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October 21

Affiliate links or codes?

The "Affiliate links" section of Wikipedia:Spam reads as follows:

Even if they are related to the subject or is an official page for the subject, external links containing affiliate or referral codes are considered spam.

What is affiliate code or referral code? Or perhaps this means affiliate links or referral links; but what are these? It would be helpful if (1) articles could be written on these subjects and the terms linked, (2) someone inserts an explanation at that page, or (3) the text at that page could be reworded. In the meantime, what are they? Nyttend (talk) 02:14, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

They are codes that credit a certain account with having sent the user to that web site. Say that I have a web site. I want users to come to my site, so I set up a system whereby people can be paid for sending users there. So, you create an account with my site and I give you a special URL, www.foo.com/code. Now, every time that someone goes to www.foo.com/code, you get a couple cents and they get redirected to my site, foo.com. Dismas|^(talk) 05:54, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Something like AJAX across sites

Hi All,

Here's our situation: we have an online store in Host A (which uses a proprietary CMS). This host is IIS / ASP based, and I can create ASP pages but they have SQL functions disabled. Now we also have a Godaddy hosting plan (linux/php/mysql -- lets call it Host B), and I was wondering if there was an easy way for me to query the database I created on MySQL on Host B.

I have been able to work around it to some extent by doing the following, but I feel it is very awkward:

I have caller.asp in host a which takes parameters passed to it, it then creates an iframe embedding and passing the arguments to a query.php which does the appropriate query to MySQL.

One of my problems with this (aside from security concerns etc) is that the formatting is done by the php file, and its a hassle to have to update the php file everytime a new layout is desired.

Surely there has got to be a better way around this. It would be great if I could just get the results in a string/array using something like server-side AJAX that I can parse according to my needs. (Oh, and yes, I understand that AJAX is intentionally limited to the same domain to prevent xss hacks/attacks)

If anyone can point me to a good article / concept it would be much appreciated.

Thanks in Advance PrinzPH (talk) 02:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

Why can't you just return the data from the PHP file in a parsable format? That seems to be what you are getting at, and it's what I would have suggested doing. It is not hard to write up a PHP function that converts an array to, say, XML, or to an HTTP GET request, and it's equally not hard to find code to parse such data. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:22, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip! :) I have gone ahead and made an 'api' on php returnin xml, then parsing that using asp. Man I love the refdesk! PrinzPH (talk) 00:08, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Youtube

What's the longest time a Youtube video has been on the site without a single view? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 10:16, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I suspect you'd need to have access to Youtube logs for that... I don't know how one could go about finding that out without them. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:13, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Do you include private videos in your description? Kushal (talk) 14:44, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

macbook display problem

Hi guys, I have a 2006 Intel Macbook and it has run into a weird problem lately. It randomly messes up and turns into something like http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/20/102009051200.jpg I think the situation is getting worse as this has been happening for a few days and it seems to like to go to that pre-VGA stage more often and stay there more often. Sometimes it corrects without me consciously acting to correct it and sometimes I move the lid as if I was opening or closing the macbook lid. Any ideas guys? I am so confused by this. Kushal (talk) 12:14, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The looks inverted... pressing ctrl+option+apple+8 inverts the screen. Maybe you have done this accidentally? Though that would be a very optimistic assessment (since it doesn't look totally consistent)... more worst case would probably be some cable coming loose, which might produce that kind of weirdness. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:08, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

It was worth a shot though. However, no, it is not the normal "inverted" look. The loose cable idea is what I thought too. that or a cable caught somewhere ... how can I fix this? any ideas? Kushal (talk) 14:43, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, if it were me, and I were comfortable taking apart a MacBook (which I am—they're not too bad, not compared to, say, iBooks, which have ten million more screws than are necessary), I would probably take it apart and give it a gander. My guess, based on taking them apart before, is that the problem will be in the wires on the hinge of the screen. There are wires that go into the LCD from the motherboard and they have to cross at the hinge. As you can imagine, this is a potential high-wear area because opening and closing the hinge, if it catches the wire, can cut into them. My guess is that there is some kind of cable damage in that area, and that you are getting analog weirdness as a result. (Which can be very weird. I had a VGA cable once that went bad on the inside, somehow, and it was warping all the colors when it was being output to a projector. Took forever to diagnose that it was the cable that was the problem, not the projector or the Mac.) ifixit.com has a lot of good tutorials as to how to take them apart and replace pieces; unfortunately, if it is one of those cables, I'm not sure you can replace those by themselves (they appear to only be sold with the entire display assembly). Anyway... that's my uneducated guess, based on previous experience inside Macbooks and your description! --Mr.98 (talk) 15:04, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I will look into it. I am also thinking about the other macbook that is running into (an unrelated) problem... http://hadakushal.blogspot.com/2009/09/messed-up-screen.html

If I do have wire damage, where will I find cheap but durable wire and parts? eBay? I guess some of it is for another question here at the reference disk but I want to make sure that it is worth it to open the computer. ... I have replaced the hard disk drive on the computer before but I have not really opened it up upto now. Kushal (talk) 22:17, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, if it is one of the cables you can't buy separately, the nice thing is that if you bought a broken display (e.g. a cracked one) used, the cables would probably work. I don't know how feasible it would be to transplant them from one to the other, though. If it is a problem of wire damaging, you don't need "durable" parts so much as to position them in the case correctly. I have in the past used a small bit of card stock (e.g. cut from an index card) to add an extra layer to keep the wire from slipping into a high-wear area. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:20, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

is there a way

I got an nvidia geforce 8400m gs in my laptop, which max(the default) resolution is 1280 by 800pixels. But i do know that this card can go up as much as 1920×1080. i know that becouse i hooked up an HDTV tv to it by the hdmi output built in my laptop, and so it can produce it with no problem, but there seems to be no way to set it higher then the default (1280 by 800) if no hdmi output is provided. any one know of any way to make it set to higher than 1280 x 800? Maby some register tweaks, or external drivers that might help.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.35.38.154 (talk) 13:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Does your problem occur with another external monitor? Are you trying to use a VGA interface instead of HDMI? The laptop's integrated screen most likely has no more than 1280x800 pixels. 130.188.8.9 (talk) 13:26, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Your screen only has 1280×800 pixels; even if it somehow accepted a 1080p signal there are still only 1280×800 pixels, it's a physical limit that's pointless to overcome through software. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:02, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Rendering problem of reference

Why is the hyperlink of references 24, 29, 32 in List of National Treasures of Japan (paintings) not properly formatted? Can it be fixed? bamse (talk) 13:36, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I fixed ref 24 - the problem was square bracket characters in the URL being misinterpreted when MediaWiki was rendering the page. So I replaced [ with %5b and ] with %5d and all is well. You're right that refs 29 and 32 (which refer to the same site) have the same problem - but I've not fixed them, as both appear to be bad (that is, they just resolve to the homepage of the museum, rather than to the specific page about a given artwork that the accompanying text would suggest). If someone can fix these URLs to point to the actual artworks, I'll escape these too. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I fixed the other references in the same way as you did with 24. For me, both links were pointing to the page about the respective artwork. bamse (talk) 14:23, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I can confirm that all three are work properly now that you've applied the escapes. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:33, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Screen capture of VisualBoyAdvance on Mac

May I know what buttons must I press to make screen capture of VisualBoyAdvance games on my Mac?--121.7.226.146 (talk) 13:51, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Preview (software) is the Mac OSX component that allows you to grab screenshots. It has options to grab the whole screen, specific windows, or manually-specified screen areas. Nimur (talk) 14:48, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

To take a full-screen capture in OS X, press Apple-Shift-3. It will save it as a PNG on your desktop. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:55, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

In Snow Leopard, Quicktime Player can capture your screen to a movie. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 18:52, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

How buy the correct memory off eBay?

I'd like to upgrade the memory of my current computer, but I'm confused about how I can tell if the memory for sale on eBay will be suitable for my computer. Most of the memory for sale includes two letters followed by some numbers - I think its PC1234 for example - do not know if this is relevant. What is the correct proceedure to follow please? Using the Everest software, it tells me that the memory in this computer is DDR DIMM SDRAM, that the Motherboard Name is ASRock P4VM8 and the Motherboard ID is 63-100-0000010-00101111-120204-VIA$P4VM8000_P4VM8 BIOS P1.00 I do not know what the model of the computer is, I think it is some old obscure model. I also have two other old computers I would like to improve the memory of before converting to Linux. Thanks 92.29.141.85 (talk) 14:20, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Here is your motherboard vendor's official product website. This has a lot of technical information, and a downloadable manual for more detailed information. The documentation states about the P4VM8 motherboard:

• Supports DDR400/333 non-ECC, un-buffered memory
• DIMM slots: 2
• Max. capacity of system memory: 2GB

You should be compatible with any memory that is DDR400 (PC-3200), DDR333 (PC-2700), or DDR266 (PC-2100). Nimur (talk) 14:40, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. What is the significance of the PC-XXXX? These PC numbers seem to be included in most eBay descriptions - what actually do they mean? Does the standard involved have a name? 89.240.199.100 (talk) 19:33, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

We have a nice table in the article on DIMMs. "PC" specifies that the technology is either Single Data Rate or Double Data Rate 1 (DDR1). "2700" is a standard "version" of the DDR1 technology; it approximately represents the data transfer speed (it is approximately 8x the clock rate, indicating an 8-bit data signal; but note also that this is "double data rate", so it's really 8x 2x the clock rate...). Actual data transfer speed may vary based on many other factors. The technical term for this is "peak transfer speed", measured in Megabytes per second, but again note that this is approximate. You can more safely consider it a "model number", which is loosely based on a technical specification. Nimur (talk) 21:34, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Go to the PNY, Crucial and Kingston web sites, find their part number for your product and searc for the number on eBay. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:00, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Its a pity that it is so difficult to identify what compatible memory would be. I wish the standard 'model number' was so designed to make it easy to see if it would be compatible with existing memory, but there are so many parameters: pins, speeds, and several other things that are difficult to identify or figure out. Is there anywhere online I could learn how to identify compatible memory - which of the variouis parameters are critical, which are less important - please? 78.151.83.175 (talk) 23:24, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Re: compatibility, almost all memory manufacturers have tools on their website that let you plug in your make/model of computer and will tell you what chips are compatible. I don't know though about which parameters are critical... usually there aren't too many options, though (at least in my experience). --Mr.98 (talk) 15:01, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Upgrading from integrated graphics

Hi, I'm thinking of getting a new PC but I could only afford it with integrated graphics. Would I be able to take my old graphics out and put it in the new system, or would the integrated graphics stop me doing that? Thanks a lot in advance. Mikerooney (talk) 15:35, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

A cautious yes. When I put a graphics card in a PC with integrated graphics, the graphics card took precedence over the integrated graphics. If it doesn't do so, the BIOS will almost certainly have a means to inhibit the integrated graphics. Just make sure the motherboard in the new PC has the type of connector required for the old graphics card. Astronaut (talk) 15:44, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

(ec) It depends on the motherboard(s). Some (most) desktop size (ATX) motherboards with integrated graphics adapters still have a PCIe slot, and if you put a compatible card into that, they typically use that rather than the integrated controller (you very very rarely can operate both). So for this to work you'd need to know what kind of graphics card your current system has, and make sure that your new system's motherboard has the same, or a downward compatible, slot. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:47, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. A NVIDIA or an ATI is offered instead of the integrated, so I presume my old ATI would work then. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikerooney (talk • contribs) 15:54, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Consider getting the cheapest modern card you can find; it will almost always be better than your old, presumably AGP card. Maybe substitute the extra cost with a smaller hard drive, for example. Sandman30s (talk) 19:24, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The single biggest question is whether the new computer has an AGP slot (assuming your old graphics card is AGP). If it does then it's 99% certain it'll work - if it's a PCI-express slot and your graphics card isn't - then you're in trouble. You might want to consider that though - are you sure your aging graphics card is actually going to be faster than the integrated graphics on your new motherboard? If the integrated graphics are based on an nVidia or ATI chip - then maybe you're better off using it 'as-is'. If it's based on an Intel graphics chip then probably your old nVidia/ATI card will do better. SteveBaker (talk) 01:36, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Perfect Performance in Windows 95

I just reinstalled Windows 95 on my old HP Vectra VE 200 MHz PC from 1997, and as always (I do it maybe once a year for nostalgic reasons), the performance is perfect. The system boots fast, and while in Windows, the performance is almost out of this world: Browsing the Start Menu, opening a new explorer window (as is done every time you open a new folder, using the default settings), opening Notepad or Paint with a *.txt or *.bmp file, opening the control panel, etc, is performed with no noticable delay whatsoever (it must take less than 1/30 of a second), and you even cannot hear anything from the HDD when you do any of these things, and there is never any flickering. You can shut the computer down in less than two seconds. Of course, Windows 9x has no security at all, and is not stable, the set of features is highly limited, and the GUI is very simplistic, but still – is it not possible to write quick (in this extreme sense) software today? My Windows Vista PC has a clock frequency of almost 3 GHz, has gigabyes more RAM, is much newer and so on, but still you have to wait perhaps a half second to open an explorer window, or a simple application. Even browsing to a new directory in an existing explorer window takes perhaps 1/5 of a second. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Those old HP's were brilliant machines. Even back to around 1990, the 486 HP's were highly optimized machines and for some reason worked faster than all the rest. Maybe they worked out the caching optimizations and lost the art today; who knows? However, current operating systems are filled with bloatware (support for older hardware and compatibility code) so I can imagine why Vista would work a bit slower. Windows 7 (64) I must admit is pretty fast for what it does (better than Vista anyhow). Also remember that there is more and more globalization code now, so everything you open must go and lookup libraries and perform pass-through conversions just to display correctly (talk about multibyte UTF8 etc. here, not the best for performance). When the world (let's call it the Microsoft world and forget about clouds, shall we) goes completely 64-bit and Microsoft finally pulls the plug on legacy 8/16/32 bit code - then you'll see vastly improved performance and less bloated operating systems. I don't see why they don't do this anyway - people can always dual-boot if they want to run old apps? Or run a 32-bit virtual machine on their fully 64-bit computer.

BTW, if you want to go back to 1985, there was this brilliant computer called the Amiga. Apart from its state of the art hardware for the time, its entire GUI O/S fitted into 1 meg. Yes, ONE MEG. And it worked super-fast and had no bugs to speak of. Now that was tight, optimized code. Now you find people can't write printer drivers in 1 meg... sigh. Thanks for the walk down memory lane. Sandman30s (talk) 19:41, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

To expand on this point, modern operating systems also include tons of features that were simply not available in Windows 95. Programs load more and more libraries that aren't always needed to read that simple text file, and the OS will index files on your hard drive for "instant" searches. As the hardware gets faster, Operating Systems have moved further away from the basic file and window manager that come with them to including intensive usability features (such as the previously mentioned search improvements) as well as automating and performing matainence tasks in the background that you were expected to perform yourself in the past. This has bloated the software significantly, but modern hardware can handle this bloat. Yes, it would be nice if it was faster, but with the points mentioned by Sandman as well as taking into account the extra services loading and bundled with the OS, software is likely to keep the same "speed" while allowing for more advanced features to easily be included as hardware becomes faster. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 20:03, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, well put, 206. To add another point - if you're online, there are lots of sometimes hidden checks going on, which can add to slowdowns obviously. Just to give you an example, I found svchost.exe recently doing a sequential port scan on my router - harmless but irritating. Also, there are tons more viruses that virus checkers have to scan for nowadays. There are agents of all sorts that compete with each other for file associations. There are annoying resident 'features' that check your local network and refreshes everything with the slightest change. Windows 7 has 'gadgets' that check time and weather and currency conversions. With all of that running in the background, it's no wonder that there are slowdowns of all sorts, even with the hugely faster hardware we have nowadays. I would imagine a new install of Windows 7, completely offline, would work almost as fast as that HP the OP mentioned.

As our global online world invents and reinvents itself, we will hopefully reach a point of standardization in the computing world that can only help with more optimized computers. Maybe cloud computing is really the way to go, as bandwidth gets faster and cheaper by the month; then all the problems spoken about here can remain in the domain of super-fast servers. Sandman30s (talk) 20:27, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Um... None of the x86-64 versions of Windows have ever had support for 16 bit code (including DOS), let alone 8 bit due to the removal of NTVDM. Well it's possible some of the early betas did, I don't know that far although it's my understanding as mentioned in the articles that in long mode certain options on the processor making it not possible but in any case since Windows XP x64 RTM they definitely haven't. They do include WOW for 32 bit code. Also I'm somewhat doubtful the overhead for WOW32 is actually as much as you think but am welcome to be proven wrong by some citations. BTW, I don't know how long you've been using Windows x64. I've been using it since 2005 and the Windows XP days. While I've never found it as bad as some people suggest the ability to run x86-32 apps remains an absolute necessity even in these Windows 7 days. While most of the core Windows apps are now 64 bit native there is still a hell of a lot of stuff that isn't. For example for a variety of reasons very few open source apps are. There's no official x64 Firefox for example. And even some MS apps remain x86-32 only. Microsoft Office 2010 will finally bring a 64 bit version but that's still a while away. Checking my running apps Windows Live Messenger remains 32 bit. Adobe have brought 64 bit versions of many of their apps with CS4 I believe. However I'm still waiting for a 64 bit Flash plugin and a 64 bit Java plugin. Then there's codecs (true with x64 FFDshow you have most of the important stuff). And I'm not even mentioning gaming... True if Microsoft had simply excluded WOW32 things would be different. I don't think they would be better. There's a reason why Itanium failed badly... Nil Einne (talk) 17:53, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

You can make Vista that fast if you upgrade the hard drive. I've seen Vista PCs with RAIDs or SSDs that are very, very, snappy. Programs are much larger than in the past and they have more modules (DLLs) that are often spread across the hard drive. Solid-state drives do not have read-write heads, which should mitigate the issue of collecting modules spread across a disk. Vista also introduced transactional NTFS, which means more journaling, and thus, more hard-drive activity.--Drknkn (talk) 20:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Apples new OS Snow Leopard received a bit of interest because it was significantly smaller (install size) than its predecessor. In a world where hard-drive space costs (essentially) nothing that kind of working to make it smaller is quite refreshing. I can't track it down (i'm at work) but there was some weird site I found once that was all about making incredible software with a file size under a set limit - something stupid like 50KB, the stuff these people could produce was insane. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 08:54, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Snow Leopard is smaller because of a combination of dropped support for PowerPC CPUs, and general optimisation of the OS. Back to the original question, Windows 95 is probably fast because you keep reinstalling it all the time, if you do the same with Vista you'll get a lot more speed out of it. I'm running the Windows 7 RC on a machine with 1GB DDR-233 RAM, a 20GB HDD partition, 64MB integrated graphics, and a 3.06GHz Intel Celeron. While Aero does not work, it seems very fast (Start menu opens with no noticeable delay), probably because it is newly installed, with no additional processes in the background. Go into the Processes tab in Task Manager on Vista and 95 and the difference will be insane! Use Software Explorer in Vista to keep this in check, and hopefully you will see performance improvements. 110.175.208.144 (talk) 06:30, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

First Computer in a Home

I normally hear that Mary Wilkes is the first person to have a computer in the home. Other times, I see it listed as "ostensibly" or "usually" or "as far as I can tell" she is the first person to have a home computer. This should be something rather discrete. If someone else was using a computer in his or her home before Wilkes, who was it? -- kainaw™ 19:24, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

It's going to depend entirely on what you consider a computer, right? How about a non-programmable digital electronic calculator, e.g. Sumlock ANITA calculator, c. 1961? Nimur (talk) 21:02, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

This article [1] quotes Mary Wilkes as saying that she believes she was the first person to work on a computer at home.

If we take the modern definition of "computer" (something that's equivalent to a Turing machine in terms of the Church-Turing thesis) - then non-programmable calculators definitely don't count - if they did then the abacus would win, and I'm pretty sure that I could argue that a pile of rocks used as 'tally sticks' would take the first home 'calculator' back to the stone age! If you're prepared to accept older meanings of the term "computer" in order to squeak that calculator past the modern definition - then I'd have to point out that a "computer" was originally a person who performed calculations for a living - and I imagine that many people had one of those at home back in 1613 when the word was first used!

However - I think the definitive answer is that Konrad Zuse developed the worlds first "Turing Complete" machine - that makes it indisputably a "computer" by all modern definitions. We're told that he built the machine in his parent's apartment in 1936 - which makes him by far the first person to have a computer at home.

Just in case anyone attempts to claim that Babbage did it first - well no - his analytical engine was never built and the small part of his difference engine that did get built (and which he undoubtedly showed to interested visitors at his home) - was nothing more than a calculator - and an unfinished one at that.

So - Konrad Zuse wins by a solid 25 years! SteveBaker (talk) 01:24, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Choise of motherboard

Hello there, I have come up new motherboard of Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3R and want to have it soon. But after reading this thread I'm bit worried about this board. As I had bitter experience with XFX 770i SLI board which froze my entire system numerous time. So I want a stable board which will be stable in long run. And I don't have the same experience again. Thank you --119.30.36.40 (talk) 21:19, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Is it possible to get further review of GA-EP45T-UD3R? The google shows few or no review on this board.

I would expect one of the reasons for the lack of reviews is because not many people were interested in DDR3 at the time the board was launched so most reviews were for the DDR2 variant. Further the UD3R can probably be said to be a mid end motherboard, I would expect most people who were interested in DDR3 were at the high end particularly with X48. However the reliability and performance of the DDR2 variant is no guarantee of the reliability and performance of the DDR3 one. From my experience I can say Gigabyte tends to make good motherboards for the price. In fact they are currently my preferred motherboard vendor (not that I buy motherboards much and that's partially influence by the what's available here in NZ and the price). I can't specifically comment on this motherboard but I will say one single anecdotal problem report, is basically useless. Even more so when the cause of this problem is unclear. It's possible for example the problem is completely unrelated to the motherboard or the user damaged it (as its claimed the problem only occured after a new HSF was installed and someone who needs to be told to try memtest doesn't exactly strike me as the sort of person who knows what they're doing). In fact even multiple reports of problems are not necessarily as useful as they may seem there are a lot of complicating factors like the number of users. Nil Einne (talk) 17:47, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Regular expressions and AWB

Hey, I figured this out once before, but I didn't save it, so now I've forgotten what I did the first time around. I need a regular expression that can find a dated template, and replace it with another template. However, the catch is the date on the template is variable so it's not a simple replacement. I've used a regular expression once before to get this to work in AWB, but yeah, didn't save it. For example, let's say I want to replace {{OTRS pending|year=2009|month=October|day=11}} with {{PermissionOTRS|id=###########}}, but I also have maybe a dozen more images that need the same ticket ID number, but were uploaded on different days so it could be September 29, or October 9, or October 20, etc. What is a regular expression that can selection the beginning of the template, but ignore the stuff in the middle? Does that make sense what I'm trying to accomplish? -Andrew c ^[talk] 22:37, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

So let me get this straight: you want a regex that matches the entire "OTRS pending" template, no matter what the arguments are? Well, that's easy, this should work:

{{OTRS pending[^}]*}}

First, it matches the beginning of the template ("{{OTRS pending"), then everything that isn't a closing curly bracket ("[^}]*") and then finally the end of the template ("}}"). I'm not sure about AWBs regex-handling, but that's pretty much the standard syntax. Was that what you wanted? 90.233.134.223 (talk) 01:48, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, wait, i forgot that curly brackets are a control character, so that might mess it up (though I just tried it in Python, and there it worked fine). Maybe it's best just to escape those, like this:

\{\{OTRS pending[^\}]*\}\}

There. That's it 90.233.134.223 (talk) 02:16, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, you got the idea. I'll test it out soon. Thanks a bunch. Since I was messing with it today, you don't have to backslash the curly brackets, but you do have to backslash the | (though that doesn't seem to matter as your 'regex' is ignoring everything after "pending", which is great!). Anyway, I'll test it out when I'm back on a computer with AWB installed on it, thanks again. -Andrew c ^[talk] 03:35, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Bi-directional HDMI and DisplayPort signal compatibility.

The new iMac introduced yesterday has a new feature. The mini DisplayPort accept video *input* so you can use the iMac display as a second monitor for your laptop or what have you. Now I've seen $20 Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI connectors are also available. So would I be able to connect an HDMI device (like Blu-Ray player or DVR) into the iMac to use as a monitor? Are both HDMI and DisplayPort bidirectional? Would the adaptor be bi-directional by design? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 22:37, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

HDMI and DisplayPort have different electrical properties, different signaling methods and different protocols. Therefore a chip is needed in the adapters to translate the signals, and I highly doubt it'd be bi-directional. Pure mechanical adapters though, such as mini-DisplayPort <-> DisplayPort adapters, are fully bidirectional as they are merely a cable. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:57, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I contacted the manufacturer and they confirmed their adapters are not bi-directional. Drat! --70.167.58.6 (talk) 18:50, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

October 22

chinese input support configuration question

I'm using a CHN Win XP and we use the language bar for input. Chinese is the default and tapping SHIFT will switch you to English. However, hitting SHIFT+SPACE enables ｃｏｍｐｌｅｔｅｌｙ　ｕｓｅｌｅｓｓ　ｍｅｇａｔｙｐｅ　ｍｏｄｅ which is incredibly annoying, especially since I often activate it at the end of an all-capital word, such as "I" -- I only ever needed to released SHIFT before striking the next letter, not striking the space, and the timing of my typing reflects that. It's a real pain in the ass to correct for something that I really don't want to have to correct for. Can this be disabled/adjusted to use a different key combination?218.25.32.210 (talk) 02:42, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I have no answer for you here, but I would like to add that you are not the only one - it happens to me, too, and is incredibly annoying, especially when you are in the middle of something that needs fast typing, such as on online meeting, or whatever, or even just chatting. If anyone can find a way to fix this, it would be a Godsend. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 09:15, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

[2]F (talk) 12:11, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Youtube (2)

On Youtube, why do many users lie about their age? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 07:15, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

If you say you're 18, 27 or 64 I have no ability to verify if it is true or not. Yes I could compare my Stereotype of what to expect of someone of that age with your actions, but beyond that (and searching your username in google for other site-registration/usage) i'm not sure how i'd be able to reliably verify you. Ultimately people have no reason to disbelieve a person's claim - it makes no difference to YouTube since age is irrelevant from my experience using the site. As for 'why' - well people often like to be seen as what they desire to be - younger / older, more popular / more intelligent and so on. It's easy enough to 'hide' your identity online. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 08:42, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Why do people lie about their age in real life?? Same principle —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.2 (talk) 10:06, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I know one reason: Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. A child produces a video at age 10 and doesn't want to wait until his thirteenth birthday before publishing it. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 10:53, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

In a similar vein people who want to see content restricted to 18 year olds who are not yet 18 Nil Einne (talk) 18:31, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

You could also ask, why tell the truth about your age on such a site? Does it really matter? I usually choose an age at random when I am told I need to specify it. I'm over the age of any applicable laws—isn't that all anyone really needs to know? --Mr.98 (talk) 14:51, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

It depends. If the site asks your age then you have a point. If the site simply asks if you are over 18 then that's a different matter. As far as I can remember most sites are of the later variety. Or they ask your birthdate. In that case many people likely also effectively lie about their age for privacy reasons (particularly given the rise of identity theft and the common importance of birthdate as one of the means of identification). I personally choose a date and year that is different although still relatively close to my real age. Of course in that case the primary purpose may be to not reveal the actual birthdate rather then necessarily lying about their age. And in either birthdate or age case some may not bother to select the right thing effectively lying about their age even if lying isn't really their intention Nil Einne (talk) 22:28, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Who Links To This...?

Is there a way to find out if an image, say on Flickr, is being linked to by another site? I have recently just added a bunch of pics to Flickr (mostly screenshots of games) and have found my 'views' surge somewhat drastically. I am wondering if I can find out if these pics are being used elsewhere (I don't mind, so long as they are used appropriately). Flickr does not seem to offer such a service, but is there another way to find out? --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 09:10, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Google offers such a service. Preface the URL of your photo with "link:" (so search for, for instance, "link:http://flickr.com/x123456"). You can also get there by clicking the "Advanced Search" link on the Google home page, and expanding "date, usage rights...". Hope that helps! — QuantumEleven 09:18, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

http://bighugelabs.com/dna.php - Flickr DNA. It's a great little site - for instance my flickr photos throuh there are...http://bighugelabs.com/dna.php?username=ny156uk. The bottom section shows 'Ego Surf' where you can search popular places to find out - I have found the google one to be 'ok' but it doesn't pick them all up. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 14:42, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Excellent! Cheers! Loads of stuff there! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 15:02, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

You can also try tineye -- penubag  (talk) 05:29, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

PostScript fonts on XP trouble

Hi. I've been emailed a zip-file containing a font-family, which I understand is in PostScript format. However, the files are simply named ._DeviaStrReg (presumably Deviant Strain Regular) and ._DeviaStrVer (Deviant Strain Oblique) etc., and don't have a PostScript icon. There's also a DS-store file. How do I go about installing them? Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►assemblyman─╢ 15:12, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

sounds like these have been copied from a mac, presumably they cost money also, so I'm not sure if this is legal.

The DS-store file is just meta information (garbage) that Macs tend to keep everywhere. "install" them by putting them where your PS font aware application expects to find them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.158.49.249 (talk) 21:35, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I tried that, didn't work, obviously... ╟─TreasuryTag►Not-content─╢ 22:58, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

You can't install Mac PostScript fonts in Windows XP, or vice-versa. It's as simple as that. You can share OpenType fonts and, sometimes, TrueType fonts, but PostScript fonts are customized for each operating system.--Drknkn (talk) 00:14, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh. Then why's there an article (several articles, in fact) called: Install PostScript Type 1 Fonts in Windows 2000 or Windows XP? ╟─TreasuryTag►constabulary─╢ 05:54, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I told you that you can only install Windows PostScript Type 1 fonts in Windows XP. There are Windows Type 1 fonts and there are Mac Type 1 fonts. Windows Type 1 fonts have a .PFB, .PFM, and--sometimes--a .AFM extension. You can install Type 1 fonts in Windows XP, but they have to be Type 1 fonts for Windows. Does that make sense?--Drknkn (talk) 06:02, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Do you think that using a program such as CrossFont would work, then? ╟─TreasuryTag►inspectorate─╢ 07:22, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I did not know about that program. I just researched it and it appears to work well.--Drknkn (talk) 07:49, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

fonts

How to make my own fonts, software etc (hopefully free) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.2 (talk) 15:45, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

FontForge is the main free one. --Sean 16:13, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

for windows please —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.2 (talk) 22:31, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/ms-install.html ¦ Reisio (talk) 10:44, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Keyboard and possibly spyware problems

I have 2 different problems which I think may be related. Firstly for a while now I've been having problems with my keyboard. It has become very slow to respond to my keystrokes. When typing some letters won't come out etc. It's quite random: sometimes this happens, sometimes it doesn't and its not tied to any specific keys so I think we can rule out it being dirty etc.

My second problem is with spyware and I think maybe related to the keyboard problem. I might sound a bit paranoid saying this but some of my "friends" keep working certain things into conversations, as if they wanted me to realise, that they could only know if they were spying on my PC. For example, the other night they managed to mention 2 songs which Ive been listening to recently yet the songs aren't new and I havn't mentioned them to them so I dont think its a coincidence that they are listening to such songs jst when I am. Also, one of them doesn't even listen to the same kind of music as me. So to summarise, I unfortunately can't trust my own friends.

Any advice on how to go about sorting out these problems? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.120.246.229 (talk) 16:42, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

As far as the spyware, and assuming that you are running Windows - I'd download and install Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and run a full scan, then do the same with Spybot. Those should give you a good idea of what bad stuff is lurking on your system, if any. Depending on the results, you might decide that your friends are trustworthy after all. --LarryMac | Talk 17:29, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, a non-technical way to see if someone is spying on you is to put out false information and see if they alter their behavior. So if you loop a song chosen truly at random, maybe something that would get a rise out of your friends (something vastly out of character or potentially embarrassing), and they mention it, you'd consider that pretty good evidence that they know what you are listening to. (Which could be caused by a variety of things other than spyware—depending on your arrangements, they could just be able to hear what you listen to, or ask a roommate, or whatever.) --Mr.98 (talk) 17:37, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Firefox and IETab

Where does FF/IETab keep its list of "URLs to always open with IE"? One of our vendors has recently changed to IE ONLY (they actually BLOCK the site for other browsers, but that's not the subject of this thread please). Consequently, FF needs to forget its previous behaviour, and "relearn" to always open this bookmarked site with IE. How can I force that?

I know that I can right-click on the bookmark, but that opens in a new tab, and also doesn't remember for next time. Is there a setting someplace, or a file I can edit?

Secondary question: I'm unable to locate any "formal" documentation on IETab in general, in which answers to questions like this might be found. If someone can point me to such a site -- NOT the mozilla bulletin board -- that would be an acceptable answer. --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 16:55, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

It looks like there's an options dialog with a "Site Filter" tab. --LarryMac | Talk 17:24, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, that's what that tab is for! Yep, problem solved, 29 minutes. Thanks!

Resolved

electrical connector

There is a type of electrical connector commonly seen on laptop batteries, where the battery has a bunch of little slots with contacts inside, and the laptop battery compartment has some blades sticking out, that friction-fit into the slots. What is that type of connector called, and what do the different contacts do? Thanks. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 17:57, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Memory On Disk

Recently, the 'memory available' on my C: drive has been going up and down erratically. It was 39GB yesterday morning, and had gone down to 31GB by the end of the night. Then this morning it was 36GB and has gone up to 44GB in the space of a few hours. What's happening? I haven't downloaded anything or deleted anything in the last couple of days (actually, it was 80+GB about two weeks ago). --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 18:11, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

How much RAM do you have? Sounds like virtual memory or perhaps large caches from the Internet or Quicktime. Do you use p2p software like BitTorrent? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 18:53, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

It's possibly something going on with system restore, but it's hard to say the exact cause without more information. A spatial file management tool such as windirstat may help you identify the cause of the ever decreasing amount of space. Look for unusually large files or directories. Often a google search will bring up the use and importance of system created files. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 18:54, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Download and install "FolderSize for Windows". In Explorer switch to "Details" view. Add the column Folder Size (and optionally remove the Size column). Now you'll have a column that shows you the size of all your folders so it may be easier to track down where the big size changes are occurring.

Alternatively install WinDirStat or SequoiaView which are programs that graphically depict folder sizes (but do not seamlessly integrate into Windows Explorer like FolderSize does).

Another option would be to Search all files after a certain date then sort the results by date to check which files have been recently created/changed. Zunaid 14:35, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Ps/2 keyboard - loose connector

I killed my keyboard with a cup of tea yesterday and bought a cheap replacement. However, the computer does not register the keyboard at start-up, and the ps/2 connector falls out at the slightest touch. Is there anything I can do? Visually the connector's pins seem fine. Fribbler (talk) 18:14, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Your old keyboard was also a ps/2 keyboard that you plugged into the same socket? If you're talking about a laptop keyboard that you're now substituting an external keyboard for, laptop keyboard PS2 ports are usually set up for a mouse, while the pinout for a keyboard is different. There are "Y" adapters you can buy for a couple bucks, that split the port into a keyboard port and a mouse port. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 22:11, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

It's a desktop, ps/2 in the correct keyboard slot both times. I reckon I will take it back to the shop, but was hoping for a workaround. Fribbler (talk) 22:18, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Gently, gently, gently, bend the pins and outer ground connector on the plug very slightly until you get a tighter fit. Failing that buy a new keyboard. Astronaut (talk) 22:20, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

It cost me €5, so I'm not too worried, but using the "on-screen keyboard" feature in vista is pissing me off tonight; hate waiting till tomorrow :-) Fribbler (talk) 22:29, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Postscript: Astronaut, you might just be an Ancient astronaut! Tinkering with the pins worked, seems they were TOO perfectly aligned, a bit of chaos made them work. :-) Fribbler (talk) 23:19, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Optimized (gaming)performance on on dual(+quad) socket MB

Hi

I have a Quad Opteron socket MB (TYAN S4985)now running Windows 7, in which currently only two sockets are populated with cpu's...anyway....

This MB has two nvidia nforce4 derivate chips (Nforce pro 2200 + 2050) which each handles a pair of PCI-E slots (in a 16+4 electrical) lane config) total 4 PCI-E x16 slots

The BSP (cpu socket 0) is connnected to the Nvidia pro 2200 chipset and the APP (cpu socket 1) to the companion chip 2050

If I 'isolated' one application by changing it's affinity (Using up to the amount of cores in one cpu) to the socket that was not designated as the Boot Strap Processor (BSP) would I then get more performance out of the app (FPS?) and the OS? by doing this?

How would I go about optimizing game performance on a multi socket computer system?

And in my case would game (FPS) performance degrade if I was using cpu socket 1 to run the game (the 2050) and my graphics card was connected to the 2200 and affinity for all other processes was set to socket 0. (Changeable by me)

Thanks in advance, DB —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.81.121.107 (talk) 18:24, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

That setup is a server system and is a weird choice for gaming. It needs ferociously expensive 8000-series 8-way MPU's that aren't any faster than comparable 2000 series cpu's. It burns tons of power. The Nvidia chipset is not a graphics accelerator. Setting cpu affinity does sound likely to help because the NUMA memory system will be relatively slow transferring data between cpu's. But the only way to know for sure is try it both ways. Did you scavenge that box from a dotcom collapse or something? Sell it on craigslist and buy a more conventional gaming machine. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 22:19, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I got the MB by pure chance I think. Running it with the rather old 8218 Opterons... As mentioned newer generations of opterons are out of my economical reach.

Anyway...just bought a Radion 4890 graphics card and it gives the MB major fits. So yes...should probably just try to sell the MB again. Cant test if it gives better fps in one or ther other PCI-E slots because TYANs bios for this MB is really not that developed...actually it blows major cow nipple...

But its kinda a super cool to have a server MB and use it for gaming..got it for something like 230 dollars...speccing it up haven then sucked about triple that amount...RAM...$200 CPUs..got it off ebay for $12.50 cheap enough...PSU 1200W.. $200

Getting expensive...

But the case... around $300 plus shipping....I scavenged the net for two months to get hold of a tower case that would fit this MB...and then Water cooling..

Damn.... thats like also $200 for two cpus... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.81.121.107 (talk) 17:00, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Intel i5 vs i7 real world performance

The new iMacs were introduced yesterday. The stock quad core ships with a 2.6GHz i5, but for $200 more, you can order a 2.8GHz i7. (I'm assuming they are both Lynnfield_(microprocessor) based because neither are available until November)

I know the basic differences between the two (hypertheading, dual vs triple channel memory). What's the real world performance delta between the two for media dense operations (encoding h264, editing video, rendering 3D, Photoshop, etc)? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 20:50, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I googled "i5 i7 benchmark" and the first link, to Tom's Hardware, runs various PC benchmarks, including a "TV and movies suite", between one i5 and two i7 processors. The most interesting results to me were the i5 and i7 running at the same clock speed. The fact you're talking about a Mac instead of a PC is probably inconsequential; these benchmarks will serve you. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:08, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. It seems i7 is slightly faster, but it seems hyperthreading and triple-channel RAM aren't a huge performance booster. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 16:01, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

AT&T ad, revisited

This [3] is the original question. The computer has Firefox and is at a library, so they won't necessarily do the needed upgrades. When I signed on yesterday a page came up saying it was 3.0.14, which is strange since it was 3.5.something the other day. But it said Flash needed to be updated, whatever that means.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:15, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

AFAIK, libraries tend to reset their computers periodically so they can be sure of eliminating viruses and malware. If the reset position is one where some programs need updates, then that could easily explain why versions seem to go backwards, or why the same message seems to come up time and time again. As for "Flash needs updating", Adobe Flash is browser plugin to display rich content in the browser window. It is used by many things including YouTube, and also lots of adverts. If you are not offered a "click here to update", you can visit Adobe's download site - watch out for the sneaky "Google toolbar" install already ticked for you. Of course, you might not have any privilege to update the library's computers. Astronaut (talk) 22:43, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Flash may not need to be updated, either; the Flash plugin may just be alerting you that there is a newer version available; but it may be that all of the sites you visit work just fine with the old version of Flash that is currently on the library computer. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:37, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, something's wrong. This ad didn't cause me any problems today, but as I said before I just sit there and sit there until a new address comes up at the top of the screen, and then at least I can hit "enter" and the screen will go blank, even if the results of that aren't immediate. One thing I did notice about one of the AT&T ads: it has a place to click to "restart". I don't know if that means anything. Sometimes this ad has a washing machine and bubbles and it's moving really fast, but usually when I see it and I'm having the problems, it's stationary.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:09, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I should point out that "Flash needs updating" is a common ploy used by Malware to persuade the hapless user to run a hazardous .EXE file. If you get that message, it's best to go to the Adobe site and download the real thing. Tevildo (talk) 20:17, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Youtube

You may have noticed that a huge percentage of videos on Youtube receive 5 out of 5 stars. Has anyone in the computing world pointed out this an over-inflation bias ("grade inflation") or proposed viable solutions? --Dpr —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.111.194.50 (talk) 23:26, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes. On the Internet, Everyone's a Critic But They're Not Very Critical, Wall Street Journal, October 5 of this year. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:35, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Nice. Thanks so much for the rapid response. --Dpr 23:41, 22 October 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.111.194.50 (talk)

Youtube, at least, is reportedly looking at changing their rating system. --Kateshortforbob _talk 10:11, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Sharing folder in Ubuntu

I'm one of those people who is awkward in Linux, and I'm struggling with permissions in Ubuntu. I installed the latest Ubuntu using all the defaults, and created my user, "Comet". Then I created another user called "Sham". My intent is to create a shared folder in Sham's home directory that anybody on the network can access. (Edit: The other machines on the network are Windows and Mac machines.) While logged in as Comet, I couldn't create a new directory in Sham's home directory; I didn't have permissions. OK, whatever, I used sudo mkdir to create the directory. Now from GNOME, I tried sharing this new directory, by right-clicking the directory and configuring "Sharing Options". It told me to add the line "usershare owner only = false" to smb.conf. I tried editing it by double-clicking it, which invoked gedit; but then I lacked permission to save. OK, I used sudo vi to add the line to the file. Now I could share the folder via the "Folder Sharing" window in GNOME; but when I try to check the checkbox next to "Allow other people to write in this folder", and approve the dialog box telling me that Nautilus has to add some permissions to the folder in order to share it, I get an unhelpful dialog saying "Could not change the permissions of folder "big"". At this point I don't know what to do from the command line with "sudo" in order to share the folder.

What am I missing? Why do I keep having to do what I want from the command line with sudo? I tried "su Comet" from a terminal window but that didn't seem to have any effect. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:55, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Instead of running everything else as root, you could just run nautilus as root. idk if this is good practise, but it should give nautilus permissions to do whatever it needs to. Eg alt-f2 (or whatever you have bind it to) gksudo nautilus. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 10:08, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

And before you start to think that Linux is hard, you should reconsider what you're doing. WHY are you sharing a folder from another user's home directory when the whole point of having users is to stop users from messing up others' profiles? The main reason why you had to keep going back to the console and sudo is because you shouldn't be tinkering with it unless you know what you are doing. --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:38, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Nice answer! Linux is hard because I don't know what I'm doing! This must be why 2009 isn't TYOLOTD. You see, I thought my "Comet" account was created with most or all of the permissions that root has. Can I just log in as root? Or, let me rephrase the question. How should I be doing this? Comet Tuttle (talk) 14:27, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

You get to know by reading the documentation. It is a healthy thing to read, many will assume you know chmod and chown or some equivalent gui trick. Home is meant to be private, non-root isn't supposed to directly or through creating a share to be able to access others homes. Why not create a one big share for all users? Check out the system-config-samba package, it is a better solution than nautilus for sharing files and folders not owned by your user. Also, are you sure "needs some permissions" was the only thing nautilus said? You might want to see again what was the exact problem. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 15:30, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest resetting the permissions of both user's home directory and starting from scratch. It is not a recommended practice to deviate from the standard permissions in a user's home directory. Next, create a folder in /home (you will need root to do this) called share. /home will now have three folders, /Comet, /Sham, and /share. Believe me, doing it this way will solve about 90% of your problems. Taggart.BBS (talk) 18:59, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Taggart.BBS, for the helpful answer, it's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for. My first stumbling block when trying to do this is actually whether "Comet", the user I created when I installed Ubuntu, has root permissions or not. When I log in as Comet, GNOME and the command prompt don't let me, say, create directories in \home; but from the command prompt, "sudo mkdir sharefolder" asks me for Comet's password, and then successfully creates the directory. This baffles me. Can someone explain why Comet seems to have some root privileges but not all the time? Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:27, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Comet is not root, but it (as the initial user you created) is an "admin", which means that it can use sudo. In other words, Comet can run things as root if it asks, but it is not root otherwise. sudo asks for your password to prevent someone else from immediately becoming root with a moment's access to your keyboard. This arrangement is thought by many (though not all) to be superior to having truly separate root and (unpriveleged) user accounts, partly because it discourages running as root all the time for "convenience". --Tardis (talk) 20:07, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Ubuntu handles su, sudo, etc., a bit differently from other Linux distros, Debian included. Comet does not have root permissions (no user does,) but Comet is in the sudoers file, which means it is authorized to act as root on its own password. If you look at the hidden files in Comet's home directory, you will notice a file .sudo_as_admin_successful. Taggart.BBS (talk) 20:04, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Excellent responses, thanks, very understandable. Now is there a way to sudo a GNOME action? Specifically, right-clicking a folder and choosing "Sharing Options", I don't have enough permissions to do what needs to be done, so I assume that as an admin the correct thing to do is to somehow sudo the dialog box. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:50, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

The nautilus-gksu package provides an "Open as administrator" right-click menu item to nautilus. Otherwise there's nothing, at least per http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/21666/. If you really want to avoid keyboard, you need to run nautilus as root, eg by using the previous to open the parent directory as root. Note that ubuntu comes with a shares-admin program, which will prompt for your password. It has no menu entry by default but you can trivially add one with some right-clicking. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 21:43, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

This did (I think) what I want, thank you. I installed nautilus-gksu but then went up one folder from home, then opened home as administrator, then after right-clicking the 'share' folder and choosing "Sharing Options", I was able to configure it to be writable by anyone. I'm glad to see >100 people voted for item 21666 which you linked to, which would have fixed my problem. Thank you! Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:48, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

October 23

Win 7 on old computer?

A Pentium 4 1.7Ghz with 2GB ram and an ATI Radeon 9550. It meets the minimum requirements for Windows 7, but would it run well? Better than XP in terms of responsiveness? F (talk) 00:42, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

It would run well, but not as fast as XP. Windows 7 uses multi-core processors better than XP or Vista, but your P4 just has one core. The best results have been obtained running the 64-bit version of Windows 7 with more than 4 GB of RAM. For example, if you had two machines each with quad-core CPUs and with 8 GB of RAM running Windows XP and Windows 7 side by side, the Windows 7 machine would be faster. But, if you had two machines with your specs running Windows XP and Windows 7 side-by-side, then the XP machine would be faster.--Drknkn (talk) 02:03, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't. A Pentium 4 1.7Ghz is surprisingly old (1.6Ghz came out not long after Athlon broke the 1Ghz barrier, around 2001) and is really around the speed of a modern atom (perhaps even slower). --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:31, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Part of it would also depend on your video card (if you have one). Windows Vista and Windows 7 have more graphic effects than Windows XP -- although the effects can be disabled.--Drknkn (talk) 12:05, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

The OP said he/she has a Radeon 9550. This is technically sufficient for Windows Aero if the card has sufficient RAM (at least 128mb) Nil Einne (talk) 20:55, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor might be useful. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:33, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Need urgent help

Can u give me a simple definition for SOFT-SOFTER HANDOFF

email me at (email removed) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.25.38.224 (talk) 07:38, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

First, I've removed your email; we only reply here. Second, you'll need to provide some context. Or you might want to look at Soft handover as a start. Google also looks like it has some results. --LarryMac | Talk 11:28, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Nero Cover Designer

Is there any way to insert or import CD cover designs made by Nero Cover Designer into a blank Word document? The version installed in my PC is Nero 7. Thanks in advance! 117.194.229.183 (talk) 10:41, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

may i know about computer software —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.162.160.125 (talk) 12:20, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

You mean my PC configurations? It's Windows XP, SP 2... 117.194.226.193 (talk) 12:27, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the previous question was an ineptly added new section, not a response to the Nero question. I've created a separate section for it below, but left it here as well so that we don't lose context. --LarryMac | Talk 12:36, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

If you don't get a proper answer, you could try using "print screen" to copy the current screen image which can then be pasted anywhere you want. Astronaut (talk) 00:00, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Computer Software

may i know about computer software —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.162.160.125 (talk) 12:20, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Please check our article software and feel free to post more specific questions. --LarryMac | Talk 12:36, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

program of c

i want to make a program for calculator in c code simply for working with very basic concepts,for that i made a code for simple calculator which perform only +,-./,*and%,which takes two operands and one operator as input. now i want to extend this code for sciencetific calculator, which perform all mathematical task,then how can i code for this please help.220.225.244.114 (talk) 17:02, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

(question moved from RD/L) --LarryMac | Talk 17:08, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Writing a four-function calculator is easy, but writing an algebra-parsing, scientific calculator requires a lot more work (if you want to do it all by yourself). I did this for the first time when I was 16 and again this year. It is not at all impossible, but requires quite some effort. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:26, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

If you understand Javascript and are learning C, perhaps this will help. It allows a person to do a running calculation in a text field. -- kainaw™ 21:50, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, it is definitely not algebra-parsing (not even nearly), but a bit more fancy than a simple four-function calculator... --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 00:55, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

You should use Fortran for this kind of thing 86.54.83.134 (talk) 12:27, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Hm? Such a program would be so trivial that any reasonable language would be equally good. --Tardis (talk) 22:29, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

The first step is really easy. In C++ (and, for brevity, without any kind of error checking or whatever):

  #include <stdio.h>
  #include <stdlib.h>
  int main ( int argc, char **argv )
  {
     // Usage:   myprog number operator number
     double x = atof ( argv[1] ) ;
     double y = atof ( argv[3] ) ;
     char c = argv[2][0] ;
     double result = 0.0 ;
     switch ( c )
     {
          case '+' : result = x + y ; break ;
          case '-' : result = x - y ; break ;
          case 'x' : result = x * y ; break ;
          case '/' : result = x / y ; break ;
     }
     printf ( "%f %c %f = %f\n", x, c, y, result ) ;
     return 0 ;
  }

...and on my Linux box:

  % ./a.out 123 + 456
  123.000000 + 456.000000 = 579.000000
  % ./a.out 3 x 3
  3.000000 x 3.000000 = 6.000000

But to extend this into a full-scale calculator requires that you think about whether it needs to be a command-line thing (as with the example above) or an interactive thing. Whether you use the calculator conventions of entering operations one at a time (so that 1+2x3 produces 9 and not 7 as conventional mathematics and some fancy graphing calculators would produce), or whether you just want to enter a "normal" piece of math and have it work as it looks like it should - with bracketed sub-expressions, etc - or whether you want to use something like the "reverse polish" notation that HP calculators use: 1 2 + 3 x

Not surprisingly - behaving like a cheap calculator does (1+2x3=9) is a lot easier than doing what the fancy calculators do. The simple approach lets you take the first number and save into a variable someplace - then read an operator and another number - apply that to the the thing you have remembered - then overwrite that location with the answer ready for the next operation.

However, if you want the standard order of operator precedence to work - with bracketing and the whole nine yards - then you have a considerably more complex problem to solve. Basically, the best way is to break the expression down into a "parse tree" so that 1+2*3 becomes:

                  *
                 / \
                +   3
               / \
              1   2

...then use a recursive descent process to evaluate the results. However, it would be complicated to explain that in more detail here.

SteveBaker (talk) 21:40, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, on Linux you could just take the argument (or user input) and do a system call to bc. That'd be real simple. -- kainaw™ 23:31, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

3*3==6? --Tardis (talk) 19:14, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Finally an answer from Yahoo

This [4] is where I asked a follow-up question.

I asked for more help and updated the situation, but the aboe question came up first.

The answer from Yahoo was simple: you can't do this.

Well, I used to be able to do it. And it still seems to work on Firefox, but I'm not changing browsers.

Anyway, I've figured out how to work around it. If I have sent an email or put an email in a folder, I had better not use the back button, and I had better never want to go back to any particular email I sent myself. Actually, with my own computer, I suppose I could start text files with what I sent myself from other computers, but then I'd have an even harder time finding anything. It was always so simple: go to Yahoo (or whatever other email service I go to on other computers), click on what email contains what I want, or if I don't see it, do a search for it. My mind just doesn't work any other way.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:17, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I still recommend that you try another free web-based e-mail service, like GMail. Another alternative that just occurred to me: Are you aware of the use of browser tabs, or multiple browser windows? If you control-click on any link in Firefox, you'll notice a new "tab" open up at the top of the browser. You can now click the tabs to go back and forth. This is much more stable than relying on the "back" button; it is basically the same as having several Firefox browsers open, each aimed at a different web page. (A new tab normally starts up with no history remembered, but you can create it with a complete copy of the "parent tab"'s history if you have installed and choose to use the "Duplicate Tab" Firefox addon.) Anyway, keeping many tabs or new Firefox windows open may be a way for you to juggle the many e-mail windows that you seem to want to juggle. Jerry Pournelle says he routinely keeps several hundred tabs open — though he has taken it to an extreme and I wouldn't recommend more than 20 or 30 or 40. PS: The claim "My mind doesn't work any other way" is a feeble excuse; obviously you can learn new things in this life. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:46, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Tabbing is available in Internet Explorer as well as Firefox. —Akrabbim^talk 17:49, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not saying I couldn't, but Yahoo could make this work since it did work at one time. I also don't like tabs, or Firefox. I also don't like Gmail. What I normally do is open a new window, but at some point that can cause problems too, because there will be too many. The solution for this Yahoo problem, when I need to look up something new, will obviously be to open a new window as I won't have the ability to go back within the one I am already in. To prevent the problem, I will have to close it when I'm through. When I don't have to go back in Yahoo email, I will have to go forward with whatever buttons I can see.

If I learn too much new stuff, I start forgetting other stuff. Obviously I had to go through a lot of learning when I got a computer. But I can only take in so much, and once I've learned a way to do things, that's how I do them.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:03, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Which I, personally, think is fine. The machine is a tool—use it in the way it works for you. Not everybody wants to re-learn everything every six months, and frankly, they shouldn't have to in order to do basic things.

Anyway, it does sound like something weird on Yahoo's end, not yours. There are a lot of ways to break the "back" button implementation with either Javascript or forms (data) submission. Ideally a web developer would make it so that these browser functions are preserved nonetheless (because we expect the "back" button to take us "back", sensibly enough), but many do not, especially with complicated web applications like e-mail. --98.217.71.237 (talk) 18:11, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with everything 98 just said here, which is why, Vchimpanzee, you should use some e-mail service other than Yahoo. If the tool is broken, use another tool. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:03, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

It works if I just take precautions. Fastmail is the only service without problems, except it doesn't have enough storage. One thing they do (now) that is neat is they will let you sign back in if all you did was use it as a notepad and ended up getting signed out, and your email still gets sent.

Thanks everyone.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:20, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

How to display list of files on a web server?

How can I know which files are stored in a domain xy.com/? Quest09 (talk) 17:53, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Generally, no. The only conditions you can are: 1. if you have FTP access to the domain (which you probably don't, since you are asking), or 2. if the site owner has made the file listing available to you (which they probably haven't, since you are asking). You could brute-force it—run a script that looked for xy.com/a, xy.com/b, etc. But otherwise... if a file isn't linked to from somewhere else, it is essentially hidden by obscurity, which is bad security (it doesn't really limit access by anything other than being seemingly unknown, and there are a lot of ways that something thus "hidden" can become known) but a generally effective deterrent against casual browsing. (It is part of the Deep Web—out there, but not indexed or easy to find.) --98.217.71.237 (talk) 18:04, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I use sitemaps with my sites. The robots.txt also sometimes gives information about a site. Resource directors may just display their contents as an index. But yes in general a site is not a collection of files that you can download. A large number have a database behind them or generate content in response to cookies or even the characteristics of your browser. You wouldn't like Wikipedia to give out all the user passwords for instance would you? Dmcq (talk) 18:54, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

wget is a *nix utility that can help you find which publicly available files are at a particular website. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:05, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

It will let you download all files that are linked to from other files (make a mirror of the site), but not files which are nonetheless accessible if you know the URL but otherwise hidden. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:08, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

BIOS history

Who invented the BIOS and when? I could not find any sources about that anywhere. --President of Internets (talk) 19:19, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Looks like our BIOS article needs a History section. The Phoenix Technologies article talks about the first BIOS for IBM PC clones to be created outside IBM. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:37, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

And inside IBM? --President of Internets (talk) 19:46, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Looks like Gary Kildall, father of CP/M, invented the BIOS, and it didn't have anything to do with the IBM PC. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:02, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Not exactly my area of expertise but my guess is the answer to this depends on what you mean by BIOS. According to our article, CP/M was the first to have something it called a BIOS. My guess would be that other earlier computers may have had something similar even if they didn't call it a BIOS. If you want to know 'who invented the term' it may be someone in CP/M although I wouldn't rely on our article for that. It is unsourced and it's possible the term was used in research papers, white papers or whatever before it appeared in CP/M computers Nil Einne (talk) 20:50, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

In looking up the OP's question it appears that Kildall invented the first one, as a response to CP/M being licensed by numerous hardware vendors. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:52, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

This really comes down to what you define BIOS to be. Is it the first little chip that was specifically called "BIOS", or is it the first device that provided boot firmware as an interface for an operating system. If you use the first definition, the first BIOS that I know of is in the CP/M. If you use the second definition, the first boot firmware with operating system that I know of is LINC. There are probably older BIOSs for both definitions. -- kainaw™ 21:36, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

CP/M was certainly the first microprocessor OS to have a BIOS. The reason was twofold:

• Firstly, hardware back then wasn't as standardized as it is these days and CP/M required all of the machine-specific parts of the OS (reading the disk drives and keyboard and writing to the disk, screen and printer) to be done by the "Basic Input/Output System" or BIOS. The BIOS specification was clearly documented and you could write your own (as I did on two occasions for computers I'd designed and built myself). There were no "device drivers" in the OS. When CP/M needed to write to disk - it called that function in the BIOS ROM and didn't care what exact disk format you used or how the disk controller chip was accessed.
• Secondly, the system was designed to boot from floppy disk (that's how you bought CP/M) so there had to be some software in ROM that could handle the bootstrapping process - and that too fell to the BIOS.

When CP/M became CP/M-86 and Microsoft cloned it to make the first version of PC-DOS, both DOS and CP/M-86 used the same BIOS design. The BIOS has evolved since then but it's still essentially the same thing. So the BIOS in a modern PC, essentially IS the CP/M BIOS. However, over time, the function of the BIOS has changed. Because you can plug (for example) any manufacturer's graphics card into any motherboard - it's become impractical to put every screen driver into every BIOS ROM. So the BIOS does the minimum possible to get the OS into memory - and the OS relies on drivers loaded from disk to do the work. Once the PC has booted, the BIOS has no further function anymore.

Similar boot ROM's must have existed for mainframe and mini-computers prior to the CP/M BIOS - but I'm not aware of them ever being "open" in the way that CP/M's was - and I doubt that device drivers were kept in ROM either - so those would have been more like a modern PC's BIOS - nothing more than a boot ROM.

Other small computers of the CP/M era generally had all of their operating system software (such as it was) in ROM - so the issue of cross-compatibility didn't crop up. Your Apple ][, PET, TRS-80 or whatever had BASIC in ROM - and that was that. They didn't have to boot from floppy - and the ROM software was custom-written for each type of machine with little or no goal of compatibility. Hence, no need for a BIOS.

CP/M was really the first - and quite possibly the last - truly portable OS. Elegant in it's way - and mind-numbingly simple!

So, I suppose Gary Kildall gets the credit for the first thing called a 'BIOS' - and all modern PC BIOS's are descended from it - but he didn't invent the concept of a boot-ROM - which is really all that a BIOS is these days. I have no clue who invented that. SteveBaker (talk) 21:16, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

That's all fascinating, but based on a completely untrue premise, and typically lacking in actual references. "MS-DOS was a renamed form of 86-DOS (informally known as the Quick-and-Dirty Operating System or Q-DOS) owned by Seattle Computer Products, written by Tim Paterson. Microsoft needed an operating system for the then-new Intel 8086 but it had none available, so it licensed 86-DOS and released a version of it as MS-DOS 1.0." For more detail, see Ms-dos#History. --LarryMac | Talk 11:56, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

... but those of us who were using CP/M when Bill Gates was still a schoolboy know where DOS had its origins ;-) though I suppose there are not many different ways of structuring an operating system, so some similarities were inevitable. By the way, Research Machines microcomputers booted CP/M from disc, then loaded application software, long before DOS. Dbfirs 17:14, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Python

In Python, what is the simplest way to detect a keypress (which key doesn't matter; all I'm concerned about is that a key was pressed)? If it's material to the question, I use Ubuntu 9.04. Lucas Brown 42 23:17, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Use curses if you're talking about a console program. (See the Python documentation for its wrapper for that library; you might need a separate version for Windows.) If you're talking about a graphical program, look for "key events"; if you don't know how to start a GUI, see the tkinter module. --Tardis (talk) 22:39, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Dell laptop trackpad forgets its settings.

We have two Dell laptops and a similar thing is happening to both. My wife has a D600. The "tapping" feature on the trackpad, which registers a "click" when you tap the pad, will just stop working. To get it back you need to open the mouse control panel, go in and turn off "tapping" and then turn it back on.

I have an inspiron 700m and the trackpad will just forget that I have the scrolling feature turned on, where the rightmost centimeter of the trackpad is the scrollbar. In my case all I need to do is open the mouse control panel and press the "OK" button at the bottom without changing anything and it works. I'll be happy to provide any more detailed info about my system if it would help in solving the problem. mislih 23:44, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Not that this is helpful in any way but moral support, but i have a latitude 630 (through my employer, still running XP) and i've had difficulties trying to keep the trackpad turned off, because i use the little joystick thingie; there's that nice utility thingie that comes up via the taskbar or control panel and allows you to enable or disable either device, but when i set the trackpad and its buttons to disable, it still reacts to my palm moving over it or over the buttons. i haven't talked to dell about it, because with the business lease i think we're responsible for our own service. i just set the sensitivity of the pad and buttons to minimum and that works pretty well (which is kind of silly when the settings for both are also "disabled" but what the heck). so i wonder if there's some generic bug in that driver. funny thing is i don't remember this being a problem until fairly recently. Gzuckier (talk) 23:53, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I had a Dell laptop that would not let me get rid of the tapping feature — this was some time ago — and I had to hunt down and install the Synaptics driver that powered the Dell's trackpad. It had its own Control Panel that had plenty of configuration options. Maybe it'll do a better job of remembering what you order it to do, if you can find a Synaptics driver for your touchpad. (Assuming Dell still uses Synaptics as the supplier.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:04, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

password reset

My employer (huge worldwide corporation) requires a number of passwords for various things. If I need a password reset, and depending on the system, it can take anywhere from 1 second to 2 hours for one to be reset. Why does this take as much as two hours though? Are these things likely being handled by cron jobs that just go through a queue every X minutes/hours? I would think that it would be fairly easy to have it done immediately. Info you can offer, appreciate it I would. Dismas|^(talk) 03:17, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Your question has a great deal of possible answers, as it depends on multiple factors. There is no standard convention on how password resets have to be handled, and there are literally millions of applications, each with a wide variety of options that can influence their behavior. A second factor is that the infrastructure of the company can cause this behavior. I can give you some global pointers as to why this should take so long, but i cannot give a definite answer. For that you might want to contact the companies IT department.

1. The first possibility is indeed as you suggested it - the password system might be handling these requests in batches to reduce server load. Its unusual (And in my opinion not practical) but it is not unheard off.
2. A second option is that there might be a master server tracking the passwords immediately, while slave servers only synchronize ever so often.
3. .... (100 more options found in custom software)

Just to give you an example of what custom software might do, in college i once had the joy of using a password changing application made in-house by the IT department. Once you chanced the password it could take minutes to days before it changed, with no obvious indicator as to why it took so long. Eventually we learned that the piece of software did little more then sending a message to IT, requesting the change. Based upon personnel availability (Or their interest to actual do something menial) such a request could take ages. Its unlikely to be the reason for your situation, but it shows does show the amount of factors that can influence such a system. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 08:42, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

If you're in a predominantly Microsoft environment, tools like Active Directory can be used to synchronize passwords across multiple environments like windows, outlook, vpn access, etc. This should happen quickly; it does in my corporate environment anyway. However if you have complex systems across multiple unix environments, and database applications to update, IT managers might have policies in place not to allow any automated changes to the environment during peak hours; so a password change on an oracle database might go on a queue and an overworked DBA might get it eventually. In your case the above poster might be right; there could be batches that run every two hours or so to replicate passwords and security updates to satellite servers. Glad help I could, master Yoda. Sandman30s (talk) 20:29, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Question

Hypothetically I have 5,000 pdf documents of around 500KB per file; if I compress them it reduces their size roughly by half. Would there be any difference in speed (both compression and extraction time) and overall saved space once compressed, between compressing them all together in one .zip file, or compressing them each individually so that they each get their own .zip file? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.2 (talk) 12:19, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

There is no difference between the compression used on the files depending on how many files go into the zip. Zip has overhead that will add to the file size, so compressing them into separate files will take more space than compressing them altogether. It depends what kind of data is in the PDFs, if its text or images or already compressed, but handing a 2 gb file wouldn't be so bad. Look at gzip and zip too. CynofGavuf 18:32, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I imagine that the speed in decompressing one 2GB file vs. 500KB file is probably noticeable. In such a case it would be worth asking whether you are going to access the files individually or in groups (whether it is worth paying the time "cost" in unzipping them all at once, or whether one-at-a-time makes more sense), which is a use question, not a technical one. There are of course in-between solutions, e.g. zip them up in bundles of 300 or so. --98.217.71.237 (talk) 18:48, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

You CAN uncompress a single file from a (huge) archive though, so that may not be a problem. --antilived^{T | C | G} 23:38, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the specifics of the ZIP format, but I guess theoretically you would be able to get higher compression when putting all the documents together - a lot more patterns for the compression algorithm to recognize. (Others will have to fill in on this). This might be more important if the pdfs are very similar. Jørgen (talk) 09:23, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Windows, 32 v 64 bit

I've recently bought a new desktop which included a voucher for Windows 7. I've decided to buy it, seen as the reviews I've read seem quite positive. I hadn't really been aware about 32 & 64 bit versions of the os and am trying to decide which version to upgrade to. My system specs are as follow-

Intel Core 2 Quad processor

Geforce GT220, DirectX 10 (1024 MB video mem)

4 GB DDR2 SDRAM

I'm using 32 bit Vista and I use the PC for games, internet browsing & watching DVDs mainly. What would be the pros & cons of updating to 64 bit W7?

Thanks- Stanstaple (talk) 14:14, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

You need to find out if you have a 64-bit processor. While it is not impossible to install a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit processor, it generally isn't a good idea. And installing a 64-bit OS on a 32-bit processor is impossible. There is little practical difference between the 64-bit version and the 32-bit version; you should get whichever one matches your processor. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 14:23, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

My system is 64 bit capable according to Performance Information Tools in control panel, but came preinstalled with the 32 bit version of Vista. Would there be any reason to expect improved performance or compatibility issues if I upgraded to 64? Stanstaple (talk) 14:35, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't know personally, but according to Microsoft, a 64-bit OS is better for a large amount of RAM, which makes sense, because a 32-bit architecture can only address 4,294,967,296 ($2^{32}$) bytes of RAM without using some sort of a special controller. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 14:54, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Intel Core 2 is a range of 64-bit processors according to our article. --Tango (talk) 15:24, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

As stated above, 32 bit Windows can address 4 Gigs of memory. However, some of that memory is what it uses for mapping other hardware, such as the graphics controller - it's system memory and not user. This means that, depending upon your system config, a Gig or so of your RAM won't be accessible to run applications in. So if you want to use all of your 4 Gig, you will have to go 64 bit. I'm running 64 bit Vista in 6 Gigs and am happy with the stability and performance. 64 bit apps (e.g. Adobe Lightroom) run very well with all that available memory. --Phil Holmes (talk) 15:29, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I have a similar choice- 32 or 64 bit Windows 7. My problem is with my production laser printer— the company that made it got bought out and 64 bit drivers were never released. If I could ever find a generic Postscript 64-bit driver, I could hack one, but I could never find it for Vista or XP 64. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:31, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Do you know if I'd have any trouble running games on 64? I know I'd have to run a custom install to upgrade to 64 rather than 32 and that it would involve having to reinstall any programs I've loaded. I've downloaded some games from Steam and I haven't looked into the implications of reinstalling these. Are there advantages to compensate for the extra hassle of a custom install? Would the system run faster or more stably? If I'm repeating myself, it's just to clarify what it is that I want to know. (I'm not much of a techie) Thanks again btw Stanstaple (talk) 19:54, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

There is no trouble running games in win7-64. 32 bit games install into a "Program Files (x86)" folder and so far all have been running perfectly well. I had the same dilemma BTW; first I installed 32-bit and then decided I'd rather have my OS see the extra RAM after finding out about the compatibility with 32-bit. The only drawback is that it won't run any of your old 8/16 bit DOS programs any more. There is always dual-boot to XP for any driver issues (I haven't had any driver issues yet) or if you have loads of RAM you can always use vmware or something to run a virtual machine (XP). I would say stick with 64 bit so that you can make use of future software without having to reinstall win7 again. Sandman30s (talk) 20:14, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

From my experience the older DOS based games don't run *that* well under Windows anyway, so you're best off just running them under DOSBox (which works just fine in Windows 7 64-bit, in fact all the DOS based Steam games actually come with a DOSBox wrapper). ZX81 ^talk 20:25, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I'm not talking about old games (though, if I could find a copy of Frontier Elite I'd love to have another go). I was concerned that modern games were configured for 32 and would be upset by *2. So far my interpretation of what youse are saying is that switching won't mess things up irrevocably, but are there advantages to overcome the bother? Put another way- why should I opt for 64 bit W7 as opposed to 32 bit? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stanstaple (talk • contribs) 20:39, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Like it says above multiple times, so you can use more RAM (you have 4Gb at the moment of which you can only really use ~3.25Gb maximum) and for future proofing without the hassle of a reinstall as well as the speed/performance/stability benefits from running a 64-bit operating system. Modern games will run just fine, I have a massive list of games with Steam myself and they ran fine on Vista x64 and I've been running Windows 7 x64 since the August release without a problem. The only thing you really need to be concerned with is driver support for your peripherals so just check you can get a 64-bit Vista driver (since Windows 7 can use those). ZX81 ^talk 20:51, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the specific response. I've read that I'll be able to use more of the RAM- what I don't know is what difference this will make to my experience of using my computer. No one has said that i'd experience any performance improvements (speed, performance, stability) by going 64. I'm not worried about drivers 'cause I only have the very basics connected. My concern is that I've a 5GB limit on downloads per month- I don't want to have to pay /mb rates for games I've already bought (ie to redownload on steam). What's the upside? Stanstaple (talk) 21:23, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand why you believe you'll have to redownload games. You won't. Beyond being able to fully use 4GB RAM (or more) large bitaddress aware 32 bit apps can use 4GB themselves whereas they're limited to 2GB with x32 versions of Windows (with 2GB for the kernel, although this can be adjusted). So can 64 bit apps and of course the Windows kernel. In some circumstances it will definitely offer an improvement, particularly in games which are starting to benefit from more then 2GB of RAM (also other things but you didn't describe anything else likely to majorly benefit). Having said that your graphics card is likely to be a major bottleneck for gaming. (Actually if your primary interest is gaming, internet browsing and DVDs, it would have made a lot more sense to go for a dual core and a better graphics card but that's too late now.) Also 64 bit apps may be faster then their 32 bit counterparts (this isn't guaranteed) although are still many apps that lack 64 bit versions (but it's starting to get to the stage where a lot of the important stuff where it may actually make a difference do have 64 bit versions). I can say from using Windows x64 since 2005 (XP, then Vista now Windows 7) that beyond driver issues and the lack of certain apps which need drivers or a very high integration in the early days (e.g. CD mounting tools, disk utilities, virus scanners, firewalls and Acrobat) as well as the occasional 16bit Windows app, I haven't had any real issues using x64. Obviously there's the need for DOSBox as well but that's starting to get to be a necessity with x32 Windows anyway. P.S. How you differentiate 'speed' and 'performance'? P.P.S. Bare in mind drivers can include stufflike mobile phones, printers, scanners, cameras whether or not they are normally connected P.P.P.S. My final opinion is you will find the benefits from Windows 7 x64 significant in the long run, and more then make up for any occasional problem you may have. The benefits of allowing the OS and apps to use more then 2GB and to use the entire 4GB as opposed to whatever is available now is something you're likely to notice. BTW I don't believe you'll even be using 3.25GB currently. Since you have Vista x32 this should be easy to check but I suspect you'll find 3GB will be available at most, probably even less given that you have a 1GB graphics card. Nil Einne (talk) 21:24, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Just to second what Nil Einne above said, you'll only need to redownload them if you wipe them. Move them to a different drive/external disk or something that won't get wiped and then after reinstalling just download+install the Steam client (~1Mb) to the same location on the disk as it was previously (I don't think the exact location is a requirement, but I do it anyway), then close Steam, delete the new directory and move the original Steam directory back in place. After restarting Steam you may need to do a client update again, but Steam will take care of that itself. It's worked everytime for me for about 15+ reinstalls over the past few years :) ZX81 ^talk 21:34, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I'll lay it straight- I didn't think it was easy to backup programs to disk anymore. If you custom install (which you have to if going from 32 to 64), then all previously installed programs are wiped. All I could find was how to make file backups. I assumed, from reading the ms website, that i'd need the original disk to reload apps. Since I don't know how steam works, I thought I might have problems redownloading games I already bought. Stanstaple (talk) 21:51, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I've actually been using a method similar to that described by ZX81 for a long while as well (2002/3 maybe?). Instead of reinstalling I just run the Steam client perhaps deleting the "ClientRegistry.blob" file first. Obviously this doesn't create the links etc. With Vista and Windows 7 and UAC it's now often necessary to run in admin first time around as well to install the service (surprisingly it doesn't seem to request admin mode which I would have thought a smart thing to do). I've used this to move between computers and even for multiple installs and different accounts (obviously if you are moving to a friends computer and you don't trust that friend you should take more care) and when reinstalling. However there's actually a backup option in the Steam client as well now although this may not keep stuff like the save games and settings. Look under the file menu... This does require the game to be fully updated etc and obviously doesn't help you if you already installed a new OS or whatever Nil Einne (talk) 22:10, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

ZX81's method doesn't always back up save games anyway (some games store it in My Documents, others in other random places), so it's always best to make sure before you wipe it all out. --antilived^{T | C | G} 23:35, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes sorry, you're right. Whilst Steam itself is fairly self-contained, the Savegames will sometimes put themselves in My Documents or even your User Profile's Application Data/AppData folders. I completely forgot because I always have a copy of both before installing, but yeh if you want your Savegames, make sure you have all these too! ZX81 ^talk 23:55, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses- I'll read over your answers and if something doesn't gel, I'll get back. Cheers- Stanstaple (talk) 20:06, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Tuned voltage amplifier

what are the effects of the rectence, capacitance,resistance, in the tuned voltage amplifier , Discuss its results —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.142.61.182 (talk) 15:44, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

At least try and hide the fact that you are asking us to do your homework for you... "Discuss its results"? Really... --Tango (talk) 18:43, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Is there an article on tuned voltage amplifier or voltage tuned amplifier? Perhaps you could write one when you find the answers. You don't mean Voltage controlled oscillator do you? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:31, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

In python, os.system() has different results from just entering into Command Prompt

First off, I'm on a windows XP version Version 5.1.2600, and have python version 2.6.2. Here's the command I'm trying to execute in the command prompt:

"C:\Program Files\Vim\vim72\vim" "C:\Documents and Settings\...etc"

Where ...etc is a whole bunch of sub directories leading to a file. When I paste this command directly into the command prompt, it works exactly as intended. However, for some reason, when I try to execute the exact same command within a python program, using os.system(), I get this error:

'C:\Program' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

I know this is not a mix-up on my part with the quote characters or the backslashes in writing the python strings; I've made sure I'm doing both of those correctly. Anyone have any clue why this is happening, and how I can fix it? That would be much appreciated. --129.116.47.61 (talk) 16:22, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I should probably also mention that other commands don't seem have this problem. For example, when I execute "C:\Program Files\Vim\vim72\vim" on its own, it works in both cases. --129.116.47.61 (talk) 16:25, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't have windows to test if http://bugs.python.org/issue1524 is still relevant, but you might want to use the subprocess module anyway. Note that you should pass -- as the first argument to vim if you need to make sure a filename doesn't get interpreted as an option (vim +quit vs vim -- +quit). --194.197.235.240 (talk) 17:26, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! That worked perfectly. --129.116.47.61 (talk) 18:05, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

immune attack

I have download an eductional game immune attack from net .I have played it but not yet completed it. Each time i have to play it from the beginning, its save option does not work ,how can I save this game and play net part of the game. —Preceding unsigned comment added by True path finder (talk • contribs) 17:09, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

What save option? According to [5]

How do I save the game?

Currently your game cannot be saved, however a user can jump to any game level or in-game cinematic by going to the main menu > instructor menu > and entering the password: abc

Nil Einne (talk) 22:14, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

October 25

uncensor

i have a photo which is in jpg and the face has been blacked out or censored by a black mark. is there a way i can remove the black mark to see the face. Which software should i use? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.201.218.217 (talk) 22:37, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

No. JPG does have layers JPG does not have layers. So, it is not possible for the the blackout to be on one layer and the rest of the image be on a different layer. Therefore, the actual pixels containing the original face have been permanently changed to now represent black. -- kainaw™ 00:34, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

(I think you mean, does not have layers.) The only way out is that sometimes JPEGs are saved with "preview" thumbnails (lower res) that can be of previous versions. There are accounts of photos being "uncensored" in this fashion. I'm somewhat fuzzy myself in how this happened but I can recall it happening a few times in internet lore; perhaps someone else can explain how to extract preview metadata from jpegs, if it is possible. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:35, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

For the record though, there have been attacks on mosaic patterns but that usually involves a source image that is highly predictable. (I'm just talking about the image here, not what could be stored in meta data) For example, people using mosaic filters to blank out check routing numbers. Because those numbers are predictable, it would be plausible to reverse that process. In a way, a mosaic, or any kind of blur, is a hash process. If the hash output maintains the entropy then it is theoretically possible to find the original image. Most won't, but they might maintain enough that you could "brute force" a lot of original source images, and then run the process on them, and compare the output. If they matched then you might have a source image resembling the original.

There are some obfuscations that are easy to crack. For instance the swirl obfuscation is easy to reverse. But mosaic loses some information, although the blurring effect itself is an average of the area it blurs, which means that it will have some relationship to the original. Its threshold will determine the entropy that's preserved, and the reversibility.

But even if all of these methods are theoretically reversible, they are probably not practically so. The swirl one is the most obvious, but a total blur, or a large mosaic should obscure most of a photograph (but maybe not something predictable like text). If you want to do it right use a black box. Shadowjams (talk) 08:14, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

NetBeans with BlueJ

I've been trying to add the BlueJ plugin to NetBeans but even though the plugin is installed nothing ever shows up in BlueJ view, even when I've opened a project in BlueJ. Anyone know how to fix it? Thanks: 02:00, 25 October 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.133.196.152 (talk)

Expandability of integrated graphics

My computer has 64MB integrated graphics, taken out of the RAM (1024MB physical RAM, 980MB available). Would it be possible to devote 128MB of the RAM to graphics, leaving me with 916MB RAM? Thanks, 110.175.208.144 (talk) 06:46, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Possibly. You'd need to go into your BIOS as that's where the option will be if your computer supports it (varies by motherboard whether you can change the RAM used or not). If there's no option then I'm afraid it's not possible. ZX81 ^talk 07:15, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

(ec):"It depends". Enter the BIOS when your PC starts up (typically by hitting DEL, F2 or F10 repeatedly as the PC starts, watch the screen closely for a clue). Typically there will be a setting which adjust how much memory is allocated to the graphics card. Different BIOSes will have it under different settings as well as call it many different names (on my desktop PC's Award BIOS it's called a rather cryptic "frame buffer" under the "advanced settings" menu). Let us know what brand of BIOS or model of motherboard you have and we can be more specific. Note that onboard graphics have an upper limit on how much RAM they can be allocated, yours might happen to be 64MB anyway. Zunaid 07:40, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

My BIOS is an "Award Software International, Inc. F6A, 6/10/2005 v2.3", and under "Display" it says "SiS 661FX" if that is useful to you. Thanks! 110.175.208.144 (talk) 07:35, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay. I assume you know how to get into your BIOS when your PC boots up. Have a look around your various menus for "frame buffer size", this is the setting you want to adjust. This setting will most likely be under the "advanced settings" menu (if your Award BIOS looks like mine, the advanced settings will be the second option on the main BIOS screen, just under the basic settings). If you don't find this or something similarly-named then please list your BIOS menu settings here. As a last resort you can go through The Definitive BIOS Optimization Guide which lists every BIOS setting in the known universe. You can cross-check your BIOS menu items against this list until you find one which adjusts the memory allocated to your onboard graphics. Zunaid 08:49, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Umm, the problem seems to be that the BIOS post lasts for a fraction of a second, and I can't see anything in there about which button to press... seeing as our BIOS brands are the same, which button do you press to go into the BIOS? Thanks! 110.175.208.144 (talk) 11:20, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I press DEL. I'm note sure if that is BIOS specific or motherboard specific. Some other options I've seen include F1, F2, F8 or F10. Just bash away repeatedly at them as the PC starts up. (Note that some PC's would allocate one of these keys to network boot your PC instead of loading up the BIOS.) Alternatively some PCs require you to HOLD IN the CTRL key while booting. You can also try hitting the PAUSE key, which will pause the startup process enabling you to read the screen. If you don't come right with any of these try Googling your motherboard model number with some keywords such as "BIOS" etc., or try to find and download motherboard manual to find out. Incidentally, once you are in the BIOS there might be a setting that adjusts how long the "Press DEL to enter Setup..." prompt appears for. Adjust it to something human-friendly like 5 seconds. Also if your PC displays a huge Intel splash screen at startup instead of showing you what the BIOS is busy doing, you can disable that also in the BIOS somewhere. (You can also dismiss this screen instantaneously by pressing the ESC key.) Zunaid 14:22, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Capitalizing conventions in programming languages?

In programming, you capitalize the general (like a class name) and lowercase the specific (like an object name). Where did this convention originate from? Maybe SmallTalk?

It seems to be the opposite of human languages, where common nouns are lowercase and proper names are capitalized.--Sonjaaa (talk) 10:09, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I doubt you'll ever be able to do more than track the usage of these conventions. Emphasizing text in different ways is nothing new, and has been applied often without explanation throughout history, for reasons both logical and not. Didn't a lot of older computer terminals only support uppercase text? Might be a place to start. ¦ Reisio (talk) 11:36, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I want to note that "human languages" is a bit of a generalization—German capitalizes common nouns as well as proper names, for example. Capitalization reveals quite a lot of richness of possibility with "human languages". --Mr.98 (talk) 14:52, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

There's a discussion at CamelCase#Computer programming, but I can't vouch for its accuracy. -- BenRG (talk) 18:59, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I think it more or less comes about from the C language convention of uppercase for #define's constants and lowercase for variables and functions. Using camelcase instead of inserting underscores between words of a longer variable became more common as experience showed that it was at least as readable - and less typing. But when C++ came along and the names of structures and classes become more prevalent throughout the code, a third convention was needed. Starting the name with a capital letter seemed like the most natural way to distinguish them. However, where I work now, both variables and classes are camelcased with a leading capital letter. I don't know what to deduce from that! SteveBaker (talk) 20:53, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

32-bit apps on 64-bit operating systems

I must admit to having a considerable amount of confusion as to how it is that:

1. a 64-bit processor can run a 32-bit operating system (thus proving the back portability of the processor to 32-bit) yet
2. a 64-bit operating system is unable to run 32-bit applications without a special program (e.g., Alien).

I believe I have run 32-bit apps on 64-bit OSX for the PowerPC (I might be wrong?): when I've compiled programs in XCode, and it seemed to include 32-bit code for both the PowerPC and the x86 architectures, both in the same executable. Why can't Windows and/or Linux do the same thing? Magog the Ogre (talk) 13:29, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

The 64-bit Windowses are fully capable of running 32-bit applications. See WoW64. decltype (talk) 13:54, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

So is, basically, a 64-bit Linux - as long as 32-bit compatibility support is compiled into the kernel and needed libraries are installed in 32-bit versions. I use a 64-bit Gentoo Linux and I can easily install a 32-bit Firefox, for example. --dapete 14:58, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

So what you're saying is that Ubuntu is blah in terms of cross-platform support? Magog the Ogre (talk) 17:11, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

A good linux program will run on arm, powerpc, alpha, x86 and more with the same source code. Usually you wouldn't want the overhead of running a 32-bit program on amd64, you'd rather compile it for 64-bit. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 18:19, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure how 'alien' is used to run 32 bit applications on a 64 bit OS. It's a tool for converting packages between different packaging systems. For an x86_64 system (the 64 bit Intel chips, sometimes called EM64t), you can 32 bit programs just fine, however, these programs might be linked against other 32 bit libraries that you'd have to install before it worked. This isn't the OS's fault really, just the way the dynamic library loader works. -- JSBillings 18:50, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I was using a 32bit Firefox binary on my 64bit SuSE Linux box for ages without problems (because some of the plugins I wanted to use weren't available in 64 bit yet). It's certainly possible under Linux - and if you choose the right options when you install the OS, it's really painless. Since most programs are available in source code form - and I'm pretty sure the vast majority of Linux developers shifted to 64 bit years ago - you really shouldn't have problems getting 64 bit versions of pretty much everything these days. The slow rate of adoption of 64 bit software in the Windows world is horrifying though. SteveBaker (talk) 20:46, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Server Processor for a Desktop Computer

Hi! I'd like to have a fast computer, but I don't want to run games on it. I'm neither doing demanding graphics or video processing. What I'm doing is developing web applications with the Eclipse IDE where source code validation, compiling, deploying, and initialization of the application server are taking painfully long on my 1.5 GHz Core 2 Duo system, though it seems to have sufficient RAM. Are server processors like the Opteron and Xeon CPUs a good choice for such a situation? Or will a Core i7 bring equal or better improvement? TIA --95.223.207.169 (talk) 17:06, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Your computer should be good enough for such tasks. How much is this 'sufficient RAM' exactly? Is the application server local (on your PC)? Sandman30s (talk) 20:50, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your response, Sandman30s! I'm running Tomcat on the Same machine. I've 3 GB RAM, of which there is usually more than 1 GB free. --95.223.207.169 (talk) 21:28, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes that should be good enough to run any sort of IDE. I presume that you don't have a million lines of source code or something prohibitive. There's possibly something wrong with your setup, or Eclipse could be experiencing some kind of memory leak on compile. Impossible to say without more information, log files, timing, etc. Have you checked on the Eclipse forums? Did you try a different java IDE to see if there's any improvement? Did the entire process ever run fast then slow down upon adding a framework? How long does it take to compile? Then timing to deploy? Timing for app server startup? Does the code run fast after all of this? Etc. Sandman30s (talk) 15:08, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your help! I'm using quite a number of validators (for Java, HTML, JSP, JavaScript, XML an Resources). When I turn some of the off, I gain some speed. Building and server initialization take about twenty seconds each. --95.223.207.169 (talk) 16:34, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

If 20s each is too long to wait, then the i7 will definitely help on compile time. A modern hard drive with large cache (or SSD) will also help for the I/O. 4G RAM should be enough. Hey, it's your money, but I wouldn't spend that much on a development computer unless build time is critical to you financially in some way. All of these are presumptions based on the exclusion of some IDE or operating system problem eg. virus! Sandman30s (talk) 18:03, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

How to view a .ram movie using unintrusive software?

The movie linked to from this http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/09/0923_020923_egypt.html page (near the headline) is a .ram file that my WinXp computer does not play automatically, although it appears that MediaPlayer will play it if I download MediaPlayer. I seem to remember that MediaPlayer is rather intrusive and takes over your computer to a certain extent. Is there any other way to play it? The .ram file is only a few bytes so I presume it links to something else. I already have GomPlayer, VLC and QuickTimeAlternative installed. Thanks 89.243.197.90 (talk) 18:06, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

.ram indicates a Real Audio movie. There's a Real Alternative program that should play it. --LarryMac | Talk 19:51, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Recovering lost Gmail/Skype passwords

1) About 6 years ago I had a gmail address similar to the one I already have. But I'd like to get back to the same address except I have forgotten the pass word. I did try some likely pass words but I just couldent access it. I was unable to maintain my account because I did not have a computer for some time.

2) It is almost the same problem with regard to my skype address. I did not have access to a computer for about 3 years and have forgotten the pass word. I'd be happier & prefer to have my old addresses with a new pass word as I feel it is more like me.

Please help.

Thanking you,

DT

This wasn't the case with email, but I've had accounts removed after I didn't use them for a certain period of time. The way to check this is to try to start a new account with the old address. If the accounts still exist, and you have absolutely no way of attaining the password, there's really no good way to get them back, short of hacking. Try the "forgot password" option, and see what they come up with. Good luck, Falconus^{p t c} 18:50, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Falconus. I did try your tip several times over the months but failed. Only after that I decided to seek help from Viki! I dont know how to Hack!!! DT

Most sites have a password reset link. This will either send a password to an alternate email (in the case of skype I believe) or it will ask you a security question to recover your password. If you haven't tried this yet, it's another good thing to try. As a note for the future: I find a good practice for passwords is to write them down and store them in a secure place (such as a safe where I keep other sensitive documents). I'm sure someone will disagree with me, but it has made me more confident in making more secure passwords so it can't be that bad for security :) 206.131.39.6 (talk) 17:08, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again. I'll try it & if it works I'll let you know....... At least it will be worth a try I must say! Thanks again. DT

Nope. No luck. I guess the reason must be because I have changed my email address too. Tnx very much for trying to help me, DT

October 26

FrontPage

Is FrontPage (Extensions server side) compatible with Office FrontPage 2003 client? 71.100.9.185 (talk) 17:31, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

FrontPage 2003 prefers to publish using Windows SharePoint Services, but it can publish to a server running the 2002 FrontPage Server Extensions, but you won't necessarily be able to use all the built in features of FrontPage 2003. ZX81 ^talk 01:00, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

C Programming Question

#include<stdio.h>
void main()
{
  char s[]={'c','h','e','t','a'};
  char t[]={'k','u','m','a','r'};
  
  printf("%s",t);
  printf("%s",s);
return();
}

/*How the character is stored in stack and how this work in stack please specify '\0' also please send me detail. —Preceding unsigned comment added by R.K.Rahu (talk • contribs) 18:12, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

You want me to specify the null? Ok. Null.

Seriously, it looks like you are trying to learn how to use c strings. -- kainaw™ 19:26, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I couldn't make head or tail out of your question. But anyway, your program won't even compile. return is a keyword, not a function, so what you have is actually not a call to "return()", but instead return returning "()", which is illegal C syntax. Fixing that, your program causes undefined behaviour, because you are calling printf() to print strings that aren't null-terminated. This causes printf() to happily tread past the end of your char arrays, searching for a null terminator, and it is looking for it in memory you don't own, thereby causing undefined behaviour. (Technically void main() is undefined behaviour too, but it works under most modern compilers. The missing null terminators, OTOH, are a very serious bug and will almost certainly crash your program.) The "" version of writing char arrays is a better idea. I'll leave it up to you to figure out why, on the chance this is homework. JIP | Talk 20:12, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem here is that all strings in C and C++ need to be terminated with a zero byte (a 'null', a '\0' character). If you had declared your strings as:

 char s[]="cheta" ;
 char t[]="kumar" ;

...then the compiler would have supplied the null bytes automatically - but because you set the two arrays character-by-character, it doesn't do that...so doing it your way, but adding a zero byte by hand gives you:

 char s[]={'c','h','e','t','a', 0 };
 char t[]={'k','u','m','a','r', 0 };

...it's easier to do it the way I did it though - less chance of you forgetting the zero on the end - less typing - more legible!

And yeah - "return" isn't a function - you don't need the brackets. Just return; would have done just fine.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:11, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

"You don't need" is more like "you mustn't have", in other words, "needless" is more like "wrong". "return();" is illegal syntax in all C-derived languages I know of - C, C++, C# and Java. JIP | Talk 20:20, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

It appears that the instructor for this student is expecting the student to use '\0' for the null character, not just 0. Often, students are required to use specific terms to demonstrate that they know what they are doing. '\0' is clearly a character. 0 is a number. We know that they are the same. A learning student may be still in the "how the hell can something be a character and a number at the same time!?!?!?" phase. -- kainaw™ 03:52, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Code for evaluating coefficients

I need to evaluate the coefficients of a polynomial expressed in factor form: f(x)= (x+A)(x+B)(x+C)...(x+Z). Here, A, B,..Z will be contained in an array P[] and the number of factors will be variable. Is there any libraries available to do this ? 218.248.80.114 (talk) 19:07, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

This is a common for loop homework problem. Use a for loop to iterate through the array. -- kainaw™ 19:29, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I dont think that finding the coefficient of nth power of x in f(x) will be possible by 'a' for loop..And this isn't a homework. Thanks. 218.248.80.114 (talk) 19:53, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

if you have f(x)= (x+A)(x+B)(x+C)...(x+Z) and you want to multiply out those factors so it's in the form f(x)=3x³ -9x² +4x -6 and then report 3,-9,4,and -6 as coefficients, then that is indeed mostly a for loop. If you want to go the other way then polynomial factorization is the place to look. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:24, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Color scheme on a mac is inverted

My school has a mac, dont know what type, but the color scheme is inverted, how do you undo it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Accdude92 (talk • contribs) 19:18, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Probably with Command-Option-Control-8. --Tardis (talk) 19:27, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

3D Buildings in Google Earth

hi, when i download a 3D building into google earth from the google 3D warehouse, save it etc, when i come back to it after a day or two closing down the computer it just goes gray and the rendering will not come back not matter what i do, refreshing, restarting google earth etc. Anyone know how to solve the problem? (Vista, latest g. earth)

thanks, --Abc26324 (talk) 19:50, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Chinese spam

For the past few months, practically all the spam I've been getting is in the form of a fabricated online newsletter, with all the links pointing to some Chinese site (the domain name is always in the form www.something.cn). Is there any way I can set Evolution on Fedora Linux up to apply an automatic filter so that if the message contents contain the string ".cn", the message is automatically marked as junk mail? JIP | Talk 20:01, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

How to fine-tune Google?

This is a problem specifically related to the use of Google (UK) as a research tool for investigating places (especially villages) in England. If the name of a location, no matter how small, is supplied as the search term Google returns hundreds of pages that seem to be dynamically generated, each of which is a directory or advertising page of some type, such as florists, hairdressers, letting agencies, hotels, even when there are none at all at the location. It is often quite a trawl to find any results that are useful (to me). Is there any way at all of excluding these, or can you recommend a different search engine? Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 22:08, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I presume you are looking for websites created locally by local people. I have the same problem constantly, that there are so many commercial link-strewn web pages that claim to be community sites but are not. My strategy using Search Engines would be to specify a domain name that corresponds to the name you are looking for (in Google you enter " Walberton site:walberton.* ") on the basis that a local community webmaster will have registered a relevant domain name ( like http://saltdean.info or http://badsey.net ). Of course, some of the time you will be swamped with other meanings of the place name. Another strategy would be to go to the web site of the relevant District Council and look for a page of links to parish council sites or local community bodies. Or do the same with the local newspaper. Sussexonian (talk) 10:01, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

hack a CD R-W drive?

Isn't there any possible way to read a CD and copy every bit and burn it as is onto another CD? This would bypass any copyprotect code and copy any CD format because it's copying the CD bit for bit. This probably breaks a few laws but it seems so simple to do. Any utilities out there? -- penubag  (talk) 23:19, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid it's not quite that simple. A lot of the time the "copy protection" is actually a physical media "defect" or a non-compliant CD format and copying all the data won't copy the actual errors with the CD itself. There's more information in this in our article CD/DVD_copy_protection. ZX81 ^talk 00:50, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Or you can make an image of the original and burn it onto another CD as an image file. That way all the "defects" are preserved (with appropriate software), but it'd require a virtual drive mounting software. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:31, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Quite correct, antilived. Alcohol 120% is an example of such software that is actually aware of most types of copy protection, even physical ones. My mounting tool of preference would be Daemon Tools. Sandman30s (talk) 18:16, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Just use something like UltraISO. Make a disk image from the CD, then burn it onto the new blank disk? —Preceding unsigned comment added by .isika (talk • contribs) 11:04, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Ubuntu Live CD On USB

Is it possible to get a 'live CD' of Ubuntu (or other Linux) and run it from a USB without installing anything on my computer (Vista). The reason I don't want to install anything is because I don't want to partition my disk, only to find that I can't connect to the internet via wifi because Ubuntu (may) not recognize my wireless card. Therefore, what I am looking for is something that can be bootable from a USB and not take up any space on my PC (except perhaps for files saved - if that is at all possible). I have a 5GB USB stick. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 23:26, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

You can certainly do that from within Ubuntu (USB Startup Disk Creator) if you have access to a machine with Ubuntu installed. Otherwise UNetbootin seems to be able to do what you want in Windows. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:29, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

(kinda urgent!) Geocities pages still up..?

Hi. If any Geocities pages are still viewable, does it mean that they're from Geocities Plus users, or is there still some time left until all normal Geocities pages are wiped out? I want to know if I have to warn some people ASAP or not... --Kreachure (talk) 23:40, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but you're too late. Yes, the only pages that are left are Plus users, all "free" users were deactivated nearly 24 hours ago now. I appreciate it doesn't help you, but they did actually announce this back in April (example of a site that reported on it) ZX81 ^talk 00:45, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Although it's too late to warn people, it looks like some free GeoCities websites are still available, though likely not for long. It's still the evening of October 26 where I am, and both my and my sister's free GeoCities websites are still available as of right now. --Bavi H (talk) 01:48, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

(My and my sister's websites are free Yahoo GeoCities websites with URLs of the form www.geocities.com/yahoo_id, not legacy GeoCities websites with neighborhood URLs, in case anyone is tracking GeoCities's demise and cares to distinguish between the two.) --Bavi H (talk) 02:03, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Kreachure (talk) 02:37, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't forget to try the Internet Archive, and also search engines' cached versions of Geocities pages. -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 09:30, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

(It's now the evening of October 27, and they're both gone now.) --Bavi H (talk) 23:25, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

October 27

Computer shutting off

I have a brand new PC. Twice over the last two weeks, the power has shut off unexpectedly. I'm going to take it in because it's still under warranty, but I'd like get an idea of what may be happening so I don't sound like a complete doofus when I'm explaining the problem. I'll just be surfing the net or whatever and the main power shuts off: hard-drive stops spinning, fans stop, LED on the power button shuts off, etc. However, the little green LED where the ethernet plugs in is still on, as is one of the other little LEDs inside the tower. I'm barely an amateur when it comes to PC hardware, but my guess is that there's something wrong with the power supply and that some, but not all, of the power cords that feed the various devices are getting cut off. Turning off the switch at the back/unplugging and replugging the external power cord seem to fix the situation and 'puter is back up and running again in a few minutes. Sound familiar? Anything else I should note before placing the call? Matt Deres (talk) 00:00, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

At a guess it's overheating as I'd expect it to turn off like you described, although if the computer is only 2 weeks old then it seems extremely unlikely that it's blocked with dust. The easiest way to verify this is to run it with the side of the case, although if it only happens once every two weeks then that's really quite hard to test. I'd at least make sure you report it as a problem even if you don't want to fix it right now so they at least have a record you told them of it. ZX81 ^talk 00:47, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Most likely you're underpowered, which means that the power supply is not supplying enough power to all your components. If your graphics card for example needs to draw more power, and the PSU cannot supply it, your computer will shut off as a precaution. Post your PC specs here if you need more help. Sandman30s (talk) 18:07, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

In my experience, overheating causes spontaneous reboots rather than spontaneously turning the computer off. --Tango (talk) 19:57, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I've had over-heating issues on a previous machine and this just doesn't seem the same. Hell, the box is still cold to the touch. :) The case is clean, the fan is quiet, and we don't have the furnace on yet; I just don't think it's overheating. Both times the machine shut off I was literally just surfing the web and not even doing anything graphically intensive. I have a high end graphics card (ATI 4600-something) and a quad core CPU, but I would think it still ought to be okay with a 350W PS. Matt Deres (talk) 00:12, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Memory timing on XFX 750i SLI

Hello there, I want to have appropriate memory timing on this mobo. I am using Transcend DDR2 4GB (2*2 GB) 800MHz (1.8V). In CPU-Z software, under "Memory"" and "SPD" I found the following information and memory timing:

Module size: 2048 MBytes
Max Bandwidth: PC2-6400 (400MHz)
Part number:JM800QLU-2G
Serial number:007FCOC

Timings table:

---

• DRAM Frequency: 400 MHz

• CAS#Latency:6.0

• RAS#toCAS#:6

• RAS#Precharge:6

• tRAS:18

• tRC:24

• Command Rate: 2T

---

As I am having numerous random freezing with this board (XFX 750i SLI). I read same problems in other boards where people solved them by changing ram timing on their board.

I want to give last try on it. In BIOS, DRAM Frequency everything is auto. Should I change memory timing there (based on above mentioned timing table)? Thanks in advance--119.30.36.37 (talk) 00:57, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

That is already quite conservative (normal RAM run at 5-5-5-24, good RAM can run at 4-4-4-16 or even lower). You should run a memtest to see if the problem is actually in your memory. --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:44, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

programming languages

Hello, I'm a total noob who is just starting to learn html and css. What other programming languages are best for me to take a foothold on? Thank you. --198.163.150.5 (talk) 03:11, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

html and css aren't really programming languages. I would recommend you learn C as most other languages can be easily picked up once you are good at C.

I suggest you start with JavaScript. If you are learning HTML and CSS, you are likely interested in web design. Therefore, you need to know JavaScript. From there, I assume you will get into dynamic pages. What you learn is based on what your webserver supports. If it has PHP on the backend, you need to learn PHP. If it has ASP on the backend, you need to learn ASP. You might have a choice. On my webserver, I can use PHP, Ruby, Perl, or compile C/C++ modules. -- kainaw™ 04:11, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Kainaw. I've developed many web sites and JavaScript has helped me very much. So, after you're done learning HTML and CSS, learn JavaScript. It's really a blast to learn. Then, learn Photoshop. I can't emphasize that enough. You need to learn Photoshop if you want to make web sites. That's where web developers and designers spend most of their time, because the best sites have lots of pictures. Then learn PHP or ASP.NET (but not regular ASP, as it's not as good as ASP.NET). Some people use JavaScript with CSS for their visual effects (like fading in and out, rollovers, etc.), but I use Flash. It's faster than JavaScript and looks better. But, it's another thing you'd have to learn and you "have to" pay for the IDE to develop it.--Drknkn (talk) 07:27, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Instead of "Photoshop" you should say "graphic design", because that's where the real skill lies. But, I don't see how is this relevant to a budding programmer. Python and Ruby (and Ruby on Rails) are also good choices to dabble with. --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:50, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, HTML and CSS are not programming languages at all. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:43, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

HTML is a language! Why else is it Hyper Text Markup LANGUAGE?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 13:46, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Sure, but the fact that it's a language does not make it a programming language. decltype (talk) 13:55, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

It's just markup—it does formatting, nothing more, nothing less. You can't express, say, logical statements with it. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:36, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I usually say that the main difference is that a programming language tells the computer what to do. It better do it. A markup language (like HTML/CSS) asks the computer to do something. It might do it. It might not. It might do something radically different that you expect. In some areas, learning to effectively use a markup language can be far more difficult than learning to effectively use a programming language. -- kainaw™ 15:16, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Replying to "HTML is not a programming language" with "HTML is a language!" is like replying to "Angela Merkel is not French" with "Yes she is European!". Not all computer languages are programming languages. For example, Wikipedia markup is a kind of computer language. Would you call it a programming language? As for the distinction between markup and programming languages, I have to cite the only scientific paper I ever wrote (a university seminar paper): "Programming languages specify how to do things. Markup languages specify what things are like." This is the best definition I've seen so far, in my opinion. JIP | Talk 19:45, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Educational programming language is an article of interest, and I'd start with BASIC. See below where Accdude92 asked a similar question. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:26, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I like Rebol because you can do a lot with just a few words, including accessing the internet. The Wikipedia article is too abstract, but see the Absolute Beginners tutorial links at the bottom. 84.13.180.244 (talk) 23:18, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

C Malloc pointer

i want to know how can i use malloc when i return a structure pointer in a function in c programming language —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.2.48.30 (talk) 06:21, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Like this:

struct MyStructure*
allocate_mystructure() {
    return (MyStructure*)malloc(sizeof(MyStructure));
}

--Sean 13:40, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if that cast should be there. From what I've heard,

struct MyStructure *pointer = (struct MyStructure*)malloc(sizeof(struct MyStructure));

is needless, and can actually hide errors. malloc() returns a void pointer, which C always knows to automatically assign to any other pointer, but by casting it, you are second-guessing C, and if the cast doesn't work, the program will crash. The cast will usually work, but there are some arcane cases (for example, different kinds of pointers having different address lengths) where it won't, and by using the cast, you are telling C: "Shut up, I know what I'm doing better than you." However, I'm not at all sure how it works when automatically returning a pointer from a function. I might be right, or you might be right. Lastly, on a different note, in C, you have to always use the struct keyword. Only in C++ can you omit it. JIP | Talk 20:18, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

C will always automatically cast from a void pointer to a specifically-typed pointer, so the cast is not necessary. (Note that this is not the case for C++.) As JIP points out, casts are generally a bad thing and should be avoided. This C code compiles without warnings using MSVC version 6.

#include <stdlib.h>

struct MyStructure { int i; int j; } ;

struct MyStructure*
allocate_mystructure(void) {
    return malloc(sizeof(struct MyStructure));
}

void main(int argc, const char *argv[], const char *envp[])
{   

    struct MyStructure *s;

    s = allocate_mystructure();

    s->i = 1;
    s->j = 2;

    free(s);
}

Mitch Ames (talk) 23:57, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

ffshrine

I need to go onto gh.ffshrine.org, but for the past few days, I have been unable to because of a donation message. How can I bypass that message? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 07:41, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

You could use Google's "cache" feature. Search for "Template:Websearch" and click on "cached" instead of the usual search links. Not all website functionality will be available. Presumably you could also make a large donation as they request. It's unlikely that there will be a technical workaround that is ethical and legal. --Sean 19:17, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Troubleshooting: scratches on CD/DVD media

I have a disc for software which will not function properly. Obvious software issues have been ruled out, so I'm trying to nail down hardware issues. There are some light scratches on the disk, and I'm wondering if one of these happens to be stopping the computer from reading some critical piece of data. The computer recognizes the disk and I can copy the contents of the volume without errors.

Does this rule out damage to the disk as the cause of the software not running? SDY (talk) 08:51, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I would expect that if you can read all the files on the disk, then the software ought to be able to when running, also. However it is possible that the disk has some form of copy protection that complicates the issue. (Although with copy-protection I would expect the reverse, ie the software runs but you can't copy the files manually.) Mitch Ames (talk) 10:03, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

There are known compatibility issues between Vista and this software (imagine that!) but I'm following some instructions on how to avoid them. Help desk time, I guess. SDY (talk) 10:10, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Font identification...

Hi! Can anyone identify the font (I think it's just one font) in these posters/book covers for me? THE AWARD-WINNING MUSICAL / THE EUROPEAN UNION / POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY / IDEOLOGY

Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►presiding officer─╢ 10:55, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

The two three OXFORD pubs look to be in Lithos; something like Lithos Regular -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 11:09, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

And the bottom line of the Lion King is probably Lithos Black; the text "THE LION KING" isn't (notice how the shape of the N is so different) - it may have been manually produced by the graphic artist. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 11:18, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Perfect—thank-you very much! ╟─TreasuryTag►assemblyman─╢ 13:57, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

(Oh, how I hate Lithos.) The names of the authors on the Oxford covers are in Helvetica, for what it is worth. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:00, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Line printer computer font?

What typeface was used on the early line printers? Is there a computer font derived from the line printer era?

Courier (typeface)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by .isika (talk • contribs) 13:39, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

No, Courier and Courier New are available, but they started with the IBM Selectric typewriter, not the line printer of mainframe fame.

There's a nice close-up shot here. Something sans-serif. Not unlike Andalé Mono (which is obviously based on the same aesthetic). --Mr.98 (talk) 14:30, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

You can also try Consolas font that is included in Microsoft Office 2007, Vista and Windows 7. It's a monospaced font. --95.25.38.66 (talk) 18:29, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

By early line printers, I presume you mean those with fixed fonts, such as drum, chain, finger and band printers. Those early typefaces were based on typewriter and teletype fonts. The classic font is Courier, which was designed for typewriters but predates the IBM Selectric typewriter and has been available on just about every line printer. American Typewriter is a similar typeface. You can find free fonts with a search for typewriter font. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:09, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Programming/Scripting

What language is best for beginners?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 13:42, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

There's no "best"; there are probably a dozen or so languages that are perfectly adequate for beginners. Python and ruby and javascript are all perfectly fine for beginners, logo was invented for that job, and people who've learned visual basic, java, or c# have grown up to be perfectly effective programmers. Plenty of university students get, as a first language, haskell or common lisp; I know people who got prolog as a first language (that's where I'd probably draw the line). If I were to give one answer I'd say "python", but that's just an opinion (and you know what they say about opinions). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:53, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

How dedicated are you and what do you want to do with it? This can answer the question perhaps best. If you are doing it as a hobby and have a limited attention span, you might want to try something that allows you to make shiny, fun, useful programs fairly quickly. (PHP probably falls into this category, along with other web scripting languages.) It's not the same approach as doing it by-the-book, from-the-basics (as C might be). In the end, what you learn from programming is not the specifics of the language so much as the general approach. This can be applied multiple languages... but there is definitely a difficulty curve on languages, depending on what you want to do with them. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:54, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

The Educational programming language article may be of interest to you. Personally I would start with some version of BASIC — that article makes Microsoft Small BASIC look interesting — but my advice to start with BASIC is just because that's what I started with. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:25, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I like Rebol - see the Absolute Beginner tutorial at the end of the article. and the Kid's tutorial. Rebol can do a lot with just a few words, rather than pages and pages of code in other languages, including accessing the internet. 84.13.180.244 (talk) 00:01, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

w3schools

Does anyone else use that website to learn scripting?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 14:03, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I imagine many people do. Personally, I have often found W3C sites to be very useful references. If you have a problem or question about what you're learning from that site, you can post it here (consider reading How to ask good questions or something similar; the location of the Wikipedia version of this guide has momentarily deserted me). If you're looking for others to learn alongside, you may want to enquire at your local college - their IT department probably runs evening classes - or conscript some of your friends to learn with you. --Kateshortforbob _talk 15:18, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not actually sure that site is affiliated with the W3C. It doesn't mention them on their website, but I might be wrong. Thanks, gENIUS101 21:22, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Processor Architecture Copyright

Is processor architecture covered copyright? If not then what is copyright dispute about in this litigation between Intel and AMD? I'm not asking for legal advice. --Melab±1 ☎ 15:50, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I took the liberty of fixing your link. --Sean 16:32, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't know of any case where the a court has upheld a claim that an architecture itself is subject to copyright. The specific copyright litigation between AMD and Intel concerned the copyright of microcode (which is, in essence, software); that is, Intel claimed that an AMD chip copied the implementation of an architecture, not just the specification. Of course other parts of intellectual property law do apply, including trademarks and patents. NEC's x86 compatible NEC V20 came with manuals that used different opcode mnemonics for all the instructions, although really the underlying opcodes were all the same as in an Intel chip - NEC didn't want Intel to be able to sue them for copyright infringement of Intel's processor manual (I think they also shipped an assembler that understood the NEC opcodes, although you could just use a regular assembler or compiler targeted at Intel and the resulting code ran fine on V20). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:36, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

There is no obvious reason why the specifics of chip architecture (e.g., the chip design) couldn't be copyrighted, and the general principles patented. There is nothing special about chip architecture, legally speaking. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:41, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Using a webcam in Windows Vista

how to use built in webcam in windows vista home basic —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.196.97.230 (talk) 18:33, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

It would help if you indicated what computer make and model you are asking about. There is bound to be pre-installed software if there's a built-in camera, but without the specifics on the PC, it's hard to help. --LarryMac | Talk 18:52, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

You need a program to make use of the webcam. It won't magically cause Windows to open a television screen and show you everything that it sees. A very common webcam program is Skype. -- kainaw™ 19:28, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Use of laptop computers by the pilots of Northwest Airlines Flight 188

I do not know a lot about laptop computers or the technology involved with them. That is why I am posting my question here on this Reference Desk. There was a recent incident involving Northwest Airlines Flight 188. The pilots missed (overshot) their destination by 150 miles, and they were out of contact/communication with authorities for over an hour. The pilots' version of events is that they were so engrossed with working on their laptops that they became oblivious to the passage of time and to the distracting noises of those attempting to communicate with them. Many people feel that the pilots simply fell asleep at the wheel (cockpit). So, my question is this. Isn't it easy for the investigating authorities to prove or disprove the pilots' version of events? Can't the authorities simply check out their laptops and look "within" ... at the hard drive or whatever? Will this data tell the investigators whether or not the pilots' version of events is true or false? Or will the laptops themselves yield no useful information? As I said, I do not know anything about laptops or the technology involved. But, I would think that the laptops can prove (or disprove) that the pilots were engaged in laptop activity, that internet sites were accessed and navigated, the dates and times of the laptop activity, etc. Isn't there some type of "bread crumb trail" on their laptops that will easily prove one way or another that the pilots are telling the truth ... or that they are lying? Or are there some other factors that I am missing here? Thank you. (64.252.124.238 (talk) 20:01, 27 October 2009 (UTC))

It's not likely that any internet usage occurred, I don't think NWA has added WiFi to their fleet yet. Assuming the laptops were running Windows, then there would be system logs that would indicate various types of activity. --LarryMac | Talk 20:36, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are quite right that this would be easy information to verify. More to the point, the pilots claim they were using a new company scheduling system, which will presumably itself keep records of accesses and will be easily accessible by the company, which the laptop might not be without a subpoena. --Sean 20:37, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Little data has been publicly disclosed about the investigation, but the pilots' laptops were their personal property and I think it's unlikely they were seized by the airline or by the FAA upon landing. They may have been asked for the laptops afterwards but there's not a great chain of custody here, if my guess is right. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:09, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Even if there is not a great chain of custody ... no one can go "back in time" and change the history of what the data should accurately reveal ... or can they? Thanks. (64.252.124.238 (talk) 00:12, 28 October 2009 (UTC))

They can, but it's trivial for a computer forensics expert to see through unless they are really skilled, and these are pilots not hackers. There are two easy ways to verify their claims:

1) check the file edit logs on the laptops

2) check the audio recording logs in the black box

If they were indeed deeply immersed in discussing scheduling, there'll be a nice long recording proving it. My $50 says they both fell asleep. There were numerous cockpit alarms that would have easily interrupted any conversation... 218.25.32.210 (talk) 00:51, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I also agree with you that they likely fell asleep. But -- being long-time pilots who are familiar with the two items you mention (laptop logs and audio logs) -- how can they think that they would "get away with it" (if indeed, they were sleeping and are lying about the laptops)? It doesn't make much sense. They must know that the laptop logs will be inspected, the audio logs will be inspected, etc. If they were asleep (which I think they were) ... aren't they smart enough to know that the "laptop excuse" and the "we were engrossed in discussion excuse" would get easily disproved? Thanks. (64.252.124.238 (talk) 01:01, 28 October 2009 (UTC))

MS Access 2000

I am having a problem getting a master query to run based on a form. I want the query to filter based on the information on the form, however, if parts of the form are blank, I want it to display all.

Right now, I have:

Column1

Criteria: IIF(IsNull([Forms].[Master Form].[Field1]),””,[Forms].[Master Form].[Field1])

Column2

Criteria: IIF(IsNull([Forms].[Master Form].[Field2]),””,[Forms].[Master Form].[Field2])

Column3

Criteria: IIF(IsNull([Forms].[Master Form].[Field3]),””,[Forms].[Master Form].[Field3])

When I try to get it to run the query, it demands a parameter for Field1.

I did get it to work, with a form that focuses only on one field with the following

Column1

Criteria: [Forms].[1 Form].[Field1]

Or: [Forms].[1 Form].[Field1] Is Null

Please Help

Thank You

omnipotence407 (talk) 21:26, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

A few thoughts from an old Access hand:

1. In that in your pasting of the criteria, the parentheses don't balance. I doubt that is the problem with the Query, but I'm just putting it out there.

2. Referencing data on forms can be tricky depending on the field. Is [Field1] something that is indicated by a TextBox? If so, the data kept in [Field1] might not be updating until after the TextBox loses focus. (The table data does not update until the control loses focus, generally.) So what you might try doing is accessing the specific name of the TextBox, e.g., give the TextBox for [Field1] the Name of text_Field1, and then access [Forms].[1 Form].[text_Field1], which ought to access the TextBox value.

3. One cheat-y way around this is to make it so that tables default to blank rather than Null, or that the form fields themselves default to blank instead of Null. It may not solve the underlying problem, though.

That's about all I can make out given the information above. It sounds like a fairly typical Access snafu though—a pretty innocuous attempt to do something fairly obvious, stymied by very unhelpful error messages that often do not address the ultimate problem. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:09, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I just miscopied that. I corrected that above. In this case, Field 1 is a combo box. The query activates after a command button is clicked running the SetValue Macro.

I do not understand how using blanks would help, could you expand on that? The fields in the table are required to be filled in.

I will be converting the database to 2007 soon. Will that help with this?

Thanks, omnipotence407 (talk) 23:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Re: converting to 2007: probably not. This is not the sort of thing the Access people think is a "bug".

I really do think the problem has to do with referencing the field vs. the control. I am betting the control has not updated the data field. Try this: rename the combo box to Field1_Combo, and change your query accordingly. See if that changes anything. As for blanks, all I mean is, "Null" is not the same thing as an empty string (what I am calling a blank, but is really ""). You can, if I recall, make it so that instead of fields defaulting to Null, they will default to an empty string. That may or may not be appropriate depending on the data in question. It's a hack and not a very good one, though. --98.217.71.237 (talk) 01:20, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

How to search eBay for everything within 20 miles?

Is there any way to search eBay for everything within 20 miles no matter what it is? I would like to find what bargains are available locally without specifying a search term. Is there any way to do this please? The cheapest things often require personal collection, hence I want to find what's near. 84.13.180.244 (talk) 23:55, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

October 28

Amazon's Cloud RDS is new and different because... ?

From a ZDNet newsletter I received:

Amazon launches relational database service: Think MySQL in the cloud

Amazon on Tuesday launched a public beta of a service dubbed the Amazon Relational Database Service RDS. The main appeal: Allow customers to operate and scale database clusters while leaving pesky tasks like patching and administration to Amazon Web Services.

I can't read the article thanks to my company firewall, but I'm having a hard time visualizing any difference between this and just buying a hosting solution from another company. Nobody using a hosting provider has to actually deal with database software updates and patches, that's all part of the host's responsibilities... and no one big enough to need in-house hosting is going to want to suddenly drop it all for external hosting. So why all the fuss? 218.25.32.210 (talk) 00:48, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

If it works really well, you get the benefits (and demerits) of cloud computing; in particular it scales linearly with your datasize and your traffic, and it (ideally) makes geographically disperse replication mostly invisible. The downside is that your data is now in someone else's premises and under their control (although whether that's not equally true for regular offsite hosting of a db like mysql I don't know), which can present technical, legal, and perhaps commercial vulnerabilities. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:06, 28 October 2009 (UTC)