help. --InternetTraveller (talk) 11:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Although I can't access YouTube, Photo slideshow software lists some software which can make videos such as you describe. There would almost certainly be copyright issues if you use the work of other people. --LarryMac | Talk 11:53, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

x86 CPUID instruction in Delphi

I tried to obtain the "GenuineIntel" string from my Intel processor using Delphi asm:

var
  Form1: TForm1;
  c1, c2, c3: cardinal;
  S: string;

...

procedure TForm1.FormShow(Sender: TObject);
begin
  asm
    mov eax, 0
    cpuid
    mov c1, ebx
    mov c2, ecx
    mov c3, edx
  end;

  S := chr(c1 and $FF) + chr((c1 shr 8) and $FF) + chr((c1 shr 16) and $FF) + chr((c1 shr 24) and $FF) +
       chr(c3 and $FF) + chr((c3 shr 8) and $FF) + chr((c3 shr 16) and $FF) + chr((c3 shr 24) and $FF) +
       chr(c2 and $FF) + chr((c2 shr 8) and $FF) + chr((c2 shr 16) and $FF) + chr((c2 shr 24) and $FF);

  Caption := S;
end;

It do not work, for I get an access violation exception. However, if I move Caption := S to another procedure (e.g. the Form1.OnClick event procedure), it works perfectly. (I do also get the exception if I write the entire code above in OnClick. Apparently, there is some problem with updating the GUI (Form1.Caption) immediately after the asm code.) What is the problem, and how do I avoid it? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 11:53, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know Delphi, but in GCC's inline assembler feature you have to tell the compiler which registers you wrote into. CPUID writes into eax, ebx, ecx, and edx. Perhaps there's a similar "clobbered register list" feature (assuming the Delphi compiler doesn't actually know Intel assembler)? --Sean 16:19, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I found the problem. I am not allowed to alter the EBX register, so I have to push and pop the value of it. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 21:06, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

Java applets

Is it possible to include Java applets in Blogger or Wordpress pages? If yes, how? 202.124.190.37 (talk) 11:53, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

If you are self-hosting wordpress then you can [14]. If you are using the Wordpress.com hosted site then I don't think you will be able to. -- Q Chris (talk) 12:17, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Automatically opening programs slowing down reboot

When I reboot certainly programs open automatically and I have to wait for all of them to finish loading before I can do anything. Some I guess I need to do this, such as the horrible all around speed bump that is Norton, but others I don't see any need for, such as Quicktime, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Ares and so on. If I want to access these I can open them as needed. So my question is, is there a way to set these programs to not automatically load?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:30, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Many can either be individually configured (in their own config screens) not to start up automatically, or their shortcuts can be removed from the "Startup" menu. But some things don't play nice - for them, Microsoft's AutoRuns program is the big stick. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:36, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I recommend a program called Startup Control Panel, which I've always found a reliable method of knocking startup crud on the head. In many years using it, I've not spotted any problems with it. (That said, I was not aware of Autoruns for Windows v9.53, so what do I know - it sounds good too.) --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:37, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Running msconfig usually works for me, but that can seriously screw up your computer, so the others would probably work better. It's only advantage is that you don't need to install it. To use it, just open up the run window, and type msconfig. Thanks, gENIUS101 14:52, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you all. I will attempt some mix of these when I get home later today (and ultimately report back here, probably long after you guys have moved on). Cheers!--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 17:14, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Quicktime X vs Quicktime 7

I'm a little confused about what exactly is Quicktime X. Reports say that under Snow Leopard, Quicktime 7 will be an optional install. So what is the difference? Does QT 7 contain all the legacy codecs (animation, cinepak, video, etc)? Is Quicktime X h.264 only? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 16:33, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

The Quicktime article states that Quicktime X is the next version, which will be shipped with Mac OS X v10.6 aka Snow Leopard, and lists a few new features. I wouldn't expect it to have any fewer features that QT7. From what I can pick up around the web, QT7 will be available because there may be some programs/media that require it, due to QTX's new design/architecture. --LarryMac | Talk 21:05, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

US and UK English versions of HTML in same file

Is it possible in the same HTML document to provide different translations of a word or phrase and have the browser choose among them according to user language settings? I'd be thinking of something like this:

<p>Under-inflated <span alt-lang="en-UK" alt-text="tyres">tires</span> waste
<span alt-lang="en-UK" alt-text="petrol">gas</span>.</p>

NeonMerlin 17:22, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Usually the web page itself defines the language it's in..

However you can use javascript to detect the language the user is using eg see [15] and [16]

Unfortunately that just doesn't work on some browsers. I'm totally out of date. Maybe someone else knows a method that works?83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:08, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

This works better (lifted off some forum, can't remember where - hope they don't mind..)

<html>
<body>
<script language="JavaScript">
   var m = ((navigator.browserLanguage) ? navigator.browserLanguage : (navigator.language) ? navigator.language : navigator.userLanguage);
   alert("The language of your browser is "+'"'+m+'"')
</script>
</body>
</html>

Covers other browsers.. Can you take it from there with the javascript? 83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:21, 13 August 2009 (UTC) (These two pages contain enough info hopefully [17] - how to 'print' with javascript , and [18] making decisions. Also consider the switch statement. It's even possible to scan and convert a whole body of text for US/UK english and convert - but that comes in lesson 2..83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:26, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually I've noticed that the above may give "en-US" when "en-UK" is set - I think it's the "navigator.browserLanguage" property - that returns the default language, rather than the set language. In practice it could get fiddly.83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:19, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Scanning over and converting has got to be more trouble than it is worth. (There is nothing so deceptively simple looking as automatic text conversion.) If you really wanted to do this, you could definitely use your SPAN method above, and then have the Javascript just go through and adjust as needed. I think it's kind of unnecessarily, personally. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 21:38, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

iGoogle contacts

How do I remove a contact from my list oif contacts in iGoogle Talk? 91.106.55.230 (talk) 17:55, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Float vs. int performance

How much faster is integer arithmetic than floating-point on modern processors? NeonMerlin 18:50, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

It depends strongly on your processor. The range can be anywhere from "slightly slower" to around 50-100 times slower; and if you do not have a FPU (as many embedded processors lack this hardware), a good rule of thumb is 5000 - 10,000x slower (using integer operations to software emulate the FPU). My i920 Nehalem (a new Intel processor) can execute floating point operations faster than integer operations, depending on cache conditions. It's safe to say that a mid- to high-end cpu will probably be on the order of 4x faster at integer calculations in general. Nimur (talk) 19:27, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

This all assumes that you do some heavy number crunching on a small set of data that fits entirely in the cache. Fetching a non-cached memory location takes much longer than a floating point operation.195.128.250.174 (talk) 20:44, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

A software library for floating point would probably only slow it by a factor of 50 perhaps compared to hardware. Using interrupts to do the business instead of subroutine calls might slow it by another factor of two or three. Dmcq (talk) 21:00, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I must have been thinking of some floating-point sqrt() or log(), which is not one floating-point operation! Woops... my numbers were pretty off, my memory failed me...Nimur (talk) 23:07, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Assuming that you mean using integers for integer calculations, and not for emulating floating-point operations (in which case it's orders of magnitude slower): it depends on the processor, but floating-point performance is generally superior. The baseline operations are addition and multiplication. On most modern processors, a floating-point addition and multiplication both take 1 cycle; an integer addition takes 1 cycle, while an integer multiplication takes perhaps 2-4 cycles. However, the answer is more complex because processors are able to execute more than one instruction in parallel. For example, the Software Optimization Guide for AMD Family 10h Processors says "The processor is capable of performing three independent 64-bit additions each clock cycle and a 64-bit multiplication every other clock cycle." and "The AMD Family 10h floating-point unit can sustain up to two floating-point operations (one in the add unit and one in the multiply unit) per clock cycle." The actual performance depends strongly on whether the code has been optimized to take advantage of the pipelining capabilities of the given processor. Fredrik Johansson 21:15, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Here are some latency and throughput numbers from Intel's optimization manual:

                           Nehalem  Enh.Core  Core
        SSE/x87 float add   3, 1     3, 1     3, 1
        SSE float mult.     4, 1     4, 1     4, 1
        x87 float mult.     5, 2     5, 2     5, 2

        MMX int add         1, 1/2   1, 1/3   1, 1
        SSE int add         1, 1/2   1, 1/2   1, 1/3
        x86 int add         1, 1/3   1, 1/3   1, 1/3
        MMX/SSE int mult.   3, 1     3, 1     3, 1
        x86 int mult.       3, 1     3, 1     3, 1/2

I don't know why they're so complicated and I suspect there are some typos, but at any rate integer math is substantially faster. However the fastest way to do math is to issue integer and floating point operations in parallel, since they run on different execution units. -- BenRG (talk) 00:20, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Windows Live Mail Auto spellcheck

Does anyone know how to turn off the auto spellcheck when composing new e-mails on windows live mail, that is the red squiggly lines under the words. It is infuriating & I can't find any setting to turn it off. The help function is no help either. Thanks AllanHainey (talk) 18:52, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

(Tools) , options , select spelling tab , unselect everything - see if it works.83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:51, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

or (ALT + M key) , options , select spelling tab , etc .83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:55, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks. AllanHainey (talk) 19:56, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Multiple Related iTunes/Bluetooth/Laptop-Phone Questions.

1. Why, when I create and buy a ring-tone from the iTune's store, will the ringtone not Blue-tooth from my HP G60t to my Motorola ROCKR Z6 using a WINCOMM Bluetooth Software Adapter, when other songs will?

2. Is there any free music editing software where I can cut clips from my iTunes songs to make ring-tones that would be compatible with the above setup?

3. Also, when all of my other songs (whether iTunes Store Downloaded or from an outside source) will transfer via the previously listed setup, for some songs I can select them as a designated ring-tone (they are listed as "Apply: Yes"). However for others, I can use the music player on the phone to access the song, but it us listed as "Apply: No." What can I do to resolve this?

So, in summary, I need:

1. Knowledge on how to transfer purchased iTunes ring-tones to my ROCKR

2. Free music-editing software to create ringtones that will be able to be transferred and be applicable.

3. Knowledge on what is causing some songs to be applicable and others to not; as well as how to change the songs to a format that will make them applicable.

Hubydane (talk) 20:12, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Help, please? Hubydane (talk) 00:41, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes an answer can take more than a few hours to be posted, as it says on the top of the page, so be patient.

1. The ringtones that are sold by the iTunes store are designed for the iPhone. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I don't think they are compatible with other brands of cell phone, which would explain why it won't show up on your MotoROKR. The regular songs aren't restricted in this way.
2. Check out the website MyxerTones for creating your own ringtones. You can upload .mp3s, select a clip, and it sends it to your phone in a pix message. I don't think it works with Verizon right now, but there is a simple manual way to do it yourself. Download Audacity, which is a free audio-editing software. Edit the desired song into a 20 or 30-second segment, and save it as an .mp3. Then, you can email that file to your phone in a pix message. Simply attach the file, and send it to <your ten-digit phone number>@vzwpix.com (this is the address for Verizon, I'm pretty sure other phone companies have a variation on this, where you can send an email to a cell phone as a pix message). Then, save the sound attached to the pix message as a ringtone, and there you go.
3. Check the file format of the songs that are 'applicable'. Then, just make sure that the files that you want are in the same format (you can convert them using iTunes). Hope this helps —Akrabbim^talk 14:56, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

After I re-read your question, the whole MyxterTones/e-mailing the files to your phone doesn't apply to you, since you are able to do the BlueTooth thing. Editing the clips in Audacity is probably all you'll need to do to get your perfect ringtone. Sorry if there is confusion. —Akrabbim^talk 15:00, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Optimize Computer Performance

I have recently purchased a HP G60t series laptop with 4GB RAM and 320GB Hard Drive. I want to know what I could do to optimize performance and totally lock down my computer from viruses/spyware/adware/etc.

So far I have installed for protection: Norton Internet Security (60 day trial w/ laptop) CCleaner Ad-Aware (Free Version) Spybot Search and Destroy

...for optimization: WINCOMM Bluetooth Software

Suggestions (Please include what suggestion will do)?

Hubydane (talk) 20:23, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Skip Norton, get AVG. The rest are fine. If you want to really avoid the viruses and spyware and etc., keep your security patches updated, and don't use Internet Explorer. To really optimize, turn off all the shiny bells and whistles in Windows. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 21:34, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

What shiny bells and whistles? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hubydane (talk • contribs) 21:38, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

The most important thing you can do is to practice "safe computing": Don't download and run any executable files from a website you do not trust; and never from an e-mail. In order to minimize the damage in the case that you do, you should create two accounts on the computer: one account with administrator access, used only for installing software that came from a trusted source; and a "user" account with no administrator access. Use the "user" account always. If you "accidentally" run an executable file, it won't be able to infect or damage your system as badly (though of course a Trojan horse executable could always just delete all the files accessible to the "user" account, upload them all to Bulgaria, or whatever.) Tempshill (talk) 21:54, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Any other suggestions? Such as Firefox/Opera for safe browsing? (I use Firefox now) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hubydane (talk • contribs) 22:31, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Most people would agree that Firefox is generally safer than internet explorer, and it won't bother your system resources at all. There are also plugins available (for example one comes with AVG) that help you steer away from notorious websites in google searches, etc. I don't know much about Opera, you could read here about it, it looks like it contains a lot of extra features that if you won't be using them would just be extraneous.

The shiny bells and whistles that 98 mentioned are things like Windows Aero, which are both optional and pretty, but can use up processor and/or video memory resources. —Akrabbim^talk 14:41, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

BEGIN...END in prepared MySQL statement

Does MySQL support BEGIN...END in prepared statements? If so, is an unusual syntax required? If not, how do I prepare several statements as one? NeonMerlin 21:21, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

A simple Googling of "MySQL BEGIN" seems to indicate they support them, and gives the syntax. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 21:27, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Learn to Program

I want to learn how to write programs. Nothing complicated, but is there a free how-to or something out there that can get me started? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hubydane (talk • contribs) 21:56, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

You might find some useful tutorials in this Google search. Theleftorium 22:00, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

First, you need to decide what you want your program to do. There are thousands of programming languages you could possibly learn. Of those, about 10 are considered easy and mainstream enough for a beginner. Without knowing what you want to do, it is very difficult to choose which language best suits your needs. Therefore, I suggest learning C++. There are many many many books in every library and bookstore that I've been to that teach C++ for beginners. If you begin with C++, all other common languages will appear to be C++-lite. If you begin with something like Java or Pascal, programming that requires C++ will seem very difficult and complex. -- kainaw™ 22:02, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Personally I would recommend starting with a 'teaching language' like Pascal (programming language). I believe it is much easier to program (and learn to program) in almost any language once you have learnt 'how' programs and programming work. Once you've got a good grasp of what you're expecting to do (and how you're expecting a program to be setup) then a lot of the learning a new languge is a case of learning the syntax and structure that are unique to that programming language. ny156uk (talk) 22:06, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

We have a WikiBook, C Programming, which is a good trainer. You need to decide what language is suitable for the tasks you want to do; I have found that Java is a very suitable tool for most applications tasks, while C is much better suited to certain problems. As a beginner, I strongly recommend Java for the following reason: the standard compiler from Sun spits out very friendly and informative error messages when things break (whereas C or C++ will simply tell you "segfault"). The importance of this will become apparent as you start programming. Kainaw accurately points out that transitioning to the more systems-oriented languages will be difficult; but I think it's easier to learn those concepts after you understand the basic structured-thinking approach of programming. Nimur (talk) 23:29, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

At the risk of being pelted with eggs, for a total beginner I'm tempted to recommend learning javascript - it can be edited in a text editor, and run in a browser, you'd also have to learn simple html - the site http://www.w3schools.com/ has a good step by step introduction to both, that is really simple to follow. I'd worry about starting with C/java/C++ since they require a lot of input that just wont make much sense to someone starting out. If you're already familar with variables, for/next loops, if/then statements etc then ignore this advice.83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:06, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it's better for a beginner than C or C++ (I just received a 20,000-line error message from g++!), but I think Javascript is horrible for development. The runtime environment is poorly documented with massive dark corners on every platform, there's no freaking #include/import directive, variables default to global, and even when declared with "var" their non-block scope is idiotic, they screwed the pooch with for/in iteration, and it does all this vigorous sucking at a snail's pace. --Sean 20:54, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Educational programming language might be a good article to read. Tempshill (talk) 16:37, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

August 14

GSM and UMTS required bandwidth

How many 200 khz gsm channel pair (DL/UL) and how many umts channel pair do you need to have -all- the channel required to make a single phone call? (and if possible a breakdown of all channel required a minima for making a -single- phone call). I know the list of all the channel type but I wondered what would be the minimal requirement to pass one single phone call (I'm not sure it's the "right" section, but I think cellular is networking related isnt it?) - Esurnir (talk) 00:42, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Use of standalone Google Maps utility

When I try to use the standalone Google Maps utility I just downloaded, it is unable to connect to the server. I have tried the test diagnostics it suggests and it comes up with:

Google Earth Server Test

kh.google.com UNSUCCESSFUL

maps.google.com SUCCESSFUL

auth.keyhole.com SUCCESSFUL

I have AVG on my computer but I can't see an option for allowing access to Port:80 (which has been indicated as being the problem). Other than that, just the Windows firewall itself (again, can't see any pertinent options). Regards -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) (talk) 03:10, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Filtered websites

Could people from the UK test whether they can connect to 4chan.org for me, or if it gives a Network Timeout error. I have a horrible feeling the UK is filtering websites again, much like they did to that wikipedia article. Thanks

It works fine for me here in Norwich Zzubnik (talk) 09:35, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

hmmm, any idea what might be causing my problem? I could access it three hours ago and now all I get is a network timeout error. I've tested using a proxy and I can access that way (very slow) so I guess it must be me. I've tried a dns flush and that hasn't helped. —Preceding unsigned comment added by W.Butt ACKACK (talk • contribs) 09:55, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Has the UK filtered Wikipedia articles? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 12:10, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe the OP is referring to the incident mentioned in this article. --LarryMac | Talk 12:29, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

TrueCrypt, encrypting entire drive on dual boot PC

According to the TrueCrypt article, The version for Windows Vista or XP can encrypt the boot partition or entire boot drive.... If I encrypt the entire boot drive of a dual boot laptop (Xp and Xubuntu), what will the boot sequence be? Will I first get a prompt for the TrueCrypt password, and then get the grub startup menu, or vice versa? Has anyone here tried such a setup? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 09:03, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Encrypting the entire drive won't work since TrueCrypt's boot-time decryption only works in Windows, as far as I know. But you can encrypt the Windows and Linux partitions independently using the TrueCrypt bootloader for Windows and a small unencrypted boot partition for Linux. I recommend searching the TrueCrypt forum for the phrase "dual boot". It looks like one setup has TrueCrypt loading GRUB and another has GRUB loading TrueCrypt. -- BenRG (talk) 17:03, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

That was helpful. I hadn't specifically searched the TrueCrypt forums, and the links that turned up on a general google search were quite confusing. The ideal solution, from a user point of view, would IMO be to first say hello to TrueCrypt, and then select the OS to boot with Grub. But after a bit of thought, I realize that the TrueCrypt bootloader would then have to somehow communicate the decryption algorithm to the OS. There is no layer between the hardware and the OS where TrueCrypt could reside and do its thing, in order to permit OS-independent encryption. Pretty obvious now, but it wasn't, to me, when I posted the question. Thanks, --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:24, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Weird spam

Just in the past couple weeks I have been receiving increasing amounts of a certain kind of spam, which I am having trouble understanding. It isn't a big deal, since my spam filter for the most part is working pretty well, but they are kind of intriguing. For one, my email address is never mentioned in the 'To:' field. It is always 'sent' to something untrue like 'info[at]mail[dot]com' or 'nothingmuch[at]woobling[dot]org'. Another thing is that these emails don't even have any links in them, so I can't possibly conceive what kind of benefit they are providing the sender, except he's sending me, maybe she's sending me just to see me get irate. Here are some screenies: [19] [20]. Any thoughts? —Akrabbim^talk 12:24, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, they might want you to respond—they might be phishing attempts of some sort. Or they might just be Bayesian poisoning. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 12:56, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

The email message may also be an effort to identify whether you are a human or a machine - by opening the mail, you may be loading (transparent) images from a web-server, which can uniquely identify your email address as a valid (and therefore, to-be-targeted) address. Our spam article has a brief mention about this tactic. Nimur (talk) 16:18, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Maybe, but that isn't true in this case. Gmail tells you if there are images from an address that you have not received from before. At this point I'm more interested in how they are even getting to me if I am not in the 'To:' or 'CC:' fields. —Akrabbim^talk 16:31, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

On the last point: that is because they are putting your address in the Bcc field, or rather doing the equivalent thing in their spam-generating software. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:39, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, I thought that was fairly clear. You can send messages quite easily without the address of all the recipients being displayed. Bcc is quite useful for things like mailing lists -- that same message probably went to a hundred addresses, and if someone mistakenly hits "reply all" to say, "Hey, is this spam?" then you're getting EVEN MORE lousy, useless mail. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 17:04, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

javascript - browser dependent

Is there a reason why this http://www.w3schools.com/js/tryit.asp?filename=tryjs_confirm doesn't work in google chrome? is it valid to use document.write from a popup box anyway?83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:51, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't work in Safari, either, for that matter. I'm not sure what you're takling about regarding the popup box -- the fact that it uses the result of a confirm() to determine what to write is not a big deal at all. It's definitely something about document.write, though -- if you change it to document.body.innerHTML = whatever, then it works fine. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 17:56, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

""popup"" meant subroutine called via dialog box .. not very clear..

For some reason, if you don't put a <html></html> around the response text, it displays as blank in Safari. Which is weird and probably wrong. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 18:06, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Both are from webkit - but is webkit wrong? or just not doing undefined behaviour?83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:16, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

using .innerHTML makes sense to me. What I don't get is the use of document.write - I'd expect it to append the document, not overwrite - which is what it does when the <html></html> tags are used (ie it overwrites).

It's not clear to me that document.write is actually defined in this context - ie write to where? But the example is from an offshoot of the W3C standards body - I'd expect it to be right.

Does anyone have a clear idea of what document.write should have done in the above example?

If you call document.write after the document object is written (e.g. the whole page has loaded), it essentially rewrites the entire document—all elements. It's only useful in situations where you are generating an entirely new page from scratch with Javascript (mostly used for outputting new windows and things like that). .write doesn't append unless you call it while the body is still loading (e.g. if you slip in a document.write("hello!") in script tags in the body of your HTML, it will do so); if you want to append text, you have to be more specific than editing the entire document object, generally speaking. What's weird about the webkit approach is that it gives a blank page when it just has a text string -- it should render the text string in the default font (like Firefox), or, at least I imagine it should. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 19:26, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

That makes sense - I was thinking that the .write method continues to append the web page even when loaded (and therefor somewhow infers the current 'caret' of text insertion ie looking for a close </script> and popping back along the call tree until it finds a point where plain text is the context .. clearly fraught with problems)...

I don't understand what webkit is doing either. If I save a text string as .html and open it with the browser it does manage to display it.83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:17, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

It looks like webkit does an initial error checking pass when opening a web page - eg the textfile "Hello" seems to be automatically encased in html and body tags. (it also seems to add closing tags were they are 'optional' and forgotten.)

I'd assume that it doesn't go through this process when re-writing the page after it's been opened - hence the new file "you pressed ok" results in blank since the display mechanism never finds the first html..83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:32, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Lost in PHP

Hi All,

I'm getting frustrated! Can't figure out this simple line fails with Fatal error: Function name must be a string ?

$txt = $_GET['find'];
$txt = $str_replace(" ","%",$txt); // <-- this line
echo 'Looking for : '.$txt;

the url being passed is test.php?find=abc+def

Note: when I have it just echo 'Looking for : '.$txt; it shows the '+' replaced by space, so I assume in the text to replace I should be looking for spaces.

Someone please enlighten me :( PrinzPH (talk) 18:10, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

You shouldn't have the $ in front of str_replace. See the examples here --LarryMac | Talk 18:15, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

O.. M.. G.. and to think that was the where I got the syntax from in the first place ^_^" sigh... as Danny Elfman sang: "THE LITTLE THINGS!"... THANKS A HEAP LarryMac! PrinzPH (talk) 18:57, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Facebook Loading Error

When I open Firefox (all software on my computer is up to date) and I log in to Facebook, my home page shows up just fine. But, whenever I click a link (be it through Notifications, or some other Facebook related link) it loads the generic Facebook page (with the Home, Profile, Friends & Inbox bar on top, with the notification and chat bar on the bottom) but then loads nothing else. I have no issue loading any other website, and I can link to Facebook from an external site and load the page just fine.

Why is this?

Hubydane (talk) 19:13, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Merging audio channels

I want to create surround audio simply by selecting different audio clips for each speaker. Is there any application that lets me do this simple task? --81.227.70.94 (talk) 21:40, 14 August 2009 (UTC)81.227.70.94 (talk) 19:54, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

copying from cd

some times i want to copy some simple video from video cd ,i got message ,"invalid Ms dos function -------" how can i overcome this and by which techinique i can copy these videos. Also how can i create cd of videos having this property. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.154.20.223 (talk) 20:23, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Video CDs use a strange disc format that's different from the usual data CD format. You need a Video CD ripping program. I don't know what to recommend, but I'm sure you can find something with a web search. The video data once extracted is just MPEG-1, which practically any movie player can handle. For making Video CDs you likewise need software with special Video CD support, but I think most CD burning software does support it. There's probably not much use making Video CDs these days because MPEG-4/"DivX" AVI files are much better and most set-top players now support them. -- BenRG (talk) 21:26, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

HID DATA Has Stopped Working

HP G60t or something like that, brand new. Bought a Windcomm bluetooth thing (little USB plug that let's me bluetooth) and installed it (had to uninstall then re-install because my i forgot my phone's ID), now every time i start up i get this error message "HID DATA has stopped working."

I'm running Windows Vista x64. Bluetooth and everything seems to work fine, I just want the message gone. o_O