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September 2

Question (Hacking, legality, private_website)

Is it against the law to ask someone to hack a privite website somebody made?Accdude92 (talk) (sign) 01:10, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I changed the title, as "question" is not indicative of the specific question posed, but feel free to change it to something else. I hope you don't mind. Bus stop (talk) 01:19, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia cannot give legal advice or opinions. But please use common sense. If it helps, think of the website as someone's house. Would you ask your friend to break in to the house? Xenon54 / talk / 01:41, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Not legal advice, but I believe that IT security consultants are sometimes hired to do Penetration tests. I imagine that their contracts are drawn up very carefully. APL (talk) 02:02, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I was famous for those in high school.

Mothers, hide your daughters! <rimshot>218.25.32.210 (talk) 03:03, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, this is a good question, and can be answered without violating the legal opinions requirement of the Refdesk; but it depends on where you live. You would have to look up the hacking law where you live, where he lives, and possibly in all the jurisdictions in between (!) and see if there is an exception for invited "guests". Tempshill (talk) 05:44, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

In that case: the applicable (federal) law in the US is probably 18 USC 1030. Xenon54 / talk / 14:30, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

It's not entirely clear to me whether you're asking someone to hack your website, or someone else's website without permission. In the later case I would expect it would usually be against the law, if hacking is against the law Nil Einne (talk) 14:36, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Annoying browser issue

Hi. There's something that's been bugging me for years, and I wonder if there's anything I can do about it.

There are lots of webpages that, when they load, direct the cursor to some particular text box. What happens to me is this: I log out of my email account, and I'm redirected to some page, say the MSN homepage. As the page begins to load, I already know where I want to go next, so I start typing the next URL in the URL bar at the top of the browser. Then when the MSN webpage finishes loading, it snaps the cursor to the MSN search bar, often breaking into what I was typing, and if I'm going quickly, I hit [enter] end up with a page of search results for some clipped URL, e.g. "ipedia.org".

Is there anything I can do to override this "feature". I like to control where my typing cursor is, but I find that I can't. Any ideas? -GTBacchus^(talk) 09:33, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

In most cases, I believe, webmasters implement this "feature" (which often is very helpful, especially for login forms) using JavaScript and the (page) onLoad event. You can disable it by disabling JavaScript, but at a great cost, of course. No JavaScript will work. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 10:06, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a higher price than I'm willing to pay. When I remember, I click the "home" button on my browser when leaving certain websites, because that (the Wikipedia front page) doesn't hijack my cursor. When I forget, though... it's kind of annoying. Thanks anyway. -GTBacchus^(talk) 10:59, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Firefox has an option to disable the setFocus() javascript method, described here. That description says it's a per-site setting. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:08, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

This is what I've been looking for. Thank you very much. Like one of the posters in that thread, I'd like to disable setFocus() so it never works on any website I ever visit. If programmers are so sloppy with this method that they don't first check to see if a user is already typing somewhere else, then they should have it taken away from them. However helpful it may be in some contexts, interrupting the user's typing for any reason is terrible. It can cause us to type passwords in fields where they're visible, for example - that's not cool. Thanks again! -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:45, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Do webkit browsers do something different ? - I too used to be immensely annoyed by this when on IE7, but haven't noticed recently (using a different browser) - it would certainly be possible to prevent focus change once typing has been registered as begun.. I'm unable to confirm this though. Well it seems to, try webkit based browser perhaps?83.100.250.79 (talk) 15:57, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Cheapest cell-phone/PDA with keyboard, mp3 player, UMTS and wi-fi

Which one is it?--Quest09 (talk) 11:25, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Depends on what country —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.99 (talk) 13:06, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, if you know the answer for US and Europe...--Quest09 (talk) 16:19, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Europe is a country now? Prices vary widely between countries inside Europe, and will also vary depending on whether you already have a mobile subscription or want a phone that includes a subscription. Also, your current provider may also have some interesting deals, possibly depending on whether you are already free to switch contracts (ie, you've finished the minimum contract period) Unilynx (talk) 17:51, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Quest09, I'm afraid you won't get an unambiguous answer, as it depends on a whole host of factors, not limited to whether you're buying used or new, with or without a mobile phone contract, what country - not to mention that prices change daily. Your best bet is to visit several mobile phone shops in your area and ask for the cheapest phone they have with the capabilities you're after. You can also do some research on the internet, but the sheer number of possibilities will make this a long task. — QuantumEleven 12:51, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

At least, you could have named a cheap one (perhaps not the cheapest) without contract. First I thought I would go with a Palm, but then I discovered that it had not wi-fi. Now I am clueless.--Quest09 (talk) 10:38, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think they come cheap. I suggest you look into Nokia Nseries. Knowing how much you are willing to spend will probably help as "cheap" is a bit subjective. Kushal (talk) 23:00, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Changing video resolution under programmatic control (C/C++) via Windows API

How can I change the video resolution, colour depth and refresh rate on Windows XP under programmatic control? I can change it manually from the control panel, but that involves multiple clicks, and everytime I change one (eg resolution) Windows keeps changing the others (eg from my preferred 16-bit colour to Microsoft's preferred 32-bit) unless I explicitly set them all. I'd like to write a small program (in C or C++, with MSVC 6) to make appropriate calls to the Windows API to set a specific combination. What API functions would I use for this? Mitch Ames (talk) 12:59, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Call EnumDisplaySettings to list those that are available, then ChangeDisplaySettings to make the change. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:04, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Great. Thanks. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:46, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

mobilephonebased learning

I have been asked to be partof a team of lecturers to develop training material for woodwork subjects,for use via mobile phones in the form of SMS and MMS . Iam due to make a presatation and participate in the first planning workshop for the project in one weeks` time .

iwould like to know information related to this concept of mobile phone based learning and if you can also relate this to web based education of the internet —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.210.184.136 (talk) 13:12, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

The first step is learning to spell. Any training material should be free of spells. --Quest09 (talk) 10:15, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I would guess the first step would be to get lecturers who understand the pedagogical demands of teaching using mobile technologies. --Cameron Scott (talk) 10:34, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

using cassettes for data?

How can I set up a Win XP/Vista computer to load and save audio files onto a cassette recorder/player? I want to relive the way I used to store data in the 1980s on a contemporary computer? Save some of my modern documents on a cassette like the good ole days.--Sonjaaa (talk) 17:43, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

A modern PC doesn't have the built-in (ROM) software to read and write files on a cassette tape recorder, like an early '80s microcomputer did. It could be done by writing software to encode the file as audio (for instance using the Kansas City standard, which was what the early micros used) and play it to the sound card. Using the original 300 baud encoding, you could store about 128kB of binary data on a 60-minute cassette tape. The harder part would be to decode the data again when the cassette is played ... --FOo (talk) 08:15, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Note there are programs to do this on the linked page. Might need adaptation to meet your purposes though.F (talk) 12:44, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I would have thought plugging the mic and headphone jacks from the cassette recorder into the sound card would be just fine, and sampling more than adequate i.e. sample the data. Most formats include timing marks of some kind, so sampling should not be any greater problem now than it was then. Probably harder to get hold of the blank cassette tapes! SimonTrew (talk) 01:12, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

If I click on the X in the upper right corner can I get my work back?

Sometimes I click on the X not realizing that when I thought I switched to a new page (with multiple rectangles at the bottom of the screen) I didn't, or when I didn't intend to switch to a new page the computer did it for me. For example, if I am calling up a web page at one particular library (Explorer), that page might be slow but when it does come up, that page replaces what I was looking at. Again, there are multiple rectangles at the bottom of the screen.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:12, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Not always (well not easily) - some applications will allow you to reopen a closed windows as they were last closed without saving as an option - though it's not a standard feature. Was it a particular application you were using?83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:30, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Just email, or perhaps a Wikipedia edit box.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:37, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes reloading the edit page with browser off-line or connection closed, restores from cache even the data you typed in edit-areas. -- Codicorumus  « msg 18:53, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid I usually find that the edit area appears as it did before I did anything.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:21, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, browser offline. That could work.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:21, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Some browsers are capable of reopening accidentally closed pages - even with the edit box contents still intact - if you are willing to change. Or if you are using IE (as I suspect) as I used to have the same problem - and don't want to change it might be an idea to request this feature.. As I understand it Windows 7 is complete- the MS programmers would probably appreciate something to do, as would their managers :)

83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:43, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

How to determine a website's service provider

Resolved

 – Answered to my satisfaction

I was taking a look at Wikipedia:Standard license violation letter. It brought a question into my head: How would one determine what service provider a website was with? Say I wanted to send a DMCA takedown, how'd I find out where to send it? In VERY ^{(sorry to shout)} plain English please. Imagine explaining to your Granny. I'm not that bad, but technical stuff will go over my head without a good explanation. Thanks, Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 19:53, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Use dnsstuff.com to perform a whois lookup, which should give you the owner of the domain (or occasionally a proxy, who can accept or forward legal documents). Or you can use alexa.com. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:56, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

That only produces domain contact details, which are fairly easy to get, normally. At the bottom end of the WP page I linked it gves a letter to send to the service provider if the domain owner is nonresponsive or doesn't co-operate. How would one identify which service provider that might be? Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:09, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

That's a bit harder, because "service provider" can mean one of three things. For a small website it's the hosting company. For a medium sized website it's the colo facility. And for a large company (a real whopper like Yahoo) its the trunk network supplier. For the first ones, put the domain into dnsstuff's traceroute window, then look and see what the last reply is - it'll often identify as a machine at a hosting company like Serverconfig, Rackspace, or Dreamhost. For the second kind, you need to backtrack a bit in that whois listing, although often only one or two machines. For example, if we traceroute sfgate.com (the San Francisco Chronicle) the second last machine is identified as belonging to savvis.net, which turns out to be Savvis Inc., the Chronicle's hosting provider. You'd probably see something like that (but having to backtrack a bit more, perhaps) for an bigger company. For the biggest (google, yahoo, microsoft) the traffic will jump straight from a trunk telecoms provider like level3 or at&t straight to the final company network. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:21, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, that's very helpful. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:23, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Finlay's answer seems totally correct to me. It might help to understand the term "peering", which is the internet engineering technical term for connecting two "equally large" networks. Neither network is the "host" or "client", rather they are "peers", and they connect using Border Gateway Protocol. Since neither is the "host" in such an internet connection, it is not possible to call either the "internet service provider" - rather, by virtue of both being large networks, and connected, they are forming part of the internet. Nimur (talk) 05:37, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

USB over ethernet, or other soultion that will work as a window service.

I would like to be able to do the following: I would like to run the server-end of a particular software application that we use on a virtual machine inside VMware ESXi server, but I have a problem. The licensing for the software uses a dongle attached to the USB. While VMware Workstation has support for USB devices passing through from the host machine to a guest OS this is not possible on ESXi or (as far as I know) any of the other server VMware products. A solution to this problem was suggested to me which was to purchase an Ethernet attached USB hub. The server VM could then connect to the USB dongle over the local network. I purchased a hub (unknown Chinese brand) for this purpose and attached it to the network and I was able to connect to it remotely (although that was from a VMware Workstation guest OS and not within ESXi server, as I have not yet set that up), but another problem remains. The client software for the hub, which attaches to the USB device over Ethernet, runs as an interactive application that minimizes to a tray application. This means that a user must log-in and activate the connection on the server. I was wondering whether anybody knows whether a similar device exists (I know that Belkin and Digi make similar products) which allows the Ethernet connections to be made by running a Windows service and so does not require an interactive login. I also understand that there are also several software products which allow the USB remote connections over Ethernet, by forwarding a USB device from one machine to another, and thus require software installation on two computers; but I would like to know whether any of these software solutions run the client end of the software as a Windows service.

So to summarise, how can I connect to a USB device from within an ESXi guest using a method which does not require a user-login? I have already left a similar message to this on the VMware forums, but if anyone has any ideas as to a better (perhaps USB device related) discussion board upon which this question could could be placed I would be more than grateful. Thanks. 87.194.131.188 (talk) 22:41, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Manipulating the console in Python...

There's a bunch of programs on UNIX-platforms that don't just use the console as a means for displaying stuff printed out to the standard output or standard error, but actually do really nice things on it, like showing progress-bars and updating numbers on it without necessarily printing a whole new line (like how wget shows a nice little progress-bar, for instance).

How do you do that in Python? I know about ncurses, but that's more for if you want to create like a whole pseudo-gui in the terminal, isn't it? That's not what I want, I just want the ability to small dynamic little updates to the last line of the console. Any help would be appriciated. 90.233.149.220 (talk) 23:56, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Curses is built on termcap/terminfo, and the python curses implementation allows access to that (which just lets you do basic stuff like cursor movements and colours in a terminal independent way). This example may be helpful. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:05, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Ahh, that little recipe seems to do exactly what I want. Thanks! 90.233.133.166 (talk) 01:04, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

If you just want to update the last line then you don't need curses. ASCII code 13 ('\r') will send the cursor back to the beginning of the current line and ASCII code 8 ('\b') will send it back one character position. This will work even in environments where curses isn't available, like the Windows console. The only tricky part is that you may need to flush the standard output buffer because some C libraries only flush it when they see '\n'. -- BenRG (talk) 11:18, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

September 3

iPod launching iTunes

When I plug in my iPod, iTunes is automatically launched. Does anyone know how I could change that, and have it launch a .bat file or something instead? Thanks —Akrabbim^talk 02:12, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

You could get it to launch a batch file by modifying the autoexec... Tweak UI comes to mind. If you don't want the iPod to launch iTunes, remove 'ipodhelper' from your startup items. — neuro^(talk) 06:07, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, OK, I had never known what ituneshelper did. That seems like the most reasonable solution. Thanks —Akrabbim^talk 11:43, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

It's a setting in iTunes itself. iTunesHelper will reinstate itself the next time you start up iTunes. Plug your iPod in, go to the page with the Sync settings, and uncheck the "Open iTunes when this iPod is plugged in" box.  Buffered Input Output 15:26, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I didn't send these emails.

I just got twenty-three delivery status notifications for failed emails.

Everyone on my contact list also got an email from me.

I sent no emails.

Does this mean someone's actually gained control of my email account? What steps should I take? 90.195.179.183 (talk) 12:54, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I also just noticed I've been logged out of Wikipedia... 90.195.179.183 (talk) 12:56, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

There are two possibilities. The first is simply that someone (a spammer) has forged your email address on their spam (making it look as if you've send a bunch of email about viagra or whatever) - but that mostly means you'll get mail-errors from people you've never heard of, often in foreign countries and foreign languages. But a spammer doesn't know who your friends are, so if, as you say, people who know you got the spam, them that looks like a virus that is running on your computer, and has raided your address book and used it to send emails that appear to come from you (often to propagate itself). That's much more effective for the virus, as people who know you are much more likely to open emails that appear to come from you. But it's bad for you, because it strongly suggests your machine is badly infected. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:07, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I believe some malware does forge the from address, so it's possible one of your contacts who also know all has all your contacts is the culprit. Analysing one of those failed delivery notifications or one of those emails received by your contacts should help you determine where the email originated from Nil Einne (talk) 14:52, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

XFX Nvidia Geforce or XFX ATI Radeon

Hello there, I am confused with XFX Brand. Are Nvidia Geforce and ATI Radeon under the same company? Is there any only Nvidia Geforce cards available out there?--119.30.36.53 (talk) 15:00, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

It's a bit confusing, so I hope the following will help. Nvidia is a company that makes a range of chips, including fancy graphics chips (geForce). ATI also makes a range of chips; their graphics chips are called Radeon. ATI is now owned by AMD. ATI/AMD is a different company to nVidia. None of these guys actually make graphics cards - they sell their chips (and designs, and software) to companies that put them onto graphics cards (with memory and other bits from other suppliers). XFX is such a company. XFX makes a range of graphics cards - most have nVidia GeForce chips on them, but one has an ATI Radeon instead. XFX is a different company from both ATI and nVidia; it's not owned by either. Lots of other companies also make graphics cards with either nVidia or ATI chips on them, although XFX is rather rare in using chips from both. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:36, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Testing something on IE6

I'm trying to do some javascript debugging, and apparently something is not working correctly on IE6, but works fine on IE8 (which I have). What's the easiest way for me to get a copy of IE6 up and running, assuming I already have IE8 on my system and am not that interested in totally rolling back? Running a virtual OS seems possible though a huge hassle for something as simple as thing. Is there a better way? Note that the issue is with some Javascript—it's not just displaying the page, so those services that let you see how a page in rendered on different browsers don't really help me. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 16:02, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I believe paid subscribers to MSDN can get Virtual PC images of older OSes with a range of stuff installed, including various browsers. I don't believe this is available for free, unfortunately. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:34, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

This site claims to allow you to run IE6, along with a number of other browsers, directly from the web. I've not tested it, and you need to "install spoon" before it will work, but it seems like a good option to try. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Avrillyria (talk • contribs) 17:16, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

IETester might also be worth checking out

They're available free here - they're timebombed, though, so you can't run them after a certain date. They release new images around the expiry date of the old ones. IETester is usually the easiest and best option. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 19:56, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

You could uninstall IE8 inside of a Sandboxie sandbox. -- BenRG (talk) 19:03, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Languages of the Internet

Is there something like this [1] but that isn't so incredibly outdated? Thanks. --Belchman (talk) 17:50, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Try these: [2] (2009), Global Internet usage (Wikipedia article), [3] (2008). ƒ(Δ)² 18:02, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, mate. But I'd like to know the % of web pages (not users) in each language. --Belchman (talk) 18:10, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Freeware to manually sort a large group of photos

I have a large number of photos in one folder. I'm looking for something like this: the software shows a photo on screen. I click the appropriate button to move it to my "Holidays" folder, or another button to move it to my "Office Party" folder, or other choices of button I have pre-established, including a button to delete it and a button to do nothing. Ideally just one button to click: I do not have to confirm things. The software then shows me the next photo, and so on. Does anyone know of any freeware or otherwise free software that can do this please? Thanks 78.146.3.82 (talk) 20:16, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Can you not use windows explorer to show thumbnails of the images, and then drag them into directories, including one named "bin", which you can later delete? --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:28, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

It takes far too long, particularly if you have a large number of photos, and the thumbnails are too small to see clearly. 78.146.3.82 (talk) 21:07, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

mirage let's you set custom actions on keys. I've used it for mass deletion of bad images and moving should be as easy. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 20:46, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. It does not seem to mention that in the documentation - how would you do it please? The commands do not seem to include moving a photo to a folder. 78.146.3.82 (talk) 21:13, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

On my Linux machine I would move the image to my-dir and change to next image with 'mkdir -p my-dir; mv %F my-dir; [NEXT]' and delete the image with 'rm %F; [NEXT]'. So you basically give mirage a shell ("command prompt") command with extras. On windows the corresponding should be 'mkdir my-dir; mv %F my-dir; [NEXT]' and 'del %F; [NEXT]' but I'm not sure. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 22:13, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

IrfanView has single-key commands to move (F7) or copy (F8), to a set of up to 10 predetermined destinations. All you need to do is set destination 1 to be your "holidays" folder, destination 2 to be your "office party" folder, etc. It then takes only two keystrokes to move or delete a photo, and a right-arrow (or Page Down) to view the next photo. It also works in thumbnail view (key shortcut: T), where you can adjust the thumbnail size if you wish. — QuantumEleven 08:53, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

3g mobile dongle top up...hidden costs in uk?

I am thinking of getting a 3g mobile dongle to but feel that there may be hidden costs not outlined.

Is there a 30 day time limit on top up purchases?

Can you just buy a £10 top up that will last until you use it up?

The websites just seem to give no detailed info.its more like..."hey lets be friends and just buy it"..!

any websites with proper info or horror stories appreciated.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.41.154.137 (talk) 21:47, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but we're going to need more information. What network is this on and/or can you give a link to the tariff/purchase page so we'll know what you're talking about? ZX81 ^talk 22:19, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

If you do pay-as-you-go from Three, they give you a free SIM anyway. Yeah, it only lasts 30 days for each £10 top-up. Personally I have a Three SIM card that is embedded in the notebook; before that the dongle cost me about £60 but that included three months and three gigs not 30 days expiry. Maplins and Argos have them from about £30, of course prices for this kind of thing change so quickly, so that is just a ballpark figure.

See Argos latest catalogue p1291 £19.99 for just the dongle + £10 min top up, or dongle and up to 3 months at 3Gb at £39.99, 12Gb for up to 12 months at £99.99. They do expire but you can always top up more, and at those prices it seems not a lot in it: I would recommend start small and see how much you really use. Cat. nos. are respectively 549/0433, 549/0440, 549/0457. Full disclosure: I have no financial interest in Argos but do find them a good guide to prices (not always the cheapest). PC World and Maplin will also have them. Check Three for coverage though, I believe they are the only UK 3G network. SimonTrew (talk) 01:05, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Just a suggestion but you might want to consider using your mobile phone as a modem instead of purchasing a separate dongle - most recent mobile phone support tethering, either through USB cable, Bluetooth, or even Wifi. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:37, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

As a former 3-mobile pay-as-you-go broadband users my advice is...don't. No matter where I used it I got slow speeds (in a city that was highlights as 'good coverage' by their site). It constantly hung, it had the ridiculous problem that once my credit ran out and I went on their site to buy more it wouldn't let me (because to pay it required me to navigate off to a bank-specific verification site). I used it for about a year (last year for info) while I was in short-term renting and it was poor. That said i've heard others have good times so it could've just been me.194.221.133.226 (talk) 10:55, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I have the 12Gb, which is valid for up to 1 year. Works well for me; I didn't want any kind of contract. It's not lightning fast, and it occasionally fails, but for 100 quid, if you're not downloading movies or streaming things, then it's a v cheap option. Their customer support does seem poor, but as I will never use it, it's not an issue. After the 12Gb ran out (8 months for me), I just bought another.  Chzz  ►  16:44, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Slow loading websites

My friend is testing a program, and needs some websites that load really slow.Accdude92 (talk) (sign) 22:07, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Possibly the best way to do this is to set up and configure a proxy server or other controlled source to emulate the behavior you want in a controlled way. You can set up a Squid proxy to intentionally delay or limit the bandwidth available. Nimur (talk) 22:13, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

(e/c) One problem: a website that is slow for me might not be slow for you. Besides the obvious connection speed differences, distance is also a factor. http://news.bbc.co.uk/ loads relatively quickly for me (Washington area), but if you lived in, say, Anchorage, it would probably take longer. In residential areas, traffic can often be slowed if many people are online at once, during afternoon "peak hours". So I'm afraid that this might be a query that cannot be answered. Xenon54 / talk / 22:18, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I know. But this is not an application to test from a proxy, but from the USER's network connection.Accdude92 (talk) (sign) 22:23, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

4chan is shit slow most of the time cause they're under constant DDOS attack

Google maps, maps.google.com, usually loads pretty slow on my DSL connection due to the large about of data needed for the maps. Dismas|^(talk) 00:24, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The point of the proxy is that it can be used to simulate any network conditions. Put it on a fast local network, and the proxy server can be slowed down to deliver at any desired latency and throughput rate. Nimur (talk) 01:54, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Define 'load really slow'... do you mean that they exceed most timeout caps? — neuro^(talk) 09:05, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

You could route all traffic through Tor which is often very slow loading normal pages. If your application does not have proxy settings or support proxy servers nativity, you can make it use Tor with sockscap —Preceding unsigned comment added by Avrillyria (talk • contribs) 09:48, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

OP has already said they do not wish to proxy or route. — neuro^(talk) 10:25, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I know. But I thought it possible that the OPs application might not have proxy settings, which might be the reason he was reluctant to use a proxy. This is why I suggested sockscap —Preceding unsigned comment added by Avrillyria (talk • contribs) 11:19, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Since this is a test-suite, it seems like a bad idea to "trust" some other website to be slow. Software tests should take place in a controlled way - which means simulating the desired failure case (slow loading websites) - as opposed to just loading a slow-ish website and hoping it's slow. That's why I suggest using a proxy (or a locally configured web server) - as a simulation of a connection to an actual slow website - and not as a conventional proxy. There's no way to guarantee performance, or lack of performance, if you are testing against an external website - so your test will be full of uncontrolled variables. Nimur (talk) 16:21, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

September 4

Alpha on Mac OS X keyboard

I'm trying to find a way to put the alpha symbol (lower case, I think. It's the one that looks like infinity but with the right side chopped off) into NeoOffice on a Mac. I found ∆ just fine but can't find alpha. Any help? I'd rather not copy and paste from somewhere. For one, I just want to know how to do it. And for two, I'd rather not have any unexpected formatting show up. Dismas|^(talk) 00:23, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

You might not be able to—the hotkeys for Greek characters are pretty limited (and appear to be somewhat arbitrary). You can always get them in Finder, though: Go to Edit > Special Characters. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 02:11, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! That got it. I still hate that they took away the Key Caps application... Dismas|^(talk) 02:32, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Apparently, this works in the same way as KeyCaps. --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 12:08, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

You can enable the Keyboard Viewer (very similar to Key Caps) in System Preferences > International > Input Menu. Unfortunately, you have to have the input menu shown in your menu bar, even if you don't want any of its other features. -- Speaker to Lampposts (talk) 19:16, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

RTMP streams and VLC

I'm trying to open a RTMP stream with VLC, and it's not going too well. There is an RTMP option in the "Open Network Stream" box. Given a URL, everything seems to go smoothly. I go into the Messages window, and again everything seems okay - no warnings or errors. But it doesn't play - it just sits there. No buffering, no video, no audio. I have to kill VLC with the system monitor of the OS I'm using at the time. Does anyone know of a way to open such streams with VLC or if there is another (preferably Linux- or wine-friendly) media player that will open them? I really don't want to install XBMC (and even then RTMP support there seems to be rather new and not fully implemented), but if that's what I have to do, so be it. Xenon54 / talk / 01:58, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

RTMP is a proprietary format and can support encryption. Attempting to open it with a 3rd-party client is unfortunately not possible unless the server allows it. Nimur (talk) 02:05, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Debian Kernel Help

Hi. The installer is asking me which kernel I want to install:

linux-image-2.6-486
linux-image-2.6-686
linux-image-2.6.26-2-486
linux-image-2.6.26-2-686

Obviously, I should get a 686 one, but I don't know how the ...26-2 one is different. Is the 2.6-686 the first 2.6 kernel release? Thanks.--S1kjreng (talk) 10:03, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The "2.6" package is "the latest 2.6". If you install it, it will actually get the 2.6.26-2 for you, so there's no difference right now. The difference is in the future. If you have the generic "2.6" package installed, future upgrades might automatically select something newer than 2.6.26. If you just install the 2.6.26-2 then future upgrades will only update the 2.6.26-2 with bug fixes if necessary, no newer versions. Not a big difference since you can easily change your mind later. 69.245.227.37 (talk) 09:36, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

ok. Thanks.--S1kjreng (talk) 22:51, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

how to make the best of out of USB stick?

I browsed about this topic a little bit and found that there are ceratin OSs that can be booted from an USB stick but its not of big use to me since public computers don't allow that. Portable apps seem to be good idea. Do you have other suggestions pls?. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.220.46.25 (talk) 10:09, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Most public terminals (in the true sense) will actively block foreign executables. — neuro^(talk) 10:24, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

For portable apps I suggest Portable Firefox as a must have, it's awesome. Also Portable Tor to allow you to view restricted sites at the public computer. I also suggest Process Explorer which can be used to override some restrictions on public computers, like timed forced shutdown if a program running on the public computer is responsible for it (select the program, right click and choose "kill process") . For OSs that run from USB, take a look at the Live USB article. SLAX is a nice, easy to use LiveOS with lots of features. Remember, flash drives only have a certain number of write cycles, so read/write intensive use of them will greatly shorten their lifespan. It might be better to use a portable external hard drive rather than a flash drive —Preceding unsigned comment added by Avrillyria (talk • contribs) 11:33, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

With the ever decreasing cost for flash drives though, that may not be much of a problem for even heavy users. --antilived^{T | C | G} 14:02, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

True, but it's still an issue if the drive fails when it's got important stuff on it. Regular backups are a good idea —Preceding unsigned comment added by Avrillyria (talk • contribs) 14:19, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

• That's such a huge topic, it's tough to narrow it down. It depends on what you want to do. Perhaps List of portable software would give you an idea of the scope of what can be done; Full office programs (openoffice.org), to compilers, to video viewers and burning software. Just about anything you'd like to do. ;) — Ched :  ?  10:12, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Graphics card choice

I am looking for a card which has better performance but produce Less temperature. Which one I should choose? I am not worried about price. Actually my room is quite hot and worried about system overheating.

XFX Geforce 9800 GT 600M 512 MB

or

XFX Geforce 9600 GT 650MHz 512 MB

--119.30.36.54 (talk) 13:46, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

(added title) The 9800GT is a much better card than the 9600, so if all you want is performance then get that. In terms of heat the 9800 will definitely output more heat but as long as your case is adequately ventilated and you don't mind a bit of noise you should be fine. If you can though, try get a 9800GTX+ (which all comes with dual-slot coolers AFAIK) or a 9800GT with a dual-slot cooler so that the hot air from the graphics card gets vented out instead of recirculated inside your case, which will help your temps. --14:00, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for reply. I had previously overheating issue with ATI Card (4890 1 GB) which caused system to freeze in 61 to 63 Celsius (GPU Temp) and even in low temp 47 to 49 Celsius (GPU Temp. If I attached XFX Geforce 9800 GT or XFX Geforce 9800 GTX+ will it improve heat issue then the ATI ? My pc case is Full Tower Thermaltake Xaser VI. Thank you--119.30.36.53 (talk) 18:10, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

That does not sound like an overheating issue. 6x degrees load temp is fine for GPUs. --antilived^{T | C | G} 12:38, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Post-fuse insertion?

What does post-fuse mean in the term "post-fuse insertion"? What kind of fuse is it talking about? It's something related to printers. Thanks to whomever can help. Leptictidium (mt) 13:54, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

IIRC, it means that it is inserted after the toner. — neuro^(talk) 14:06, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The fuser melts the toner to the paper. In a cheap color laser printer, you will place all your color toner on the paper at the same time, then fuse them all. This causes a problem with bleeding and ghost images. For most people, it is not visible and no problem at all. On the high end, each color is placed on the paper and fused, one at a time. This eliminates the bleeding and ghost images. If you see the two side-by-side, you will recognize the one with separated toner insertion to be of superior quality. -- kainaw™ 16:03, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The fuser uses heat and pressure to "fix" the toner to the media. "Post-fuse insertion" or "post-process insertion" inserts a non-printed page such as a separator or cover into the job. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:25, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Static discharge and electronic devices

As you probably know if you wear synthetic fabrics and remove one layer over the other it generates a lot of staic electricity.. Does this present a danger to electronic devices (eg phones ipod etc) - under any conditions - what if the device in the pocket of one of the clothes items, and what if the first act after removing one of the items is to pick up an electronic device? More specifically has anyone ever bust their stuff doing this? Does anyone know what sort of quantities of static electricity is produced (charge).?83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:16, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

You would have to encounter incredible extremes of static electricity to damage phones and .mp3 players. For the most part, the metal parts in the casing for these devices would shield the electronics from any static damage. This is a normal concern that I'm sure most designs address. I have never heard of someone's stuff getting damaged by normal static buildup. If you took apart the phone to expose the electronics, it would be a good idea to ground yourself, as a person with their clothes can build up thousands of volts of static electricity. It is not dangerous to humans, as there is little energy to create current, but you can burn out diodes with it. —Akrabbim^talk 17:32, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

(Aren't most things plastic?) I was wondering about a worst case scenario - say for instance I picked up an usb stick, or memory card - touching the metal contacts?83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:39, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Electronics can get zapped by static charges - but only when one part of the device is at one voltage and another is at some other voltage. Transferring charge to something like a phone is fairly risk-free because the entire phone gets charged up and discharged together. Touching the pins of a memory stick and then plugging it into something could zap it though - I'd recommend trying not to touch the exposed pins of such devices. The worst thing about static discharge damage is that it sometimes doesn't show up for days or weeks after the device is zapped - so it can be tough to know what actually caused the problem. SteveBaker (talk) 16:50, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Minesweeper

Hello. Why is there speculation that Minesweeper in Windows Vista generates its board before the first click as mentioned in Minesweeper (Windows)? Would generating the board after the first click make more sense since, if Minesweeper randomly lays a mine at the first-clicked square, it can randomly assign the mine another location, knowing where the first click was and where not to place the mine again? I programmed the algorithm in Java as shown below.

for (byte b = 0 ; b < 99 ; b++)
{
    boolean bool = true;
    while (bool)
    {
        bool = false;
        mine [b] = (int) (Math.random () * 480);
        for (byte j = 0 ; j < b ; j++)
            if (mine [b] == mine [j] || mine [b] == i) //i = location of first click
            {
                bool = true;
                break;
            }
    }
}

Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 18:11, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Either approach you mention is reasonable. I think the better approach is to make sure the first click is not a mine, but there are reasonable arguments on both sides of the debate. The sentence in the article is not cited, so I don't know whether it is speculation or fact, or a sort of abstraction to help teach the concept of the game rather than analyze the (unimportant to the article) exact sequence of events in the code. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:16, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I fact-tagged that line in the article, FWIW. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:19, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Minesweeper's first-click behaviour is dissected at the following: [4], [5], and [6]. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:27, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

This only applies to pre-Vista versions, the original Microsoft-written ones. The Vista version may have been rewritten from scratch so the these dissections maybe no longer apply. --FvdP (talk) 19:40, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

On the original version you could use the XYZZY code to see where all the mines were before you clicked. If you didn't click on a mine, they would be in the position as you saw. If you deliberately picked a mine for your first click, it suddenly wouldn't be a mine. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 20:45, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Why would there be a reasonable argument for generating the board before the first click? --Mayfare (talk) 16:27, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you need a lot of CPU time to generate the board (eg to make a setup that doesn't have an impossible-to-solve situation within it - or in order to establish some kind of 'difficulty level') then you might want to do it before the first mouse click in order to produce a faster response once the player starts playing. However, the need to move the mine that the player first clicks on without that move causing an impossible-to-win board might be just as tricky. Simply quietly erasing that first mine seems like an easier solution - but it results in fewer-than-expected mines in the setup - which might be a problem if the user is counting on some exact number in his solution. Overall, it just seems easier to do it after that first click...but I could see how some players might regard that as 'cheating'...although it's really not. SteveBaker (talk) 16:42, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

AT&T ad

There is a library where I go and get on a computer where this [7] comes up every time someone goes to the Internet. The page says Firefox needs updating, so I don't know if that's the problem.

A number of web sites I go to there but not at home (where I limit the sites I go to so as not to cause problems) have an AT&T ad for high-speed Internet. My guess is they put something in it to slow the Internet down so you would think yours was slow and get theirs.

Actually, it doesn't happen every time, but when the computer does freeze, there is an AT&T ad on the screen. If I try to do anything, I just get the word "Stopped" in the lower left corner. I don't know how long it takes to go to the next page. It seems to work better when I put something where the URL goes and press "Enter". At least a blank screen is progress.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:22, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

So what's the question? --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 12:03, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

How do I fix it rather than just sitting there and sitting there with only the word "Stopped" or some useless message about some ad I didn't even want at the bottom of the screen? Here is a page where it did just that a minute ago.[8]Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:15, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, that page loaded completely for me in about 3 seconds. For what it's worth, you didn't miss out on anything in this instance, because the cartoon was unfunny. Unfortunately it's difficult to diagnose problems like this without actually sitting at the computer that is having the problems. The partial loading of pages that I have experienced has been because of bandwidth restrictions, connection problems, or a slammed server that is hosting the page in question. It is unlikely that banner ads have much or anything to do with the problem. Tempshill (talk) 03:04, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

That was just one sample. There are lots of newspaper web sites that have the problem. It doesn't matter what I'm looking at; if it's an unfunny cartoon, then I'm looking at it for a very long time and I can't get into anything else. And the AT&T ad is always there, though the situation doesn't happen every time there is one. There are many sites that have this same ad. So far, the delays have been minor today.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:44, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Three times today I just sat there and sat there. If you don't have dial-up, you're not supposed to be able to see "Read (url)", "Waiting for (url)", "Transferring data from (url)". I remember when we had to do that, but that was in the days we were happy to have anything. The AT&T ad was there every time.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:09, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Converting Win98 program to Windows Vista 64-bit compatibility

Hello, I have a few old Win98-compatible programs that are incompatible with Windows Vista 64-bit. Vista's "compatibility" function does not work in these cases (I've tried). Is there a decompiler/recompiler that makes programs compatible with Windows Vista? I suspect the programs are made in Visual Basic, Visual C or Visual C++. Thanks, -- Guroadrunner (talk) 21:35, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Nice idea, but I have never heard of any such miracle product. One workaround might be to run your old programs in a VirtualBox that has an appropriate OS in it, of course. Tempshill (talk) 02:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

True - the program worked in VMWare's virtual box program, but VMWare's virtual box created a separate "ghost" hard disk drive that the programs operate, but not interact with what's on the Vista hard drive (no copy/paste function to the non-virtualized HDD). In one case, I need my program to interact with a program on the Vista hard drive to work, although thinking about it your idea works if I operate both programs in the virtual box world. This duo of programs I am talking about are the Windows-based GP2Edit-32, which modifies elements of the DOS-based Grand Prix II (which I can run under DOSBox). GP2Edit, which is legal, is no longer supported by its author. Of course I could just format the disk and load WinXP... -- Guroadrunner (talk) 00:03, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Graphics card on motherboard

Hello there, I want to add new Graphics card (PCI 2.0) on my mobo. This is my first time. So if I attach the card in mobo with cable do I need to change anything in BIOS?--119.30.36.38 (talk) 22:43, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

It depends on the BIOS. Some bioses are smart and will automatically disable the onboard graphics adapter if they detect an external graphics cards. With other BIOSes you'll have to go into the BIOS "onboard peripherals" screen and disable the video. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:47, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

September 5

E-mail

Why do students with a school e-mail address often create another address for the purpose of joining sites like Youtube, Myspace, Facebook, Gamefaqs, etc? Jc iindyysgvxc (talk) 00:37, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

There are lots of possible reasons, if the above is actually true.

1. School addresses necessarily expire. Unless you are a graduate student, of course, in which case you can have the same one for a decade. Yay!
2. School addresses are seen as rather "official," being explicitly joined to a real, physical identity. Not everybody wants these places like Youtube, Facebook, etc., to have access to their real-world identity. They might want a little more anonymity.
3. School addresses may have specific terms of service that make them undesirable for wider use.
4. School addresses may require POP3/IMAP enabled mail readers to access them, where webmail is sometimes more convenient. Similarly, one might want to diversify one's incoming e-mail—to keep the school things on the school address, and everything else on the webmail address. This is advantageous also in terms of spam.
5. Lastly, there is no worse place in the world for reliable IT services than a school. Academics always underfund their IT departments drastically, and this leads to all sorts of mayhem on a regular basis. Every university I've attended has had major IT problems—stolen data, overheated servers, ridiculously small inbox quotas, you name it. If you want reliable e-mail, your local university is probably the last place you'd want to go.

The above is just speculation. I'm not sure there is a definite trend, nor am I sure the causality is right here. (In my experience, students often already have gmail addresses when they arrive at school, and then have the school mail just forward to that, for what they are used to.) It also probably differs depending what level of "school" you are talking about (high school? undergraduate at college? graduate school?). Again, this might not even be true—is there any evidence that this is a major trend? --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:50, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

The above statements are generally true, although some schools offer lifetime email addresses to alumni. One other reason may be that the student used their yahoo/hotmail/gmail before entering college and that is their primary email. -- Guroadrunner (talk) 16:58, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Though the "lifetime" e-mail addresses are often different anyway (e.g. @alumni.uni.edu vs. @uni.edu) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 18:46, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

• Another issue is the naming conventions. While someplaces are relaxed and let you choose your address, others have rigid naming rules and will *force* you to have the email address of WILBERFORCE_TIBERUS_VIJAYARAGHAVENSATYANARYANAMURTHY (at) schoolname.edu, when everyone knows you as "Billy V". Get a Gmail/Hotmail address, and you're the much more user-friendly billyv_23 (at) gmail.com

But the reason I use a separate address is the spam issue. The address I give out to websites, mailing lists, etc. gets hundreeds of spam messages a day, whereas the address I only give out to friends, family and "official" contacts gets a couple dozen per week at most. -- 128.104.112.179 (talk) 17:48, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, worse than the long names are that most require you to have short names. There is nothing so emasculating as having your proud, long last name (John Q. Izzardly, III) truncated into some sort of horrible Unix username (jizzard@uni.edu). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 18:45, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Probably the most simple reason is the fact that sites such as myspace and Facebook arent accessable through school, we were blocked from all these sites which resulted in the emails being of no use inside college and school email was very slow to access outside of college.195.49.180.146 (talk) 12:57, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Increasingly, you ARE your email address. Ideally, you'd want to keep the same address your entire life. I've used steve at sjbaker dot org for close to 15 years now. The mail server it's directed towards has been linked, redirected, forwarded and moved around more times than you can count - but it's the "one true place" where people can always get hold of me. People who I have not talked to in 10 years can (and do) still find me there. Knowing my email address also lets them guess my web-site URL - which is another huge win. Changing your email address frequently is a really terrible idea from a communications standpoint...although the brief spam-holiday you get is often welcome! So if (for some reason) you're required to use a school address (for example, because teachers are ignoring mail from other addresses) - then it makes sense to redirect it to your 'permanent' address for the duration of your time in school - knowing full well that when you graduate, you'll have a new address - but your 'permanent' one can always redirect to it. SteveBaker (talk) 16:33, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Importing bookmarks from Firefox into Opera

Can somebody tell me where to find my Firefox bookmarks? I am trying to import them to Opera and, unlike Chrome, it makes me look for them rather than just doing it automatically (actually, I never managed it with Chrome - it just went on for ages before I gave up - both times). --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 02:26, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I think Transmute will fit your needs nicely. It transferred my Chrome bookmarks to Firefox almost by itself.--The Ninth Bright Shiner 03:12, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I downloaded that, but it's not quite what I wanted. Anyway, for reference, I found out how to do it here on the Mozilla website. --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 12:00, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Excel 2007 being absolutely dense

Sometimes it baffles me how freeware can outdo a bazillion-dollar office suite.

Let's take this hypothetical situation here:

      Column 1 | Column 2 | Column 3
Row A   106    |          |    99
Row B          |    90    |

Very simple, no? I want to start a line graph and add on to it as new values arise. However, the fact that there's a gap between the 106 and 99 is just far too troublesome for Excel, so it doesn't connect the values. I'm left with three standalone points when I really should have one standalone and two connected.

OpenOffice.org Calc, hilariously, does not do this. Meaning you can have oodles of columns between one value and the next, and two values will still connect. Now while I love Calc, I'm trying to transition back to Office ever since I re-obtained it. I'd rather have the correct graph on Excel if possible. Is there any way to make Excel connect those points?

And yes, I realize I could put "102.5" in Row A, Column 2, but I feel like I would be winning the battle only to lose the war, know what I mean?

The problem is that you have introduced 3 'y' co-ordinates and provided only 2 values. The problem is with using a Line Chart. If Excel draws a line directly from 106-99 then anybody reading that chart will think that the value for Column 2 must be something between 106-99. Because Excel does not have a value in the field it assumes it is a missing data point so does not connect the data to it. It could assume the null-value is equal to 0 (in which case yourl line-chart would go from 106-0-99 and look like a 'v') but that wouldn't be a very good assumption as it's rare that someone has a 3 point chart, but pieces of missing data in 100-data-point Y axis is easily handled and looks sensible (the data shows a line, it breaks, then resumes - showing a data-point missing an entry.

I would suggest that OpenOffice is incorrect because it fails to note that there is no entry in column 2 for Row A and by connecting the dots leaves the reader (anybody other than the creator) to assume that Column 2's row A value must be something between 106 and 99. ny156uk (talk) 09:32, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Well I won't say which is right or wrong - surely there should be an option to turn this on or off - perhaps there is - if so, what/where is it?83.100.250.79 (talk) 11:42, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

If there is an option in Excel, I've never found it, despite LOTS of looking. It is incredibly irritating. I've resorted numerous times to making two data sets -- one where the missing points are averaged, and one which they are not, and then making the one where they are not have data markers so you can see where the actual data is. The truth is Excel is an awful, idiotic program, and is not capable of making good-looking, useful graphs at all (it is, however, great at making misleading, 3-D, colorful graphs, which are apparently what people use in the business world today, despite their inability to convey information). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:35, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I often wondered what it is like to have a job where I can just create a few pi and bar charts and talk about "market trends" - ah, to live in bullshit castle, what a dream!83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:49, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

My biggest complaint is that Excel (and other visual data analysis tools) readily apply trendlines and spline fits to data which should not have either. Unfortunately, it has trained a generation of "data analysts" that you can just "put" a curvey line through any data points, whenever you want, without thinking (and assume the result is meaningful). Interpolation will soon be a lost art... Nimur (talk) 18:26, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

The problem with Excel, at its heart, is that it does not give serious people the ability to really manipulate how the data is displayed, and encourages people to take a rather non-serious attitude towards visualization of data (hey, maybe this is an X,Y chart? or maybe it is a bar chart? how about a web! let's make it in 3-D, while we're at it!). It is, like the rest of Microsoft Office, geared towards middle-management. Alas, the rest of us have to use it too (or open-source programs that faithfully replicate all of its flaws). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 01:51, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Importing sound files to Scratch

What kind of file types does scratch (MIT) accept when I import sound files?--Mikespedia (talk) 05:09, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Windows Problems

On every Windows XP or Vista computer I've ever used - my own, public computers, etc - after leaving the computer on for more than a day or so it starts to act up, goes extremely slow and makes hard drive rumbling sounds even when all programs are closed and the computer is supposedly idol. More mysterious, in task manager there are no processes making read / writes, yet the hard drive rumbles away like it's been formatted or something. Why is this? Why does restarting the computer fix this problem for the next 24 hours, then it comes back? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.99 (talk) 10:04, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

This sounds like the proverbial "When did you stop beating your wife?" question. I'm sure there will be a few Mac and Linux folks that will have a ball answering this, but - I'll give it a meager shot. (Although I've run both XP and Vista for over a month without a need to reboot). Anyway ... think of your memory (RAM) like a chalkboard. You keep writing, then using a dry eraser to to remove things when your done. Eventually, all the "dust" still on the chalkboard needs to be completely "washed off". (reboot). There are memory managers that can help with this, but essentially the computer is looking for a clean spot to write stuff. Hope that helps a little. — Ched :  ?  10:17, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand what you're trying to imply with that loaded question. Anyway, thank you for the answer. I'm not really sure what ram has to do with hard drive rumbling though, could this be the swab file?

There is no "dust" that needs to be "washed off". Some things that might cause disk activity during idle time are background defragmentation, shrinking the page file, and background indexing. The first two of those probably wouldn't show up as reads/writes in Task Manager. They can all be disabled and they shouldn't slow down your work because they stop when the machine stops being idle. NT does have an annoying habit of discarding perfectly good pages from RAM when the machine has been idle for long enough, which causes a temporary slowdown and disk activity when you start using it again. Other than that I don't know what your problem could be. -- BenRG (talk) 11:14, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

It sounds vaguely like an antivirus program constantly scanning the hard disk - which locks up the hard disk - but doesn't use that much resources - since the hard disk is the bottleneck - could this be it.83.100.250.79 (talk) 11:37, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about your systems, but I have had Windows XP computers with persistent uptimes longer than 500 days. (The only need for a reboot, if I recall, was after upgrading to XP SP2). My current Windows XP system is reporting an uptime of over 7 days at the moment. I think Windows, like any operating system, can be stable or unstable, depending on the installed software; good luck with hardware and drivers; and generally, making sure the system setup is well-thought-out. The operator's or administrator's capabilities are a major contributing factor, but sometimes you just get some bad luck with a wacky audio-card or disk controller that occasionally freezes up the machine. As far as the "gradual decay" towards sluggishness, I have not seen this behavior on Windows XP, though I remember it was always a problem on older systems (Windows 95 in particular). As I mentioned, one of my WinXP systems ran for most of two years without a reboot, and I never saw a performance slowdown. I suspect you have some buggy software running on your machine; it's probably not the operating system's fault. Nimur (talk) 18:07, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Just to correct Ched, RAM is constantly being written to and read from, it is not like a chalkboard -- if you look at it like that, it is being wiped off constantly. I find that after about 20 days of uptime my computer slows down noticeably. I don't understand how you are reading HDD read/writes from taskmgr, because it doesn't show them (as far as I know, but I don't run Vista, and it would surprise me if Microsoft implemented that in such a core feature). — neuro^(talk) 18:47, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

You can add I/O information to the XP Task Manager's process view in View → Select Columns. -- BenRG (talk) 19:02, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I only see that option on the view menu on the networking tab. — neuro^(talk) 19:09, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

On Windows 98, RAM was often not freed up by programs after using it. In Windows XP this was noticeably improved to the point of not being a problem. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 03:55, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

In the past, (pre-WinXP) it was undoubtedly true that you needed to reboot your Windows machines at least daily. Microsoft even told you to do that! Linux and Mac users could rightly point to up-times measured in years without slowdowns or crashes. But I have to grudginly accept that Windows has gradually gotten better - the WinXP machine I use at work goes for weeks to maybe a month before needing a reboot. The reason for needing to do so at all is usually a slow leakage of resources due to almost insignificant bugs that slowly, but inexorably, cripple the system. A lot also depends on the kinds of use you put your computer to - and on how sensitive you are to performance. I'm a game programmer - I measure where every millisecond goes - and every millisecond is precious - so I'm spectacularly sensitive to problems like this!. Some programs and usage-patterns impose more of a stress than others - some may 'tickle' particular bugs - it's really tough to say why (in detail) this happens on a general basis. When it gets bad - reboot - and while it's rebooting, think about how much nicer it would be to be using Linux. SteveBaker (talk) 16:17, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Windows didn't gradually improve, it improved suddenly with the switch from Win9x to NT. Any slow leakage of resources on your machine is not NT's fault. If your 3D graphics programming is bluescreening your computer, that's ATI or Nvidia's fault. -- BenRG (talk) 20:08, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Linux cp of home directories

1. What are the correct options to give to cp to recursively copy a directory, maintaining file ownerships+groups, file permissions, including .hidden files, and let softlinks remain softlinks? I'm copying the /home subtree to a different disk. I have read the manpage, but the number of options is quite large, and the explanations terse. In case there are distro-variations, I'm using Ubuntu and Debian, and the file systems are ext3.
2. Is there any reason not to replace the /home subtree with a softlink to a subdirectory on a different disk?

Thanks, --NorwegianBlue ^talk 13:04, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

"cp -a /home /new/home" as root should do it. As for the second question, theoretically some program might get confused by /home being a softlink, but that would certainly be a bug. 84.239.160.214 (talk) 13:26, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! --NorwegianBlue ^talk 13:52, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I've always used 'tar' for this:

  cd fromdir ; tar cf - . | ( cd todir ; tar xf - )

It preserves links, sym-links, ownerships and privilages, etc - so long as the person doing the copying has the relevant permissions. There are a bunch more command line arguments to fine-tune what gets duplicated and what doesn't. SteveBaker (talk) 16:05, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Presumably the -a option achieves the same thing (the 'a' is short for archive), but as you say there are a bunch of command line arguments. The directories in question are small enough for me to use both approaches and compare. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:06, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

three way merge sort

i have done 2 way merge sort ..

but now i want 2 do it by three way ...

please give sort function and merge function in detail in c-programme language..

hope i will get it earlier as there is mine exam soon.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yogeshlahane (talk • contribs) 19:04, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not do your homework for you. Please read the header. — neuro^(talk) 19:06, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

We have a mergesort article, which shows the 2-fold way of doing it. I've never heard of someone doing it 3-fold (and I doubt it'd be more efficient), but the 3-fold implementation is an obvious extension of 2-fold - where you split into two, split instead into three. When merging, your merge function needs to be able to compare values from the three sublists. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:52, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

If you are going to try a 3-way merge sort, you would just be baby-stepping into parallel sorting algorithms. Performing it on one processor doesn't provide a benefit. Doing an n-way merge sort on n processors will have a benefit (limited heavily by Amdahl's law. Of course, there are many other parallel sorting algorithms that are far superior to parallel merge sort. -- kainaw™ 20:50, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Was I wrong to read this as a homework question? I still read it that way, just curious if I am misreading. — neuro^(talk) 22:35, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

It may very well be a homework question. Good. There is no proscription against answering homework questions; we just don't do the homework for the guy. If, as it seems, the OP needs a C implementation of 3-way mergesort, and doesn't want to do the work himself, he was SOL before he asked, and he's SOL now. If he wants to do the work himself, but was just somewhat confused, then we've helped in an appropriate and educational way. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:53, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

If the algorithm is done by hand an n-way merge is more effective. Imagine sorting a big stack of paper. I often do this myself when sorting books, splitting into 5 or 6 stacks is good. This is where the effort of moving is much bigger then the effort of identifying the next one to pick. Just keep picking the smallest off each stack that is bigger than than the last one you picked, until you can't do it any more, then pick the smallest again to start a new run. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:35, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

In the olden days of computing where there were no disk drives, but card sorters and tape drives, the most effective would be to read as many tapes at the same time for a merge, as you could. The idea is to reduce the number of operator tape mounts. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Tracing travel route on map

I am trying to create graphics of our travel route (for a family photo album). Can anyone suggest a program / website I could use for this? I would like to trace our route as lines across a map. I tried Google Maps, but it puts massive markers at every stop which I would like to avoid if possible... — QuantumEleven 21:26, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Bing Maps. Hit "Collections" -> "Open your collections". At the bottom of the collections box is a row of six or seven icons. Next to the pushpin tool is a path tool. It will measure distance as well and you can hit "print" to print the path and the surrounding map. Xenon54 / talk / 21:34, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I believe Google Earth will do that as well, but it has 3D buildings and some other cool stuff. Thanks, gENIUS101 01:15, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

You can draw lines on Google Maps instead of dropping pointers (and have those lines follow roads automatically). -- kainaw™ 21:04, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

home networking, what equipment do i need?

the situation is that i'm moving into a large house with lots of other people, there is an existing ethernet network, ie internet comes into the house and each person gets an ethernet port in there room. Now i have several bits of equipment that use the internet and would like to make a "mini-home network" ie i have one device to plug everything into (as i only have one port in the room). Now i would like to be able to set up a network so i can share files between my computers easily and securely and preferably it would need wireless, though i could live without it

the problem i have is what do i actually look for? routers seem to need to be connected to the internet access (ADSL or cable), bridges just seem like a way to expanding the range of stuff, i think i need a switch but none of them ever seem to have wireless, is a switch what i should be looking for? and if so does anyone where i can get one with wireless ability?--90.221.74.56 (talk) 21:49, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

You need a router. The name router has been misused to commonly refer to router/modem combos which is what you've described. If you want to have a network that's pretty much inaccessible from the main LAN then you need a router, one with a WAN port and a/some LAN ports and wireless capability. If you just want to extend the main network and make all your equipment to be part of the main network then you need an ethernet switch, and a wireless access point for wireless. --antilived^{T | C | G} 01:59, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Writing Guidelines

I've moved this question to Wikipedia:New contributors' help page#Writing Guidelines, as that seems like the appropriate venue for this subject. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:39, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Searching in Google - what is "clients1.google.co.uk"?

After every key is pressed in a search, it will have a message in the firefox toolbar "waiting for clients1.google.co.uk". Is this keystroke logging?--Nothingwrongwithit (talk) 23:45, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

It's Google Suggest sending what you've typed so far to Google to provide you with that dropdown list of suggestions. You can turn it off here (bottom of the page) if you don't want the suggestions. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 23:59, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

(ec) This notes that it's a server associated with Google Suggest. That latter link tells you how to turn it off. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:01, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

September 6

SQL server problem

When I try to go to http://www.hscl.cr.nps.gov/insidenps/report.asp?STATE=&PARK=&STRUCTURE=&SORT=&RECORDNO=6534, a National Park Service webpage, I get an error message as follows:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][TCP/IP Sockets]Specified SQL server not found.
/insidenps/global.asa, line 13

Is my computer missing something, or is this a problem with the NPS website? I've accessed pages like this before, including this page just two days ago, and never had this problem before. Nyttend (talk) 01:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Your computer isn't missing anything, theirs is having a problem. My guess is that they keep their database on a specialized server that has somehow crashed or been turned off. (I would wait until Tuesday to expect anyone to look at it again, given the three day weekend and all.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 01:38, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

As its name implies, SQL Server is a server side product. Nothing is required on the client to run. If you can find the webmaster's or tech support e-mail address, I would inform them of the error. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 01:48, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanations; as all had worked a few days ago, I was guessing that it was on their end, but I wasn't sure. I saw "Microsoft" as a possible indicator that my use of IE was the problem; for all I knew, they had changed settings to something that IE didn't like. If you'd said that was a browser problem, I would have perhaps tried to find a Firefox-equipped computer. Unfortunately, there's no way to find an address for a webmaster; most of the National Park Service website has been down today. Nyttend (talk) 03:49, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

For example — I found that their report-an-error page was visible, but when I tried to submit a report, I received a "page-not-found" message. Nyttend (talk) 03:53, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

You shouldn't see any sort of explanation of the error at all. The web master should have disabled custom error messages in the web.config file. Imagine what a hacker could do by changing the URL and seeing the output from the server. Everything you see is just plain incompetence, and it's more common than you think.--S1kjreng (talk) 05:41, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, just wait until Tuesday. I bet it will work again. Nobody is there right now and nobody is going to get to it before then. It's a government website, not a for-profit dot-com that cares about its uptime. They'll get to it. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:05, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Intel E4300 vs. Intel T3400

I am about to buy a low-cost laptop. I have a choice between Intel E4300 and Intel T3400. Which is better? Intel has a comparison at its website. The E4300 has a faster FSB and larger L2 cache, but the T3400 is newer and has a lower "Max TDP". Which is better? Thanks! --Masatran —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.36.231 (talk) 10:39, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure you saw E4300 on a laptop? I thought the E-series is for desktop? --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:18, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

What redirects here?

How do I find out what articles redirect to another article? In this case I'm interested in Female ejaculation ?Rfwoolf (talk) 12:49, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Use the "what links here" option - [9] -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:59, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Not not the What links here, cos how do I distinguish between which terms links there, and which redirect there?Rfwoolf (talk) 16:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Ahh okay I see you can then filter out the links... Got it. Thanks Rfwoolf (talk) 16:28, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Copying text from an Acrobat Reader PDF document

Acrobat Reader has something called their Text Select Tool. When I use it to select and then copy text, and then paste that text into, for instance, TextEdit, the results are strange. The results require a lot of cleaning up. Here is an example of how something comes out:

Consult the ser onsult servic vice and suppor e support inf t information that came with y ormation your i our iMac f ac for or

inf information about ho ormation how t w to contac tact A t Apple f pple for ser or servic vice.

I have an Apple computer.

What is causing this? Is there a way to overcome this? Bus stop (talk) 14:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

What's causing it is how PDFs store text sometimes. Instead of storing it as a sentence, it stores it as a bunch of glyphs (letters) with specific positioning information (letter "C" goes here, letter "o" goes there), and doesn't necessarily know how they fit together. So in your case you have things like "inf" on one line and "ormation" on another, because the PDF doesn't actually realize that those are part of the same word and are sitting on the same line. My understanding of it is that it varies depending on what tool was used to make the PDF. Some programs do better than others. There's no way to overcome it that I know of. It's a problem with the PDF, not the reader. (This is assuming, based on the content, that it is not an OCR problem.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 15:00, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

The problem seems to be much less pronounced with PDFs produced in 2009. I should have mentioned, that the PDF that I was trying to copy and paste from, was made in 2006. Maybe the problem has been to an extent addressed since then. Thank you for your help. Bus stop (talk) 15:51, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm told another issue is that in a PDF file, the program that created the file may write out the text "information about ho" and then stop what it's doing, skip lower on the page to write unrelated text, then skip back to where it was and resume with "w to contact...". If this is so, it sounds difficult for programmers to write a PDF reader to reliably copy and paste text that happens to be contiguous visually. Tempshill (talk) 01:44, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

The easiest way, in that case, would be to dump the page to an image file (PNG, for example), and then run OCR on that. It might work or it might not (or, most likely and even worse than not working, it will work with an accuracy of 98% or so...). Jørgen (talk) 08:58, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Believe it or not it is now working. I went to Adobe's website and downloaded an updated version of their Adobe Reader. I guess I should have tried that in the first place. Thank you all for your input. Bus stop (talk) 16:21, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft Excel Mode function

Is anyone familiar with the Microsoft Excel 2007 function called "Mode"? It is supposed to return the mode in a set of data. Sometimes, however, a set of data has more than one mode. Nonetheless, Excel returns simply one (and only one) result. That is, Excel returns only one of the modes, but not all of the modes. Does anyone know which of the several modes it reports? Is it the highest numerical mode? The lowest? I can't seem to find any rhyme or reason in how Excel computes the mode in a situation where the data set has several modes. One of my thoughts is that it goes through each data point, one by one. As soon as it finds one mode (any mode), it simply reports that. And any subsequent additional modes that it finds, it simply ignores. But, that is just a guess on my part. Does anyone know? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro, 6 September 2009)

Here is the official documentation for the function, but it does not explicitly answer your question. Maybe the best solution is to test on a few known data-sets to see if the behavior is consistent? In this case, the best programming practice would be to assume that the value is "undefined" on such a data-set (or at least, that the selection of which mode is undefined), unless you can guarantee that it is always (e.g.) the lowest of the possible valid choices. Nimur (talk) 21:20, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Fiddling about in Excel 2003, I see there is the same problem. If there is more than one mode, it looks like Excel reports the first mode in order of the position of the first element of that mode in the array - not necessarily the first mode. For example:

• mode(2,5,3,5,1,2,1) = 2

The "first mode" would be 5 but it reports the 2. Do you get the same result in Excel 2007? Zain Ebrahim (talk) 10:56, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you for the input. To Zain Ebrahim ... I think that your theory is correct. Yes, I do have the same problem and the same results in Excel 2007 as you do in Excel 2003. To test your theory ... I tried the following functions and got the following results (among several other trials):

• mode(700,333,8,8,8,700,111,555,700) ... Result = 700 (as your theory predicted).

Using the same exact data set, in different order, yields:

• mode(8,700,700,700,333,111,555,8,8) ... Result = 8 (also, as your theory predicted).

Now, this leads to my follow-up question (below). Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro, 7 September 2009)

Follow up question:

I thought that the Mode function also works on text data (that is, words) ... in addition to numerical data. In fact, in the Remarks section of the official documentation, it states: "Arguments can either be numbers or names." Therefore, as a test, I tried the following data set:

• egg, star, star, star, tree, orange, frog, egg, egg.

And I expected to get a mode of "egg" ... but I got an error message instead (specifically, #N/A). I tried formatting the above list of words as "general format" and also as "text format" ... both formats returned an error message for the mode function. What am I doing wrong? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro, 7 September 2009)

I'll think you'll find that Names in this context refers to Named Ranges. 86.165.115.70 (talk) 15:50, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

MPEG-2 and AVCHD Video Files

Dear All,

Can anyone tell me a way to convert to either of these two file formats if you have a camcorder that doesn't use them? Mine will only record in a strange format for which the file extension is .mt2s

If someone could recommend a program that would convert (especially for free) I'd be very grateful.

90.218.48.56 (talk) 20:22, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Avidemux and Handbrake both support .mt2s files —Preceding unsigned comment added by Avrillyria (talk • contribs) 20:42, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Sites - copyright

What's the best way to tell if a site is legit? Specifically [10] (popups!) Is it a no brainer that this site is circumventing copyright (I don't want an angry letter from my ISP...)83.100.250.79 (talk) 21:20, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

When you say "legit", I think you mean whether accessing a particular website violates any laws. Since we don't know where you are or what you're doing, it's impossible to know; and we can't give you any legal advice (see our legal disclaimer at the top of the page). If you're interested in learning about digital copyright law in general, we have numerous articles you can read. In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is the applicable legal standard; typically, Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act explains the liability of one party for the infringing acts of a second party. Again, we can't interpret whether these apply to your particular scenario; or make any guarantee about the accuracy of the articles at any given time. Nimur (talk) 21:37, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

obviously my intended activity would include downloading stuff via this site, what I'm asking is suppose I want to download a Rhianna (or Shakira song) (as examples), and I don't entirely trust that everyone using the site has read and digested the DMCA etc - so there might be some non 'legit' stuff on there.. How can I find out if a music label has released a song for free (as does happen - for publicity reasons etc I suppose) - is there a simple way I can find out the copyright status of a song.?

83.100.250.79 (talk) 22:14, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

No, there is no simple way. Everything must be assumed to be copyrighted unless you know otherwise fairly explicitly. Anyway, that site is almost certainly violating copyrights. Whether they are breaking laws depends on their jurisdiction. (You can tell this pretty easily by reading its disclaimer, which is a standard "we're not violating copyright, our users are! nothin' we can do about that!" that all sites who habitually violate copyright have posted. In this case I'm not sure it is even true; it sure looks like the content is hosted on their server, which makes them liable.)

Now the upside for you, as a user, is that the only people who know, at the moment, that you've downloaded anything is the skeezy site. It's not the same thing as the P2P software where one of your "peers" might actually be a copyright watchdog. So the odds of getting a letter from your ISP are pretty low. But I am not a lawyer, yo. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 23:53, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

There is an easy way - if the site says something like "this song is provided copyright-free" then it is - if not, not. Everything that anyone writes, draws, paints, composes, sings, publishes, sculpts, etc is automatically copyrighted. There is no need to put a little 'c' in a circle or register it someplace. So unless there is a specific statement (such as at the bottom of every Wikipedia page) that says that there are some special terms and conditions, then it's safe to assume that the work is indeed copyrighted and that you need permission - or some kind of license - in order to be able to copy it. Even if you ARE allowed to copy it - you may be required to accept some additional terms and conditions (as is indeed the case with the Wikipedia GFDL and CC-BY-SA 3.0 license terms) - which may prevent you from giving copies to your friends or putting the thing on your website or whatever - even though you were allowed to download it for free. SteveBaker (talk) 15:56, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

September 7

Fonts

I have multiple computers in my home, and I have recently used one (not the one from which I am typing now) to view a user's signature. I thought it nice, and decided to copy some of the code for my own. Unfortunately, it seems the computer I am on now does not have the font I want installed, so all I see when I look at that user's signature on this computer is regular text. Could someone tell me how I can install, download, or otherwise acquire the font "Monotype Corsiva"? Intelligentsium 00:03, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

P.S. - I have a feeling my new signature looks a lot better to those of you whose computers can show Monotype Corsiva - to me it only looks like italicized text. Intelligentsium 00:03, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

You mean that it looks like this? I have the font of which you speak, and it looks quite similar to that font. Sorry, but I can't help you get it; the only time that I tried to download a font, it failed without my understanding why. Nyttend (talk) 00:53, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Going off topic but it's a really bad idea to rely on fonts for your signature. If you want a proper signature, include an image; if you want to have your name printed clearly - use a normal font. Script-font-signatures are generic, unreliable, and very 90's :p --antilived^{T | C | G} 01:23, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

To install a font, download the font file(s) (typically *.ttf files), and then copy them to the C:\WINDOWS\Fonts. You have to copy them to the Fonts folder from another, uncompressed, folder, on the computer. If I remember correctly, it is, for some reason, not possible to copy them to the Fonts folder directly from a compressed foler (*.zip) in (at least) Windows Vista. You can download loads of highly interesting fonts for free (see "free fonts"), but I believe that Monotype Corsiva is not free, but included in either Microsoft Windows (Vista) or Microsoft Office (2007). --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 09:21, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Mac on PC

How do I do it? I heard it's called Hackintosh, what exactly do I do —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.99 (talk) 11:28, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

That article links you to resources, such as they are. Apple claims that doing so violates their EULA and that it's illegal, and they make strenuous legal and technical efforts to keep breaking Hackintoshes. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 11:57, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

And it depends on your hardware; hacked distros such as iDeneb are a bit easier to install, but still your mileage may vary, as it may not work as well as it should. And obtaining an ISO image of it may be illegal in most jurisdictions, too. Blake Gripling (talk) 12:02, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

int in C++

What are the benefits of having a type "int" in C++ that can be a short, a long, or even a long long? Should a programmer always use definite types, such as short and long instead? -- kainaw™ 11:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I guess it made sense to Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie and those guys back in the day, to have a type that was the size of the machine word, although in practice it's pretty hard to think of a programming case that having that adaptive int makes for easier programming of a given task than using a fixed-size. My only guess is that, while modern compilers can treat values from 8 to 64 bits with facility, things were harder and less efficient with DMR's first C compiler (and they couldn't afford the space or time to have the compiler invisibly insert a bunch of instructions to complement arithmetic ops on a size the architecture didn't natively support). Without exception, every single serious systems programming job I've ever worked on has used uint32_t (et al) or something very similar. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 11:55, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

What I mean by that is that, particularly with a rather basic compiler and a very slow and instruction poor CPU,

       int x;
       for (x=0; x<10000; x++) {
         *p=x + x/2 + x%5;
       }

would be much faster than if the type of x was short or long, because all those ops on a non-native-wordsize x would require lots of masking and shifting to get them to work. More modern CPUs have a rich enough instruction set that this isn't a major issue right now (except for long long). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:07, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

In addition, C99's stdint.h has some nice types that encode the idea of minimum-width and fastest-minimum-width integers, so you'd probably code the above example with the type of x being uint_fast16_t, so you get the advantage of using the CPU's native int if that's appropriate, but without prescribing a possibly suboptimal type. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:36, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I understood the question, and so did Finlay, who answered it well, but make no mistake: an int can never "be" a short or a long. Even if int has the same representation as another integer type, the types remain distinct. It is also impossible for "int" to provide as much storage as "long long", unless "long" and "long long" are the same size, because an int can't be larger than a long. My advice is to not worry too much about short and long, and just stick with int, unless there's specific reasons to worry about those things. decltype (talk) 13:05, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Correct. I was referring to bit-size, not type. I do not see why a compiler couldn't use 8 bytes (long long) for an int and still be ANSI C/C++ compliant. I know that "long long" hasn't been completely adopted, but 64-bit machines are common enough that an optimized system could opt for 8-byte ints. -- kainaw™ 14:13, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

When working with hardware acceleration, using a generic name for the "standard" floating point or integer representation allows for easy portability. In reference to your original question, this means that I can compile the same code for two different machines, (e.g. a 32-bit and a 64-bit system), and get all the benefits/hassles of immediate conversion to the new bit size. For complex applications, this would be undesirable; but for numerical algorithm kernel code, this is extremely helpful in improving portability. Nimur (talk) 15:06, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

True. My point was that on such a system, sizeof(long) would also have to be exactly 8. decltype (talk) 06:42, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The original specification for C said that 'int' was the most efficient word-length for the hardware and only guaranteed that it was no smaller than a 'short' and no longer than a 'long'. Small microcontrollers and ancient C compilers for things like the 6502, 6800, Z80 and 8080 families often used 16 bit 'int' but so many programmers of larger-scale computers assumed that an 'int' was 32 bits that there were severe portability problems with these systems. Nowadays, some microcontrollers still use 16 bit int's because it's rare to be able to port anything from (say) a PC with a couple of gigabytes of main memory to a microcontroller with 512 bytes! However, even the compilers for those systems often have a compile option to always compile 'int' as 32 bit. Hence we now have a 'de-facto' standard that char is 8 bits, short is 16, int is 32, long is either 32 or 64 depending on whether the underlying hardware is 32 bit or 64 and long-long is 64 (if it's implemented). I would be rather surprised if any compilers ever broke that 'standard' in the future because it's so widely assumed to be true - even when the language specification doesn't guarantee it.

The reason not to always use the maximum word length is performance. Even though a 64 bit machine may be able to add two 64 bit numbers just as fast as a 32 bit one - it's really quite rare to actually need 64 bits in most of the situations where integers occur - and the additional memory storage requirements and RAM bandwidth demands of using 64 bits tend to completely outweigh their usefulness. When I worked at L3 Simulation, we had over a million lines of code in the application I was in charge of - and there were only (I think) two places where we used 'long' - and that was for date-fetching functions as mandated by the Linux kernel API. We were careful to do that precisely because of 32/64 bit portability issues.

The major benefit of transitioning to 64 bit processors is nothing to do with integer calculations - but rather that of improved double precision floating point performance and the ability to address more the 2Gbytes of RAM without kernel slowdowns and other ikky problems.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:43, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Improved floating point performance? Are you talking about the extra XMM registers? But there are extra GPRs too and that improves integer performance... -- BenRG (talk) 19:45, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

The ability to perform fast bitwise operations on 64-bit integers has a tremendous impact on the performance of chess engines and other board game implementations that make heavy use of bitboards, such as Othello. decltype (talk) 06:42, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Use the stdint.h ones instead, or for big projects set up your own include file which defines you own names for the types you want. That'll make it easier to port. By the way you do sometimes get funny sizes like 18, 24 or 36 bits in embedded work. The other thing I'd warn against is assuming that int is the same size as a pointer, use intptr_t instead, same with things like file sizes. Dmcq (talk) 16:36, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

If you're not using C99, here's some portable C89 code to generate fixed size types. "Portable" meaning that it does not make any assumptions about the size of char, short, int or long. Similar definitions can be made for signed types. (Although personally I believe that if you want portable code, you should just use int, or long if the value might exceed 16 bits.) Mitch Ames (talk) 11:50, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

/*  Portable definitions of fixed size integer types */
#include <limits.h>

/* 8 bit */

#if UCHAR_MAX == 0xff
    typedef unsigned char u8;
#elif USHRT_MAX == 0xff
    typedef unsigned short u8;
#else
    #error No 8 bit type available.
#endif

/* 16 bit */

#if UINT_MAX == 0xffff
    typedef unsigned int u16;
#elif USHRT_MAX == 0xffff
    typedef unsigned short u16;
#elif UCHAR_MAX == 0xffff
    typedef unsigned char u16;
#elif ULONG_MAX == 0xffff
    typedef unsigned long u16;
#else
    #error No 16 bit type available.
#endif

/* 32 bit */

#if UINT_MAX == 0xffffffff
    typedef unsigned int u32;
#elif ULONG_MAX == 0xffffffff
    typedef unsigned long u32;
#elif USHRT_MAX == 0xffffffff
    typedef unsigned short u32;
#else
    #error No 32 bit type available.
#endif

DV handycam

If it possible to capture video in .MOV, Windows .AVI, or .MPG files using DV Handycam? --AquaticMonkey (talk) 13:38, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

When I import video to my Windows machine from my MiniDV camcorder, the video is in an AVI file. Not sure what codec. Tempshill (talk) 15:30, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

No, you can't capture in those formats, but you can convert DV files to them pretty easily with something like ffmpeg. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 20:04, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Can Wikipedia please add a 'share' facility for Facebook and myspace users etc?

Hello,

I am not sure where to send my request for the idea of Facebook and myspace share buttons to be added to Wiki? Sorry if I have wasted your time, please can you forward on to the right place, or instruct me where I need to send this idea to?

Thank you

Why can't you simply use the hyperlink? It's the most general way to "share" a web document. Wikipedia's architecture has been conveniently designed so that its URLs are human-readable. I think the best place to ask about this sort of feature would be the WP:Village pump, where technical issues and policy suggestions are discussed. Nimur (talk) 15:09, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Binding application window to a particular monitor

I recently added a second monitor to my Windows Vista computer and am looking for a Windows equivalent to devilspie (UNIX). My primary concern is iTunes - the Library window is maximized on the 2nd monitor, but the Get Info insists on opening on the 1st monitor. I am thinking of something like devilspie so I can pattern match by windows name / parent application name / etc to convince iTunes to keep on its own monitor. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Freedomlinux (talk) 16:02, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

GIMP/PSD text layer problem

Greetings. Am gonna be terse today, because I'm getting sick and am tired, so here's the problem.

User is using GIMP 2.4.3 running on Zenwalk Linux. User does the following:

1. Open old PDF as single-layer graphics and edit out certain portions (text). What remains is one layer of graphics.
2. Save so created document as .psd (user's customer wants .psd).
3. Open so created .psd on following day; introduce text as layers into document. Save (as .psd still).

Now, when user tries to edit the text in the .psd, he can't. Is this:

a) impossible b) easy, but user doesn't know how to do it c) complicated, but user also doesn't know how to do it.

I thought .psd was a useful and editable format. Is it the GIMP that doesn't fully support it? What gives?

I can share the incriminated .psd file to show what I mean. Thanks in advance. Gonna get some tea now. Cheers, Ouro (blah blah) 16:35, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

When you import into Gimp, you are converting the PDF into an image of the PDF. When you save as PSD, you are saving an image, not text. Gimp (even through the latest version, as far as I know) does not save a PSD text layer. It saves it as an image. -- kainaw™ 16:43, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

One down. Thanks, Kainaw. Have to look for another tool, then... Ouro (blah blah) 16:53, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Try importing the PDF in Inkscape, remove the things you want, and then export. Inkscape won't write to PSD, but will write to SVG, PS, EPS, and AI (adobe illustrator) formats. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:17, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

If you're ever going to open .svg files created with Inkscape in AI, be sure to save it in plain .svg or AI will have problems. 142.20.146.226 (talk) 20:09, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

powerpoint

Which type of the following screen elements is displayed below the slide pane and allows you to type additional slide information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.166.18.43 (talk) 16:57, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

There's a 'slide notes' that you can add lots of notes -these don't appear on-screen but you can print them off so that you have the notes that relate to the appropriate page (you can also send the doc to people so they can see it with the slide-notes for further reference). Is that what you mean? ny156uk (talk) 17:21, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

System freezes with nvidia geforce 9800

Hello there, I am having trouble with system freezing issue. I have bought a new card nvidia geforce 9800. Whenever I try to play crysis or other game it freezes within 10 minutes. I recorded temperature.

• In idle 49 Celsius and 3d load it is 83 Celsius (Graphics card)
• Processor 27 Celsius
• Mainboard 36 Celsius

What is the problem and how can I rectify it? I am planning to buy a processor cooler. Will that solve that issue? I have full tower chasis with four fan inside.

My specs:

• Core 2 Quade 9400
• nvidia geforce 9800
• mobo: 750 SLI nvidia geforce
• 4 gb ram (800 MHz)
• Full tower chasis

Any advice would be appreciated.--119.30.36.53 (talk) 17:25, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

The processor temperature sounds good to me. The nvidia temperature running the game is higher than I'd like though still below when they'd slow it down. The fan should speed up a great deal at that temperature - do you hear it doing so? Freezing though sounds to me more like a possible power supply problem. Dmcq (talk) 17:52, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree - if it's not overheating then you're almost certainly overloading the power supply. You need a more powerful one. SteveBaker (talk) 03:41, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

• My PSU is Thermaltake 750W. I have increased the fan speed from 35% to 40% by using Riva Tuner. Still I don't hear fan noise. What should be the ideal fan speed at 83 Celsius? Will it reduce fan life span (If I increase)? Thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.30.36.53 (talk) 12:05, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Is it a GT or GTX or GTX+? My friend has a GT with a single slot cooler and it gets really hot, whereas the GTX+ with dual slot cooler is considerably cooler. If you have the former, you should improve the ventilation in your case or your card will just keep recycling hot air around. --antilived^{T | C | G} 12:14, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

It's funny about you not hearing a change in the nvidia fan, I'd have though it was probably the loudest part of what you've got. If the system lasts much longer or doesn't crash with the side off then it's probably overheating. You have to be careful about airflow, it's usually best to keep everything clear but sometimes a baffle to ensure the air goes the way one wants can help if there is a particular problem. Dmcq (talk) 18:20, 8 September 2009 (UTC).

Are you sure the GeForce's fan is actually working/spinning at all? I know it sounds a bit obvious, but as you've said that you don't hear it I think it's worth verifying and it certainly would explain the overheating. I used to have a 7950GT which suffered similiar issues and that was because my fan had seized up and stopped and like Dmcq above said, I would also expect it to be quite noisy. Try loading a game and "playing" it so the card is working hard and then placing your ear next to it should be enough to hear if it's on. ZX81 ^talk 19:17, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

• After increasing the fan speed to 50%, I am hearing a little noise from card. I also tested with "furomark" software. When temperature goes to 85% the fan speed increases with huge noise in it. I have tested my system with another card but same thing is happening. Can it be motherboard or processor? bit worried :(--119.30.36.55 (talk) 19:31, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Symptoms of processor overheating

Hello there what are the symptoms of processor overheating? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.30.36.53 (talk) 17:40, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Other than the computer's CPU temp alarm going off, the most common symptom is apparently random system restarts. That is not always a CPU overheat. Just about any part of the computer can overheat and produce enough heat to cause the computer to reboot. What makes it complicated is that a faulty fan can cause a perfectly cool system to reboot. -- kainaw™ 18:49, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Many CPU's use clock-throttling (aka Dynamic frequency scaling) to try to keep cool - so if your PC seems to run slowly when doing CPU-intensive tasks, it's worth checking the temperature. Some GPU's can do that too. If this happens a lot - if it's happeneing then it's a sure sign that your machine is inadequately cooled and may crash under more extreme loads. SteveBaker (talk) 03:40, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

• Can system freezes because of processor overheating? --119.30.36.55 (talk) 19:17, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Probably, yes, and definitely crashes followed by restarts. I've been having problems with my 2005 AMD Athlon64 PC recently, which turned out to be caused by processor overheating. The symptoms were: during CPU-intensive tasks, during file copying, and during any activity which involved USB traffic, the fan sped up, becoming much more noisy. It was instantaneous and highly reproducible, move the mouse, and the fan speed increased. I tried to hear whether it was the fan of the PSU or the fan attached to the CPU, and first thought it was the PSU. Since I had installed two extra hard disks, I found that reasonable, and replaced the PSU. Same symptoms. Then I read about the Cool'n'Quiet feature of the Athlon 64 CPUs. So I removed the fan that cools the CPU, and saw that the cooling paste had gone dry, and that there were patches where it was simply gone - there was air between the metal block to which the fan was attached, and the CPU. So I bought cleaning liquid (two components) to remove the cooling paste, new cooling paste, and fastened the fan again. That fixed the problem completely. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:46, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Ubuntu

I've been a Windoze guy for a long, long time. However, when my box recently died, I thought I'd give Ubuntu Linux a try. With my old 'puter now pushing up daisies, I got an old junker off a friend and tried to install Ubuntu 9.04 on it. As installation begins, Ubuntu craps out, saying that the BIOS on the computer is too old (1999, and it needs 2000) and proceeds to give error number 16, which I assume is related to the BIOS date issue. So, what's my best option? I've never updated a BIOS before; I don't know if such a thing is practical/possible. Should I instead look for an older version of Ubuntu? What release would I need? Or should I just try a different distro? I'm willing to do some learning, but Linux is brand new to me. Matt Deres (talk) 17:50, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Try Damn Small Linux. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:43, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

You could try an older version of Ubuntu, but that would expose you to bugs/security holes which have since been patched. Your best bet is to talk to Ubuntu experts to see if there isn't some simple setting that you can change to get it to work (the unofficial forums (ubuntuforums.org) is probably the best place to do that - they are remarkably beginner friendly). Failing that, you can look for another linux distribution which may work better with older equipment. (Again, the Ubuntu forums may help to point you in the right direction.) -- 128.104.112.179 (talk) 18:51, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Ubuntu is more forgiving of an older machine than, say, Vista, but asking a decade old machine to run it is unlikely to be fun. It may very well be possible to get it to run, but the stuff it installs by default is (comparatively) memory hungry. DSL is a better fit, as is Puppy Linux. Knoppix might work okay, depending on the machine's specifics. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:04, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Errors during installation might be caused by errors in the burning of the CD; make sure to verify it first. Xubuntu is a version of Ubuntu that is intended for lower end computers. --Spoon! (talk) 20:13, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Puppy linux will boot off a cd without needing to be installed - try that for a start. There are probably other variants of Linux as well that will boot off the cd. 78.149.167.102 (talk) 23:48, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I assume it's a GRUB error 16, which is usually a file-system issue. Updating your BIOS is a trivial task, and I haven't had any problems doing so. That's assuming that the BIOS is actually the problem. I've learned to avoid the bi-yearly Ubuntu releases. They're very buggy. It's ridiculous that Ubuntu releases a new version every six months. That's not enough time to fix the bugs. Windows Vista was in beta for 1 ½ years! And even then, it wasn't ready. I use Ubuntu 8.04 -- the long-term support release. They've patched that one too many times to count, so it's very stable. The latest version is 8.04.3, meaning it's on it's third "service pack" (that's what I call it) after only 1 ½ years. There's also Debian, which is what Ubuntu is based on. That is very stable. If you mess around with any of the new Ubuntu releases, you're frankly asking for trouble.--S1kjreng (talk) 03:52, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you all for the replies. I burned a CD of Puppy Linux and that also is failing to install. In the case of Puppy, it appears to be starting correctly, and even allows me to access the boot options with <F2>, but will go no further - it just freezes. Both Ubuntu and Puppy fail to either install or run from disc, so I'm beginning to suspect the problem is more... complicated than an out of date BIOS. Discs are cheap, so I'll give one of the other options above a crack at it and then perhaps haul the box out to the curb for the weekly pick up. Computers are not my friends this week it seems. Matt Deres (talk) 18:42, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I had a lot of trouble a while back installing Ubuntu on a relatively old secondhand computer: the problem turned out to be the CD drive - out of my four second-hand drives, the Ubuntu CD was only happy to install using one (counter-intuitively, the oldest). 213.122.39.88 (talk) 22:20, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

External drives that appear to be internal

Dear Wikipedians:

This has been a problem that bugged me for a long time:

At times I find opening up the computer, put in new hard drive, etc, to be a major hassle. Unfortunately, so far all the "canonical buses" are internal -- by which I mean the PATA and SATA interfaces. I know that Linux can be installed and booted off of external devices such as USB stick. However, I googled and found that it takes a lot of hacking to isntall Windows XP on a USB stick.

I'm wondering if there is a solution that would allow me to install Windows XP (and all operating systems for that matter) transparently (i.e. no hacking) onto an external storage device that lies OUTSIDE the system chassis and is powered independently.

What I mean is that as far as I'm aware, there are three external buses used for storage devices:

• USB
• Firewire
• eSATA

I'm wondering if :

1. Are eSATA drives recognized and treated in the same way as internal SATA drives? (That is, can WinXP be installed onto eSATA devices with no hacking necessary).

2. Are there any other alternative bus architecture that I'm unaware of that would allow me to accomplish the effect of being able to install and boot OS off of external devices?

3. Is there a way of plugging in an expansion slot device (like extra USB port hookup) that translates internal IDE cable signals into an external USB/Firewire signal so that all my USB sticks transparently become USB devices (because the system has no way to tell what's at the other end of the IDE cable, as far as it's concerned it's a perfectly legal IDE hard drive).

4. Or, better yet, is there someway of FOOLING the system/OS into thinking that a USB/Firewire device is a proper internal PATA/SATA device?

Thanks.

174.88.240.61 (talk) 22:17, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

There are probably some hacks, but you probably need to check if your motherboard will boot from these devices. Many new BIOS will boot from USB. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:42, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I also did some digging aruond myself and found out that eSATA does exactly what I want to: internal and eSATA appear EXACTLY the same (i.e. as internal) to the system, and therefore to WinXP and all other OS. As a perk, eSATA also has beat all other external buses (USB, 1394) in speed by roughly one order of magnitude ;) I'm going eSATA! 70.52.150.227 (talk) 01:56, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

September 8

Algorithmns to measure how closely two short sections of text match

I want to write a program that parses downloaded bank statements. This would include comparing text strings of up to about 50 characters long with another similar text string, or perhaps a whole group of similar text strings. What algorithmn could I use to measure how similar the two compared text strings are? The result would be a number scale that at one extreme means an exact match, at the other no match at all. Perhaps such an algoithmn may be similar to those which match mispelt words - how do they work? 78.149.167.102 (talk) 00:04, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Levenshtein distance is a good article to start with; there are several articles in the same area linked to at the bottom of that article. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:26, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Hamming distance is another - but a lot depends on what your desired kind of similarity is...if you look for precise binary differences - then a single letter missing from one string towards the start will make the strings totally different from that point onwards - when from a "human" perspective, they are almost identical. Two interchanged letters is another common typo that you might want to consider to be a 'minimal' change. Two strings might be identical but one is in uppercase and the other lower - not one character matches! You might also want to consider using a Soundex approach - which makes two strings that SOUND similar come out similar in comparisons...handy when a message has been relayed by phone and typed by someone who doesn't spell so well! But it depends on what you want and why. SteveBaker (talk) 03:29, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

For things like bank statements it may also be useful to compare similarity of numerical values, for example saying $100 is closer to $99.99 than to $1000 or $900. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:18, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia

I'm not sure where to ask this question so I picked this section. How much data is stored in Wikipedia? I'm curious to know. Thanks for any information. NeoJustin (talk) 07:50, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Text only, or including media (e.g. pictures)? Only en.wikipedia.org, or *.wikipedia.org? Do you want to include wiktionary.org, and other projects as well? If you only count the pure textual content (with formatting) in en.wikipedia.org, you might use the last dump of the database as a measure. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 07:53, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking en.wikipedia.org and everything including pictures. Any breakdown would be nice. I was thinking it must be like trillions and trillions of bytes of data. I'll look at the link. NeoJustin (talk) 08:08, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The dump doesn’t seem to provide a total byte count, only 17,449,963 pages of which 2,404,861 pages are in English. If a “page” is, on average, about 10KB (this is just a guess – someone might have done some research on article length?) then the total in the English Wikipedia would be around 2.5 GB, but the last dump on September 4th was 9.7GB compressed, which could expand to nearly 200GB including talk pages and user pages. Can anyone narrow down the discrepancy?

By way of comparison, The U.S. Library of Congress Web Capture team has claimed that "As of May 2009, the Library has collected almost 100 terabytes of data", and, according to Kevin Kelly of the New York Times, "the entire written works of humankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages" would amount to 50 petabytes of data. Google processes about 20 petabytes of data per day. The big advantages of Wikipedia are its ready accessibility and its relevance (usually) Dbfirs 08:55, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

So all the articles on the English Wikipedia would be less than 200 GB. Interesting... I could download it all onto my computer (if I had a reason). NeoJustin (talk) 17:49, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether that dump included pictures (probably not if they reside in commons). Are there any Wikipedia experts reading this who can check on my guesses? Dbfirs 22:54, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Turn the Windows search index off

how

Load Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services - Scroll down to "Windows Search" and double-click to open. Click stop and then change the startup state to "Disabled" to stop it from restarting. This will obviously have a knock on effect on the performance of anything trying to use Windows Search. ZX81 ^talk 19:11, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Vision client

Is there any way to turn it off without my teacher knowing?Accdude92 (talk) (sign) 13:21, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Probably not, if they've set it up reasonably intelligently. (I'm assuming they don't give you access to the Program Files, Control Panel, or an unencumbered Task Manager). And even if you could, if you got caught, there would probably be severe penalties regarding computer "hacking" and other such things. You'll have a whole, long life to goof around on the computer — surely you can make it through a few months of school. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:52, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

As 98.217 mentioned, unless there is a serious flaw in the software and setup, you will not be able to circumvent it while it is running. But there are other ways to work around such software locks. As mentioned above, try not to get yourself in trouble; schools sometimes overreact to any minor digital deviance with legal threats and a variety of other hassles.

The following advice applies in general to a machine you wish to unlock, which you have physical access to. A common adage is that "physical access to the machine" trumps every software security methodology, but this is not strictly true. A skilled systems engineer can set up so many levels of protection.

You could conceivably reboot the machine with a Live CD. This will circumvent almost every software protection on the local machine. But, a few technical caveats come to mind. But, if the machine is running a Trusted Platform Module, or some other pre-boot hardware lock, (including certain setups with encrypted hard disk drives), the machine may refuse to boot any unauthorized software. In fact, there may be a pre-boot BIOS password at power-up, which will deny you the ability to boot from disk or CD. Even if you successfully circumvent these and boot a Live CD, you're not in the clear yet. The network may be configured to deny access to any machine which isn't running exactly as it was configured.

If such draconian technological protections were actually in place, attempting to circumvent them would be technically challenging and would certainly not win you any points with your teacher.

As always, though, the best way to circumvent a computer security system is social engineering. See if you can volunteer to work with the computer or IT department as an extra-curricular activity. It will be a good learning experience, and you will probably gain fuller access to the computers and the network. The "best way" to "break in" to a system is to politely ask permission and earn the privilege to use it. Nimur (talk) 15:04, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Short answer to your question is "No" As a Computer teacher, I use vision, and I've had students try to disconnect... if they are sucessful I see an indication on the classroom overview so I can check on that student personally. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 16:25, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

php html

I have a php script that generates a page from it's flat file database when I visit a url such as "example.php?page=2". I would like it to also create a .html page on the server so that the php is not being queried constantly to view the page from the php. What would be the best way to do this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.99 (talk) 14:15, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Why? If you save an html page, it's no longer dynamic, which is the point of that setup. And you could have it automatically generate one, but it would be easier to load it and copy the HTML source code from the browser, then just upload that. Ale_Jrb^talk 15:13, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I think the OP wants to cache the generated pages for a time, perhaps for performance reasons. This is precisely what Wikipedia does. Wikipedia's caching is done using the squid proxy. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:18, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I am aware that caches exist, and indeed that Wikipedia uses one ;). However, while you could technically call saving a static page in your web directory is a form of caching, it really isn't. It would be completely useless to simply save the page - you would have to direct users there. To do that, you would need a dynamic script (or a separate caching server/program) to direct requests there - in most cases, this is no more efficient than simply retrieving a page from the database in the first place, and databases are often (usually?) more efficient than file writes.

It might just be worthwhile if the page in question is performing lots of complicated calculations, but it would still then be better just to cache results in a database and display them directly. And the question says that the original script is just displaying a page - as in '?page=2'. PHP is efficient enough that doing this dynamically is superior in most standard situations to periodically performing a file write to save the HTML, and then redirecting users there.

And for the example of Wikipedia, it generates everything dynamically - it is the separate server software, squid, that performs the caching. Imagine if the Wiki web directory (SVN) had a static HTML page for every article... Ale_Jrb^talk 15:46, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I do this for sites similar to Wikipedia. Users edit content. When they edit the content, I don't just update the database. I generate the entire HTML and replace the html file on the main website. The public hits static HTML pages. However, the site is dynamic in the sense that it is easily updated online by the users. Of course, these pages do not have truly dynamic content that changes based on time of day or browsing history of the user. -- kainaw™ 15:40, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, that sounds like pretty bad practise to me - you're merging several jobs into one. If you feel the need to have a cache, which only really improves performance on extremely busy sites, you should have a proper cache server - or failing that a cache script that stores requests and responses, and redirects users. Dynamically re-saving HTML pages when someone changes your content isn't the way I'd do things, though I suppose if it works for you, that's fine :). Ale_Jrb^talk 15:49, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Caching is very good practice for sites that don't update constantly. It can save a huge amount of processing on the back end. It's not very hard to develop good caching procedures. I'm not sure where you got the idea that caches are bad, but they aren't, and nearly everybody uses them. Dynamically generating a complex page for each user is not a good idea if you can avoid it. (Does taking up processing power matter? Yes, if you have a lot of users, and yes, if you are co-located, where processes that go over 1-2% of the total CPU can get you disabled temporarily. Running multiple MySQL queries, for example, can easily do that if you are not careful about optimizing them.) Complicated scripts like WordPress can be sped up dramatically with caching, for example.--98.217.14.211 (talk) 15:56, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, caching is effective. That's why large sites invest significant resources in cache servers. But if you update your site so infrequently, and it has so few pages, that you consider a script that dynamically saves static HTML pages directly into your web directory for people to view a good thing, then your site would be fine being solely static. A proper cache acts as a proxy between the content server and the user - for most sites, it's on a different machine. Wikipedia is an excellent example - the squid (cache) servers are most definitely not PHP scripts that recreate static HTML whenever you perform an edit. Is that how you would cache wordpress? If so, yikes.

Caching properly is a good thing. That method of caching is (usually) not. See the difference? In a situation where the potential bottleneck is lots of database queries, a far better method would be a system like memcached. Ale_Jrb^talk 17:50, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

It depends on the usage. Many of the projects that I work on have one or two changes per month. The entire point behind the PHP-based online admin is to keep them from calling me to change a phone number or add a new employee name to a list. Of course, they still call and ask how to make the change. -- kainaw™ 15:53, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Heh - the danger of the layman. :) Ale_Jrb^talk 17:50, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

You could easily write a function that, before being called, would check if there was an existing HTML file in the directory, and if so, output its contents, and if not, generate it, and then output its contents. Whenever you updated the flat file, you'd just delete (either manually or algorithmically) the existing HTML file to clear the cache. Depending on the complexity of generating the page, this could easily deliver higher performance. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 15:56, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

woah! lots of answers :) But how exactly do I do this? What is the code I have to enter into my php file to make it do this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.99 (talk) 18:56, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

It is not a line of code. It is an entire program (possibly hundreds of lines of code). I seriously doubt anyone is going to flood this page with tons of code. As for caching - that is separate from PHP. You install a caching mod in your webserver. As for writing web pages, you just use fopen and fputs. -- kainaw™ 19:36, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

ok, sorry. I am absolutely clueless with php, I thought it would just be a simple matter of telling the script to make a actual .html file out of the html code it sends to the browser when a page is viewed. my bad —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.99 (talk) 19:43, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Screenshots From Games

I'm thinking of making a blog/diary based on some of the wargames I play regularly. It's more of a private account of certain scenarios I've played and how certain little dramas within those scenarios played out (e.g. defense of a certain building by a certain unit; assault on an enemy position using a particular combination of forces; etc). and I was wondering if it would be possible to get multiple screen shots without leaving the game. I would take a bunch of screen shots, then organize them after the battle and post them on the blog. Is there any software that does this (i.e. run side-by-side with a game, with hotkeys to take screen shots, and said screen shots will be saved to a clipboard or auto-saved)? TIA!! --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 18:21, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Fraps. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:29, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Excellent! Just what I needed, thanks! --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 18:55, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Processor comparison

As per my previous posts detailing my recent bad luck with computers, I've decided to throw in the towel and simply buy a new system. The place I normally buy from (www.neutron.ca) allows me to customize my system piece by piece and I'm out of step with how processors are compared. On the system I'm looking at, the cost will be about the same for either of these two setups: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.00 GHz, 6 MB, 1333 MHz and Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 2.66 GHz, 4 MB 1333 MHz. My computer gets intermittent heavy use (graphically intensive games, multitasking between videos, web, other progs), but is not a work machine. That is, when it gets used, it tends to get used pretty roughly, but it also lies fallow most of the day. Which setup can handle that kind of work better? Or is the difference between them more subtle than that? Matt Deres (talk) 19:17, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

If you do more multitasking, the Quad core processor will allow your system to feel more responsive while the Core 2 Duo has more raw "horsepower." Either way, you can't go wrong, and both will be plenty fast. (Personally I'd go for the quad core). When dealing with games, your graphics card is going to pull all the weight, so go for something reasonably new (GTX 200 line for nVidia) and you'll be relatively futureproofed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.131.39.6 (talk) 19:34, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

They only offer ATI cards, so mine will be a Radeon HD 4670 (1 GB), which should also have lots of horsepower. Given that it's a higher end graphics card, would that make the quad core the smarter choice? Let the quad core work the multi-tasking and let the Radeon handle the games? Matt Deres (talk) 19:44, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Modern games are surprisingly well multithreaded; I think you will see a strong performance boost from the quad-core, even if it is mildly weaker in "raw horsepower" per core. Nimur (talk) 20:22, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The ATI card you picked is plenty good, I'm just more familiar with the nVidia line (hence my example before I signed in). Nimur also makes a good point in that many games are multithreaded, though any modern dual or quad core CPU won't have any problems as the CPU isn't used as extensively as the graphics card in gaming. You will mainly see a difference in the fact that you can run relatively CPU intensive tasks behind the game while seeing a negligible performance hit to the game. I've encoded video while playing games on my similarly configured computer, and it's done just fine. No matter what processor you ultimately choose, you will not be disappointed. Caltsar (talk) 20:34, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

September 9

help me make my keyboard quiet please?

I live in a dorm and sometimes stay up late. I worry that my typing might bother my room mate. Is there a way to make my keyboard quieter without buying a new keyboard? (eg: would sticking paper between the keys soften the impact of the key on the back of the keyboard?)

I googled this and all i got were keyboards to buy and one ps3 forum that told the person asking my question to just buy a keyboard!

Any thoughts would be great! Thanks!

137.81.113.21 (talk) 06:03, 9 September 2009 (UTC)