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September 24

Does Microsoft Office 2007 product activation keep track of uninstallations?

Hello,

I'm considering the purchase of Microsoft Office 2007, but I've noticed that the retail version available in stores says that the program can only be installed on 3 computers. Does this mean 3 computers at one time can be running MS Office using the same product key, or does it mean that 3 installations on a given key are permitted (which would be more restrictive)?

To clarify: if the user installs MS Office on one computer, I assume the product activation system notes that one copy of Office has been installed using the user's specific activation key. However, if the user uninstalls MS Office from this computer at a later date (e.g. he or she is getting rid of the computer, it has a virus and needs to be formatted, or one of several other potential scenarios), does the product activation system record this and decrease the number of installed copies of MS Office associated with the user's activation key by one?

On a related note, if the user's computer is destroyed before MS Office can be uninstalled (e.g. by a house fire), has the user irrevocably lost one of their permitted installations, or is there a way to contact Microsoft and deal with this?

I've tried to find the specifics of Office 2007's product activation online, but there seems to be no concrete answer to this question one way or the other (Microsoft's website for Office 2007 was decidedly unhelpful). As such, any information regarding this would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

- 67.70.122.28 (talk) 00:30, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

3 computers does mean 3 computers at the same time, and from my experience uninstallations are not tracked, so if you install the program on 3 computers, remove it from 1 and try to install it on another, it will deny activation. If this happens, a phone number should be shown on screen which you can call, tell the Microsoft staff member that you have uninstalled 1 copy, that only 2 installations are now active, and they will give you a code to bypass activation. This answer comes from Canada, but I would imagine that the process is similar or the same everywhere. Vancouver Outlaw (Speak) 01:46, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

No, CD's such as Norton 360, or games such as Team Fortress 2 have always kept track of un-installations so I would assume Microsoft Office does as well. warrior4321 04:03, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I prefer preventing the program from keeping track in the first place. You own the program now, forget about the originator's terms. Mac Davis (talk) 03:02, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's not true. You own a licence to USE the program (subject to the agreements of the licence), not the program itself. There's a big difference. ZX81 ^talk 13:16, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

UNIX dd command

Hello, I was wondering what dd does with the output when "of" is not specified. I ran:

dd if=/dev/zero bs=1000
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1000 count=400

Did I create anything? I know that this writes to stdout when of is not specified, what does that mean? Also, does anyone know of an easy way to create a large file (not a sparse file, I want to actually reserve disk space) without actually writing anything? Thanks, Brusegadi (talk) 06:55, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Stdout means standard output, that's the console if you haven't piped it to somewhere else. You didn't see anything because you used /dev/zero, try some text file and what happens should be more visible. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 08:59, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)If you don't specify an of, dd sends its output to stdout, which will mean to your terminal. If you do dd if=/dev/urandom then you'll see screens full of garbage. Because you were reading from /dev/zero, those zeros are sent to the terminal, which ignores them. I don't know of a way (and I don't think there is a way) of reserving disk space without actually writing, and in the past I've used dd for the job myself. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 09:07, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

To actually take up disk space, just use dd as you did. Sparse files require the use of the sparse or seek option. 82.75.185.247 (talk) 19:58, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

You didn't create anything. If you want to see whatyour output is then try using "hexdump -C" or maybe "xxd". Either of those will show you the actual bitstream you're creating. Shadowjams (talk) 09:15, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I formatted the part of your question containing the two dd calls, by adding a leading space, which is useful if you want the output to appear exactly as it does in the edit window where you enter the text. As it was renedered, it was confusing, becuase both dd calls were printed on the same line. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 14:54, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you all, you were very helpful and informative :) Brusegadi (talk) 05:44, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Password vault for OS X

I run OS X 10.4.11. I would like to use a password vault like Password Safe. Does anyone have any recommendations as to which to use? --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:20, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I like 1Password myself. I got it at a deep discount ages ago so I have not compared recent password managers lately. OS X's keychain also acts in a similar way as Password safe if you don't want to pay money for it (you just have to make sure to lock the keychain when you're done to keep it completely secure!) Caltsar (talk) 14:30, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I use KeePassX on Linux, which also runs on OS X. It's been fine for me. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:33, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

1Password and Wallet are good. I got 'em from MacHeist :) Mac Davis (talk) 03:00, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Apple filing system; changing search sort parameters from last opened to date modified

I cannot tell you how much time I lose and things I can't find because when I perform searches on my mac it sorts by "Last Opened" rather than by "Date Modified". I'm on an IMac G5 (Powermac12,1, PowerPC G5 (3.1)) running Mac OS X. version 10.5.7. When I go to my normal filing system screen menu, where I have documents such as word/excel/pdfs etc., the default sorts are: Name, Date Modified, Size & Kind. However when I go to the search window at the top of the screen and type in a search term, the sort categories on the results of the search are limited to: Name, Kind and Last Opened. Is there any way to change Last Opened to Date Modified (or add Date Modified as a fourth category to sort by? Thanks in advance.--173.68.34.143 (talk) 14:35, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

How To Find Out When A User Last Logged In To A PC On Win XP?

How is it possible, if at all, from another user account (or from the login page) to find out the last time a particular user logged into a PC running Win XP? --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 15:06, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

You can read the System Event Log. Microsoft's knowledge base has an article: How to view and manage event logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP. You might have to set group-policy to log user-login events (depending on your version of Windows XP). Even if the actual logins are not logged, you might see "footprints" in other system events (such as program launches and starting of system services) that indicate a user began running the system at that time. To enable logging of the actual login sessions, you need to enable login auditing, as described in this Microsoft document. Nimur (talk) 15:18, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

The date/time stamp on the file used to store the user registry hive is usually a good indicator of that user's last session. The relevant files are "C:\Documents and Settings\username\NTUSER.DAT" and "C:\Documents and Settings\username\ntuser.dat.LOG". You'll normally require Administrator privileges to see another user's files. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:28, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Choise of motherboard (ASUS P5Q-EM Motherboard)

Hello there, I am looking for better motherboard for my gaming rig. Here's my specs (except motherboard) :

• Intel core 2 quad 9400

• DDR2 RAM 4 GB ( 800 MHz)

• PSU 750W

• XFX ATI Radeon 4890 1 GB or XFX 9800 GT 512 MB

• HDD 320 gb

• Chasis - thermaltake chaser VI

I was planning to get this mobo but confused with the review in newegg (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131336&cm_re=ASUS_P5Q-EM_Motherboard-_-13-131-336-_-Product and cons) as it runs too hot during gaming and some other issue. I did not find any hitpipe on this board. I noticed two blue colored box on this board and one of them contain "Asus" name on top. What are those boxes? A user from newegg mentioned that Vista 64 bit sp1 takes to much time to install on this board and even it hangs the system.

I have XFX 750i SLI mobo which is causing freezing problem from the very first day when I built up my system and tested system on other mobo and found problem with 750i SLI Mobo. I don't need cross fire or SLI enabled platform, just need a stable system which will run both ATI and Nvidia High end cards smoothly. Any advice for getting this new mobo would be appreciated. Thank you--119.30.36.60 (talk) 15:34, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I have a similar setup and I've been happy with a rather inexpensive MSI Micro-ATX motherboard I bought. Look for something with the correct number of expansion slots for your needs and make sure the FSB and memory standards match up. A higher price doesn't always mean the motherboard is better, and heatpipes are not always necissary on the board. You could improve performance by finding a board with higher cockerate memory, but then you'd need to invest in new memory. Newegg is very good for finding the correct motherboard based on components you already own (you may need advanced search). Caltsar (talk) 19:09, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Is there any reason why you need integrated graphics or m-ATX form factor? I have a P5Q-E and I've never had much problem with it. Just looking at Newegg even the P5Q-Deluxe (open-box?) is cheaper than the board you chose, so unless you really need the G45 or the m-ATX form factor I don't see why you'd choose that. PS: 4890 is in a completely different class to a 9800GT. --antilived^{T | C | G} 20:00, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

The specific board I chose was on sale at the time from another retailer, and I wasn't recommending it specifically, but I was mentioning that it is not necissary to buy an expensive board such as those targeted toward gamers. A board that is cheap and gets good reviews will generally last just as long and perform just as well as the "top of the line" equivilant board of compatible specs. Everything the op has listed will fit onto a mATX board, but if he can find a full sized ATX board for less, that would be great! Also, having integrated graphics on a board often adds little to no cost, and it is found on almost all of the cheaper motherboards I've come across. Boards built to use a PCI Express graphics card and no integrated graphics are often targeted at a higher end market and come with a similar markup. Obviously this is not the case 100% of the time, but I've always found it easier to look for boards regardless of the inclusion or lack of inclusion of a built in graphics card. (Minor Edit) Indentation made me believe you were replying to me. My points still stand regardless of who they're aimed at. Caltsar (talk) 20:30, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks for the reply. I don't need integrated graphics or m-ATX form factor. Well, I have just found this board in new egg (Gigabyte GA-EP43-DS3L). Shall my system match with this mobo? Any thoughts ? thank you--202.56.7.137 (talk) 21:20, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Download some pages, links and content from Wikipedia

We are a group of researchers and would like to build a mathematical model for change in the Wikipedia network. To begin this, we intend to focus on a small subset of the Wikipedia site (pages under the "Statistics" subcategory). The analysis requires three kinds of information:

1. a list of all pages under the Statistics subcategory, with information on which pages are linked to which other pages within that subcategory;

2. a list of the dates on which each of these pages and links was first established (history or date stamp);

3. a file for each page that contains the text in the current entry (which we shall use to create a "bag of words" model).

Are there any tools that Wikipedia currently has that would help us in download this specific information?

Thanks 152.3.22.21 (talk) 16:09, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

You can get the raw data two ways:

a)You can download database dump - as you care about the history, you'd need to download the entire history, which is a pretty huge file. Then you'd read that into MySQL, and run queries on the result.

b)Alternatively you can use the MediaWiki API and query just the stuff you want. As you want a small subset, this is probably the better approach.

But I'd caution that the creation date of an individual article isn't nearly as informative as you'd think (and may very well confound what you want, or at least render it a partially-manual process). Many articles are forked out of existing articles (so maybe once there was just a "statistics" article, then someone took the "Descriptive statistics" section and made the Descriptive statistics article, and so on. There isn't a good machine-readable way of tracking that (people really should credit the originating article when they're forking, but they sometimes don't, and there is no standard rubric for you to parse to detect that). In general this is a major obstacle to analyses of Wikipedia such as you propose: mediawiki is very good at tracking changes within a given article, but motion of stuff between articles (which is very very common indeed) is entirely an untracked, manual process. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:49, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you guys at Duke? I recognize the 152.* IP ... - You might find Category:Wikipedia_resources_for_researchers useful. Often, when research has been done with Wikipedia, it is best to do it out in the open, with active communication among the research team and the Wikipedia contributors; but some research needs a "double-blind" methodology. The MediaWiki API linked above is a bit heavy-handed, since you just want the Page History data (this is easy to get, either by screen-scraping or manual checking). Nimur (talk) 19:11, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

@ User:Nimur, whois says that is a Duke University IP. :) --[Belinrahs | 'sup? | what'd I do?] 17:13, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Espon P-4000 and Linux?

Is the Epson P-4000 compatible with Linux? My Creative Zen Vision W doesn't appear as a mounted device under Linux, but Gnomad2 recognises it. I've been thinking of getting an Epson P-4000, as it has a 80 GB hard drive compared to the Zen Vision W's 30 GB one, but I'm not sure if it will actually work under Linux. JIP | Talk 18:16, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Processor failure or something more benign?

Lately I have been having bizarre crashes on Windows Vista (although it happened once when I had XP last month), the entire system just stops with the sound quickly stuttering then cutting out, no hard drive activity, and the screen is frozen in place - no blue screen of death or anything. The system responds to nothing, so I am forced to reboot. Initially it only did it within minutes of me starting to play The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, so I figured it was a problem with the game. But now it does it when I'm screen-sharing over Skype while running NESten (an NES emulator). Just now it did it after only 5 minutes of screen-sharing.

Now I'm worried that something is wrong with my processor or something, but I hope there is some kind of simple solution.

My system specs: Pentium 4 HT, 2 GB of RAM, ATI Radeon X1650 (AGP), running Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit. Nothing on the system is overclocked or anything.

Chris16447 (talk) 21:38, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

This sort of crash / lockup is almost always due to a software bug and not due to hardware malfunction, in my experience. If you want to do a thorough memory test anyway, download memtest86, make a boot disc, boot from it, and let it run through a cycle's worth of testing. Crashes under XP were more frequent than under Vista because of Vista's improved driver model. I bet the problem is with crappy video card drivers. ATI and NVidia suck at writing drivers that never crash, seemingly. (Granted, it is a difficult task.) Download the latest video driver available for your video card and see if that fixes it. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:08, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Very likely a video driver problem; Skype's video capture system relies on hardware video acceleration, which may fail if you are running other software (including the NES emulator) which may also have some form of video acceleration. Consider checking this first - find the latest version of your video driver, and see if the failures persist. Nimur (talk) 18:23, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

September 25

Dual Quad Core i7 possible?

Is it possible to build a computer with two quad core Intel i7 chips (8 cores total)? Or is a Xeon better suited for multiple chips on a motherboard? --68.103.141.28 (talk) 00:23, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't know of any technical reason why you can't. However, you'd need a motherboard that supports two i7 processors and as far as I know there aren't any commercially available (yet?). I'm happy to be proved wrong though! ZX81 ^talk 00:52, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

True Crime nyc ps2 - editing

I own it on ps2 , is there a way to mod it by using some kind of software or an application? I really want to choose another player model to play as.

IS THERE ANY F***ing way to EDIT PS2 GAMES!? 85.220.102.101 (talk) 17:53, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Macbook broken screen, please help

The screen on Justin's macbook is messed up. Here's a picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hadakushal/3939622349/

Any ideas what happened here? Will just replacing the LCD screen fix the problem? Maybe? Need more information to answer?

I was wondering if buying a non-Apple part would be worth it. This one http://cgi.ebay.com/screen-13-3-lens-for-Apple-Mac-macbook-13-3-inch_W0QQitemZ280399759286QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item414920c7b6&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14 is $24. The cheapest ones that claim to be original part run $75 dollars. I also found this guide http://www.ifixit.com/pdf/guide_536_en.pdf and while not easy, it looks straightforward.

Looking forward to your reply ... Kushal (talk) 11:47, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Jeez, that looks not so good. What happened to it? You usually don't just wake up one day and have it look like that. I'm not really sure what the issue is—I would take it first to an Apple store, show it to them, have them diagnose it. Then you can figure out whether you want to try and do the labor at home. It's a real chore to replace the screen, as you can imagine, but if you can do it yourself, it's obviously cheaper than having them do it. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:26, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I think you are right, Mr.98. I never asked the complete details in this case. I am not entirely sure how it started. However, once it did, it just kept growing until it became what it is today. :( We don't have Apple Care anymore. Is it worth it to drive to an Apple Store? The closest one here is just shy of a quarter to three hour drive. :( Kushal (talk) 09:56, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

That looks like a hardware problem with the screen itself. If replacing the screen isn't doable, you could also hook the laptop up to an external monitor, although obviously at the cost of reducing portability. StuRat (talk) 12:59, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

That is a possibility, StuRat. I guess I would be needing a mini DV port adapter for whichever monitor I choose. ... maybe something that doubles as a television even! I will probably query Justin about it. He likes taking the computer to class and such though (he is in college). I would probably want to go with the least expensive solution, though. and nothing seems to beat a 25 dollar screen. ... any ideas? Kushal (talk) 18:06, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not speaking from experience on this, but it seems highly unlikely to me that the $25 screen is going to be an adequate replacement. Sounds too good to be true. I would seriously look for some reviews. It's only the cheapest option if a) you don't count your own time as valuable, and b) it doesn't immediately break again or cause other difficulties. If I were going to replace the screen, I would probably opt for original parts, esp. with Apple (where everything is about original, proprietary parts).

Taking it to the Apple store won't cost anything—they ought to be able to tell you if it's a screen problem or something else. (Even just hooking it to an external monitor would tell you something, as well.) A cheap LCD monitor will cost about $120. The Mini-DVI->DVI or VGA plug costs $19, usually. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:27, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks guys. I found a decent Asus 21" monitor on Amazon for ~ USD 150 and Mini-DV to 24 pin for about fifteen dollars more. It is starting to look like a very good alternative. Kushal (talk) 04:48, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

recovery shutdown

i have aprblem that is when i start my laptop the windows vista is loaded smoothly but sometimes i heard asound like fast ticking the ablue screen pops up showing shut down recovery and stuff like dumping physicsl memry.what do you think the problem is?

First, back up everything on your hard disk, probably most easily done by copying it all to an external USB hard disk during one of those times you are able to successfully boot Vista. The problem is probably a corrupted OS, though before you try to address the problem, you might as well download memtest86, create a boot CD, and boot up your computer with it, letting it run a complete memory test for a cycle. This will highlight problems with your computer's RAM, which could be the cause of the blue screen problem you're seeing. Then I would start from scratch: Reformat your hard disk, deleting everything on it, and reinstall everything from scratch. I would normally first suspect corruption of the OS for some reason. (When you reinstall Vista, be sure to make an "admin" account that has administrator rights, and a "user" account with no administrator rights; and use the "user" account whenever you use the computer. This helps prevent viruses, trojan horses, and other malware from infecting your OS in the future.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:06, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I would guess that the "fast ticking" is a hard disk trying to seek and failing. It seems likely that it would be better to grab what's possible of the hard disk and if the OP can do this, to replace it. Otherwise they might be looking at a new machine. --Phil Holmes (talk) 11:06, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Recovering Last Session After a Crash on Firefox and a Dumb Mistake

I'm running firefox 3.5.3 and had a crash. Unfortunately, when it restarted I accidentally clicked the 'start new session' button rather than the 'restore my previous tabs' button. Now I'm staring at google instead of the 10s of research pages I had open in mid project. Is there any way I can get that last session back?

Your history may still contain those pages even if the session crashed, (depending on how the crash happened). You might consider bookmarking those pages as well; you can use the new "bookmark all" feature to save an entire browsing session with a single "bookmark". Nimur (talk) 21:05, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a solution to restore your lost tabs, but I would highly recommend the Session Manager addon to prevent something like this happening again

replace only new and updated files

I have all of my files in a folder, with a nice and organized directory structure. I want to keep a copy of this folder on a couple of computers, and use an external hard drive to sync it up. What I'd like to do is at the end of the day, just drag the top level folder onto the external drive and have the system only copy the new files and only overwrite the files which have been updated. The computers in question are using vista, and xp.

When I try this in XP, the message I get is "If the files in the existing folder have the same name as the files in the folder you are moving or copying, they will be replaced. Do you still want to move or copy the folder?". So I don't have the option of only replacing files that are new or updated, and don't want to waste my time overwriting files I don't need to. In Vista the exact message is different, but the result is the same: no conditional copying command.

Is there any way to do this? Do I need to use another (preferably free) program besides windows explorer? Thanks for the help mislih 15:36, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, Windows Vista is actually a lot better than XP in this regard. Explorer asks you if you want to merge the folders. But still there is no "copy only newer versions" option. However, writing such a program is almost trivial, so surely there are quite a few available on the Internet. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:24, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I use xcopy to do this. If you use the following syntax: "xcopy /s /d /y /c sourcefiles destination" you should get what you want. If you save this as a .bat (Batch file) then all you need do is double click the batch file to synch up. As an explanation, /s does all subdirectories, /d does what you want - copies new/newer files, /y suppresses confirmations and /c supresses errors. HTH. --Phil Holmes (talk) 16:44, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Nobody has yet mentioned Windows Live Sync, which is the official tool from Microsoft and is included on newer versions of Windows. If you wish to use the Microsoft servers as the provider, you are limited in total storage space; but if you choose to run your own server using the Windows Server, you can operate an arbitrarily large data synchronization. You can also read about the Microsoft Sync Framework for more industrial-strength synchronization. Nimur (talk) 18:16, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

If using xcopy, /h (copy hidden and system files) may also be useful. Run xcopy/? to see all the switches, and what they do. Also you might want to try robocopy, which includes all sorts of extra capabilities. It comes with Vista, but I believe it will also work on XP. Again, /? should show you all the switches (and there are a lot of them!). Mitch Ames (talk) 01:27, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Or Teracopy. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:27, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Inkspace

How can I use Inkspace? --ArgGeo (talk) 5:30 pm, Today (UTC+2) User talk:ArgGeo

Moved from WP:VP. Svick (talk) 16:18, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

First, you need to download it, instructions and links here. Here are the official tutorials. Do you have a specific problem? Nimur (talk) 16:40, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

For your future searching and such, you should note it's called Inkscape, not Inkspace. --Sean 20:54, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

How did they disable the back button?

Go to the Asheville Citizen-Times web site[1]. Look at any article that has more than one page. Read each article one page at a time. When you get to the last page, click on "Back". You only have to do it once.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:53, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

The hyperlinks are not to a URI, but instead serve to actuate a javascript tool to load new content. Such use is common on rich content websites (often using AJAX, DHTML, etc.), although it is discouraged by standards organizations like W3C because it results in stateful URIs. See the section in our HTTP article and also computational idempotence for more technical details about why such design is discouraged (these articles are fairly technical and theoretical - but they are conceptual ideas that are part of the HTTP and web architectural standard). This section, Protocol Parameters for the official HTTP specification, explains in technical detail why the news site Vchimpanzee linked is technically "broken" according to strict interpretation of standards - it uses the same URL to refer to multiple documents based on the user's Javascript state. Nimur (talk)

On a related note, to make printing out the articles cheaper, I copy and paste the text and put it in an email to myself with all the white space removed. The entire article appears even if I never go to the other pages.

On another site [2], there are links to other articles on the page with each article but when I copy and paste those articles the first few words of the actual article appear--not just the names of the articles! It's very annoying if I'm trying to save money, not to mention it makes the result harder to read.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:39, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Again, like many complex websites, they use JavaScript to override default behavior, including copy/paste. Nimur (talk) 20:57, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Note that in this case, "complex" is synonymous with "poorly designed, from a user's point of view." One should never use Javascript to override things like basic copy and paste behavior. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:48, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. What is to stop a user from disabling javascript just on that website? Kushal (talk) 10:01, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

That will make many such sites unusable, since they're usually not good at making their masterpieces "unobtrusive". Greasemonkey is a better solution in my experience. --Sean 11:02, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

UDP and throttling

Suppose I am playing a hypothetical first-person shooter that broadcasts my character's position by blasting out UDP packets over a Gigabit Ethernet LAN at maximum speed, saturating the network. This is awesome! All my friends' machines know precisely where I am, many times per second! Now suppose I connect my Gigabit Ethernet router to my DSL modem which has an uplink speed, typical as I understand it in the USA, of only 768Kbps. That's under 1/10th of 1% of the bandwidth I'm using for LAN play. How does the throttling occur? Does the router itself discard 99.9% of the UDP packets? Or does it perhaps discard a mere 90% of the packets and fire the other 10% of the packets to the DSL modem via its link at 100Mbps Fast Ethernet speed, and then the DSL modem in turn discards another ~93% of the resulting packets as it uploads them to my ISP's connection? And in all cases, how do the router and modem determine which UDP packets to discard? Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:17, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

What is the destination_ip_address set in these UDP packets? -- 87.115.106.169 (talk) 22:23, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

This is all hypothetical, so I guess it would be the IP address of some other guy playing against me, a few cities' distance away. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:52, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Games don't flood networks with an infinity of packets (at least not since Doom); indeed games are generally very economical, sending as few packets (and as small) as they can get away with (without causing jumpiness or obvious interpolation/extrapolation artifacts). Packet loss will occur only when the network is saturated for some other reason. -- 87.115.106.169 (talk) 23:04, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

In other words, the software of the game does the throttling, by sending an intelligent number of packets. Even if your connection is fast, the software will not blast out packets at megabytes-per-second data rates. It has been designed not to use (and not to need) this data rate.Nimur (talk) 23:25, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I am asking specifically about how exactly the router/DSL modem setup above would throttle a large amount of UDP data, not about how a well-designed (or even adequately-designed) game will handle the situation. I only mentioned my hypothetical game as an example, but it might as well be a video broadcast application. I am indeed asking about a situation where the network is totally flooded with UDP packets. Comet Tuttle (talk) 03:32, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

The throttling device (the DSL router in your case) will initially delay the packets and will then drop them once its queue is full. If you were usin TCP your sending process would not receive the ACKs to say they had been received and so would slow down. With UDP the network does not provide that feature, and so by default your process would continue sending them and they would be dropped by the router. A well designed process (the game) would communicate with the far end machine to check arrival and would slow down, like the TCP does - but the game writer would have to do this. --Phil Holmes (talk) 10:12, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

More about accessing a 1541 from a modern PC

So I've ordered an XM1541 adapter cable, but it hasn't arrived yet. I originally thought I could attach it to a modern PC with a parallel-to-USB adapter, but apparently those won't work. I do have another option - I just found out my father's company has at least one many years old laptop, which still has an old-style parallel port. I could, in theory, copy the files to that laptop if I borrowed it from my father's company. But how do I get them from there to my own system then? I'm not sure if the laptop has any USB ports, so memory sticks might not be an option. It has a CD-ROM drive, but I'm not sure if it's a recording drive. I couldn't get the laptop to connect to the Internet when I tried to help my father set it up at his home. A last resort would be to physically remove the laptop's hard drive and put it in my own computer, but I don't think you can do that with laptops, only with desktops. Do I have any other options? JIP | Talk 23:52, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't install hardware often, so I'm not always up to date with modern computer hardware. But if your computer has an available PCI slot, I think you could purchase and install a PCI parallel port card? Then you could use the XM1541 cable with your computer's new parallel port and avoid having to use a second computer at all. --Bavi H (talk) 01:41, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes it has available PCI slots. I'll just have to see where I can get a PCI parallel port card then. JIP | Talk 07:42, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Hey, wow! These are even available at Verkkokauppa.com so I don't even to have to order one from abroad! I found that trying to find a USB parallel port replicator is next to impossible, but apparently PCI parallel port replicators can be found like mushrooms in the rain, like we say here in Finland. Installing PCI devices is a bit trickier than simply plugging in the plug, but I've done it before many times, back in the days where EtherNet devices didn't come integrated into motherboards, but you had to buy and install them separately. JIP | Talk 07:49, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

If you did want to go down the "transferring by using the hard disk" route, you could get a USB->2.5" disk adapter. --Phil Holmes (talk) 10:18, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I ordered a PCI parallel port replicator from Verkkokauppa.com. Now I need to wait for both items to arrive, then load a 1541 driver for Linux from the... Internets, and then I should be in business! I just had a look at the box of Commodore 64 disks I have and went all nostalgic just from looking at them. There's about 100 of them, and with 330 kB each, it comes to 33 MB. That's one-thirtieth of the smallest-capacity USB memory stick on sale nowadays, and that would fit in my back pocket. JIP | Talk 17:48, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

But you can't double the capacity of a USB stick with a paper hole punch. 69.245.227.37 (talk) 23:15, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

The PCI parallel port replicator arrived today. I installed it without difficulty, and the computer booted back up all OK. I haven't actually tried to use it for anything. Still waiting for the XM1541 cable. JIP | Talk 16:42, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

September 26

Strange things happening to Windows XP clock.

For the last few days, maybe a week, strange things started to happen to the clock of my Windows XP. Sometimes it jumps forward or backward one hour, and sometimes it even jumps back and forth one full day. As I observed, I think it happens mostly when waking up from standby mode. Has anyone an idea what can cause this? I have firawall and antivirus, and just in case they let soemthing through, I googled a lot for malware which behaves like this, without any success. I use this system since around a year ago, and these strange things started happening only recently. --217.91.40.206 (talk) 10:44, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Time and date weirdness can be a result of the CMOS battery going dead, but that shouldn't happen on a year-old system... Xenon54 / talk / 13:39, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

It seems too organized for that. It's not resetting to 00:00, it changes from AM to PM, increases or decreases the day or the hour by one, but the month, year, and minutes are still correct. That's why I'm still suspecting some funny malware, a bug, or other software-related issue. However, I couldn't find anyone with similar symptoms by googling. --217.91.40.206 (talk) 15:19, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Could be changing to different time zones if the minutes and seconds stay the same. --h2g2bob (talk) 21:10, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with h2g2bob, it sounds (to me at least) as if it is switching the time zone. Try checking the time zone next time it happens. Thanks, gENIUS101 20:03, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Two fold laptop question - struggling m9750 Alienware laptop

Hello all. My long suffering Alienware m9750 laptop ius on the fritz again. When turned on, it begins to boot up for perhaps 1.5-2.5 seconds, and the fans give a hint of whirring, and then it turns off. Long term problem that sounds most like the fans failing to initialise but, it has happened before and when I left the laptop for a couple of days then came back to it, it switched on fine. The last time it did this, I left if for about a month in my laptop case while shopping for a new one - and I randomly returned to it one day and it worked perfectly. That was July 9th, and it has worked flawlessly until the other day. I'm not sure if a fan failure can manifest like that. I have a laptop cooling pad also which produces nice cooling air for it. Blasted thing, any thoughts?

Second thought. Failure of the Power-on self-test? I don't know what system it may use to understand what error code it may be reporting to me. SGGH ^ping! 14:11, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Secondly, in the opinions of the informed users here, what are some good, reputable laptop producing companies that still contruct their laptops from components they manufacture themselves, rather than 3rd party imports like Alienware does? Preferably good to high-end performance laptops of the visual kind. If I need to replace el Alienwareo, I am hoping to get something whrre third party component conflict and shoddy construction principles in the mould of the new Dell-Alienware merge aren't going to crop up (also want to get away from their dodgy customer services!). Thanks guys, SGGH ^ping! 13:21, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

You have a more serious problem than the fans. If a fan fails, the most that will usually happen, with a fairly recent system, is that the BIOS screen will pause at bootup and tell you there was a fan error. As with the post from yesterday about a failing laptop, your first priority is to back up all the data when you do get a good boot and a stable system. Then it's probably time for a new laptop, unfortunately. As for components, no laptop manufacturer manufactures their own components. Tempshill (talk) 16:34, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

It's already all backed up - as it worked yesterday morning for a while. It is also backed up, as this is a common occurence. What are some reliable laptop makes? 90.206.202.29 (talk) 20:35, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry that was me above. New development: While it was going through its 2-second boot-and-fail-malarky, I managed to pop the CD drive open and took out a CD that was left in there... and it carried on booting happily and is now working... is a CD being trapped in the drive giving it too much to do on boot up? SGGH ^ping! 21:36, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Depends how it's set up. Very often a computer is set up to boot from a CD and if no bootable CD is present then to boot from the hard drive. (This presents an obvious security risk if your computer is physically accessible to others.) If a CD is present and looks bootable but has a half-baked (and in practice unbootable) OS on it, then I'd expect just what you described above. With most computers you can alter the booting sequence, etc., via a submenu of the BIOS. (If the computer is where others can play with it, you may wish to restrict the options and password-protect the BIOS. But don't then do what I once did: forget the password.) -- Hoary (talk) 10:34, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Glad it's backed up. The usual suspects are Dell and Hewlett-Packard; I like the latter, and a friend of mine likes the former. Pick something with a long warranty, and double the warranty by purchasing with a credit card that doubles warranties (i.e. most of them). For what it's worth, there was a Wall Street Journal article yesterday or the day before in which it was claimed that HP is at war with other laptop manufacturers by lowering their prices; their profit margins are supposedly around 4% to 5% currently. Tempshill (talk) 04:01, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

The Dell I am using right now is definitely not made by Dell, and it is flaky -- though its spontaneous reboots occur only (ha ha) once a day or so. My other Dell never acts up (though Gnash running on it does). My nine-year-old Toshiba laptop remains utterly reliable, but Toshiba's new products look glossy and nasty (though for all I know they're fine underneath). My office-issue Fujitsu laptop is a dog, but a friend's very different Fujitsu is fine. My Apple laptop has appalling design faults, but other models seem good (if overpriced). Perhaps the brand means very little. -- Hoary (talk) 23:24, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

How to stop OpenOffice writer from splitting words at the ends of lines?

I have OpenOffice 3.1.0 and WinXP. I've copied some text that I typed into a Notepad file and pasted it into an existing document. OpenOffice for some unknown reason is often splitting words into two with a hyphen at the ends of lines. The words are ordinary short words. How can I stop it doing this? I want justified text with whole words only. I've tried chaging the font size - does not make any difference. Thanks 89.242.92.200 (talk) 13:36, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

It is doing it I suspect because the text is running outside the print margins on the sides of the page, and when your resize the text it is retaining the hyphens because by then they were already there. Perhaps expand your print margins before typing the sentence, rather than after? SGGH ^ping! 14:07, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I cannot imagine that altering the margins would make any difference. It is supposed to be able to justify the text within the margins. It has done on all previous occasions. 89.242.92.200 (talk) 14:19, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

In that case you have auto-hyphenation switched on. Hitting F11 should open your Stylesd and Formatting box. Right click on default and select modify, then click on the text flow tab. Then deselect automatically from the top and save the new preferences. That should stop it? SGGH ^ping! 14:38, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your help. Before reading your second responce, I copied the text from the open office document into Notepad, un-wordwrapped it (no hyphens found) then opened another OO document and copied the un-wrapped text into it. This time there has been no hyphening. I deleted the previous document and emptied the recycle bin, so sorry I do not know if what you suggested would work. Seems to have been a problem with the formatting of the original document. Thanks. 89.242.92.200 (talk) 15:57, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Best way to create small simple single-user no-frills database by non-programmer?

Long long ago when I used CP/M, it was easy to find database software that would allow you to design a simple on-screen form and create a simple database. But now there seems to be nothing available that can do this - at least no free software. (Some former freeware that could do this is no longer freeware). The database I have in mind involves entering information onto an on-screen form, and then choosing the form(s) to display based on searches on the various fields on the forms.

What would be the easiest no-pay way to create a database like this please?

Side-question - I can understand the simpler commands of SQL easily enough. But I understand that SQL is normally accessed through some other language. Are there any available front ends or "GUI"s that can make use of SQL without requiring that you learn another language as well? 89.242.92.200 (talk) 13:55, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

You might try OpenOffice.org Base. I have found it a bit too slow and clunky for personal use (and I already have and know Access so there's no real motivation to learn it), but its goal is to be something like Microsoft Access or FileMaker Pro, which are the pay versions of what you are looking for. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:04, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Is there any such thing as a self-contained database language now, as there used to be in the good old days? One that does not require you to learn another language as well, and that is not part of some huge multi-purpose package either? Edit: The xBase article lists two or three free database languages at the end. I'd be interested to hear of any SQL-like languages that are self-contained and can be used without another language. 89.242.92.200 (talk) 16:00, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Answer to side-question: There should be plenty of sql guis out there, eg pgadmin. --91.145.72.227 (talk) 18:45, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Are there any simpler ones please - PgAdmin looks fiendishly complicated. 78.151.116.146 (talk) 19:09, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

It isn't that complicated, but I admit it is not exactly zero-setup as you must install postgresql first. Perhaps sqliteman which uses sqlite, so you only need to press ctrl-n to get going. Btw I'm no expert, I'm just copy-pasting debian repository contents here. --91.145.72.227 (talk) 19:28, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

It looks pretty complicated, compared to what the OP wants. Frankly, I think what the OP really could use is FileMaker—sounds about the level of complexity. Unfortunately, it's not cheap ($300). The more lightweight Bento might actually be a good compromise if the OP has a Mac—not as feature-rich, but if it's just for a personal database, it might be worth the $50. Unfortunately all of the free programs are generally made for DB people, not general computer users. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:09, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

What I want seems to be covered by no-pay clones of the Clipper (programming language). These are listed at the end of the xBase article, and include Harbour and xHarbour. They look as if they are BASIC-like with database capabilities thrown in, which suits me. Thanks. 89.241.43.172 (talk) 11:41, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Looking for imageSorter2004V1.3.zip

I'm looking for a copy of this freeware program http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Others/Image-Sorter-2004.shtml Unfortunately every download link I can find simply redirects to the programmer's home page, which no longer exists. Does anyone know where I could find a copy of this file on the internet, not just a dead link please? Unfortunately Google does not allow (AFAIK) you to search for a file rather than just a link - perhaps there is some way of searching for files only? Thanks 89.242.92.200 (talk) 15:51, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

September 27

Emulator for running Windows Mobile apps on PC

Is there some kind of (preferably free software) emulator that will allow me to run a Windows Mobile app binary (i.e. I don't have the source code) on a desktop PC (Windows, Linux, doesn't matter)? --164.67.235.98 (talk) 00:45, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

MIDI interface

Is MIDI hot swappable? Or do I risk causing my system to freeze? If you're wondering, it's a separate (modern) audio card.

I think it is, but I just want to be sure. --Glaesisvellir (talk) 00:56, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes - the MIDI interface is okay to disconnect while software is running. Are you sure your audio card connects to the PC via MIDI interface? It's unlikely - if the card supports MIDI, it probably connects to some external device (like an electric-piano keyboard). That part is safe to hot-swap. But the audio card itself probably connects to the PC using PCIe, or something like that. Removing the audio card while the system is running is less likely to be a stable option. Some external audio cards operate over USB, and are a little more resilient to unexpected disconnects - but I wouldn't recommend it. Nimur (talk) 07:13, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I was wondering about an external component, not the card itself (seeing as how it's PCI). --Glaesisvellir (talk) 22:12, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Google tracking my web visits

A while back I saw Google's record of the web sites I had visited. I recall there was controversy about that. Is the information still available? If so, to whom? How do I find it? --Halcatalyst (talk) 02:36, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes! Google enables you to keep track of your entire web history in one place. Dubbed "Web History" and available at google.com/psearch

Web History (Previously Google Search History / Personalized Search)

Web page tracking, which records Google searches, Web pages, images, videos, music and more. It also includes Bookmarks, search trends and item recommendations. Google released Search History in April 2005^{"From lost to found"}, and then expanded and renamed the service to Web History in April 2007 as it started to also record browsing history.^{"Your slice of the web"}

From List of Google products. You can read the privacy policy at http://www.google.com/searchhistory/privacy.html Ciao! Kushal (talk) 03:27, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

• I see that my history goes back to 2007, when I bought this computer. I still have some questions about how the information might be used (by others). It seems that I access the history on this computer by signing into my Google account. What if I signed into the same account on another computer (not my own)? Would I be able to see the search history on that computer? --Halcatalyst (talk) 15:31, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you would. Your search history is tied to your Google account, not a specific computer — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 17:12, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmmmmm. But I would be seeing that computer user's search history, no? And would that history then become "my" history? --Halcatalyst (talk) 18:23, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

If you go to Google, right now, and click "sign out", you will no longer be storing any search history; as soon as you "sign in", you will be storing history to whichever account you've just signed into.

If you use someone else's computer, and they've left their browser signed into their Google account (presumably they don't mind you accessing their stuff!), then as far as Google is concerned it is them doing the searching, so yes it will be stored in their history. But if you sign out, and sign in as yourself, you won't be stealing any of their history, Google will just know that it's you browsing right now.

Does that help? - IMSoP (talk) 20:56, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I notice that when I sign in, Google provides a check box to "Remember me on this computer for Web History." I take it then that I have access only to my history. I think I have it now. Thanks! --Halcatalyst (talk) 21:26, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Windows Resetting Defaults

A while ago I installed a program that was titled something along the lines of "Seven Transformation Package" on my windows XP operating system, which was supposedly supposed to make my computer look more like Windows 7. Unfortunately, it was poorly designed and crashed halfway through the installation. When I tried to uninstall it it also crashed halfway through, so as a result, some of the remnants of the "transformation" are still left on my computer. They're all style changes, such as icon styles, bootscreen image differences, a change in the background image for the shutdown dialog, etc. They're tiny things and don't affect the way that the computer runs as a whole, but I'd like my computer to look like it looked like before I even bothered with the "Seven Transformation Package." I know there is something called "System Restore" but I do not have any restore points before that. I have no real experience with system restore, so I don't even know if something like that would fix this but I just wanted to say that first so I don't get suggestions for that, since I know it won't work. Also, I won't use backups because this happened so long ago, the amount of files I'd lose would be more of a disadvantage than the advantage of the nice aesthetic appeal of a regular Windows XP operating system. Anyway, my question is: is there any way to restore all the defaults of windows without losing any of your computer data, installed programs, files, etc.? If anyone has an idea or a solution, please reply. Thank you! :-) Yakeyglee (talk) 02:52, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

You can try a Repair Windows from your XP install CD. But it can cause a lot of problems if something goes wrong, so I don't recommend it unless you're having serious problems. It might be easier if you reinstalled the Seven Transformation Package and then uninstall it again. That might clear out the extra files, but if it's poorly written then, well, no guarantees. Indeterminate (talk) 05:57, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

New speakers

I'm sorry if I'm coming across as a total noob, but I had to replace my computer speakers because my cat bit through the speaker cable. I had speakers which came with the PC, they just say "FLC Presario Speaker system". They came with a light green plug which plugged into the back of the PC, and a USB plug which plugged into one of the USB ports on my PC. I bought Creative Inspire 245 speakers. They come with the same light green plug which I plugged into the back of the PC, and a power cord which I plugged into the same power jack which is powering my monitor, my PC and my printer, but I don't have any sound. I went to the device manager on Control Panel and clicked on "Sound, video and game controllers", but there is nothing listed for Creative or Inspire. Do I need to download a driver? Or what do I need to do to get my new speakers to work? Yes, the power is on on the speakers, and the volume is turned all the way up. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 03:22, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Make sure the green cable is plugged into the right port on the back of the PC. You'll have at least 3 ports, maybe 6, and you might have to try each one until you get sound. Usually you want to plug it into the light green port that matches the plug. If you have an mp3 player or stereo sitting around, you can also try plugging the green speaker plug into its headphone port to make sure the speakers work. You don't need any new drivers for new speakers, only if you change your sound card in the computer. Indeterminate (talk) 05:49, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

The cables are damaged and so you replace the speakers? Talk of the effluent society! Many years ago I went on a long vacation and somehow rats got in. As well as breaking into bags of cereal, eating virtually all, and pissing copiously, they had a great time chewing through cables (including those of my speakers). Luckily no rat was electrocuted. (Given the choice, I'll take the aroma of dried rat piss over that of decomposing rat corpse.) I replaced the cables and the speakers are even now working just fine. -- Hoary (talk) 13:37, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Is an effluent society one that generates a lot of liquid sewage ? :-) I don't think you need to be affluent to replace speakers when the wires are damaged, you just need to have cheap speakers with wires that don't unplug. True, it is possible to splice in some new wires, but the average consumer isn't able to do this. StuRat (talk) 14:16, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I replaced the speakers because the cable is hard wired to the back of the speaker. If I could have just replaced the cables, I would have. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 18:59, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Is there an indicator light on the speakers ? Does it turn on ? Make sure all the connections are good, you might have to wiggle them to get them to work. Check the wires between the two (or three) speakers, too. You can also verify the volume settings on the PC to make sure all are at maximum and the "mute" check box is not checked. In addition, the application you are using to make sound may have it's own volume settings and/or mute box. StuRat (talk) 14:16, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I got them working. I fiddled with the "audio manager" settings. They were set by default to 2CH speaker. When I changed the setting to 4CH speaker, it worked. It may have something to do with the fact that the old speakers had the USB plug, I don't know, but anyway, now that it's 4CH, it's working. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 18:59, 27 September 2009 (UTC))

Internet

On my desktop computer, whenever I start up the internet, it becomes unresponsive for about 3 minutes. I don't know what's causing the problem. I've tried a virus scan, but there are no results. So what's causing the problem and how can I fix it? Jc iindyysgvxc (talk) 05:29, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

• What do you mean "start up the internet"? What actions does that involve. Are you running windows? What version. What method do you connect to the internet? Cable modem, dsl, dial up modem, other? Do you have wireless in your home? If it is, what is the brand of router you use, and what's that router physically connected to?

Let us know the answers to these questions and we might be able to provide some more specific advice. Shadowjams (talk) 05:39, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

WinXP, and by start up the Internet, I mean double-clicking the Internet Explorer icon to have Internet Explorer come up. I don't know what metohd I use to connect to the Internet - I think it's cable modem. And no, I don't use wireless - at least not for my desktop computer. I do use it for my laptop - but I'm not talking about my laptop here. Jc iindyysgvxc (talk) 05:48, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

So your desktop is connected by an ethernet cord to something.... what is it connected to? I assume by unresponsive you mean it hangs. Or does it say "page cannot be displayed" (or something like that), and then if you refersh it a little bit later it works. Are you on a university network of some kind, or at a residential connection? Shadowjams (talk) 05:54, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

By unresponsive, it freezes for about 3 minutes, then works again. If, by resedential connection, you mean at home, then yes. And my desktop is connected by an ethernet cord to a wall plug. Jc iindyysgvxc (talk) 06:07, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, this is hard to diagnose without more information. Here's what I'd do for diagnostics: Try to use another program to connect to the internet while IE is failing. So maybe an instant messaging app, or even something as simple as ping (go to Start>Run>type in "cmd" hit enter, in the black window try "ping www.microsoft.com"). See if you get any internet connectivity while you're sure IE is down. If you do then I would suspect you have some sort of spyware or proxy setup in IE that's causing you problems. If you don't have a connection then you need to do more testing. The first question is if you have an IP address, and if you do, what is it (only post the first 2 sets of numbers, like 192.168.x.x if you want to preserve your anonymity). If your IP comes out to 169.x.x.x (with x being numbers) then you have a connectivity problem. Why that's resolving only after 3 minutes probably involves the network you're connected to, so you'll need to know through what method you're connected. Shadowjams (talk) 06:16, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Home PC connected directly to a wall plug? Sounds like dial-up to me. The delay could be the dialing to connect to the ISP. -- kainaw™ 12:33, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

A lot of houses have ethernet jacks in the walls. APL (talk) 18:48, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Has the computer always had this problem or is it something that just recently developed? If it's recent, did you make any changes to any part of your system at around the same time? Install any new programs? Have you tried connecting the internet with any other programs besides Internet Explorer? For example, if you use Outlook Express or something similar to check your email, does it experience any problems? Does all of Internet Explorer seem to freeze up or just the page being loaded? For example, while it's frozen, can you still access the menus and buttons? If not, it could simply be a bad install of IE. Re-installing might help, as might switching to another browser, like Mozilla Firefox. We're asking a lot of questions here because there are literally dozens of different things that might be responsible. Matt Deres (talk) 23:02, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't be suprised if it were some sort of spyware that was screwing up your system. Try scanning with something like Adaware. APL (talk) 18:48, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Bridge connection question

So, I am runnining Ubuntu jaunty. It turns out that to connect to the machines at work I need to have XP. So, I installed a copy of XP on a virtual box. I was able to connect to the internet via NAT, but NAT is not good for VPN, since the virtual box does not have its own IP address. I tried port forwarding and that did not work. So, I tried bridging my ethernet connection so that both operating systems (host,ubuntu ; geust,XP) would receive an IP. I have, after many late nights, nothing to show for it. I manage to get br0 to work, but then network capability become non-existent in the virtual environment. Furthermore, when I have br0 working, my connection is not detected in Ubuntu, firestarter (firewall) complaints that there is no active connection, yet, I can browse the internet and "shields UP" (website where they test your firewall) shows my firewall as working... Has anyone succeeded in doing this? If so, what type of configuration worked out? Thanks in advance, Brusegadi (talk) 08:42, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Vista sidebar gadget

On my Dell laptop, I run the Windows Vista (home premium edition) that came preinstalled. Soon after I got it,I made a minor modification to the default weather gadget on the sidebar, so that it would always start with my hometown rather than Redmond - in C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\Weather.Gadget\en-US\js\localizedStrings.js I changed these 3 lines: L_localizedStrings_Text['DefaultCity'] = 'Redmond, WA';
L_localizedStrings_Text['DefaultLocationCode'] = 'wc:USWA0367';
L_localizedStrings_Text['DefaultUnit'] = 'Fahrenheit';
Everything was fine for a year or more. However, the other day, I noticed that the little "spanner" icon which enables me to change the weather location had disappeared (it was definitely there for a long while after my edit). If I close the weather gadget and then restart it, it still comes up with the weather for my hometown, but the spanner icon is still missing and I now cannot change the location when I am travelling. Any ideas how I might fix this, preferably without reinstalling Vista? Astronaut (talk) 10:26, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

"Wirelessness" with Dell Inspiron 1545

Hi, i recently had to reset my laptop (Dell Inspiron 1545) to its 'factory settings' and then reinstall Windows Vista, as you do. I have also been able to re setup my Belkin Wireless G Router and can now use the internet. However i have not been able to get my laptop to work wirelessly with the built in wirless 'thing' with the router, as i was able to do before. I have assumed i need what i believe to be called a 'driver' for the built in wireless thing, bu i dont know how to get it. A quick look on the Dell website has given me numerous options for download but i dont know what i want, can anyone help? :)

--84.66.153.11 (talk) 12:59, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Please go into Device Manager (Start -> Control Panel -> System & Maintenance -> Device Manager, curse Vista!), find the model of your wireless card, and then come back here and tell us. If you know that information, here are all the network drivers (expand the "Network (6)" group) for your laptop. Xenon54 / talk / 13:08, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Im not really sure how to find the model of my wireless card. Under the 'network adapters' bit it says 'Marvel Yukon 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller' if that is it? --84.66.153.11 (talk) 13:16, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

No, Ethernet is a wired connection. Check in the other categories for something that says "WLAN" or "Wireless" or "Wi-Fi". Also, some laptops have a switch to turn Wi-Fi on or off...please check if that switch is on. Xenon54 / talk / 13:47, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be anything of that description. I do have a button that 'previously' did turn the wireless on and off, but that doesn't work or seem to make any difference anymore. In the part 'Other Devices' there is a 'network controller' which has a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark in it next to it. Is that anything. Also would it be worthwhile downloading all the Dell drivers in the 'network' section and see if that works? --84.66.153.11 (talk) 14:05, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

The "network controller" might be it. The yellow triangle indicates a problem - it doesn't necessarily have to be the driver, though. Since we can't determine which card you have, I would say to download all the drivers and see which one works. Xenon54 / talk / 14:26, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

You might check in the BIOS -- the computer's firmware, reached by hitting a key or combination of keys very quickly as you're invited to do immediately after the computer is reset -- to see whether wireless (or near-synonym) has been turned off. ¶ i recently had to reset my laptop (Dell Inspiron 1545) to its 'factory settings' and then reinstall Windows Vista, as you do Actually, no we don't. My own Dell 15-something had Windows for only a matter of minutes, till I zapped it in favor of Kubuntu (which has since worked perfectly well with the computer's wireless connector). No, don't worry, I'm not about to suggest that you dispense with Windows (an idea guaranteed to make some regulars on this page see red). However, this is one of the times when a bootable Linux CD could be handy. If you boot off, say, antiX and can get problematic hardware to work, then you know that you've had a software rather than a hardware problem. -- Hoary (talk) 21:50, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

To narrow down the choices, you could visit the Dell support site for your country, then enter the Service Tag for your particular laptop (it is usually printed on a label attached on the bottom of the laptop, and contains 6 or 7 alphanumeric characters). Dell's support site should then let you download all the correct drivers for your particular laptop )assuming of course, you haven't upgraded something). Astronaut (talk) 08:59, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Using Internet Explorer, head to http://support.dell.com/, from there click System Configuration from the left menu under Product Support. Click on the Current System Configuration tab, then accept the terms of use. Once you have accepted, it will prompt you to install the an ActiveX control. Continue and allow it. Once it has installed and completed it's scan, you will be presented with a full list of hardware/software/etc that is currently installed in your computer. Terrapisces —Preceding undated comment added 15:31, 30 September 2009 (UTC).

Basic Java Question

Could someone explain the difference between a local class and an non-static inner class? 66.133.196.152 (talk) 14:08, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Here's the official documentation from Sun: Nested Classes. I think the word "local class" is being used generically to refer to all types of non-public classes - those which are defined in the same .java file. It's possible that it is also referring to in-line definitions - those which are defined "nested" inside another class or function definition. These Non-static inner-classes specifically refer to those which can be instantiated. Really, there's two questions here - what's the definition of "non-static"; and what's the difference between "local" and "nested inner class"?

To really get going, you need to thoroughly understand instances and the "static" keyword. In Java, "static" means that a variable or function can be used even without instantiating a particular object of the class. The values of static variables are the same across all members of the same class. Anything can be static or non-static - variables, functions, and even inner classes.

Now that you get "static" - on to "local" vs. "nested" classes. Inner classes can be defined and used conventionally (with instances; or statically - which means you access it with the class-name, but never instantiate it; or anonymously, which means that you can have and use instances of classes which have no names. Here's some pseudo-code to demonstrate the difference:

Source code example

public class OuterClass{ /* I can define an inner class inside the outer class */ class InnerClass { private int counter; public static int computeSomething() { return 2 + 2; } public int computeSomethingNonStatic() { return counter++; } } // End of Inner Class definition // Code for Outer Class ... public someFunction() { /* First I will use a Local Inner Class */ OuterClass.InnerClass inst = new OuterClass.InnerClass(); // instantiate a local class OuterClass.InnerClass.computeSomething(); // I can use static functions inst.computeSomethingNonStatic(); // ...and non-static functions /* Now I will define a nested class, anonymously */ JButton j = new JButton(); j.addActionListener( new ActionListener(){ // This is the start of a class definition - inside a function call! // Here I'm defining a nested inner class (and an anonymous one, too) // (I should make this a valid ActionListener or this code won't compile) }); } }

I think my local class is pretty straightforward - it's just like a regular class, except that it's intended for use that's compartmentalized inside the OuterClass. You can see how static or non-static features of such a class might be used.

The nested class is a bit trickier. I instantiated it anonymously (without a handle) and then defined it during instantiation - creating a new, anonynmous, nested local class. We now have neither a handle to the instance, nor any way of naming the class definition, of this new ActionListener. Its definition is intended for this local usage only - so I nested it inside my function. The actual definitions of its functions are floating around in memory somewhere though - so when the JButton I assigned it to needs to call its methods, it knows how to find their definitions. Also note that this class, even though it has no name, is still non-static - I needed to instantiate one with a "new" keyword.

Hopefully this has helped clarify. In practice, nested classes almost always implement some standard interface - so other code can use them. There isn't much use for a nested class without an interface - because nobody can see its methods (the definition is locally scoped)! Again, the official Java tutorials might be very handy; and playing around with a few examples is a good idea too. Nimur (talk) 14:55, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Adobe Flash Player/Firefox timeout setting

I'm using FireFox 2.0.0.20 (yes, I know it's out of date) and I allowed Adobe Flash Player to upgrade itself to Version 9 the other day. Since then, I've been frequently getting an error box "A script on this page is causing Adobe Flash Player to run slowly. Do you want to abort it?" (or words to that effect). Is it possible to increase the delay before this message is displayed (it seems to be about 20 seconds at the moment)? Tevildo (talk) 16:12, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

According to this article, "The timeout of this alert cannot be altered, however, 15 seconds is about as long as one might want to wait for an application to become responsive." Basically the article says that this can't be modified, and recommends that Flash programmers themselves optimize their code to avoid it.

Is it all Flash files that do it, or just one page? There's a question as to whether it's one bad SWF or if it's all of them.

In any case, using an outdated browser with a new plug-in is a recipe for trouble... --Mr.98 (talk) 17:20, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

It happens with most of the embedded videos on the BBC website. If it's not variable, then I'll just have to live with it until my normal machine is feeling a bit healthier. You'd have thought that a simple "Show this message again?" checkbox would be an option, but - these are the breaks. Thanks anyway. Tevildo (talk) 17:49, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

If you have AdBlock, you may be blocking advertisements from their media server. Some (but not all) BBC News videos require the advertisement to be viewed, or the main video will not play. Nimur (talk) 18:58, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

The videos are _playing_ OK, I'm just getting the timeout message while they start. It's not a critical issue. Tevildo (talk) 19:28, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Update script

Would it be possible to write a script in greasemonkey that would automatically update a web page every 5 minuets and load any changes to the page (text, images etc), and automatically stop updating if the script detected the page no longer existed (404 error)?

Yes, that would be possible. --Sean 15:13, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Awesome! How exactly would I do it, I've looked at userscripts.com and I can't find any so I assumed it couldn't be done

Well, that's a very specific request, so you're unlikely to find it pre-canned. You'll probably either have to code it yourself or convince someone else to do so. If you want to try doing it yourself there are many free Javascript tutorials on the web, and you can always come back here if you get stuck. --Sean 19:44, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Study Question

Dear, am an IT student from london and I need your advices ,I would like to know the best to study at moment between lunx (red hat)certificate and Mcse (microsoft certify system engeneer) Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Skyese55 (talk • contribs)

First, define "best". Until we know what you mean by "best", we can't give you any references on the matter. -- kainaw™ 21:01, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Before you certify, you might want to check the proper spelling of linux and Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. We also have an article on the Red Hat Certification Program. These articles might point you in the right direction. Nimur (talk) 23:15, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

indenting on word 2002

How do I Make it where the first line of each entry is at the left margin: extra lines are indented 0.5Accdude92 (talk) (sign) 22:03, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

You go to Format --> Paragraph and click on the drop-down box under Special. Then, you select Hanging and enter 0.5 to the right of it.--Drknkn (talk) 22:08, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Ctrl-T is your friend --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:45, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

September 28

Safari vs. Google Chrome

Is Apple's claim that Safari is the fastest web browser true? Is it faster than Google Chrome, which claims to be faster than Safari? Intelligentsium 00:44, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

On my system (Vista Home Premium), Chrome is by far faster than Safari. Having said that, K-Meleon is way faster than both of them. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 01:36, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

The tests I've seen online put Safari and Chrome neck-and-neck. Of course, mileage will vary from system to system. On mine, Safari 4 is way, way slower at rendering than Safari 3, which is sad. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:36, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm under the impression that the most recent Google announcement about the speed of Chrome was mostly or entirely based on JavaScript performance rather than whole-browser benchmarks. Tempshill (talk) 03:16, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

There are very many variables. Yes, on my sole surviving Windows antique, K-meleon runs a lot faster than Safari (though the latter is burdened with a couple of plug-ins) and about as fast as an old version of Opera. -- Hoary (talk) 03:28, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Old Microsoft Attempt At Making Their Products More Reliable

What was that anti-spyware program that Microsoft released in 2004 or 2005? The one which had almost the same icon as the one for Nurofen and didn't actually perform even half as well as the many free versions of anti-spyware readily available on the internet? Why did it disappear and where has it gone? Is it still possible to download it and use it? --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 01:34, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

It was 2005 and it was literally called Microsoft AntiSpyware. However since then been it's been updated and renamed so it's now called Windows Defender as of 2006. You can't download the old AntiSpyware anymore (at least not from Microsoft), but even if you did it'd be horribly out of date for definitions. Windows Defender however is very much available and it's built into Vista (possibly with service pack) and Windows 7 as standard. ZX81 ^talk 01:57, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Aha! So, in that case, I already have it, albeit without the icon that looks like it is meant to advertise headache tablets. Cheers! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 02:14, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, MS Defender has ranked highly in anti-spyware comparisons.--Drknkn (talk) 03:12, 28

September 2009 (UTC)

Which in turn is being replaced by Microsoft Security Essentials which is out in the next couple of weeks. --Cameron Scott (talk) 10:01, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Window/ Dialog box cut off at right side and bottom

The windows/dialog boxes of some programs get cut off at their right sides and bottoms on my computer. The windows/dialog boxes (sorry, not sure which is the correct term here) are displayed relatively small. They don't allow scrolling (as if that were cut off as well) nor resizing. As a result, the program becomes impossible to use because I can't access some of the buttons, menus, etc.

Most recently, it happened when I installed HotRecorder (window/dialog box in the size of the typical small Windows boxes "Do you really want to... - Yes / Cancel"), but I had experienced it before with another program (probably some media player like QuickTime... the window/dialog box was larger, but other than that same story).

I'm using Dell's Windows XP version. I've tried different dpi settings, but at least with Hotrecorder there was no change.

Thanks so much for all recommendations!! --Thanks for answering (talk) 01:45, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Could you take a screenshot (hit the Print Screen button on your keyboard, then run the Paint program in the Start menu's "Accessories" folder, then Paste, then save) and upload it to Flickr for us to look at? It vaguely sounds like you have some sort of Theme installed that's operating badly. Tempshill (talk) 03:15, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Recording Yahoo Messenger Voice calls / conversations

Which program allows me to record a phone call via Yahoo Messenger (i.e. my voice and the other party's voice) for free and even if I call a landline? I wanted to try HotRecorder, but don't get it working so far (see post above). I haven't yet seen another free program, but I'm sure there must be one?! [BTW, I'd prefer mp3 or wav files... but I'll rather have any program... :o)] --Thanks for answering (talk) 01:50, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

YMMV but Audacity (software) could be just the thing for you. Kushal (talk) 09:58, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

There is any web search engine that let me search more than 32 words??

I was trying to search this: site:pandora.com "Features Of This" -"extensive vamping" -"minor key tonality" -"age influences" -"ambient soundscapes" -"instrumental arrangement" -"wet recording sound" -"major key tonality" -"repetitive melodic phrasing" -"unsyncopated ensemble rhythms" -"slow moving bass" -"mellow sounds" -"mild rhythmic syncopation" -"vocal-centric aesthetic" -"gravelly male vocalist" -"light synth fx" -"prominent use of synth" -"affected synths" on google, but google dont let me search more than 32 words.

There is any web search engine that let me seach more than 32 words???
PS: as you saw in the search, the web search engine needs to be able to have something like the -InsertWordHere syntax on google, something like the "insert word here" syntax on google, and the site:InsertWebSiteHere syntax.
PS: This search is not complete and i will add more words to the search when doing the search on the web search engine.

If no one comes along and answers your question you might consider just downloading all of the site you're interested in (see wget) and do the searching locally, where you could do whatever you want. --Sean 15:18, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Software for side notes

How can I write side notes on pdf docs and similar stuff. Of course, I could always tell people to go to page x and look at the end of third line of the second paragraph. But this is kind of clumsy, isn't it?--Quest09 (talk) 16:11, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Adobe Acrobat allows revision, review, and change tracking, but it is not free software. Nimur (talk) 17:07, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft Word 2007 does, too, for its .doc and .docx files. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:09, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

... but you need to convert .pdf to .doc first. For some pdf files, the only way is to print, then scan with OCR. Dbfirs 20:52, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Preview for OS X allows limited annotation ability. See List of PDF software. Unfortunately we don't have one of those big "comparison" tables for PDF readers that specify which ones allow you to annotate. Unfortunately, the whole PDF reader field is one of fairly slim pickings, with the stuff you'd really like them to be able to do usually bundled in either for-pay suites (like Acrobat) or as a bunch of cryptic command-line programs. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:52, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

For windows PDF X-Change viewer has a very usable free version (I use it as my primary PDF viewer) which supports annotation.194.164.140.216 (talk) 12:49, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Turing test for virtual reality

Is it possible to make a picture so realistic that it will convince a human that it is real? For example, showing him a picture of a landscape and telling him it is a window.--Quest09 (talk) 16:15, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Sticking a picture or CGI image on the wall would never work, because we can tell the difference between photos (perfectly realistic images) and windows. To do this, a computer program would have to take account of exactly where a person was relative to the picture, and update the position, lighting etc. of the image, as well as activity so the picture doesn't appear static and so on. It would be extremely difficult, but it's possible, yeah. Give it a few (lots of) years, and who knows? Ale_Jrb^talk 16:19, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Perspective could be dynamically adjusted to account for the viewer's position - Head-related transfer function describes this for sound, and it has been experimented with for video. But - if you have a room with multiple people in it - a 2D display cannot correctly model the 3D perspective for each person (who has a different view angle and position). Nimur (talk) 17:05, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

It's certainly possible to add head-tracking to a computer screen and make it "window-like" in the sense that if you move your head to one side you get a slightly different perception.

But it's not really possible to create one that would fool a person (With reasonable eyesight). The technology just isn't there and the difference would be obvious for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is that he would probably be wearing some sort of headgear to create the needed stereo effect. 72.10.110.109 (talk) 18:44, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Moreover, when you move your eyeballs, you see from a slightly different angle; I expect that it would be significantly harder for the computer to adjust for eyeball movement than for head movement. Nyttend (talk) 19:22, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

(What does this have to do with a Turing test?) The biggest problem here is less the rendering of the scene (which could be done with enough hardware and good choices over what to render), but the fact that monitors aren't anything so powerful and detailed as a real simulation of reality would need. They just don't have the necessary density or brightness to really look like even indoor lighting (much less outdoor). I don't think it's just something you can "scale up" from existing technologies, either—putting a more powerful backlight would probably still not make things look realistic, and would potentially introduce new problems as well (e.g., you'd probably start to cut into how "dark" your darknesses could be). Monitors and screens just don't have anything like the color and brightness depths of reality; you would have to have pretty poor vision to be fooled easily.

That being said, with controlled conditions, you can make a pretty convincing illusion. I'm thinking of simulator rides. When I was a kid, I was totally blown away by the "Star Tours" ride at Disneyland, and was thoroughly convinced that somehow it was actually blasting around different environments. (Granted, I was a young kid, and wanted to believe. But you didn't discount either!) That was accomplished by playing a movie in an environment meant to make you feel it was a window; with the right coordination of movement and sound effects and things of that nature, it can be a compelling effect. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:06, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

It is not a real Turing test, but it is analogous to a it. In a Turing test, the machine passes if the human is not able to tell the difference between artificial intelligence and natural intelligence. In my speculative version, the picture passes, if the human is not able to tell the difference between artificial pictures and natural pictures. 80.58.205.37 (talk) 14:56, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I have worked on laser-rendered graphics systems for flight simulation that had more resolution than the human eye - so much brightness that staring into the simulated sun hurt your eyes. For that system we projected the image onto the inside of a 30 foot 360 degree dome - which is far enough away that the usual problems of depth perception and field of view were a non-issue. However, our graphics weren't (then) good enough to have people confuse our images with reality for anything but the most simple scene (eg, we could paste a satellite photo onto the ground - a photo of real clouds onto the sky - and put the simulated viewpoint so high in the air in the virtual world that you couldn't see that things like buildings were not truly 3-dimensional). That's about as close to "real" as I've seen from a display system. For the actual graphics themselves, I think there are plenty of games out there that are hard to distinguish from reality in still images - many car racing and sport simulations have such constrained environments that the graphics system has plenty of horsepower to make it look real. Some of the publicity shots for the Crysis game engine showed side-by-side still images of scenes from a real pacific island and the one in the game - and in many cases, it would take a trained eye to pick the real from the simulated. The graphics in many movies are similarly impossible to distinguish from reality - but they can't produce their pictures in 'realtime'. Even the best 'real-time' graphics tend to give themselves away when things start moving. Every year we get closer though...I think that if someone wanted to pass a graphical 'Turing test' - it could be done. SteveBaker (talk) 03:28, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

No, it is not possible, but then again, some real visual fields of view don't seem real. You have to compare visual perception that contains all the cues of stark reality to anything created as mimicry of that to find the shortcomings of the imitation. Bus stop (talk) 04:01, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Search term request

I'm looking for search terms to help locate papers on a new topic that I want to learn more about. The best I can explain it is with a pathetic example. You run an online movie rental service. You have the basic "if you like A, you may like B, C, or D" based on actions of other users. You want to take it one step further. "After you watch A, you probably want to watch B, C, or D". The new version simply adds an ordering to it. That is my interest. I want to read about adding an ordering to the common "you may like" search heuristic. -- kainaw™ 17:23, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

This article may help as it seems to be about what you mean http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8268287.stm 89.242.159.115 (talk) 21:57, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

"Automated recommendation"? This phrase has taken off with startup companies and has been featured on StackOverflow and Wired Magazine. Nimur (talk) 22:37, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I've been looking through a lot of papers on automated recommendation. I've found a few (very few) mentions of placing the recommendations in a sequential order. For example, if you select A, you may want B. However, if you select B, you may not want A. That is because the algorithm understands that B follows A, but A does not follow B. -- kainaw™ 00:33, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

History glitch in Internet Explorer 8?

More detail is here.[3] and [4]

In summary, I tried to go back, while on Wikipedia, and ended up where I had already been, again and again.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:05, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Here's another example: I saw some information about WGTM on a message board. I went to that station's article from a Help Desk archive page. I edited the article based just on what was already there, mainly adding links, and making inconsistent details consistent. I checked Hurricane Hazel to make sure that was the name of the article. When I went back to where I was, I went to WGTM first, then Hurricane Hazel, then the Help Desk archive page. That's backwards.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:33, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Purchasing an Ethernet cable

I live in an apartment, and I have my PC set up on a desk in my bedroom. There is no way to connect to the Internet in my bedroom, so I would like to purchase an Ethernet cable to connect the PC to the router. (No wireless capability, and not that interested in pursuing it.) Where is the best place to buy an Ethernet cable that would be between 25 feet and 50 feet long? I'm wary of electronics stores that may gouge me. I searched on Newegg, but I could not seem to find what I wanted there. Any suggestions? (I'm in the US.) 129.42.208.178 (talk) 18:59, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

You could try Best buy.Accdude92 (talk) (sign) 19:03, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm surprised Newegg didn't have anything. I share your concerns of gouging (and Best Buy will certainly do that), but I figure that shipping will eat up most of the savings you'd have made online. My advice would be to check for an independent computer parts store in your area. My local place, for instance, charges $10-$15 for a 50-foot ethernet cable, as contrasted with $40 at Best Buy. — Lomn 19:18, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, Newegg does have such cables. They're under "Networking" instead of "Computer hardware", which may be why you didn't spot them. 50 foot cables appear to be in the $7 to $10 range. Throw in $7 for shipping and the price is on par with my local place, except I don't have to wait three days on the local place. — Lomn 19:40, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Best Buy's components are all very overpriced in my experience. Use Newegg as a price guide and then call around to your local electronics stores. The first question they will ask is the length of cable, and the second question is: Cat5, Cat5e, or Cat6? (Cat6 is overdoing it for you.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:28, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I recommend Monoprice for all sorts of cables. Cat 5e cable will set you back $2.55 for 25 feet, or $4.33 for 50 feet, plus shipping. I just ordered a batch of assorted AV & network cables from them, and the build quality is uniformly good. -- Coneslayer (talk) 14:08, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Making a video

I have some sets of 24-bit bitmaps that I wish to concatenate into a video. Some sets are 800x600 pixels, others are 770x700 pixels. The sets range in size from 500 bitmaps to 7500. The bitmaps are labeled "frame####.bmp", with #### being an integer ranging continuously from 0001 to the end of the set of bitmaps. These labels are in the order I wish to concatenate them (i.e., I want frame0001.bmp to come first, then frame0002.bmp, etc.) The output video should retain the 24-bit colorspace and be in the .mov, .qt, .wmv, .mpg, or .mpeg format. Considering that I run Windows XP, are there any freely-available programs I can use to do this? --Lucas Brown 42 19:14, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

FFMpeg can do this:

ffmpeg -f image2 -i frame%04d.bmp my-movie.mpg

--Sean 19:51, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Umm... Is it possible to download a binary file? I'm not that adept with this stuff yet. --72.197.202.36 (talk) 20:57, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Googling "ffmpeg binary" suggests this unofficial builds page. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 22:18, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Try here for some unofficial builds (binaries). But yeah, it's a pain you can't just download pre-compiled binaries a little easier! Most of the free-software types have a pretty limited view of who will use their software... even if you do know how to compile things from scratch, it's a terrible pain to get everything working right that way. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:17, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Haha, look at the diffs on our edits. Somehow, neither of us got an edit conflict. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 22:23, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

It is not that the authors refuse to make binaries. They just don't have the need to do so. There are a lot of open source projects that have a lot of Linux users and very few Windows users. The Linux package managers handle the binaries, not the authors of the project. Since Windows is not package-based, there is no package manager to make binaries for it. That is why I've argued for many years that someone needs to make a Windows package system (like APT or YUM) for Windows users. Then, Windows users can open it, search for ffmpeg, locate the package, and click "install". When the package is updated, they get a systray notice and easily upgrade the binary. -- kainaw™ 03:23, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

You can also do this with the inbuilt Windows Movie Maker, albeit with restrictions about how long each image is displayed. --Phil Holmes (talk) 08:41, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Studies of WP vandalism

I'm aware that studies have been done to check the percentage of articles that are in a vandalised state at any given period of time, the frequency of vandalism, etc. However, has anyone (whether Wikipedians or academics) tried to determine the longest that an article has remained in a vandalised state? I've just discovered that an article on my watchlist for two years was vandalised five years ago, and I only discovered it because someone else finally detected the vandalism today. Nyttend (talk) 19:20, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

The signpost did a feature on vandalism survival times, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-06-22/Vandalism —Preceding unsigned comment added by Avrillyria (talk • contribs) 12:14, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

My Yahoo email nightmare continues

Of course, no one has bothered to respond. They didn't respond quickly when it was an emergency, meaning a password problem.

For this, they are just showing they don't care and they'll be lucky if I ever decide to use the service again.

More about this is here.[5]

What just happened was that I went to Yahoo email while working on something else, then tried to go back to what I was doing--which I couldn't! When I tried I got a big yellow error message.

Then the folders disappeared.

The yellow triangle appeared in the lower left corner. Line 10, char. 17037.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:48, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I was finally successful in clicking on the "Error Code 21" message. Which normally disappears as whatever's on the screen is replaced by something that shouldn't be there. This gave me the screen for Error Codes 14 through 17, NOT 21. This is to be expected from people this incompetent.

I was successful also in getting back to the "beginning", thogh it skipped over what I've been working on all afternoon. More here. [6]Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:56, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Time to switch to GMail instead. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:10, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Yep I'm sorry too, but I'm not sure there is much we can actually do when the program supplied is screwing up - from your previous problems I'd suggest trying Safari web broswer, and maybe getting your mail through windows live mail which seems fairly stable. Both are free. Sometimes a change is the best solution.83.100.251.196 (talk) 20:30, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm NOT changing browsers.

And I don't like certain things about Gmail either. I've had Windows Live Mail the longest and thanks to recent changes I try not to use it. Furthermore, the computer came with a Yahoo toolbar.

I have actually told the Yahoo people to read what is here.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:46, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Signing off Wikipedia until Wednesday. Internet Explorer and this computer seem to have done very well for me. When it works, Yahoo does pretty much everything I want except for the text being too narrow when I print or try to copy and paste. This wastes space on printouts and causes other problems. Other than that, I have been happy until recently.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:58, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I couldn't resist the temptation to come back when I didn't really have the time. Okay, one thing I forgot to mention yesterday. It's only the back button that's a problem now. I had no problems with composing an email that I started at 1:00 and sent to myself four hours later. The problem was going to Yahoo from another window and not being able to back out. Maybe Yahoo will respond to that issue.

Of all the services I've tried, only Fastmail seems close to perfect, but my storage has about filled up.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:16, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Update: I was told Java might be the problem. I installed the Java update that I've been nagged to install for at least a week. I am always reluctant to install anything since I've had to do system restore twice. I don't recall anything messing up the coimputer in a way that didn't require that.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:28, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

String as linked list in .NET

In the .NET Framework, what classes if any implement a text string as a linked list of characters? NeonMerlin[7] 20:40, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I haven't worked with the .NET Framework much recently, but I don't think that such a class exists. If you need an efficient dynamically-expandable string, use a StringBuilder, which implements a string as an array list. If you just need a linked list of characters, use... a linked list of characters. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 22:03, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

You're describing a kind of trie, which is pretty esoteric and unlikely to be built in. Googling for "Template:Websearch" gives some implementations. --Sean 01:14, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

It depends how exactly you mean "a linked list of characters". If you just mean a set of characters, one after the other, then this accurately describes a string, from the System.String class. If you really mean a linked list, then the most recent version of .Net includes a generic collection called LinkedList<T> which you could instantiate with chars. It wouldn't really be worth doing, but it would be possible. --Phil Holmes (talk) 08:32, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

A good web-application builder?

Can anyone recommend a good online app-builder for a beginner-to-moderately-experienced developer?

I have been looking for an application for some time that combines some of the features of a task manager, a time-tracker, and a motivator. I can see in my mind exactly what I want this site to look like, but none of the applications I've seen online fit the bill. So I figured I'd write my own. However, my knowledge of data-base-backed web programming with nice UI is limited (I know some php, some ruby, less rails), and I'm looking for a good product that can use to get some demo-ware out quickly. I heard that Coghead was a good app-building application, but it's dead now.

Any thoughts? Thanks! — Sam 63.138.152.155 (talk) 20:51, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

computer -- suggestion

It would be useful to have somewhere (if it is, sorry that I didn't find it) a TABLE. Link to which I come when I look i.e. for Megabytes / gigabytes. I.e. to find out 4.38GB CD is space for how many and how long songs ? [As a USEFUL tool for the people who are still not so squilled about making the operations themselves :-) ]. thank you very much. jsyh

This is difficult. Not only are songs of different lengths, but there are different encodings. You could have a dozen different two minutes mp3s and each of them could have a different file-size.

Furthermore, not all songs are stored in MP3s. You might have them in OGG or FLAC format, or some proprietary Microsoft or Apple format.

All that said, If you count on 16hours per GB, you're probably safe, and will probably have space left over. APL (talk) 21:52, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes for numbers - mp3 songs vary from 64kbps to 320kbps a difference of 5 times.83.100.251.196 (talk) 22:13, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Look for a FIRST-GLANCE CLEAR SET bytes CONVERTING TABLE KB-MB-GB-TB [computer -- suggestion]

Multiple-byte units
Decimal Value Metric 1000 kB kilobyte 10002 MB megabyte 10003 GB gigabyte 10004 TB terabyte 10005 PB petabyte 10006 EB exabyte 10007 ZB zettabyte 10008 YB yottabyte 10009 RB ronnabyte 100010 QB quettabyte	Binary Value IEC Memory 1024 KiB kibibyte KB kilobyte 10242 MiB mebibyte MB megabyte 10243 GiB gibibyte GB gigabyte 10244 TiB tebibyte TB terabyte 10245 PiB pebibyte – 10246 EiB exbibyte – 10247 ZiB zebibyte – 10248 YiB yobibyte – 10249 – – 102410 – –
Orders of magnitude of data

It would be useful to have somewhere (if it is, sorry that I didn't find it) >> a TABLE as a USEFUL tool  :-) -- Even to which one is led by any Link from Google-search: "Megabytes", or so typed, leading to that Table which is built/looks like "a chess-board" where one can find all necessary information/conversions even though he has not the technical and mathematical know-how --> for Megabytes / Gigabytes/&co. I.e. to find out 4.38GB CD is space for how many and how long songs ? Thank you very much. jsyh

The problem you will run into is that a song is not a measurement of disk space. The length of a song (in minutes) is not a measurement of disk space. So, you cannot convert disk space to time. You cannot convert disk space to number of songs. This is similar to me asking you to tell me how many boxes I can put in my car. All you can do is make a guess at the average size of a box to try and make a guess at the answer. Then, since your answer won't be exact, I'll complain. If I were to make a guess at how much disk space each and every one of your songs requires, and then guess at which ones you want to put on a disk, and then guess at how many will fit, I will end up with nothing more than a wild guess. It won't be accurate. You will complain. -- kainaw™ 03:16, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Kainaw. My MP3 music files vary from just over 1MB to nearly 9MB. MP3 is compressed data, and you can choose your compression (sacrificing quality). Normal HiFi CD format takes up much more space (perhaps 40 or 50MB per 3-minute track, but it varies). As an average for MP3 files, you could reckon on 1MB per minute (compared with 10MB per minute for full CD quality), but it varies. By the way, my CDs are only 700MB. Perhaps you meant DVD? (4380MB) Dbfirs 03:35, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

The OP just wants to convert between bytes and megabytes, they might find this table useful. Nimur (talk) 13:17, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

share of CMOS in computer booting119.152.28.135 (talk) 22:46, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

what kind of information a CMOS(used in computers)stores? forexample there is port for keyboard,and there is a keyboard atatched already to it.now i reboot my pc,as pc wakes up ,does this cmos will have information about new pc keyboard,its model ,(posibly)its driver,OR it simply will have just a mere info that "there is port for keyboard at this location go and detect it"?

In theory it could, but in most operating systems, information on drivers to be loaded is stored in initialisation files (the registry in windows) stored on the bootable hard drive. The CMOS often contains information on which drive to go to for boot files. See our article on Bootstrap loader. Systems with fixed keyboards can store the driver in ROM. (My knowledge of operating systems is out of date, so perhaps an expert can tell us if some modern sytems store keyboard information in CMOS? ) Dbfirs 02:07, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Most modern BIOSes have support for USB HID devices - meaning mouses and keyboards. In theory, they can query the manufacturer's ID and model numbers with this protocol; but the USB HID standard provides a standard, reduced set of features that is independent of any manufacturer's specific implementation - so it should never be necessary. For mouse or keyboard connected over PS/2 port, it is fairly unlikely that there is any metadata about the keyboard model provided to either CMOS or even the full-blown operating-system driver. A proprietary driver might be able to override this limitation. Nimur (talk) 11:57, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Can Python do database things easily?

I'm considering learning a free clone of Clipper (programming language). But a Python tutorial I looked at suggests that Python is easier to learn than I thought. Would Python be able to do database things easily? Can it do old fashioned database things like searching or sorting records? 89.242.159.115 (talk) 22:47, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and it can do string-processing very well, which is worth a lot in data processing applications. Here's a nice reference on Writing MySQL Scripts with Python. In some incarnations, the database access is nothing but a wrapper for SQL statements; but there are other features as well. Nimur (talk) 23:33, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Which mainstream languages are the most compact?

Looking at this comparison of computer languages, http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/abc.html it seems that BASIC is much more compact (ie requires the least amount of code) than the other languages I looked at. I like compact languages. Which mainstream computer languages are the most compact? 89.242.159.115 (talk) 22:53, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Depends on the application. I'm a fan of Python (programming language) myself but if you did lots of matrix work you might like APL (programming language) and you might like something completely different for analyzing natural language or for producing diagrams or interrogating a database. Dmcq (talk) 23:05, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

It depends highly on your application. For example, MATLAB can very succinctly represent a matrix inverse calculation; but it is very verbose at string concatenation, compared to, say, php. Nimur (talk) 23:36, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Twenty-five years ago I used a sophisticated timetabling programme written in abbreviated BBC Basic (mixed with machine code) and it all fitted into 32KB of memory (Yes, I do mean 32 x 1024 bytes). It was the most condensed coding I have ever seen, fitting many commands into each line. (called "T-squared" if anyone recalls it) Is Cobol at the other extreme? Dbfirs 01:58, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

For languages that actually use words rather than just symbols (sorry, APL fans), I'd suggest that the stack-based or concatenative languages, such as Forth and Factor, are some of the most concise. This is because they strongly encourage turning any repeated code into its own function. Stack-based languages aren't so widely used for applications programming, but your office printer probably uses one (PostScript), as do Sun SPARC, Mac PowerPC, and OLPC XO-1 computers in their boot firmware (Open Firmware). --FOo (talk) 09:07, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I think there is some confusion in the definition of "compactness" that respondants are assuming here. Compactness of source code - and compactness of run-time representation are not the same thing at all. BASIC can be a very compact run-time language because it's interpreted and most implementations 'tokenize' the input stream to get rid of spaces and to squish reserved words down to a single byte. I suspect that Forth (programming language) could come close.

But the source code of BASIC is only small for the crudest of applications - it's a very crude/simple language with very little 'power'. Almost any C-like language will annihilate BASIC in a contest of source-code size (before anyone thinks to object to that statement - I recommend they look at the IOCCC entries (The rules require programs to have at most 2048 characters of source code in the C language. In the 2007 contest, one of the winners was a chess playing program! You couldn't come close to programming Chess in 2k characters in BASIC!!).

I agree that APL (which is indistinguishable from transmission-line noise to most people) is amazingly compact - you can say a lot with a very small number of source code characters - but the trouble with APL is that it's rather specialised for mathematical operations. For 'general-purpose' languages - I'd probably guess Python or maybe Perl would win the competition.

However, any experienced programmer worth a damn in the business will tell you that source-code compactness is quite utterly irrelevent - the more compact it is - the more incomprehensible it'll be when you come back to it months or years later. APL has been justifiably described as a "Write-only language"...Perl has been accused of the same thing. I've been a programmer for close to 40 years now - I earn a small fortune doing it (I'm a game programmer) - and I like my programs to be verbose and clear...CRYSTAL clear. Clarity and legibility are by far the most important thing if you want code that actually works - and stays working.

Compact source code only ever mattered for those few years when teeny-tiny microcomputers had less than 4k bytes of memory - that was the last time when BASIC was a good choice for ANYTHING! So - forget BASIC - pick a language with the power to do what you need - and, if possible, pick one with lots of runtime efficiency.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:04, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree in principle with everything - especially the parts about verbose and clear code. I deal with a lot of "numerical kernel" code - written by physicists and applied-math types - and they love single-letter variables, function-pointers, and GOTOs - things that should have died two generations ago. It's impossible to read - regardless of how compact it is. I believe it stems from a misconception that long variable-names somehow generate less-efficient compiled code. This is categorically not true. Variable name lengths (and in many cases, compactness of source-code) are not related to efficiency of code in either the size of the binary or the execution time. In fact, more verbose code styles can often be optimized by intelligent compilers better than hand-tweaked stuff (depending on a lot of confounding factors). Finally, I would just note that (although I am not a VB programmer), Visual Basic is a very modernized version of BASIC; and it is used by a huge number of applications-programmers. I don't think it's any less efficient than, say, Visual C++ or Visual C#; (nowadays they all use the same back-end compiler and runtime environment). Personally, I espouse Java for as much as possible; and pure C whenever real speed or hardware access is needed; but these are more for reasons of readability, maintainability, simplicity, and portability. Code compactness (either measured by source-code size or binary size) is about as low on my list of priorities as you can get when choosing a project implementation language. Nimur (talk) 04:28, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

You're incorrect about variable name lengths not affecting binary sizes, at least with all the ABIs I've ever worked with. External variables have their names stored in the binary (as-is for C, mangled for C++ and others). I do agree that variable name length has no meaningful effect on efficiency, but it's not zero. --Sean 14:59, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Er, unless you strip them. --Sean 21:23, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Regardless of people's opinions of whether they like compactness or not, the OP said he likes it, and some of the reasons for writing compact code are steeped in pride and pleasure. Many moons ago I created a .COM program in DOS (ah the good old days when dot-coms meant something else) to generate prime numbers - and the entire program fitted into 38 bytes, something which I was proud of at the time. Then I fiddled around with writing efficient sprite handlers in assembly and found that there was an entire community that thought in the same way - the cult-like demo community that has its roots in the good old days of the home computer back in the early eighties. Demo writing is still strong and people pride themselves in writing compact code to do as much as possible, and they come together at parties to showcase their talents and hard work. The OP can check some of these efforts at pouet.net. Look at some of the 1K entries; lots of them have code included. You won't find BASIC here though; it will be mainly assembly and some C code. It's pretty amazing what can be done in 1K or 4K; there are even some brilliant demos that fit into 64 bytes! Sandman30s (talk) 11:59, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I have no time for "demo" writers. They are generally hopeless practical programmers and produce nothing of any real value. It's an exercise in egotism that doesn't impress "real" programmers in the slightest. Sure, you can build some horrible piece of code that does something fancy - but what they produce is completely and utterly useless. It can't even generally be re-used for something important. The big difference with producing a "demo" and writing real code is that you are under no constraints in writing your demo. If something is too difficult - you don't have to do it. When writing real code - if some particular effect has to be produced - you have to find a way to do it - period. With demo writing, you can change what you produce to fit your ability to do it - that removes all of the sources of difficulty - and actually eliminates the real challenge. Demo's - however superficially clever - are deeply unimpressive to most professional programmers. Produce (for example) a playable game - that's fun, bug-free, looks good and runs fast with clear, readable code - and THEN you've actually achieved something. Produce that same thing with code that can be re-used to produce your next game - or handed off to someone else to maintain and expand upon - and you can consider yourself to have done a good job. I can't count the number of people who send these silly "demo" programs in with their resume's when applying for programming jobs in the games industry...we don't run them - we don't even look at them - they tell us nothing about how good a practical programmer this person is. It's about as relevant as whether they are good at doing crosswords. Being a habitual "demo" programmer is a negative when seeking a paying job because it implies that kind of hackish mentality that makes the person produce really crap code that nobody else can work with - and the last thing you want when you're down to the wire, finding the last bugs as shipping deadlines loom - is to discover that someone wrote something in the "demo" style - and it's quicker to toss it out and rewrite it clearly than it is to fix it. That's not to say that you shouldn't try to write compact code - but compact-when-compiled, not compact in terms of source code size.

The game I'm working on right now contains a little over a million lines of code. There are about a dozen programmers working on it - so we each have to work with a good 100,000 lines of code. If it's not clearly written, that's a nightmare.

SteveBaker (talk) 12:59, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

There's a huge community of demo writers who would take offense at this. You make it seem that writing a game is about the only 'professional' thing that can be done; a case of blowing your own trumpet it seems. Lots of demo writers are students who do this in their spare time while studying to do the more commercial stuff like write commercial games and applications and any number of more 'useful' things. That doesn't mean to say that demo writing is not useful; 3dmark is a commercial demo that comes to mind. They've worked in collaboration with demo writers to create efficient code in awesome demos over the years. These demos are used in shop windows for example to showcase the power of that spanking new graphics card, or used to benchmark and compare PC's around the world, with graphics companies buying advertising space in the setup screens. Remember also that it takes a talented team to make a really great demo, such as the unreal series. Some of the musicians have gone on to successful music careers just by advertising their talents in widely spread demos. Some demo groups have been supported by graphics and sound card companies over the years, and even attend the bigger parties held by them. These companies have even sponsored equipment at parties and as such created successful relationships with the most talented individuals, some of them going on to work for these companies. Now you call them 'hackish' - it's a bit unfair for someone with 40 years experience to compare against people who are inexperienced but in some cases hugely talented and have no other way to express themselves to people like you who don't believe in them. Sandman30s (talk) 13:35, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

September 29

Cannot edit in K-Meleon?

I was browsing with K-Meleon, and I found that I could not edit the text in the edit window. I could edit the edit summary, Subject/headline, and search window, but not the text. At first I thought the page was protected, but the logs indicate that it was not. I cannot edit sometimes, but at other times I can. This is very annoying, as I'd like to use K-Meleon to browse Wikipedia, as it has features I like that are similar to Google Chrome, but it is much faster than Chrome and a bit faster (and a lot easier to use) than Safari. Any idea why I cannot edit? Intelligentsium 02:33, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried both while logged-in to Wikipedia, and while not logged-in? Do you have any extensions enabled on K-Meleon? Which version of K-Meleon are you using? Have you noticed any similarities between the pages you are able (or unable) to edit? For example, are all the pages which you cannot edit very large?–RHolton≡– 18:15, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Be it resolved...

I have an LG monitor and Vista Home Premium SP2. When I leave the PC unattended for a while, the screen resolution changes. LG technical support was unhelpful. Is there a way to lock the resolution? Clarityfiend (talk) 07:43, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you have a screensaver which is changing the resolution? Nimur (talk) 09:22, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like the issue. One circuituous way to lock the resolution would be to use an account on your computer without admin privileges (which hopefully you are doing anyway). I believe that Vista requires admin rights for a screen resolution change. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:04, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Aha! I don't seem to be the only one having the problem.[8] The recommended solution seems to be to disable Transient Multi-Monitor, which I'm going to try. Odd that it didn't happen on my defunct Philips or a new Samsung I tried though. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:01, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

How To Get Google Search Results To Only Show Results Which Include Every Word In The Search Terms....

....rather than lots of links with only one or two words from the search included? Interestingly enough, I wanted to get an example to illustrate my problem, but googling 'Paris Hilton' didn't give me loads of links to the city of Paris or the Hilton hotel chain. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 10:07, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Use " " or click on the advanced search button and narrow that way. --Cameron Scott (talk) 10:14, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

(e/c) By default, Google searches for pages that contain all words in your query. To find pages that contain your query in the exact same order, which is useful for longer queries, use quotes (e.g. "Paris Hilton"). You only get what you describe when you type "Paris OR Hilton". Xenon54 / talk / 10:17, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Google will often use synonyms for some of your search terms, for example expanding US state abbreviations like NY to New York. You can use the + operator to force it to only use the term you entered. You can also use the "allintext:" operator at the start of your query to eliminate "these terms only appear in links pointing to this page". More nifty tips here. --LarryMac | Talk 11:48, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Flaming

When I say flaming, what comes to mind?Accdude92 (talk) (sign) 13:27, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

My first thought is "why do you ask?" Vimescarrot (talk) 13:42, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

A friend of mine, dosnt think it means attaking an internet user.Accdude92 (talk) (sign) 13:53, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Tell him to see Homonym and Flaming. Vimescarrot (talk) 14:00, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

While we're at it, see Context (language use). In other contexts, there are a lot of possible interpretations. Nimur (talk) 15:01, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

The act of writing intentionally inflammatory emails or web posts, specifically to belittle someone you disagree with. APL (talk) 15:26, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I've ever seen "flaming" in this sense. I've seen "flamed" and "to flame". Perhaps it is simply because it is rare that anyone would write about the act of flaming while it occurs. They write about it before or after it happens, as in "He is going to flame..." or "He flamed...". -- kainaw™ 15:36, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

"Bob has a lot of posts in the beginner's forum, is he helping those newbies?" "No, he's just flaming them." APL (talk) 15:43, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Alternatively : "If you'd spend less time flaming people, and more time listening to what they say [...]" APL (talk) 15:44, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Forum rules section: 'No flaming other users'. I would think this one would be flaming obvious! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 03:23, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

"I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my homosexuals flaming". Oh wait, that's not the same .... --LarryMac | Talk 18:38, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I must say that the Reference Desk is not for polls like this; you should go to a discussion board for that. Now that I have said this, I'm going to be your enabler by answering for myself: "Inflammatory posts criticizing a user of the Internet". Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Video of computer monitor

I'm looking for a school project. I thought I could make a program that reconstructs the original video from a video of a computer display or tv (as often seen on the internet). Unfortunately my English is quite limited, so I need a little help to find any existing studies on this (google tells me 'hand-captured video' isn't canonical English). If anyone can hint where to find lots of suitable videos or has anything else to say they would also be welcome. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 17:41, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you referring to capturing the video directly from the computer, or clearifying the picture and eliminating scan lines and other artifacts that come from taking video of a CRT? The most common way of acomplishing a clear picture of a computer monitor or TV (especially when CRTs were more common to see in movies) is to either use bluescreen techniques or to otherwise overlay the screen's video on top of the "real" monitor. If this is not the answer you are looking for, you might be talking about eliminating scan lines and other artifacts from existing video that contains TV screens. This seems to me to be incredibly difficult to accomplish as the "interlacing" that you'd be reversing can be anything from an annoying flickering effect to a large black bar movnig slowly from bottom to top (or top to bottom) of the screen... even potentially a stationary black bar in the middle of the screen if the framerate and refresh rate match up. You could probably get a pretty decent reconstruction of the video on the screen in the event of a flickering type effect as you are getting full frames at roughly half the framerate as normal, but for a slow crawling scan bar you would need to reconstruct the missing portions of the image which in many cases would be next to impossible to do as the black bar moves too slowly to fill in the missing information from other frames. Caltsar (talk) 18:28, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm referring to the existing video case. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 18:43, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

If you want to capture the screen, then I would recommend using Camtasia. It's a program. If you use a camera, it will look horrible and take up un-necessary disk space.--Drknkn (talk) 20:07, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Memtest working too fast

Hello there, I have just burn memtest86 3.5 on CD and boot system from it. I noticed that it was testing the ram too fast (without any error) and soon after that it was booting constantly. Most of the time percentage reaches to 48. During booting interval I rejected CD from cd rom. Is it normal? How many times should I test?

I have 4 gb transcend ddr2 800 MHz ram. Thank you--119.30.36.42 (talk) 19:38, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I have not seen this occur personally, but would suspect that memtest86 is hitting some bad memory at the 48% point; so bad that the CPU resets. Try unplugging your memory DIMMs and rearranging them (while the computer is off! And be sure they are all well-seated after you move them!), and seeing if memtest still chokes. If this behavior keeps occurring, I would get new RAM and see if that fixes the problem. Are you experiencing crashes or sudden restarts when you use the computer normally? Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:22, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

• No, I am not experiencing any crashes or sudden restarts right now, just testing this software. Is there any problem with memtest86 3.5 version? or what else?--119.30.36.49 (talk) 13:05, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

• Update: Ok, I have figured out problem from here.It was because of the version. Thanks--119.30.36.49 (talk) 13:19, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Other messengers?

Can anyone give me any other programs that access the same function that AIM does? IE, a friend of mine is stubborn and won't install AIM. What other programs can I use to communicate with him using my AIM account? --76.120.179.184 (talk) 19:57, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

If he uses GMail, the Google Talk client built into the GMail interface can talk to AIM. The Comparison of instant messaging clients article lists several other programs that operate with AIM. --LarryMac | Talk 20:12, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

There is Pidgin. (Formerly "Gaim") This is an opensource client that'll connect to the AIM network. No reason to ever install any software created AOL. (Pidgin is better, anyway.) APL (talk) 21:29, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

From the Pidgin article, you will see versions of Pidgin and programs that use its libpurple library to get the same functionality. In my opinion, these are better than AIM because they designed to be useful. They are not designed as a marketing tool to track and harass the user. -- kainaw™ 21:42, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Amazing what you learn on the refdesk - I hadn't even heard of this AIM program before reading this, seems to be loved in the US though. Nanonic (talk) 22:40, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

It makes sense that AIM is only widely known in USA. It's an offshoot of the America Online service, which is primarily a USA-only service. APL (talk) 17:58, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

iPod Touch Current Location Malfunction

Alright, I've had my iPod touch for a few months, and the current location device has worked perfectly. However two weeks ago I spent 3 days in Sumter, South Carolina, and used my iPod (and apps requiring current location) there. I get back to Banner Elk, North Carolina, and now any app that requires my current location puts me as still in Sumter, South Carolina. How can I change this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hubydane (talk • contribs) 23:49, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

What puzzles me is how it knew your location in the first place! The iPod touch has no GPS and no cell-phone capability to fall back on. I can't imagine how it could possibly know it's location. SteveBaker (talk) 02:33, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Maybe the programs use the wifi's ip address? But that would mean it would automatically change when I came back to Banner Elk. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hubydane (talk • contribs) 02:37, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

But your WiFi's "address" is just an internet address - you can't get any kind of precise location from that. Your ISP must work over thousands of square miles and (assuming you have a dynamic IP), it'll allocate specific addresses to individual customers at random. I don't see how the iPod could use that productively. Anyway - the online iPod touch manual says:

iPod touch uses Location Services to determine your location. Location Services uses available information from local Wi-Fi networks (if you have Wi-Fi turned on). This feature isn’t available in all areas. If Location Services is turned off, you’ll be prompted to turn it on. You can’t find your current location if Location Services is turned off. See “Location Services” on page 118. To conserve battery life, turn Location Services off when you’re not using it. In Settings, choose General > Location Services.

So I think it's relying on the WiFi provider giving your location. That might work in commercial places like coffee shops and airports that offer free WiFi - but WiFi access points in general don't have to do that. My WiFi gizmo in my house certainly doesn't know where it is any more than the iPod does...unless I tell it. So anyway - it looks like you need to go to "Settings" choose "General > Location Services" and turn it back on (presuming that it's somehow gotten turned off) - and perhaps you're locking on to a different WiFi system than you used to pick up...perhaps you're getting a stronger signal from some new WiFi node that doesn't offer this service?? SteveBaker (talk) 03:53, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

September 30

Mindspark search engine

There is a search engine called Mindspark that, uninvited, got onto the toolbar of our computer. We thought we got rid of it but it's back again.(But not on the toolbar.) Has anyone heard of this thing? Thanks.Rich (talk) 04:53, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

This suggests you run Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:49, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Quick C question

/* Convert Fahrenheit to Celsius*/
#include <stdio.h>

int
main(void)
{
        double fahrenheit;
        double celsius;
        scanf("%lf", &fahrenheit);
        printf("The temperature in Fahrenheit is %.2f.\n",  fahrenheit);

        /* convert */
        celsius = 5 / 9 (fahrenheit - 32);

        /* display celsius */
        printf("The temperature in celsius is %.2f degrees.\n", celsius);

        return (0);
}

Why doesn't this work? My compiler says:
FtoC.c: In function âmainâ:
FtoC.c:13: error: called object â9â is not a function

which makes little since to me. What can be done to make this work? (I am an extreme newb at C) -- penubag  (talk) 06:51, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

You have to have an operator between the 9 and the parenthesis. Try "celsius = (5 / 9)*(fahrenheit - 32); and see if that works for you. Dismas|^(talk) 07:03, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks it now compiles correctly! But unfortunately, when I execute it and input any number for Fahrenheit, the program always returns 0.00 degrees. What has to be done to fix this? -- penubag  (talk) 07:17, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

(5. / 9) *(fahrenheit - 32);. Because 5 and 9 both have type int, the result of 5/9 will always be zero (see integer division). Adding a "." will cause one of the literals to have type double, and the other will be implicitly converted to that type. decltype (talk) 07:34, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much, it works now! But one more question, why are Fahrenheit and Celsius ints? I told them to be doubles at the top? -- penubag  (talk) 07:43, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

They're not. But 5 and 9 are ints. --Spoon! (talk) 07:46, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes. It is the types of the operands that determine the type of the result. Consider the expression:

 double d = 1 / 2;

Because 1 and 2 both have type int, the result of the division will also have type int. The result is the algebraic quotient with any fractional part discarded, yielding 0. Then, d is initialized with the value 0 converted to double. That is, the conversion to double happens after the expression (1/2) has been evaluated. decltype (talk) 08:06, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I always teach first year C/C++ students that math expressions are right-to-left and boolean expressions are left-to-right. So, the example of

double d=1/2;

makes sense if you realize it goes right to left. You get a ;, so you know it is a statement. You get a 2. That's an int. You get a /. Division. Cool. You get a 1. You can do the division now. That is 1/2, which is zero (int division). You get a =. You need to assign the zero to something. You get a d. It is a variable. You get the double. You need to turn the int 0 into a double. No problem. You put 0.0 in d. So, while this "right-to-left" rule is not exactly true, you can (hopefully) see why it is beneficial for first year programmers who are trying to understand how things work. In the next year, I divulge more about how things really work because they should be past parsing math and boolean expressions. -- kainaw™ 12:37, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Ohhhhh, I get it now! The compiler reads right to left. That makes much more since to me now. Thanks kainaw -- penubag  (talk) 17:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

In C, if you write a number without a decimal point, the compiler treats it as an integer. While it's evaluating math, it's lazy. If it sees an integer divided by another integer - it does integer math. So 5/9 is zero. When you subtract 32 from the Fahrenheit number, the compiler sees that although 32 is an integer, 'fahrenheit' is a double - so it knows to do that using double precision math - so it converts 32 to 32.0 and does the subtraction. Finally, it has to multply the result of 5/9 (which is the integer: zero) by the result of (fahrenheit-32.0). It sees that because one of the numbers is a double that it has to do the math in double precision - so it converts the zero to 0.0 and does the sum. Putting the decimal point in there tells the compiler that these are double-precision numbers - so it's forced to do all of the math in double precision.

In nicely written C code, all of the numbers in that expression ought to have decimal points because it's quite a lot of work for the computer to convert an integer into a double - so all of the constants (including 32) should be given as double's - even when (as in the case of the 32) it would have come out right. In general, it's awfully easy to screw up when you mix integers with floats or doubles - so it's safest to always use '.0' on the end of numbers used in expressions where you expect to get a float or double as a result. Also, it's bad form to write 5./9. (even though that's perfectly legal) because the '.' is kinda invisible to people reading your code - so to be super-professional, you should write 5.0/9.0 which really emphasises that you remembered to put that decimal point in there.

The art of good programming is not only to keep the computer and the compiler happy - but also to make things super-clear to other people who have to read your code. (And 'other people' includes you - a couple of weeks into the future when you have to read and re-understand your own software!)

SteveBaker (talk) 12:39, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for further explaining the point, my C book did not mention this process at all. I'll be sure to do this in the future. -- penubag  (talk) 17:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

That's good advice for another reason too, you'll avoid having to convince your co-worker / instructor that (5./9) really is correct, portable, and guaranteed to produce the "right" result (although that may have a net positive effect in the long run). Regards, decltype (talk) 12:57, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Not to veer into style and "best practices" too much, but ... in my experience 5.0, 9.0 (or maybe 5.0/9.0) and 32.0 should all be constants. If you declare them as const doubles, then there's less confusion about what decision the compiler is making for you. Constants also can make life simpler when programs have to be changed - suppose this was a larger program with calculations like this scattered throughout and that the value at which water freezes on the Fahrenheit scale changes in the future (not likely, but bear with me); you could search for every occurence of "32" in your source code and hope you change all the right ones, or you could change the declaration of "FahrenheitFreezingPoint" once. --LarryMac | Talk 13:19, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Converting integer literals to doubles is not expensive, it's free, because it happens at compile time (even when optimizations are disabled). There's no reason to write them as doubles unless you think it helps clarity. Integer division doesn't happen because of laziness, but because it's a useful operation that's often what you want when you're dividing integers. (5.0 / 9.0) * x or x * (5.0 / 9.0) will compute 5.0/9.0 at compile time and do just a single multiplication at runtime. In contrast, x * 5.0 / 9.0 parenthesizes as (x * 5.0) / 9.0 and will most likely do a multiplication and a division at run time. There are circumstances where that might actually be better, because 5.0/9.0 is not exactly representable as a double while 5.0 and 9.0 both are. -- BenRG (talk) 00:33, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Finally, you can get rid of the weird characters in the error message by doing an "unset LC_CTYPE". --Sean 15:07, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

That did not seem to work. -- penubag  (talk) 17:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Hrm. Try doing an "env | grep -i utf" and do an unset on anything mentioning utf8. This will probably make your greps and such 10 times faster, at the cost of not handling non-ASCII correctly. --Sean 21:33, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry I'm pretty much illiterate here. I tried typing "env | grep -i utf" and my compiler says "LANG=en_US.UTF-8". It still does not fix the issue but am I forgetting a step? -- penubag  (talk) 00:17, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

One last question:

#include <stdio.h>

int
main(void)
{
        char color, O, o, B, b, Y, y, G, g;
        printf("Input the first letter of the color: \n");
        scanf("%c", &color);
        if (color = O || o ) {
                printf("The content is ammonia\n"); }
        if (color = B || b ) {
                printf("The content is carbon monoxide\n"); }
        if (color = Y || y) {
                printf("The content is hydrogen\n"); }
        if (color = G || g) {
                printf("The content is oxygen\n"); }
        else { printf("Invalid color type\n"); }

return (0);
}

This simple program is supposed to return chemical names for the first letter of its color. When given a letter, the program says all of them are the chemicals. How can I make it skip each if statement if it is not true?-- penubag  (talk) 17:44, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Your if statements are saying something like "if (color = O)" or "if o". "if o" will always be true (as will "if b", etc). You need to have the complete comparison on each side of the ||. A couple other things to conside would be using either toupper() or tolower() on your input, and/or using a switch statement instead of the ifs. --LarryMac | Talk 17:55, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I haven't read that far into my book yet and don't know the syntax for any advanced commands (or basic ones for that matter). The first 130 pages do not mention switches yet. -- penubag  (talk) 00:17, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Also if(color = O) {foo;} doesn't compare color to O, it assigns color to the value of O. And the if statement gets the value of that assignment operation, which IIRC is equal to the value of O. You should use if(color==O) instead.

Finaly at no point do you initialize the characters you are comparing with. So even the above whould compare color to a variable with random content. Taemyr (talk) 18:02, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Ahh, thanks, that makes since. -- penubag  (talk) 00:17, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

dammit. i've always had a mental block on = vs ==; reason 489 why I'm a system designer not a developer --LarryMac | Talk 18:05, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

About that, some coding guidelines recommend placing the constant-expression (if there is one) at the left hand side, so that the compiler will catch those errors. For example:

if('O' = color) return 0; /* ill-formed */

I don't like it one bit, but I can understand the arguments in favor of it. decltype (talk) 18:53, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Others have pointed out your grave errors (your program has undefined behaviour, and is likely to make demons fly out of your nose^[9]). When you've fixed those, you should prefix all your ifs, except for the first, with "else" or use a switch. That way, your program won't test your color against "B", when it's already determined that the color is "O". decltype (talk) 18:48, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Basically you should be writing

if ( (color == O) || (color == o) { etc...

This was mentioned above but no-one seemed to say it explicitly. The reasons are given above. It's also explained here [10] 83.100.251.196 (talk) 22:45, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

That did the trick! Thanks very much! I'm still having a little issue with the "else": even if I define a valid letter, the program reads the else statement and prints the invalid chemical message.-- penubag  (talk) 00:18, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

The "else" block is only paired with the previous "if" block. So in this case it fires when the color isn't 'G' or 'g'. If you want it to go off only when none of the previous conditionals are true then use "if", "else if", "else if", ... , "else". Rckrone (talk) 01:04, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

That worked! My book didn't seem to mention this at all. Thanks !-- penubag  (talk) 01:10, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Why is license agreement popping up every time I start Photoshop or other adobe programs???

I got Adobe Web Premium CS4 Student Edition.

I used to serial I got from Adobe.

Everytime I start Photoshop, dreamwaver or another adobe program I have to accept the license agreement.

Why does it do that?? And how do I make it stop? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.74.217.62 (talk) 09:26, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

It seems like you may already have a solution, or at least the start of one. The Adobe forums are probably the best place to get advice on a problem like this; they have the highest concentration of experienced users and Adobe "pros". The corrupt/incomplete installation already mentioned there does seem the most likely solution. Having said that, searching adobe photoshop "license agreement" "every time" gives some promising results which might offer alternative fixes. --☇Kateshortforbob _talk☄ 13:37, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Update script, part 2

Continuing from my previous question, I'm trying to write a greasemonkey script that will refresh a page and load any new changes, but will automatically stop refreshing if it detects a 404 error (I don't want it to keep refreshing because then all I'll have is the 404 error). So far I've managed to come up with this

var numMinutes = 5;window.setTimeout("document.location.reload();", numMinutes*60*1000);

That refreshes the page. Now all I need is a way to automatically stop the script when it detects 404. Any suggestions on how to do this? Many thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.133 (talk) 11:57, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

How about something like this (not tested)?

function my_reload() {
    GM_xmlhttpRequest({
        method: 'GET',
        url: window.location.href,
        onload: function(responseDetails) {
             if (responseDetails.status != 200)
            {
                 alert("request failed");
                 return;
            }
            document.innerHTML = responseDetails.responseText; // Wrong: see note below
        }
    });
}

Here are the AJAX details for GM. --Sean 15:20, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I see you can't use document.innerHTML. Perhaps add an iframe, and replace its HTML with the new document. You could also just refresh the iframe or current page if the AJAX call works, of course, but that leaves a small race condition where the first call works and the second one doesn't, which might be acceptable for your application. --Sean 15:51, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

ln -s not supported

Assume you have a program that requires ln -s. However, your Linux box mounts from a Windows NFS. Windows doesn't support symbolic links. Is there a common solution or do you have to fiddle around with tricking the system into thinking a local Linux drive is somehow mounted under the Windows drive to trick the program into running ln -s on the local Linux drive? -- kainaw™ 16:32, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

A Windows... NFS? Do you mean a Windows Shared Folder using Samba? or Do you mean NTFS? Can you clarify the following: What file-system is the symbolic link target on? How is that file-system seen or mounted by the local linux environment? What file system is the symbolic link intended to be on? Nimur (talk) 17:46, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

The system between the local Linux machine and the remote Windows machine is unknown. /home on the Linux is NFS mounted (not Samba) in some way to the Windows machine /nethome (or should that be N:\\). The goal is to place a symbolic link in home (which is technically on the Windows machine) to the local Linux drive in /tmp. The error is a simple "Operation is not supported". I suspected Samba, but sambaclient is not running and I can see the entry for the Windows drive in /etc/mtab. Is it possible to use mtab to mount through Samba without having a sambaclient running? If so, then my suspicion that the problem is with Samba would be verified. -- kainaw™ 17:53, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX has a Windows hosted NFS server; this was more necessary in the past, when Samba's netbios/smb client wasn't so hot, than it is now. Perhaps this is what Kainaw's windows machine is running. Incidentally NTFS does support symlinks (well, kinda) - NTFS junction points - I'd guess it was the WS4U-NFSd that doesn't (junction points are a tad esoteric, really). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:38, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

The only way I can think to do something like this is with a UnionFS overlay. Do the following sudo /bin/mount -t unionfs -o dirs=/tmp/kainaw:/home/kainaw none /home/kainaw2 (where /tmp/kainaw and /home/kainaw2 are intially empty directories). Now you can create symlinks in /home/kainaw2 (including ones that overlay stuff already there) and the changes are infact stored in /tmp/kainaw and leave /home/kainaw untouched, but /home/kainaw2 looks like your homedir, but with the symlinks you wanted. If you really need the symlinks to be in /home/kainaw then you'll have to figure out how to make the automounter mount that directory somewhere else. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:30, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Parallel ports and Linux kernel drivers

The first part of my Commodore 64 games restoration project - install a PCI parallel port replicator - is now completed, and so far works without problems. Still waiting for the next two phases - attach the 1541 disk drive, and install the necessary driver software. So therefore I have questions:

1. How "hot-pluggable" are parallel port devices? Am I in danger of damaging the adapter, or my computer, if I plug/unplug the 1541 while the computer is on? What if I keep it plugged in, but power it up/down while the computer is on?
2. I have only seen OpenCBM being mentioned as a 32-bit Linux kernel driver. My computer has a 64-bit processor and 64-bit Fedora Linux. Will the driver still work? JIP | Talk 16:52, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

In general, the IEEE 1284 compliant devices are very hot-pluggable - though watch out for devices that use a common ground / common live voltage in "unconventional" ways (other than setting a reference - in theory, there should be buffer amplifiers if the 5-volt is used for anything, but some creative hardware designers might be drawing power over the interface!). On the PC side, as long as the driver is properly written, the worst that should happen is a data timeout or error; but I assume that you know this, since you are writing the driver. (Avoid blocking I/O calls in the hardware access code - Whatever you do, don't hang the whole computer on bad/missing data! ). Are you writing the C64 emulator driver or just planning to use the OpenCBM driver? Nimur (talk) 17:32, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Commodore serial-488 ports are very sensitive to being connected when powered - I once blew two 1541s when daisy-chaining them with the power on; the PC's parallel port is fairly robust by comparison. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:35, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Like many parallel-port devices, that hardware is probably not standards-compliant. Technically the hardware must accept any voltage between -15 and +15 volts relative to the common ground - and I doubt the PC was even supplying this. It sounds like something was leaking power onto the parallel port unintentionally - maybe daisy-chaining shorted a pin which was otherwise assumed to be floating, etc. Again, well-designed hardware should never explode when you plug it in backwards (etc). Nimur (talk) 17:40, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I should therefore be safe with keeping the 1541 plugged in but only powering it up when I'm using it. (The 1541 is notorious for getting quite warm when powered up, so I wouldn't want to leave it on all the time, as I do with modern hardware.) I'm going to use the OpenCBM driver, which I'll compile from the sources. I don't know nearly enough about Linux kernel programming to write my own driver. JIP | Talk 17:38, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

It's been a quarter of a century since I last had to do this, but if memory serves one always turned the 1541 on before the c=64, and off after it. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:47, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

With me, I usually did it the opposite way, and never had any problems. We'll have to see if the 1541 still works after nearly two decades of inactivity. JIP | Talk 17:56, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Software To Find Out What's Hogging All The Space On My Disk.

Is there anything for Windows Vista that does this (preferably free)? I'm noticing that my disk space is getting noticeably smaller each time more or less every day (60GB disappeared over the weekend!) and I'd like to find out what's going on. TIA! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 19:00, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I can't say for sure, but I'd assume at least one of the programs in this archived section should work with Vista. --LarryMac | Talk 19:04, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

OverDisk makes nice pie-charts. Nimur (talk) 19:15, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

As per LarryMac's archive link, let me re-iterate: forget every other suggestion you might get here about SequoiaView and WinDirStat etc. Just get FolderSize for Windows. It adds a "folder size" column straight into Windows Explorer so you never have to run a separate application just to check out your folder sizes. I'm using it on XP but I'm sure it works on Vista too. It just WORKS. You'll easily be able to see and clear out your space-hogging files in no time. Check it out. Zunaid 23:03, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I find the SequoiaView-like applications much better. The problem isn't just listing folder sizes, it's being able to really see where the memory is being taken up. With a graphical display, you instantly know, "oh, crap, I have a much of MPEGs I forgot about." With FolderSize, you see that a folder (probably WINDOWS) is huge, and have to drill down a few more times to figure out what's going wrong. Anyway, different strokes, different folks, but I do think we can say that these two programs provide different functionality. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:04, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

memorex mini traveldrive MS-DOS boot problem

Dear Wikipedians:

I have a 512 MB memorex mini traveldrive USB keydrive that I got from a friend ~2007. I used HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool to format it as an MS-DOS 6.22 bootable drive using the MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS found in the first partition of my hard drive.

However, when I reboot into the USB key, the message "Starting MS-DOS..." is displayed, but then the system hangs. However it is still responsive to the Vulcan nerve pinch.

Note that I have previously used this USB key successfully as the boot-stick for my Slackware Linux.

I also have a Kingston DataTraveler 1GB USB keydrive that boots up MS-DOS perfectly. I also got the Kingston one in 2007. So I am greatly bewildered as to why one USB key can do it and the other one can't?

Thanks for your help.

70.52.150.94 (talk) 19:30, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Blackberry Daylight Saving Time problem

I'm in a country which is in the same time zone as a large US city, but is not in the US. The Blackberry Time Zone options list the US city only, so that is what it is set to. However, there's one big difference - the country I'm in does not use DST (Daylight Saving Time).

The BB software does not seem to have any options for turning off DST. When I sync it to my computer it takes the time from the computer, but touching the Date?Time applet on the device causes it to revert to DST, meaning that it sets the clock forward by an hour.

Does anyone know of a setting on the device I can use to turn off DST permanently? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.183.8.194 (talk) 19:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

XFX or Gigabyte (motherboard)

I am looking for a motherboard for gaming. Which brand is better? I don't want SLI or Crossfire. Thank you --119.30.36.40 (talk) 21:29, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
P.S. I have heard number of freezing issue with XFX board

Have you gone to Newegg and browsed the Motherboard section to read the user comments? I have found the user comments very useful. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:48, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

My second Gigabyte mobo just failed. I sent the first one back, and they sent me a new one after two weeks. It won't post. I think I'll order an Asus. After a few months with the first Gigabyte mobo, I smelled something burning, then the ethernet stopped working, and it wouldn't POST most of the time.--Drknkn (talk) 22:20, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

• I have changed my mind. Both of them have lock up or freezing issue. I am thinking to get Asus board (ASUS P5Q-EM LGA 775 Intel G45 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard). Any suggestion? --119.30.36.40 (talk) 22:53, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

October 1

The wireless charger

Dell has a new high-end laptop that charges wirelessly. I haven't seen this computer yet, but it comes to me that this design may have some serious inherent problems. How do they solve them? If you have to install an induction coil in the bottom of a laptop, how do you:

• Keep the coil in the same place for the next generation's product?

Since laptop computers are compact, they may require rearrangement of parts from model to model.

• If the coil is very large in size (certainly much larger than the coils for electric toothbrushes), how do you use the bottom of computer for heat dissipation?

Many laptop computers use the bottom to dissipate heat. However, wireless charging requires touching of two parts to maximize efficiency. Certainly I can make a bottom that sits 1/8" apart from the charging stand. This shall enable the air to flow freely to remove the heat. It just renders the charger much less useful.

If your computer has a large footprint (this one has a 16" monitor), you probably have the land area to install the coil. What if you want to install it on a much smaller computer?

• Can the charging stand be used internationally? I mean voltage.

Many years ago I have seen a creative use of inductive charging on a Japanese-made PHS phone. The charging stand makes half of a transformer and the handset makes its another half. When the handset sits in the charging socket, this hard-wired transformer lowers the AC voltage for recharging (you need additional circuits in the handset). Since PHS is mainly used in Japan, they may afford to build hard-wired circuits for 100 VAC. Most GSM phones may need extra circuits to handle international variable voltages for their roaming users.

To me, this design trick seems to have a business sense. They are for the high-end markets. A rich user may just buy several charging stands for the home study, living room, office, and elsewhere. The charging stands cost very little to build (possibly nothing but a coil). They shall be very profitable. -- Toytoy (talk) 01:14, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

==There is any program that randomize a song??

There is any program that randomize a song?? An example: The program get the sound, split in many parts with 0,001 second and then put those parts together in a random order.