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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)

Mmm... my read of the article (which is short and doesn't have a lot of technical details) is as you have it. Amazon is hosting off-site DB. They have optimized the DB (though how you do that well without knowing what the data is, I don't know). They have it on fast machines. They will take care of the DB. You just build your code to reference Amazon.

I can see ups and downs to it. In-house databases are often pretty sad and poorly maintained (I suspect about 25% of the stories on DailyWTF are about in-house database admins). Much of the daily upkeep could indeed be handled off-site. But setting the thing up in the first place is 90% of the trouble, and I doubt Amazon is going to do that for you. And you get all the downsides of hosting off-site—being dependent on their security, their servers working well, their uptime, etc. I guess it comes down to the price. Is it cheaper than hiring a full-time database admin, hosting the servers, and staying on top of that? If it is, then you can see the tradeoff. If it's not... then, yeah, no way. --98.217.71.237 (talk) 01:26, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Youtube

Is there any way I can prevent people from seeing my youtube favorites?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 02:27, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

With the new layout, you can choose what you wish to display on your channel as such. – Latics ^Talk! 03:30, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

PSP Memory Sticks

The PSP video game system works with "Memory Stick Duo" and "Memory Stick Pro Duo" cards. What's the maximum size memory stick that works with an original PSP? Googling seems to yield only speculation by the unwashed masses, and the Sony website now merely shills the newest PSPs; Sony's "Support" section for the original PSP hasn't been updated since 4GB cards were the largest that were available. Comet Tuttle (talk) 05:17, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I bought a PSP on launch day, and I've used a 8GB card. If that is useful information to you. Chris M. (talk) 20:10, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Maximum iPhone acceleration?

What is the maximum g-force an iPhone can be subjected to? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 05:34, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Do you want it to still work after being violently accelerated? That is survive the drop? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:52, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Though (at least for case integrity) orientation is greatly important. Is there some solder/part or something necessary for use that could get worked loose or something from being repeatedly sub-damaging dropped? (One of my screen corners is now raised (a whole millimeter), which doesn't affect it one bit). And maybe being dropped on something that "gives" a few mm could even have a different way of failure than identical acceleration on something hard? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:05, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

html help

How can I make the grey line displayed on User_talk:Penubag/Sandbox3 go right below the title, not off-screen? I want it positioned on the right but don't want to define coordinates so when the browser is resized, it remains on the far most right. (I'm using firefox 3.5 on the monobook skin. Feel free to edit that page) penubag (sock account) 07:22, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

You mean something like this?

<div style="width:900px; margin: 39px 0 0 0; border:1px solid #AAAAAA; border-left-width:0px; 
border-top-width:0px; -moz-border-radius-bottomleft:17px; padding:0px 17px; font-size:100%; float:right; text-align:right;">Text</div>

--antilived^{T | C | G} 07:57, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Only if it can be positioned at the top of the page as well using position:absolute;top:0px or equivalent. In other words, I want it aligned on the right and on the top of the page. Is this possible? penubag (sock account) 08:07, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

But position:absolute;top:0px doesn't put the box at the top of the page, but the top of the parent element. While for simpler sites it often is <html> it simply isn't the case on Wikipedia. An alternative is to use position:fixed instead, but that will scroll when the user scrolls, which may or may not be desirable. Example Code:

<div style="width:500px; margin: 0; border:1px solid #AAA; background:#FFF; position:fixed; z-index:100; top:0px; right:0px; 
border-left-width:0px; border-top-width:0px; -moz-border-radius-bottomleft:17px; padding:0px 17px; font-size:100%; text-align:right;">Text</div>

--antilived^{T | C | G} 08:43, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

how User_talk:Penubag/Sandbox3 is set up now makes the element go to the top where I want it. I don't want position:fixed 's effects here. So do you think it is impossible to make that element float to the right and stay on the top with Wikipedia?-- penubag  (talk) 09:09, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

That's how the standard say it should work. You can always do top: -xx px but that's really inelegant and will probably break between styles. --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:19, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

...or every time Wikipedia has a new announcement --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:30, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)your recent edits look great! That's what I was kind of aiming for except it will break when Wikipedia notices on the top. Also, it's too bad it doesn't fit right in the Vector skin. Thanks a lot antilived, it's funny how something that seems so simple is impossible. -- penubag  (talk) 09:33, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

It's simple if you can control the semantic layout of the site itself (eg. make the parent of your div <body>). Maybe you can insert the element via javascript, but that only applies to your browser. --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:45, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

What is gmail doing on my computer?

I just noticed that when I try to follow a link in an email on a gmail account by selecting it and hitting 'Enter', I get a message

Grrr! A popup blocker may be preventing Gmail from opening the page. If you have a popup blocker, try disabling it to open the window.

However, when I click the link with the mouse, it works just fine. Firefox then gives a message that it blocked a popup, as it's supposed to. (I'd like that message to go away too, but that's a different issue.) I googled (!) that gmail-message and all I get is talk about how to de-activate popup-blockers. However, I like my popup-blocker. What I want is that message to go away. Opening that page is something Firefox is supposed to do, not gmail, right? So what is gmail doing on my computer? And why would a popup blocker prevent a page being opened anyway? Is Google participating in some sort of anti-popup-blocker scam? That's the only thing I can think of. But what scares me more is that Google can influence the behaviour of my browser. DirkvdM (talk) 08:08, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Google isn't doing anything nefarious here. They're helpfully trying to fall back on other ways of opening the link despite your popup blocker, and as you've noticed, they sometimes succeed, but it depends on how you select the link.

You can disable your popup blocker on Gmail without disabling it everywhere. That's all they're asking you to do. And you don't have to listen to them, but then it becomes your problem when Gmail's interface doesn't work as intended.

Gmail works by using a technology called JavaScript that lets them modify certain aspects of the way your browser acts. This is the reason you can click messages and buttons in Gmail and have them do things without loading a whole new Web page every time you click. They have to change what it means to click on a link, or else it wouldn't be a very good e-mail client.

The Web is much more than documents and links these days. Interacting with a modern Web site does, in fact, require giving Web sites you visit some control over your browser. You're allowed to deny them that control as well, by turning off JavaScript, but the tradeoff is that you will get a much crappier interface for Gmail, and many other web sites won't work at all. You will be choosing to send your Web experience back to the 90s. rspεεr (talk) 08:25, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

If nineties technology works where 'naughties' technology doesn't, then of course I prefer the nineties technology. The fact that something is newer doesn't mean it's better (a common misconception). I know I can selectively disable the popup blocker. But I don't want to because I don't want any popups. They're a nuisance with no function whatsoever. And anyway, if I disable the blocker on gmail, then it will be disabled on all links in all my emails. Luckily there's the workaround of clicking the link, which does work. But that's not how it should be. So if this technology doesn't work properly yet, then it should be fixed before it gets implemented. I don't want to be a beta tester for a commercial company. DirkvdM (talk) 09:14, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

If you selectively disable popups for just mail.google.com, you will not get pop-ups. Gmail does not have or cause popups. Your popup blocker is merely interfering with a non-popup feature of Gmail. And if a link brings you to a different page that does cause popups, your popup blocker will kick in again, since the popups aren't coming from mail.google.com. "Naughties" gmail works just fine, in fact better than "nineties" technology. It is faster, more secure, and more aesthetically pleasing, to name a few. —Akrabbim^talk 13:20, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't follow. If I selectively disable popups for just gmail, I will get popups there. Or do you mean I still don't get them elsewhere? Of course, that's what 'selectively' means. :)

If a gmail feature is disabled by a popup blocker, to the extent that I can't even follow a link, then that is a bug that should be fixed and in the meantime I should be able to disable that feature, but I don't even know what feature it is, let alone if it is useful to me. In any case, gmail should not disable the ability of Firefox to follow a link.

Which email provider is more aesthetically pleasing is very much a matter of taste. I still prefer Operamail, but the free version is horribly out of date in terms of storage space. DirkvdM (talk) 17:49, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Gmail opens external links in new windows so you can still have your email open while you browse that new page - this is desirable behaviour, IMO. Your popup blocker should allow that as long as it can tell that you requested the page to open - it seems that your popup blocked can only tell that if you click on the link rather than selecting it and hitting enter. This may be something to do with how gmail handles keyboard shortcuts - do you have gmail's email shortcuts enabled? If so, try disabling then and see if that fixes it (you should still be able to open pages by selecting links and hitting enter - that is a Firefox shortcut rather than a gmail one). If it does and you are happy not to use gmail's shortcuts, then the problem is solved. If it does and you want to keep the shortcuts, you should report it to Google as a bug. If it doesn't fix it, then I don't know what the problem is - you should probably report it to Google too, at least you'll have ruled out one possible cause for them. --Tango (talk) 18:01, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Popups are a characteristic of specific websites. Gmail does not have them, so if you disable your popup blocker for gmail, you still won't get popups from it. Other websites will still be blocked from causing popups. —Akrabbim^talk 20:16, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah, ok, I misunderstood. Makes sense, I'll do that. Thanks. DirkvdM (talk) 09:18, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Keyboard shortcuts are set to 'off', so that's not it. Opening a page by hitting enter is not a specific Firefox shortcut, but a very general one. Any browser does this. Including a file browser (which is almost the same thing); if I select a file and hit enter that activates that file, and in the case of an html file, it gets displayed (in another browser window). So Google is not following the standard here (which I consider a bad thing - standards are extremely helpful in making life easier).

I tried contacting Google before, but couldn't find an email address. That is usually at the bottom of the page or linked to at the top of the page. But not here. Again, they don't follow the standards. Of course I could try google@gmail.com. :) Actually, I just did, sending a test-mail first, referring to this thread to keep it short (in case the address doesn't work). DirkvdM (talk) 09:18, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

No, that address doesn't work. It's a short email, yet I received a message saying that it could not be delivered because "Storage quota exceeded". Of course Google has this address, so I assume they don't want to be contacted. I can imagine they get many mails, but that can hardly be a reason not to have any email address at all. Especilly weird for an email provider. DirkvdM (talk) 12:16, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

It's probably either a dummy account created by them to stop other people from using the address or it's marked as invalid and can't be used, but since they don't publish it the error is really only yours in assuming that is the address to use. I'm sure they do have email addresses, but more and more companies don't publish their external addresses and insist on you using web contact forms instead. Google is no different and if you try and use their help/contact pages describing your situation at the point the wizards can't help you any further they'll offer you a chance to "report it" to Google and that's where you can fill in the forms. The lack of publishing an email address is partly because of the spam problem and unwanted emails, but also because a lot of questions people ask can be answered by reading the help pages on the website so by forcing them to do that it seriously cuts down on the amount of mail they have to answer and frees up a lot more time. ZX81 ^talk 12:55, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Google reads my email!

The above thread reminds me of another, more serious, issue I have with gmail. I often notice that gmail ads are related to the content of the email. In other words, Google reads my email. Whatever happened to "Don't be evil"? DirkvdM (talk) 08:12, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Computers read your e-mail all the time. That's how it gets to other computers. And targeted advertising is Google's sole source of profit. There wouldn't be a company there to not-be-evil without it. rspεεr (talk) 08:25, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

If it's bothering you, you might want to try this firefox addon. It looks promising. -- penubag  (talk) 08:32, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

That addon deals with the more serious problem of Web sites sharing what they know about your browsing habits with other Web sites. It won't stop Google from doing stuff with the e-mail you specifically put into Google and told it to do stuff with. But then, I did just remember a silly way to disable targeted ads for some e-mail threads -- if you mention certain recent tragic events in your messages, it'll turn off the targeted ads so as to not offend people. rspεεr (talk) 08:43, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

If you want to ensure that no entity except your intended recipients ever reads your e-mail, not even a computer, you do have a way to do this -- you can encrypt your e-mails with public key cryptography. However, this will take some effort from both you and the recipients. Also, they will have to decode the message in order to read it, and if they do so at all, they are almost certain to do so using -- wait for it -- a computer. If you're worried about anthropomorphized computers reading your e-mail, you just can't win. rspεεr (talk) 08:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Computers don't have to read emails to pass them on. They only have to pass on the packages, just like a mailman does with paper mail, without registering what's inside them. And I'm sorry, but the notion that there wouldn't be any (commercial) companies without advertising is complete nonsense. (Mind you, as ads go, I like the Google ads because they are so modest - I have even been known to click one, something I normally never do with ads (the ones that get through the mazes of Adblock, that is).)

Encrypting mail would be too impracitcal, since most people wouldn't know what to do with them, even if I told them. And them using their own computer is of course not the issue. What I expect from a mail company is to deliver my mail without reading it. I know that with email it's a lot easier to do that unnoticed, but that doesn't absolve them from the moral obligation not to to it. I wonder if they couldn't (and shouldn't) be sued for this. I assume there's no people reading my email, just a computer picking out key words. But that is already a form of reading, albeit low key. And I know that 'James Bond' can read my emails. There's little I can do about that. What worries me is that Google does this so openly, as if this is normal behaviour. This opens the door to a further invasion of our privacy, step by step leading us to a rather undesirable society. Big Brother is already watching us. But this is a whole lot worse than cameras in the (public) streets. This is an unseen 'camera' in our private lives. DirkvdM (talk) 09:42, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

"What worries me is that Google does this so openly, as if this is normal behaviour." It already is normal behavior. http://www.nbc.com/ has 9 web trackers on their website! And most websites have them as well. I'm talking about web trackers like Google Analytics, Google Adsense, Omniture, DoubleClick, Lotame, Tacoda, and Zedo. I've caught gmail sending information to Google Adsense on me a few times. If you want to view the trackers on an individual page, there's an addon for that. -- penubag  (talk) 09:58, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I meant 'normal' in the sense of 'acceptable', not 'common'. (eg, if it is common to evade taxes, does that then make it normal?)

We don't have an article on web trackers, but I understand that those keep track of where I surf. That is something completely different, because it's in the public domain. Just like the the cameras in the streets that I mentioned. Mail and email, however, are in the private domain, especially the content. I find it really disturbing that Google does this so openly, which is an indication that they assume people don't mind their mail being read. As you indeed seem to do. Maybe I should raise this issue on a legal or political forum.

Another issue is what could be done about it. Email-providers operate internationally, so which legal court should deal with this? DirkvdM (talk) 12:01, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and thanks for the tip about the Ghostery add-on. After installing it I visited nbc, and indeed there is a long list. Then I tried my bookmarks. About half don't use them, including Google, BBC, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Internic, Espacenet (patent bureau) and xs4all (my internet provider). But gmail and (surprisingly) operamail both use Google Analytics. And quite a few others too, including my newspaper, NRC, which is considered the most 'respectable' Dutch newspaper. And linuxquestions even has four of them! This really surprises me. I didn't expect these on .org sites, especially not open source sites (most of which indeed don't use web trackers, so this one is the odd one out).

Funny, I just gave a list of my bookmarks. :) But then that was my own choice, and few get to see them, which makes all the difference. DirkvdM (talk) 12:32, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Gmail uses targeted advertising regarding e-mail content. That means it has little scripts that search for words and tries to think up what kind of ads go with them. That doesn't mean that a live person ever reads your e-mail, or that your security is compromised (e.g., that the ads can be traced back to specific content in your specific account). It does signal something different, though, as I'm pretty sure no other mail service (at least not one of this size) used the content of the e-mail as the basis of its targeted advertising (previously it would be based on information you put in, or targeted based on web browsing, etc.). Is this a problem? In a larger sense, it feels like a problem, but that feeling is actually you just realizing something that has been true all along: your mail host has access to your mail content, that your mail content is actually just floating around largely without your control before it gets to you, and that you are not really very happy with this. If this bothers you, at the moment your primary way to change it is to use a different mail service. Gmail is free, you are not paying for it, and have very little say with them other than being able to leave.

I doubt there are legal remedies. There is as far as I can tell no real violation of privacy, just a perceived one. It would be a very fine legal line, though, to ask whether a script that picks a few words at random out of messages and uses them for ads is violating any privacy, assuming no information leaks out. No other human being sees your message content. In any case, when signing up for the service, you no doubt agreed they could do this—read the fine print of their agreement, I am 100% sure it is in there.

As for what jurisdiction, it's doesn't really matter for international companies like this—you could file a suit anywhere they had a branch, I imagine. Best pick a place with actual legal protections of privacy though (that is, not the USA, where their headquarters are located, where privacy has very little protection). This is not legal advice, though. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:03, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Here is a link to Gmail's privacy policy. Everything that they do that we have mentioned here is out in the open for you to read and be informed about. If you object to their conditions, you can cancel your account and pay for a more private and more secure mailserver. This is not evil corporate practice, as you mentioned before. Evil would be secretly breaking these conditions that they have laid out, which I think is beyond the scope of this thread. —Akrabbim^talk 13:26, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, in the privacy policy there is a reference to 'the content of messages', but see my next post.

I also read there that they block spam. How can they know if I consider something to be spam? I never receive spam (anymore - I learned that the hard way), so there is only a danger there that they block something I do want to read. DirkvdM (talk) 18:26, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Of course a mailprovider can look into my mail, as well as any other computer that it passes through on the way. Just like any plain old mail deliverer. The point is that that is immoral, and I assume illegal just about anywhere. Like I said, I understand that it's just a computer looking through my mail. And that computer can't understand what it is reading. Yet! But if we allow this then what else will be allowed? And of course computers get ever 'cleverer' and in the future it might be difficult to say where the dividing line is between a stupid computer and interpretation. The difference between data (key words) and information (reading) is not so clear and it will get ever less clear with the advent of intelligent computers. So we should draw a line (the same line that has always been there for mail deliverers) and say that no-one but the recipient should be allowed to look at the contents of email.

If the fine print (also an outdated notion in the world of browsers :) ) in the agreement states that gmail is allowed to read my mail, then the agreement is illegal. You can't make something legal by letting someone sign a statement that they agree with the illegal act. DirkvdM (talk) 18:26, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

It is not illegal at all. Email is not regulated the same as US mail is. There are no laws protecting your privacy from the company that is providing you with the service. You should be thankful that they offer such a nice privacy policy, and such tame, colorless advertisments. As for the spam, they have algorithms to be able to tell if something is coming from a spambot, as well as identifying spam-like attributes in the text. There are certain identifying characteristics, and Gmail is pretty good at what it lets through, and what it blocks. See also spam blocker. —Akrabbim^talk 20:12, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

If I were a judge, and I'm not, I would ask, "why expect mail privacy?" The answer is pretty straightforward, and leads back to the beginning of the postal system: if people are constantly able to see what you write, then you constrain what you write. If you expect your secrets will be known by others, you constrain them. And so forth. And secrets, of course, need not be illegal or illicit—they can just be something that one doesn't want other human beings to know, for whatever reason. We agree? Nobody cares if a dog knows your secrets—it's not the same thing. OK—is a script more like a person or a dog? At the moment, it's a dog. Definitely. All it can do is mechanically call up a table of possible ads and look (very cleverly) at your content and decide what ad might work best for you. Is that a privacy issue? If it's a dog, not really. It's not "reading" at all. There is zero comprehension involved. What if the machine gets smarter? Now we are getting precariously close to the Chinese room argument... but still, it's hard to create a sense of real violation unless we're talking about something that's actually sentient, that can actually interact with our world like a free agent. We're nowhere near that stage. Even if we were, your targeted advertising would be the least of our general social and legal quandries. So I'm not convinced that there's any privacy violation going on here. If the information in your mail cannot "leak" to real people (which is a big "if", to be sure, and one worth taking seriously), then where's the violation of privacy?

I'm not saying that Gmail's thing isn't creepy. It sure is, to me. But I'm not sure it's really creepy because something bad is happening. It's creepy because it looks like something bad is happening—it looks like someone is reading your mail. But no-"body" is—it is just a "dumb" bot.

As for legality... varies by jurisdiction. In the US, as I understand, you have no inherent, legal privacy over e-mail. Nada. There is no law that gives you that. You send something over someone else's servers, and they look at it—fair game, legally. It is not treated as postal mail. (There's an argument that this is a good thing, considering that e-mail is totally privately run for the most part. What would our e-mail systems look like today if the USPS had taken over e-mail responsibilities in the 1970s? Probably bad.) In any case, it's a free system that you signed up for, agreed to a license that lawyers no doubt inspected carefully, in a world with plenty of easy alternatives, and you continue to use just because you choose to, and there are no consequences for stopping your service other than slight inconvenience... aka, not terribly compelling, as far as claims to standing go.

As for spam... my understanding is that Gmail uses a combination of things to try and figure out what is spam. I'm not sure they actually have released what they do (as it would make it easier to defeat), but it's pretty straightforward. They look for common spam patterns (there are only so many iterations of spelling "VIAGRA" with numbers, after all), and look for things that other users have already labeled as "spam", and then subtract from that indications that it might be "ham" (real mail)—if it is sent from someone who you have corresponded with previously, for example. It then assigns a likelihood that a given message is spam or not, and if it is "spam" under its assessment, it moves it into a "spam" folder that just sits there, out of your way but not deleted, indefinitely. That's provided so you can check periodically to see if it is doing the right thing. Go ahead and take a look! Sometimes it gets things wrong, but it is pretty good, as far as such things go.

Anyway... if you don't like Gmail's policy on these things... you can leave! There are plenty of other services that offer similar services. There are plenty of services that won't give you ads at all and won't screen your spam out. Feel free to exercise your right to choice! There is really little holding you back, other than the hassle of a one-time "change of address" e-mail. (You can then set up Gmail to forward things your new address to avoid missed messages as people switch over.) Happens all the time. Not a big deal. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:33, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Above, DirkvdM asked, "How can they know if I consider something to be spam?" Whether a message is spam is not based on your opinion; it's based on the conduct of the sender. Spam is not "mail I don't like"; it's "mail that is sent out in bulk, by a sender who knows that people never asked for it" -- and usually sent via any of a number of criminal techniques, such as using computers infected with a spammer virus (a botnet).

Mail service providers can identify spammers based on a lot of factors: spammers send large numbers of messages from home computers they've broken into; they put fake headers on the messages; they operate out of known-bad or known-insecure networks; they use various tricks to try to hide their origins or to defeat simplistic anti-spam systems; they send the same message from dozens of different (compromised) computers; and so on. The Internet's biggest spammers are well-known to the anti-spam community -- see the Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) for instance.

Of course, a large mail provider (or even a site with a few hundred users) can learn plenty about spam from their users' reports. In the case of Gmail, there are buttons you can use to report a message as spam; and you can look through your "Spam" folder to mark messages as not-spam that have been incorrectly detected as spam. But even without this data source, a mail provider can do a *lot* to discern spam just based on the conduct of the sender. --FOo (talk) 03:51, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah, after some searching I found the spam box. It's under '6 more' (nicely hidden). Luckily it's empty, so they haven't made any mistakes yet. DirkvdM (talk) 10:08, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Mr 98, if it isn't illegal, then there's little I can do about that. But whether it's immoral and should be illegal is a different matter. You allude to the free market, but that shouldn't be the basis for things that are essential for normal living (in the modern world). For example, roads are so essential that one can not have them all be in private hands and say "well, if you don't like that none of the roads are open to bicyles or you can't afford the price they ask (or whatever), then tough luck". Of course, long distance communication is not as essential as roads, but it comes close. So if there is no government institution that provides the service to make sure it is available to everyone, then there should be laws that make sure there is a decent provision of the commodity. Which means that all providers of long distance communication should abide to those rules. You can't say, well some of them do, so the rest can be absolved from that. The postman shouldn't open my mail, my telephone company shouldn't listen in on my telephone calls and my email (and internet) provider shouldn't look in my email. In whichever form. Rules have to be kept as general as possible, because you can't possibly predict what future developments there will be. You say we're nowhere near sentient computers. How do you know? And even if it is decades into the future, that doesn't alter the principle.

I don't know USPS (I assume that means US Postal System and that that is government-run), but the Dutch postal system worked perfectly well before it got privatised. The fact that one specific government service doens't function well is not a reason to abolish all government services but to improve the ones that don't function well.

As for switching an email address, the biggest hassle is not the change itself or even notifying everyone (and reminding them several times later on). That takes at most one hour of my time. But I would want a provider that doesn't read my email. So I should read the small print of all the providers. A daunting task. And it would severely limit my choice. And what if there is no such provider, suppose they all do this, does your argument then still hold? This is the reason that they all should behave, to make sure that they don't all misbehave.

In a free market you can't say "you can do this, but you can't". That would create unfair competition. DirkvdM (talk) 10:08, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm still at a loss as to why it is immoral. They are completely upfront about whatever information they use, and insistent that none of their processes violate your privacy and expose personal information. They don't take anything more than keywords, just so that they can keep a business running and provide you will a high-quality free service. I would be surprised if regular mail doesn't go through at least some kind of scan to detect harmful materials or bombs or something. That doesn't mean that they are looking inside your packages and finding out what's inside, beyond a simple "Dangerous: Y/N". —Akrabbim^talk 12:05, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Let me take that last remark in my last post a little further. Suppose that unfair competition were resolved by saying that all communication companies can tap your communication. So telephone companies have computers that listen in on your conversations and when you have one about cameras then next day you get (e)mail from camera manufacturers. And mail companies hold your letters against the light to read them and stamp relevant ads on the envelope. That would even things out. Does that sound ok to you? DirkvdM (talk) 13:02, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

No, it doesn't sound ok, but then it doesn't happen either so I don't see how it's relevant? You're trying to compare Google's targeted adverts against a fictional 1984 type situation. Are you trying to suggest that by allowing Google to do this then it opens the doors to future things like this? I really can't see that being a catalyst, but everyone is welcome to their own opinions and beliefs! ZX81 ^talk 13:20, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Not exactly 1984, because that is the government following people's every move. This is a private company. I'm not sure which is scarier. DirkvdM (talk) 19:46, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I've been reading this thread since it started and I'm sorry, but I don't think you understand the basics of how email works. You say you're concerned about the illegal/immoral actions of an automated computer reading your email, but I'd be more concerned about the fact that your email is completely unencrypted and to get to it's destination it will pass through multiple unrelated nodes, any of which *could* read or even copy it the email if they wanted. I'm not saying that's something you should just feel fine about, but it is the nature of how email works and if you're not happy with this you need to use encryption as written above. Also as previously mentioned without reading the body of the message the automated systems have no way of verifying it's not a scam/spam/virus email and handling it accordingly. If you want an email provider that doesn't do any filtering (very unlikely these days since the vast majority of customers want it!) then you would have to change to someone else or run your email yourself. As it's been pointed out above, Google are completely upfront about their email policies and you are free to move and go to someone else if you are unhappy with them. Saying you don't want to read all the small print because it's a "daunting task", I don't really see how you can argue then. If a company is telling you the in's and out's of how it operates and how it will handle your privacy and you can't be bothered to read it, then do you really have a right to complain if it later doesn't work the way you want/expect it to? If you don't want to use Gmail for whatever reason... don't. Probably the best solution to your problem is to purchase a Vanity domain and host that somewhere which will be your email address for life (or at least until you get so much spam you decide you need to change it). If you don't agree with someones policies, you'd then be able to pick up and move it to anywhere you want or even host it yourself if you feel technically inclined enough. Sure you'd have to tell everyone your new email address, but at least it's only the once. The only drawback is it isn't free, but it isn't an expensive cost (from my perspective anyway), considering the options it gives you. ZX81 ^talk 13:13, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the OP still has not really specified what is immoral about it. The private vs. public debate is really somewhat off-topic (there are arguments either way). Most pertinent here is nobody is really "reading" the mail—it is a brainless robot that scans the text and finds matching ads. There is no actual privacy violation if no other living human being has access to the information. It feels like a privacy violation, because it looks like a human is reading it, but there is no comprehension whatsoever. It is equivalent to having a dog read your mail. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:54, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Presumably, very precise statistics are being kept on what advertisements are shown, and in what markets. Certainly humans look at those. These are (one would hope) not connected to any particular user's account, but it's the equivalent of Google scanning their database and producing reports on what percentage of private emails talk about certain subjects. You may or may not consider that a privacy violation. APL (talk) 15:30, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

It's hard to come up with that being a privacy problem when looking at the aggregate. "Oh, 83.5% of people talk about their dogs and send photos of their kids." It's hard to construct a legitimate argument, in my opinion, that considers that a violation of personal privacy. It certainly should not lead to what we would consider the negative effects of privacy violation (liability, embarrassment, self-conditioning, etc.). --Mr.98 (talk) 19:20, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

The argument that I can switch providers keeps coming up, but that's not the issue. Also, having to read all the small print of all the providers was just a practical argument and not the issue either. My argument is that it is immoral and should therefore be illegal.

The comparison with other communication companies is not about a fear that that might happen in the future but that it is illegal for them. So it should be illegal for all communication companies. At least I assume pretty much everywhere it is illegal for mail companies to read the mail that passes through their hands and for telephone companies to listen in on phone calls. I said that allowing email providers to do this would constitute unfair competition, because that way they can generate income their competitors can't. But that's just a practical argument. The real argument is that it is immoral to scan people's private communication. I shouldn't have to come up with arguments for that because it is elementary (dear Watson). It goes against the grain.

Let me turn this around. Anyone who says it isn't immoral and should be legal for email providers should also find it ok for telephone and mail companies to do this. ZX81, you say that doesn't sound ok, so how can you say it's ok for email providers to do this? It's exactly the same thing. Your argument that that doesn't happen is circumstantial. And note that it doesn't happen because it's illegal. DirkvdM (talk) 18:32, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Believe it or not, the Wikipedia Reference Desk does not have the authority to outlaw targeted advertising in email. APL (talk) 18:49, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Really? Oh dear! :) DirkvdM (talk) 18:54, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

You've consistently dodged the question of what makes it "immoral", and the distinction being made between data mining and wiretapping. In the end, that is what it comes down to. If you cannot articulate why you think no distinction should be made, and will not engage with the distinctions that have been suggested, then it is really not worth discussing further, because you are not actually engaging the relevant issue. I'm not sure comparing to telephone companies works very well, but yes, if telephone companies somehow were paid for with targeted advertising, and they could do anonymous data mining of conversations that didn't involve any actual humans listening to the conversation, then I don't think that would be a privacy violation, no. (The idea of a telephone spitting ads at you is of course abhorrent, but that is a different question altogether.) --Mr.98 (talk) 19:20, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

By signing on to Google, you agree to this targetted advertising. If you don't like it, don't use Google, but remember that all e-mail is more like postcards than letters, and more like using a phone in a public bar than your private phone at home. All e-mail can be read by the technicians who look after the servers, though usually they will be too busy to bother, just like your postman will be too busy to read your postcards. Dbfirs 10:52, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Visual Basic Flow Control Problem!

Hello. I have been programming with vb, but somehow, using the following function always results in the "Else" part! What is wrong? The Successor of Physics 10:38, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Public Shared Function SetVal(Of outtype)(ByVal msg As String, ByVal def As String)
        Dim val As Object = InputBox(String.Format("Enter the new value for {0}", msg), "Set Value", def)
        If TypeOf val Is outtype Then
            Return CType(val, outtype)
        Else
            MsgBox("Sorry, unexpected input was recieved. This program will terminate immediatly", 16, "ERROR")
            End
        End If

What exactly are you trying to achieve? I suspect you're using "If TypeOf val Is outtype" to test where the user's input is an integer (for example). This won't work because InputBox returns a String - you can't use the TypeOf test to see whether a String could be converted to an Integer; you need to use Integer.TryParse or similar functions for this. (Also you misspelled "received" and "immediately".) AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:23, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I was trying to use the "If TypeOf val Is outtype" as an equivalent to the c# code "if (val is outtype) {}"The Successor of Physics 12:35, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

The syntax is correct, but "TypeOf val is outtype" will never be true unless outtype is String. To repeat my question, what are you trying to achieve? (Come to think of it, terminating the program immediately is rather a drastic response to incorrect user input.) AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:44, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

plz help fft plots

Moved from Science desk by Falconus^{p t c}

i want to know something about this matlab code.what is it all about. i found it in image processings.

L = n_img;%No. of frames available for signal computation
NFFT = 2^nextpow2(n_img); % Next power of 2 from length of y
Y = fft(intensity_fluct,NFFT)/L;
f = Fs/2*linspace(0,1,NFFT/2);
plot(f,2*abs(Y(1:NFFT/2)))

yours.. SCI-hunter (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:47, 28 October 2009 (UTC).

I'm not a Matlab expert, but all it seems to be doing (or trying to do) is taking the data in the vector intensity_fluct and applying an FFT to it. It then plots the magnitude FFT output on the Y axis with the X axis calibrated from zero to half the sampling frequency. So it's basically graphing the different frequencies making up the input signal intensity_fluct. It seems a slightly over-complex way of doing it. --Lesleyhood (talk) 12:36, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for previous answer. what is the significance of sampling frequence here.is it the (frequency/frame) i assign when i cut the frames from a video?if not then what is it.please help urgently. ~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by SCI-hunter (talk • contribs) 04:56, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Broken laptop due to wrong charger

I have a broken laptop. The defect was caused by a replacement battery charger, that was wrongly polarized. That means negative pole was connected where positive pole should connect and positive was connected where negative should be. The laptop can still work on battery power, since it is not heavily damaged, but it is not possible to load the battery, so it will not work for long. I suspect the laptop have a fuse that went off when electricity came in the wrong place. How difficult is it to repair this kind of thing? Is it enough to open it, replace it and start working again? Can it be done at home? --80.32.35.58 (talk) 11:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

A fuse would be quite easy to replace, but you may have blown a few power transistors or DC-DC convert chips and not be worth repairing. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:46, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I read somewhere else that laptops have a surge protection. I don´t know if mine has this, but perhaps there is a way of resetting it... --80.32.35.58 (talk) 11:48, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Usually a surge protector will sacrifice itself to save whatever it is protecting. In that case, you will have to replace that component. If it was just a breaker, then I suppose it is just a switch. I don't know, however, because I have never owned a laptop and I have no idea what they come with. Falconus^{p t c} 13:54, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

(I am the OP.). Astonishing the laptop came back to life after I pressed a reset button, waited for some hours and started without the battery as they told me in another site. However, it still has a problem recognizing the battery. Speculative, I would say that the surge protection gets hot and cuts the power supply. After that it needs time to cool down to work again. Does anyone know what happened? It is an old ASUS, by the way, and I am using the same replacement battery charger (with right polarization this time). 80.58.205.37 (talk) 15:57, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Best way to see all machines connected to my wireless router?

Resolved

I have cable Internet and a Linksys WRT54G wireless router. What is the easiest way to see all the machines on the wireless network? We have an XP laptop, a Mac laptop, an HP all-in-one, a Playstation 3 and a Tivo. I tried looking on the web admin page for the router (http://192.168.1.1) but couldn't find anything. Mike R (talk) 15:40, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean by "see"? If you just want to know which machines are connected, nmap does it: nmap 192.168.1.1-255 and once that's done arp

If you need to actually browse the contents of those machines, you'd need to set up the relevant SMB/NFS shares accordingly. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:47, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

According to the manual, you can get a "Wireless Client MAC List" by following the procedure on pp. 51–52. It's accessed through the MAC security controls, so I can see how it would be hard to find. -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:51, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you both; that was what I needed. Mike R (talk) 16:01, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Home Network Question

I've just installed Ubuntu on an old PC I had lying around and decided to link it to my Vista rustbucket. No problems at all and the network is up and running perfectly - too perfectly, though, because I have set permissions for certain folders on my vista and the Ubuntu computer is now having no problems looking round at virtually everything else on the vista computer. Now, this is a problem, so I would like to password protect certain work folders on my desktop on the vista without archiving, zipping, compressing or doing anything else to them that would cause them to be slightly troublesome to work with (they are on the desktop for a reason!) from the vista computer. Is there any way to do this with Home Premium? Also, I have noticed that only my Ubuntu computer (and of course the Vista computer) show up on 'networks', and not my brother's XP or my mother's XP, which are all in the same house here. Why is that? Sorry, two questions here.... --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 16:21, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm still trying to figure out the automation of the home network myself. When I replaced my router, Windows 7 auto-deleted home network 2 (what happened to 1??) and created home network 3... then rediscovered all my XP PC's. If it helps, each XP PC belonged to "Workgroup" when I had those setup under XP networking. Each XP PC also has an alternate IP setup, such as 192.1.1.5 (under TCP/IP properties). If you're battling, delete it and get vista to rediscover your network. As for the unix question, not sure, but maybe investigate linking them via NFS shares (or is it LFS in linux?) instead of a direct "root" share. Sandman30s (talk) 21:23, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Hotmail doesn't work any better

At a college where the person helping me suggested I get Hotmail, the computers now have Firefox. I just happen to use Hotmail there, though it doesn't serve that much of a purpose. Various problems have caused me never to use Hotmail for composing. Excite, which has far more problems, gives me a pop-up plain-text work space which I can't lose as long as I don't click on the Red X. It can never be used to actually SEND the email, at least not the way I do it. That may be a question for a different day.

On Hotmail one would expect to go to the page to sign in and then to the inbox. That does happen. It used to take two tries, and still does with Yahoo.

If one goes to an email in that inbox and then follows a link, clicking "Back" should eventually bring you back to the inbox. Nope. Back to the sign-in page. You never see the inbox. You have to click on the inbox page because "Forward" will send you back to that email.

Of course, every tie you click on "Back" after looking at an email, it sends you back to that email after a brief glimpse at the inbox. Sometimes you can click on "Back" again to get back to the inbox.

And if you go to a different folder ... well, that's even worse. I generally do that at another library with Explorer because I have to double-check the sent folder in case an eamil I sent myself doesn't go through. You don't dare go anywhere else or you'll never find your way back.

I just wonder why this bizarre logic goes into the software for these email accounts.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:44, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Who knows? You might get lucky and have someone from Microsoft User Support come along and answer your question, but in the meantime, it may be helpful to contact them here directly. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 17:53, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I may do that. I just get so frustrated with those people. Regardless of the email address, they take a year to do anything and they always come up with some excuse like "we can't duplicate the problem".Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:35, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I am not at all surprised by the "we are unable to duplicate the problem" response, by the way. I have never seen the behavior that you have been complaining about. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:43, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

You seem obsessed with the "back" button in your many similar lengthy questions about email. Why not just click on "inbox" instead? 78.144.248.102 (talk) 10:26, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, that's what I do now, but if I want to go "back" to something I want to be able to do it. If I can't remember where I was, then how else will I get "back"?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:38, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

c program

i need a simple code in c language in c,for the work of scienctific calculator,which takes 2 oparands and one oparator .for single four function calculator i made ,but for scienctific calculator i cant .plz give me a program for this,thanks210.212.20.75 (talk) 18:13, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

yacc and lex will generate you c code fo parsing your calculators input, the blanks should be easy to fill in. Even if you need to make it in pure c yourself, the bison (gnu yacc) manual could give you ideas. (hint hint, there's a calculator in the examples section). --194.197.235.240 (talk) 19:04, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

This sounds like a homework problem. What is it that you are having trouble with? Is it with getting input? Is it with parsing the input? Is it with printing the results? Is it a complete failure to understand what a C program is and how to compile it? Without understanding the problem, it is impossible to assist in a solution. -- kainaw™ 19:35, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Someone asked this exact same question just a couple of days ago (here: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing#program_of_c). The answer is really too complex for a Reference Desk question. However, read my (LONG!) response there - perhaps it'll be of some help. SteveBaker (talk) 00:43, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Skype

One of my friends said skype was going bankrupt and that skype was shutting down, is this true?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 19:10, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

ebay paid $2.6B for Skype in 2005; it wrote the value down to $1.7B, but sold Silver Lake Partners 65% of it last month, the transaction putting the value of the whole company at $2.75B. So no. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:25, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

What's the best VNC-like alternative?

I want to disconnect my Ubuntu machine from its monitor and just control it over the network from my various Windows machines. What's the best RealVNC-like program to do this? Is it still RealVNC itself, or is there some new hotness? Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:41, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

NX might be worth a look, though I've never tried it. -- BenRG (talk) 22:05, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Ubuntu comes with its own VNC server, which you can enable under System/Preference/Remote Desktop. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:00, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

What's wrong with RealVNC? --164.67.235.128 (talk) 08:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Are we talking about what VNC server to run on the Ubuntu machine, what VNC client to run on the Windows machines or both? Nil Einne (talk) 08:36, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

October 29

Google customising searches based on cookies/preferences/previous searches?

I'm noticing what appears to be a curious correlation between what I've been searching for and what I've previously been searching for. It's as though it's playing mind games with me and trying to outsmart me. For example, you could search for specific things and it will target your search results in a specific area of interest or using certain keywords. This has just been occurring recently as in within the past month or two.--Lul Luii! (talk) 00:04, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I would suspect this is just in your head—in the sense you are seeing patterns where there aren't any (which is something we are all prone to, as our brains are evolved to be pattern-matching machines that err on the side of inclusiveness). I don't think Google is playing games with you, trying to outsmart you, or even customizing your searches based on prior searches.

But hey! You can find out. Download Tor, get it set up in Firefox, and the next time you get a "playing with you" search result, log on through a proxy (at which point Google thinks you live on the other side of the world and have no cookies), and see if you get the same result. It's an easy enough thing to do once you get Tor set up. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:19, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I remember seeing disclaimers on some of my Google search results pages that said "Results customized based on recent activity". You could click a link for more information, and another page would come up showing recent searches you did that were used to influence the current search. If I remember correctly, that information page also had a link to turn off the customizations. Here's Google's description of this feature: Google Web Search Help - Search customization details. --Bavi H (talk) 01:47, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Background music in JAVA

I'm programming a video game in JAVA, and I want it to have background music that loops in the background. I know how to do this, but the problem is that I also want a short introduction to play at the beginning of the music the first time but for it to be skipped once it repeats (similarly to most of the background music in Pokémon). How do I do this? --75.28.53.240 (talk) 01:25, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Put it outside the loop!The Successor of Physics 14:10, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem is, how do I have the program detect when the intro is done playing in order to start the loop? --75.25.103.119 (talk) 21:32, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

The Clip interface has a setLoopPoints(int, int) method that will do that, if your loading the audio data into Clips. I think it would be easier to split the sound file into two (the intro and part to loop) and have the program handle them separately. You can do that easily with FOSS like Audacity.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 22:25, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Windows 7 upgrades (Dell)

Does anyone know if there will be a deadline when Dell would no longer recognize the upgrade to Windows 7 in recently Vista-purchased setups? I bought my laptop in August, and it came with a free upgrade to Win7. I could get the upgrade kit right now, but I don't want to just because I want to give them time to work the first bugs out and stabilize it from the initial release. Will there come a time when I have waited too long and it will be too late to order the upgrade? —Akrabbim^talk 02:50, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

From ther FAQ page: Registration deadline is January 31, 2010. There isn't any reason to wait for this though. The DVD will be exactly the same whether you order it now or on 31st Jan, and you do not have to install it right away once you receive the kit. If you are afraid of bugs (I've been using it since Beta and I haven't experienced many), let it sit for a while or until SP1 comes out or whatever, but delaying your order certainly doesn't help. --antilived^{T | C | G} 03:58, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't delay. Win 7 is way better than the rubbish masquerading as an operating system called Vista. As Antilived mentioned, the DVD would be exactly the same. F (talk) 05:23, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, OK. Thanks for the advice. —Akrabbim^talk 12:07, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Letting computer A use computer B's hard drives?

Hello all, and thanks in advance for answering my question. While I'm sure there's an answer somewhere on the internet (and probably a very simple one, at that), it's difficult to find the exact magical search terms to hit paydirt - and, so, what better way to go than to ask Wikipedia? =)

I'll try to make this simple. I recently bought a new computer. It works very well and I have no complaints, save for one: there is a severe lack of case space. I'm a hard drive maniac, and collect hard drives like kids in the 50s collected baseball cards. External enclosures are not an option - not enough desk space, not enough power outlets, and quite frankly it'd be a low-fi solution to a high-fi problem!

However, I have a second computer, inadequate for my hardware demands, but chock full of drive bays and SATA connections! Both computers are networked through a typical home LAN.

What I want to do, in a nutshell, is use computer B as basically nothing more than a zombified filestore. But (there's always a but =)) - I live in a shared house, and would rather my housemates not discover my love for Britney Spears and As the World Turns episodes. So I would like computer A to see the hard drives located on computer B as, well, hard drives - able to be accessed and written to from and by any program that should wish to. But other computers on the network? I would rather they not see any extra hard drives! Hence, Windows Network Sharing (or whatever it's called) doesn't seem to be an option - mere password protection is simply not enough. One does not need to listen to Britney Spears - Oops I Did It Again.mp3 to know that the possessor of said file demands maximum ridicule. Not to mention that I would rather not clutter up the other computers with superfluous hard drives in their file explorers. So a typical "network share" or "media storage center" would seem to be an inadequate solution - I don't just want to transfer files back and forth, I want to be able to "Save As" directly to computer B's hard drives.

Both computer A and computer B run Windows XP Professional. I could run a Linux LiveCD on computer B, but computer A must remain tethered to the nourishing teat of XP Pro. I would prefer free software if software is needed - open source being a plus.

So, just to restate, as succinctly as my logorrhea will permit: Is there a simple, preferably free way for computer A to recognize the various hard drives physically contained within computer B, and read, write, and generally molest them as it would its own (quite puny) local hard drive - while computers C, D, E, and even F all remain merrily humming along, completely oblivious to aforementioned disk drives?

I don't need too detailed an answer - just a mere point in the right direction should be enough, once I'm on the right track I'll be as good as gold! Badger Drink (talk) 06:30, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Windows file sharing with mounted drives + TrueCrypt for hiding your Britney collection? If you can put B next to A, you can run some extra long SATA cables from B to A. Or you can just store everything on a few 2TB hard drives instead of spreading them over a couple of hard drives (more power efficient too). --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:24, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't TrueCrypt still show that something's there? (for an analogy: parking a car on the street, in full view, without the keys - people can still see that there's a car there, even if they can't hop in and take it for a test drive. What I'm looking for is more like keeping the car in the garage where only I even know it's there) As far as the extra-long SATA cables - I actually considered that option, but Computer B is one of those Dell Optiplexes with the surrealistic hinge-like opening that consumes a lot more real estate opened than it does when closed. Badger Drink (talk) 19:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Nope, without a password an encrypted volume is just an ordinary file (or partition, or a whole drive). TrueCrypt even allows you to create an encrypted volume inside another encrypted volume for deniable encryption so that even if you're held at gun point to unlock it you can unlock the outer volume showing some harmless files with the existence of the inner volume unable to be proven. --antilived^{T | C | G} 02:19, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Why would the content of a shared SMB/CIFS drive even be visible without mounting it (which is password-protected)? Sure, if you name your shares "My pinky girl Britney collection", you will give some hints, but then you deserve the ridicule. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:24, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

It looks like, OP is trying to hide these files from users of machine containing disk which holds these files. This does not involves any network activity. -Yyy (talk) 16:06, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion - no, it's okay if computer B can see the files. Computers A and B are both mine, and years of therapy have taught me that I cannot hide my Britney addiction from myself. =) It's computers C, D, and occasionally E and F (none of which are mine) that I don't want seeing the drives. Badger Drink (talk) 19:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

If you really want the drives to look like local drives, you could probably use FreeNAS on Computer B as an iSCSI target, and run Microsoft iSCSI Initiator on Computer A. I don't have any experience doing this, though. -- Coneslayer (talk) 13:35, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Gotcha! And if I'm okay with having the drives appear on Computer A as folders, would that change anything? Badger Drink (talk) 19:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

This seems the right way, only this will require that computer to run linux (or other unix), which might render that machine unuseable for other purposes. There is no iSCSI target functionality in winxp (but there is in some windows server versions), that probably is not a viable solution either. -Yyy (talk) 16:06, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Computer B can run Linux just fine. Computer A is the one that must remain tethered to XP Pro. Badger Drink (talk) 19:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Unstoppable Loop!

Help! The loop in the code below is unable to stop! How can I fix it?The Successor of Physics 14:14, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

    Public Sub GSim_KeyDown(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.KeyEventArgs) Handles Me.KeyDown
        If e.KeyData = Keys.F3 Then
            Dim credits As Form = New Credits()
            credits.Show()
        End If
        If e.KeyData = Keys.F2 Then
            ObjVoice.Speak("Simulation Stops")
            sim = False
        End If
        If e.KeyData = Keys.F1 Then
            ObjVoice.Speak("Simulation Starts")
            sim = True
            Do
            gravact()
            Loop Until sim = False
        End If
    End Sub

In the short term, I believe you can Ctrl-Break to stop loops as they are running in VB.

It looks to me like your loop is in the Do/Loop column. Have you declared sim correctly so it is accessible by "gravact"? (Otherwise, how is sim going to ever be false?). Or, if you are trying to make it so that F1 starts and F2 stops, you will need to set it up differently. If it were me, I would make the simulation a separate thread (not a function), and have that thread started or stopped based on the pressing of the button. That way you will be able to interrupt the program as it runs. In any case, using Do/Loop with a function in between like that is probably not what you want. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

And just to add... if your gravact() function runs continuously, it will not ever let the keyboard buffer be processed, which means you can never make sim=false. In VB6 we used to have a nice function—DoEvents—that let you process the keyboard buffer (in exchange for some performance). In VB.NET, I believe you have to do it as threads (which is better to know how to do anyway—DoEvents is kind of cheating and does not teach good programming). --Mr.98 (talk) 01:20, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Exporting contacts from Outlook Web Access

Here's the situation: due to the wonderful little economy we're having, my mother has been been given notice and will be let go very soon. Luckily, she was able to find a new position in another company, and she would like to bring her Outlook adress-book with her as it contains many dear friends who's contact information she would like to keep (specifically, she would like to export it to gmail). Not being the worlds most computer-literate person, she asked me to help her. Ordinarily this wouldn't be so hard, you'd just export it directly from Outlook, but the thing is that in her workplace, they use Outlook Web Access for email, not the Outlook software, and as far as I've been able to find out, you can't export the entire adress-book from the web interface.

Is there any way this can be done? I figure that if I can connect her Exchange-account to an Exchange-client, it wouldn't be so hard, but I don't know what information you need to connect an Exchange-account to a client, and I don't know if I can find out that information from the web interface. Any ideas on how to do this would be very welcome. 83.250.228.169 (talk) 14:25, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

The only real client that connects to Exchange proper is Microsoft Outlook (not, I stress, Outlook Express). The connection info for that is really rather convoluted, and is more than can easily be determined from the webmail address alone. But Evolution (software) connects to Exchange using OWA as a wire protocol (rather than the full Exchange protocol) so you don't need any more info than the OWA web address and the account's login details. I've not used Evolution for this, but its article does say it supports contacts, so it's worth a shot. I'd caution, however, that it'd be very wise indeed to make sure that your mother's boss is okay with y'all doing this, as many companies are sensitive about departing employees taking information with them when they leave, or connecting up unauthorised programs to the company's systems. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:52, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Device file in windows

There must be something analog to linux /dev/sda1 (sda2, sdb1, etc) device files in windows. There were one partially related topic here (months ago, cannot find now)(that was about transfering large files from mac to windows using external hdd; one of proposed methods involved using raw disk device).

I remember only that the path to device file began with something like \\?\ or //?/. Article device file system, has no information on these files. (this is quite obscure topic, probably). -Yyy (talk) 16:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Take a look at the instructions for a popular Windows version of dd here for some basic examples; I don't know of a general specification for the format of these things, but I'll look. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:28, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

For the double backslash notation, see Path_(computing)#Uniform_Naming_Convention. As for windows device files, they don't really exist in the unix sense. In DOS, however, the old device names CON: (and I believe also PRN:) are still supported. If you from the command line type

     copy con: t.txt

then whatever you type will go into the text file t.txt, which will be closed when you type ctrl-Z. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 17:02, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

NT actually has a single-rooted pathname hierarchy much like Unix, but the root exists only in memory. Concepts like "drive letters" and "DOS devices" are specific to the user-mode Win32 subsystem. It translates c:\path\file to \??\c:\path\file before sending it to the kernel. (Yes, that's a folder whose name is two question marks.) \??\c: is a symlink to the actual disk device, which handles the parsing of the rest of the path. (Well, the attached filesystem handles it—I'm not sure how that works.) If you pass a path beginning \\?\ to Win32, it changes the second backslash to a question mark and passes it to NT otherwise unchanged. You can use this to open raw disk devices, create files named con, and generally wreak havoc. You can view the whole NT object hierarchy with the utility WinObj. I'm not sure how \\.\ path parsing works, but they seem to be interchangeable with \\?\ paths in many cases. -- BenRG (talk) 17:50, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers! NT single root pathname hierarchy was the thing i was looking for (and the raw disk copy method was by dd). -Yyy (talk) 19:04, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Word-to-PDF mangled

As part of a transcription project, I typed a manuscript document into Microsoft Word format, converted it into PDF with Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional, and proceeded to begin proofreading by having Acrobat read back the transcription while I looked at the original. To my surprise, it only read a little bit of each line: perhaps half of the words per line, perhaps less, and the first word/letter of each line was missing. Sometimes, it would read the second half of a word — thus producing very unusual sounds! — but not the first, and proceed to read the rest of the line and part of the next, etc. Any idea what would be causing this? I did nothing unusual with the formatting of the Word document; while I changed fonts and page margins occasionally, the same effect happened when I converted just parts of the document that are all written in the same font and format. I've done this exact process with many similar documents in the past — type, convert, use the Read function — with the same computer, and never had this problem before. Restarting didn't help, and I observed that a previously-created document that had once Read Aloud fine continued to read aloud fine, so it's apparently an error with this document. Any idea what possible errors I could have made? I've been reduced to copying it into Notepad and converting that into PDF; it reads aloud without problems (thus making me think that I made some odd formatting error), but I've obviously lost some formatting details in the Notepad version. Nyttend (talk) 17:08, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea how to solve your original problem, but here are a few suggestions for workarounds: Try saving it into rich text format (.rtf) or open document format (.docx) or even into a previous MS Word format. Heck, try opening it in OpenOffice or even WordPad and saving it from inside these programs. Then export the resulting file into PDF. Another option, instead of converting to PDF in Acrobat, try installing one of the free PDF writer software (CutePDF, pdf995 or PDF Creator etc.) which appears as a PDF "printer". Print to PDF from inside your program and check if that helps? It sounds like a strange formatting issue, do you have any columns, text boxes, graphics, headers & footers or any non-text data in your doc? Also try checking your template (usually normal.dot) although I wouldn't be able to tell you what to look for. By the way, your solution of using notepad should suffice if all you're interested in is proofreading the text. Zunaid 17:29, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I was wondering, too: Why do you need formatting for a reader? Anyways, I suggest you get OpenOffice, which comes with its own "export to PDF" functionality, and give it a try. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:48, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for not explaining; my wording does sound a bit odd, now that I read it again :-) The reason that I want the formatting is that I'm transcribing this for an archive: as much as I can, I'm producing a diplomatic transcription, complete with strikethrough for text stricken in the original, a cursive font for official signatures, etc., and I use the Comments feature for situations that need explanation. When I finish the transcription, I send the archive the PDF and also the original Word document, so that any errors that I make in the PDF can be corrected without having to modify the PDF directly; I'm not too excited about perhaps sending them a defective Word document. By the way, I bought Acrobat Professional for another purpose, so I'm not using it simply to convert text to PDF. I'll try your proposed OpenOffice idea on a family member's computer that already has OpenOffice; hopefully that will work better, so that I need not use the Notepad version more. Please check back for an update :-) Nyttend (talk) 20:00, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried just copying and pasting the text from one Word document into a new, blank one, and exporting that? Just a thought. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:46, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

No updates yet, but...yes, I did try this, and the result was identical. Nyttend (talk) 03:24, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, that's very odd. I would try converting it to PDF by other means. OpenOffice is one solution; CutePDF is another. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:23, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I've tried converting it with OpenOffice; it reads fine, but OpenOffice didn't carry over my (frequent) use of the Comment feature. It's more important to have the comments than to have it read aloud properly, so I'm not going to go with that. Thanks for the suggestions! Nyttend (talk) 00:57, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

By the way, I discovered why it reads as it does: when I tell it to read a specific paragraph, it always shows a small and thin (all sides are a single pixel wide) box around the paragraph, and in this document, the box is too far right and too low. Consequently, it chops off the top line or two and the letters at the beginning of each line, and it reads the first line or two of the paragraph below this one. It's somewhat like if you imagine a stamp with a production error: the holes around the edges are misplaced so much that they cut into the design, so when you tear the stamp out of the sheet, you don't get all of your stamp, but you get part of the next one. I don't know why it's misplaced like this, let alone how to place it properly. It seems to be an issue simply with this documenbt, as other similar documents (which I've created since this one) have all turned out well. Nyttend (talk) 01:01, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

WinTv7

WinTV7 records stuff as large .ts files, with only 20 mins of video reaching 1GB, even when supposedly at "fair" quality (the lowest setting). How can I make it less space hungry? I can't find anything on either the website or the program itself. Many thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.2 (talk) 17:49, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

WinVista -> Win7

I have a modern-ish computer which currently runs Windows Vista. Are the benefits in system stability worth the inevitable loss of speed from running Windows 7 on a Vista machine? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.2 (talk) 17:52, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I thought Windows 7 is supposed to run faster than Vista. --164.67.235.128 (talk) 18:08, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

164 is correct; your computer will supposedly run faster; but I expect games won't be affected. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:10, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you'd see either an increase in stability or a decrease in speed going from Vista to Win7. There was a huge improvement in stability in the switch from Win9x to NT, but not much change since then. You might see an increase in speed. Unless you have a specific problem with Vista that's solved in Win7, there's probably no reason to switch. (Unless, perhaps, if you can get Win7 for free.) Features new to Windows 7 and List of features removed in Windows 7 may be helpful. -- BenRG (talk) 18:22, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. My main problem with Vista is Windows Explorer seems very unstable; copying large files freezes the entire machine until it's finished copying, browsing folders will often lockup for up to 1 min before unlocking etc, basically Vistas explorer seems extremely crap. I never had these problems with XP explorer and it's using the same files and hard drives etc. I just wondered if Win7 had any noticeable improvements in the system stability area. Thanks for all the advice —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.2 (talk) 19:16, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Have you installed SP1? There were some infamous problems with file copying in Explorer in the original Vista. I don't know if there were any further changes between Vista SP1 and Win7. It might also be a driver issue; you could try looking for updated drivers from your computer vendor. I've heard people say that Windows 7 has better hardware support than Vista, but I assume that's simply because it bundles newer drivers, and those can also be found online. If you don't mind spending the time and money then there's probably no reason not to upgrade to Windows 7, but I wouldn't trust it to solve your problem. Win7 is not very different from Vista. -- BenRG (talk) 20:50, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I've been using Windows 7 for about six months, and I find it much more responsive and stable than Vista. Indeterminate (talk) 07:11, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again. I haven't got SP1, I'll install that and hope it fixes the problems. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.201 (talk) 15:38, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Data recovery!!

Which is the best software in the internet to download for data recovery after the hard disk has been formatted twice..virtual library takes lot of time and not able to recover the past data. is there a way out to recover data reliably with some other softwares from my laptop's harddisk?..anyone please help —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.122.36.6 (talk) 19:32, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I've never used SpinRite but that's an option. Note that recovery from a disk formatting is unlikely, in my experience. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:47, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

If the disk has been quick-formatted, there may be large amounts of the data left, but with the meta-information that describes it removed. A professional data-recovery company may be able to make something of it, but it's not fast and not reliable and assuredly not cheap (essentially they pull all the blocks that are still readable and use heuristics to try to reassemble chains of them, hoping to get decent files or file-fragments out of that). If the format was thorough (i.e. it wrote to every byte on the disk surface), the data is essentially gone - people will make vague claims about the capabilities of the CIA and STEMs and SQUIDs and so forth, but there's no evidence that anyone can get back data that's genuinely been overwritten. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

And even the wildest claims for being able to recover data under such circumstances would be much less likely to be successful after formatting the disk twice. So you don't stand a chance unless these were "quick format" operations. SteveBaker (talk) 23:59, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

"Guinness" Internet records?

A two-part question: 1) is there any semi-significant webpage/organization that keeps internet-related world records (most visited webpage, biggest webpage, most pageviews in 1 day, whatever?) and 2) if there is such a list, then what is the longest blog comment ever posted? 165.91.174.108 (talk) 19:57, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

There is Alexa Internet which tracks traffic, and Google Trends, among other statistics sites. I doubt anyone has tried to keep track of the "longest blog comment ever posted"—which would be easy to beat, anyway. ("Did you read this <paste entire contents>"—record beaten.) --Mr.98 (talk) 01:44, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Windows question

Inspired by the question "Device file in Windows" above, is it true that modern Windows versions are not really inherently backward-compatible with old pre-Windows MS-DOS, and only maintain the illusion of backward-compatibility (for example, drive letters when the file system really is single-root-based) out of hysterical raisins? On a related note, I find it stupid modern GUI-based Unix command line windows still only offer CLI-based text editing, when full GUI-based text editing has been around for over a decade. But Windows goes further - it still desperately tries to perfectly emulate a 1980s text-only display as the only option for a command line. JIP | Talk 21:16, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, a 32 bit (or 64 bit) protected mode OS can't perfectly emulate a 16-bit real mode OS like DOS, but Windows generally does a pretty good job (and through dint of a heck of a lot of work; there's certainly nothing inherent about what compatibility there is). DOS (and 16 bit windows) programs are run in Virtual 8086 mode containers, with varying degrees of emulation of legacy hardware (e.g. your old video game expects a soundblaster audio card and a VGA graphics card, so Windows has to emulate these in software and reflect this back to the real audio and video technologies in your real machine). This afforts a great deal of compatibility, but it's not perfect - in particular it falters when the application tries to do special things like install TSRs, VxDs, or muck around too much either with the hardware it imagines there or the OS internals that it was written to run on. For that reason later versions of Windows feature full virtualization, allowing a copy of the old OS (warts and all) to run within the new one - that's what Windows 7 Professional's "XP mode" does. Even this isn't perfect, but really it's pretty incredible that Windows 7 will still run CP/M .COM programs, for which the source has long been lost and the original authors long dead, on a system with radically different hardware. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:32, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

It's not clear, really what major improvements to the command line are possible, although the cmd.exe window (at least as far as XP, which is where my real experience ends) is lagging a bit. The only thing recent terminal windows on (say) Linux offer that Windows' one doesn't is (mostly) decent cut-and-paste and the ability to click on URLs that appear in the window. As for cmd.exe itself, some people use monad instead. Beyond that I don't know what you'd really add. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:37, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, Raymond Chen (a senior engineer in the MS Shell (that's Explorer, not cmd.exe) team) writes an interesting windows compatibility blog The Old New Thing. It's clear that MS is struggling somewhat under the burden of compatibility layers, and probably wish they'd had virtualisation a major release or two ago, leaving them free to purge and regularise their APIs more aggressively. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:08, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

NT was designed from scratch (by some of the original architects of VMS) without any thought to backward compatibility, except inasmuch as it should be possible to write compatibility layers on top of it. The NT kernel has POSIX-like fork() with shared copy-on-write, which is not exposed through the Win32 API. NTFS supports case-sensitive file names, also not available through Win32, and allows attaching essentially arbitrary attributes to files. NT originally shipped with Win32, POSIX, and OS/2 "subsystems", i.e. API layers running in user mode. That's why Wine Is Not an Emulator: it's an implementation of Win32 on top of POSIX, on approximately the same footing as Microsoft's implementation on top of NT.

The POSIX and OS/2 subsystems were basically DOA, though. I think they were too anemic to be useful (the whole Windows GUI was specific to the Win32 subsystem, for example). They were last shipped with Windows 2000. The NT kernel has also accumulated some Win32-specific hacks, and large portions of the GUI have been moved into kernel mode for speed (though that doesn't really make them part of the kernel; NT kernel space looks a lot like user space except without memory protection and other security restrictions). And, of course, desktop users typically ran with full administrative privileges, rendering NT's complicated security model largely moot.

The story of Win32 console windows is interesting. In Unix, command-line apps have their standard input and output attached to OS pipes, and at the other end of the pipe is a terminal emulator (or, of course, an actual terminal in the old days). Input of special keys like the arrow keys and output of cursor-positioning commands and color and the like are handled through special byte sequences usually beginning with ESC. In Win32, though, when an application runs in a console window the input and output handles are not real handles, but magical values that only have a meaning to the Win32 subsystem. Uses of these handles in functions like WriteFile are intercepted at the Win32 level and sent to csrss.exe via a private interface (using LPC). It's csrss that actually draws the console window. Arrow keys and colors are such are handled with dedicated functions like ReadConsoleInput, which go through the same private interface and have no encoding in bytes. Microsoft hasn't documented the interface or provided any way to hook it, and that's why there are no third-party console replacements. Many console apps will still work with their standard handles attached to pipes, but they're limited to a dumb-terminal interface because the console-specific functions will fail. Of course, nothing prevents you from inventing a set of escape sequences and doing things the Unix way, as Cygwin does, but it will only work with apps that were designed to work with it. And nothing forces you to use CRLF as a line terminator in Windows except the continued existence of programs that don't recognize LF alone (like notepad.exe). It's all about tradition. -- BenRG (talk) 01:37, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

"hysterical raisins"?? --LarryMac | Talk 18:26, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

It's a pun on "historical reasons". JIP | Talk 08:08, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

October 30

Request for example Java program

I'm looking for a "Hello world" type example in Java that I can modify and play with. The example code should accept a string argument, display it on a pop-up window. The pop-up window needs to have a button for closing the window. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.49.11.61 (talk) 00:03, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

You want a JFrame example. This is Sun's JFrame tutorial. Once you can make the window open/shut, you want a JLabel tutorial. The JLabel will be placed inside the JFrame and contain the text. This is Sun's JLabel tutorial. -- kainaw™ 02:28, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Bitdefender uninstalled, but Windows is reporting that its turned off

I've uninstalled Bitdefender, but Windows XP is telling me that its reporting its turned off, even though I've restarted my computer. Do I have to edit some registries or something? The application is gone; I uninstalled it from the Control Panel, so I don't get why Security Center is reporting that it is turned off.--Lucky9109 (talk) 02:07, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

This is an off-the-cuff idea only, but how about if you were to install some other (perhaps free) antivirus software, and then take a look at what Security Center states? Maybe the uninstaller doesn't deal with Security Center at all (unsurprising) and maybe Security Center isn't smart enough to distinguish between "off" and "no longer present" (slightly more surprising; I would have thought they would have tested this with all antivirus products that it bothers to recognize). Tempshill (talk) 02:57, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Someone else's media files on my iTunes: wtf?

Something very strange is occurring on my PC at the moment. I'm staying in a hotel, using a PC that is wireless-enabled, but this particular room is not wi-fi enabled and I'm connected to the net via a cable. I do not have any kind of Bluetooth enabled. I have no idea if any of that's relevant, but I thought I'd mention it just in case. Anyway, on my iTunes there's a whole bunch of media files that don't belong to me, which are certainly not on my hard drive, but which I can watch and listen to through iTunes just fine. On the left hand side of iTunes, under "Shared", it says "[name of person I've never heard of]'s Library". Normally, right-clicking a song title leads me to where the file is saved, but that option is not available to me with these files. A regular search of the hard drive for the song titles brings up nothing. This is freaking me out a little: how on earth can I have access to someone else's media files? And how can I stop someone else having access to mine? --Richardrj ^{talk email} 06:36, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

iTunes automatically discovers other iTunes instances on the local network (typically every computer behind the same router) and allows every iTunes to stream (but not download) music from any other instance on the local net. See ITunes#Library_sharing. You can disable this sharing via preferences. There also used to be add-ons that would allow you to download the shared files (one of them is myTunes), but I don't know if those still work. By default, nothing is stored on your drive, the music is delivered over the network on demand. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:35, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Cool, I never knew any of that stuff. Thanks for the explanation. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 12:35, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Windows 7 classic start menu

How can I get the windows classic start menu in Windows 7. I hate this new look.

There are several third-party apps that will do this. Classic Start Menu Windows 7 ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:14, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Beginners programming

I'd like to learn a programming language for my own amusement. Could anybody point me in the direction of a good, free online tutorial & compiler to download, if necessary? The fun to be had is in understanding and applying the logic of a language. I've googled a little, but got lost in the options. I've pretty much no experience. Thanks Stanstaple (talk) 18:35, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Good for you. This is becoming a Computing desk FAQ; it was asked twice on October 27 (search for "language" on this page). I'll repeat myself that the article Educational programming language may be of interest to you; and I'll go ahead and recommend you learn some variety of BASIC even though SteveBaker hates it. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:42, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

If you're interested in learning Java (one of the more difficult first languages, but still suitable for dedicated beginners), you'll find a complete tutorial brought to you by Sun. It's very well organized, and outlines exactly what you need to download to get started.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 20:49, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not a heavy Python (programming language) user, but I think it's a fine first language. Here is a whole page of first-timer tutorials. The Wikibooks one here looks pretty good. Please come on back to this desk with the inevitable questions you'll have as you get going. --Sean 14:05, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks all- Stanstaple (talk) 19:00, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Stable Motherboard on high temperature

Hello there, Currently I am looking for a motherboard which will be stable on high temperature (36* C or more) and also no freezing or lock up. I have come up with several motherboards in choice.

• XFX 750i SLI
• Asus P5 Q P45
• Asus P5 Q3 P45
• Gigabyte EP45T UD3R
• Gigabyte EP43 UD3L

So far I have found the above boards within my budget. Which one I should go for? I am using C2Q 9400 CPU.Thank you--119.30.36.41 (talk) 22:28, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I would recommend a P45 motherboard over a P43. Also it appears you've got some DDR3 and some DDR2 motherboards in there. The DDR3/DDR2 issue was discussed about 2 weeks ago, I suggest you search the archives. Specifically since you apparently live in Bangladesh I would recommend you start comparing 2x2GB DDR2 and DDR3 RAM prices where you live since I'm doubtful anyone here has any idea what the price situation is like there Nil Einne (talk) 08:26, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

IE Tab

Does the IE Tab extension for Firefox render pages using the current version you have installed on your PC, or does it have an internal version of IE which could be different from the version I have installed. I ask because some sites throw errors when viewed with IE Tab, but not with IE natively, and I'm wondering if it has to do with versions of IE. anonymous6494 23:22, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

It uses your current version for the rendering. If you have IE Tab installed, go to the Tools menu in Firefox, then select the IE Tab Options item. Note the "External Application" where you can specify which application to use. But the default is Internet Explorer. Also on the IE Tab page on mozdev.org, they list as a requirement that you have "Internet Explorer > 4.0".

I don't know why some pages throw errors under IE Tab. Could it have something to do with IE's "compatibility view"? –RHolton≡– 13:08, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I have IE 7, so it isn't compatibility view. Thanks! anonymous6494 15:24, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

October 31

Incremental backup and deleted files

How does an incremental backup handle deleted files? --Halcatalyst (talk) 00:03, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I assume you're talking about a situation where files X, Y, and Z exist, then you back up your hard disk, then you delete the files, and then a new increment is made. The new increment just records the fact that files X, Y, and Z have been deleted. It doesn't go back into previous incremental backup files to erase the data or anything. If and when you recover your hard disk with the backup, then those files are simply never restored onto the hard disk. (Or, I suppose, some backup programs might write them out to the hard disk and then delete them, but that would seem silly.) Tempshill (talk) 02:51, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

That's not the way I understand that incremental backups work. I think that if you create the file A and do a backup, then file A will be written to the backup store. If you then delete it, nothing new will be written to the store. So if you do a full restore, it will restore the deleted file A. --Phil Holmes (talk) 11:09, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

With incremental backup, a "full restore" requires a date. If the date is after the file was deleted, it will not be included in the full restore. -- kainaw™ 13:35, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

At best, that depends. Not all incremental backup utilities will track deleted files. Indeed, it could be argued that they shouldn't, since you may want to recover a file a while after it has been deleted. See [1] for example. --Phil Holmes (talk) 15:00, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Find out IP addresses

Hi, in the Wikipedia article about Cyberstalking there is a point about tracing an IP address in an attempt to verify their home or place of employment. How would someone be able to find out someonelse's IP address? Is it possible, if so how, through the use of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Photobucket, etc.? And also, more importantly to some extent, how would someone block their IP address being visible on such sites and the internet in general? Thanks very much for reading this and any help and information would be much appreciated. 86.138.158.223 (talk) 00:09, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, the easiest way to find someone's IP address is to have them visit a site that you have access to the server logs for. That can be as easy as sending them an e-mail with an in-line image linked to from your site -- when they open the e-mail and view the image, pow!, it connects to your server, gives you the IP address.

The only real way to block your IP is to route it through an anonymity network, like Tor. In such a situation, only the in-coming Tor node would see your IP address, and your traffic to the Tor node is encrypted.

The problem with blocking your IP address in this way is that it is very slow, on the whole (you are routing all your internet traffic through another computer, often on the other side of the globe). It also doesn't give total anonymity (see the "weaknesses" section of the article—but for many practical purposes, it would work).

Another approach would be to have as your ISP a service that was large and used dynamic IP addresses. AOL, for example, does things this way, I believe. Visits from AOL users all look basically the same—they don't give you much (if any?) information about where the user is visiting from, and they change the individual IP addresses often enough that tracking behavior by one of them is pretty hard. (Or, at least, that's the way it used to be—I don't know if it has changed in recent years.) --Mr.98 (talk) 00:53, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much for that. I shall use that to research further... :) 86.138.158.223 (talk) 16:51, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

BTW in case you haven't noticed, editing wikipedia without being logged in to an account also gives away your IP address. (Our privacy policy means the IP address can almost never be revealed publicly and is only viewable by a small number of people for any edit made while logged in to an account.) Nil Einne (talk) 16:58, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Thermal paste of processor on new motherbaord

I have been using my system for three months. Now I am planning to replace my system to newly purchased motherboard. So If I attach my processor on new motherboard should I add thermal paste again on it? Bit confused. Thanks--119.30.36.53 (talk) 09:10, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

The best way of doing this is to clean the heatsink and processor of all the old thermal paste and add a small amount of new paste before attaching the heat sink. --Phil Holmes (talk) 11:06, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Emphasis on small. See thermal grease. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:11, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Laptop Powering Down (Ubuntu 9.10)

I have a Two-year old Acer Aspire 5315 on which I have replaced Vista with Ubuntu 9.10. I'm using it more as a storage facility than anything else (even though I'm loving the new OS!) as my other Vista is down to 30GB. Anyway, as such, I need to leave it on most of the time so I can read and write data to/from it. However, I have noticed that after about 5 minutes of idling, the screen tends to dim-down over the course of around 30 seconds or so, until I am left with a blank screen. Pressing a button restores the screen, leading me to believe that this is some sort of power-saving feature. It is annoying, though, because I prefer to see the screen when I am writing to the disk from the other PC so I 'know' that files are arriving. Therefore, I want to turn off this feature (if it is a feature and not just that my laptop is buggered) but nothing changes when I open Power Management in System>Preferences and set suspend to 'never'. Is there anything else I should do? --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 10:01, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Have a look at System -> Preferences -> Screensaver. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 10:20, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Cheers! I did that just before I came back here to say 'no worries - found the solution!'. But, thanks anyway! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 11:27, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Control of Sound Card

I have a full-screen program (with accompanying sounds) that locks out Spotify when loaded ("cannot access your sound card"). Is there anyway I can forcibly remove control of the aforementioned sound card from the program - I am prepared to lose any sound from the program itself? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 10:37, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Windows Vista Service pAck

Will installing service pack 1 on vista delete my files and programs or will they be safe and unaffected?

There is no reason why installing anything should delete anything without you being asked beforehand, but, in any case, service packs are supposed to be installed. Nothing should be affected. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 11:30, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

No, it will definitely not. I fact, every Windows user should install service packs as soon as they are released, for they contain important security and stability updates. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 12:59, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers! I'm installing service pack 1 and 2 so hopefully I'll have no more problems with windows freezing and stuff.

It is a little late, but you should always backup important files before applying MS Service Packs (or any similar "big overhaul" OS updates, whatever the OS). They can result in trouble, like the OS getting corrupted, things of that nature. They will not likely delete anything purposefully but can "break" an OS and require its reinstallation (which can "break" programs, at times). --Mr.98 (talk) 16:11, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

immedately give me answer this question.

what is the diffrence between window 98 and window xp? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Navjotkaurparihar (talk • contribs) 13:41, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Depends what you want to know, but XP (2001) is newer than 98 (1998). XP is widely regarded as superior, if only because it offers a service which many more people will find familiar, and is compatible with a much larger percentage of (new) software. 98 is no longer supported by Microsoft and maybe therefore less secure. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 13:53, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

From a technical point of view, the big difference is that Win98 is in the MS-DOS lineage of operating systems (i.e., a highly-polished turd), while WinXP is based on Windows NT, which is significantly less bad. --Sean 14:09, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

XP is very stable (if one application crashes, the entire OS will not) and secure. In XP it is possible to create different user accounts, so that person A cannot access the files of person B. Such security is not available at all in Windows 9x (Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME), where person B can access the files of person A simply by opening the "C:\WINDOWS\Profiles\Person A\" folder. Furthermore, Windows 9x is antique is many other ways as well, whereas XP is a fairly usable system still, despite of its age (nine years). The most visible difference between Windows 9x and XP is the GUI - Windows XP is themed (the default theme is called Luna) by default. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:33, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

As an aside, saying "Answer this immediately!!!" is impolite, especially on a completely volunteer-based community such as Wikipedia. JIP | Talk 01:57, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Vista Service Pack 1 trouble

I just spent an hour installing service pack 1 on vista. it reached completion, then said "Service pack did not install. Reverting changes". What went wrong??

If you Google the error message, you can find a number of pages that attempt to help. [2] [3] It sounds like it could be a whole variety of different, difficult-to-diagnose things, unfortunately. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:09, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

There will be a log somewhere on your computer with more detailed information. Check the Event Viewer and c:\windows\windowsupdate.log (which is a text file). To start the Event Viewer press Win+R to open the Run dialog and type "eventvwr.msc". -- BenRG (talk) 16:29, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

And this is one of the many reasons nobody uses Vista. HalfShadow (talk) 00:32, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Except for the several million who do. OP, I would just try again. Tempshill (talk) 04:42, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

As one of the several million (I tried to buy XP with my laptop in 2007, but was told it was Vista or nothing, so I just configured it to look as much like XP as possible), I've had only occasional problems with upgrades, and only occasional crashes when I've had many applications open. Are you sure you had full admin rights when you started the upgrade? (Is Windows 7 stable yet?) Dbfirs 08:18, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Windows 7 is very stable. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 12:46, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Does it allow me to configure my own desktop layout yet? (as I've been doing for twenty years). Dbfirs 09:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Good anti-aliasing in Photoshop

I often find in Photoshop that I have shapes that I wish were better anti-aliased—e.g., a mask that has a very hard pixel edge. Blurring said hard edges doesn't really make them look better—they look like a blurred hard edge, not an anti-aliased one. Is there a better technique here that I am missing for taking something that has a very hard pixel edge and getting that nice, anti-aliased look? The best I have come up with is producing the mask at, say, triple the resolution, and then down-sampling (which anti-aliases pretty well), but this is not always an option. Surely there is a better way? --Mr.98 (talk) 16:58, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

What was used to create the masks in the first place? I know GIMP, not PS, but in that case if you use a soft-edged tool to make the mask, it will stay that way. --Sean 21:12, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Presumably he's creating the masks in photoshop.

I meant "what tool?". --Sean 14:05, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

When you say you're blurring the edges, are you using the "feather" tool? By, perhaps, less than a pixel? APL (talk) 21:43, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Work in higher resolution - double or triple the size of the image before you start. When you're done, save the high res version for the future - but drop the resolution back down again for the version you actually want to use. I'm not a big photoshop user (I prefer GIMP) - but when you drop the resolution back down - make sure you're using whatever Photoshops' best quality option is for doing that. SteveBaker (talk) 23:51, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

How are you creating the masks? The Marquee tool doesn't have antialiasing, so you should use the Path (the "pen" tool, haven't used Photoshop in a while) tool to create your mask using bézier curves instead. That gives you much nicer results and you can edit your path later. --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:10, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

So what I've found works very well in the meantime for single-color masks (e.g. black/white), is to put a 2 pixel Gaussian blur and then go to Image > Adjustments > Levels and push the white/black balance towards the center. It gives me a very nice anti-aliased edge for such images. Just passing that on. It appears that there is no sure-fire way to get the results I want (other than, as stated, working at a higher resolution and down-sampling). As for tool, I was using masks created with the magic wand tool (which claims to have anti-aliasing, but it is not very good). --Mr.98 (talk) 20:58, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

There's your problem. Use Path and you'll get a much nicer result. --antilived^{T | C | G} 22:28, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

There's an option to turn on anti-aliasing. Look on the top toolbar where you have the options for your tools; there's a check box that toggles anti-aliasing. <- this may/may not apply to masking, but the way I do making in photoshop is to add a vector mask. If you provide me with a screen shot of what you want to do, I will help you more. -- penubag  (talk) 06:12, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Blender 3D Rendering

What factors determine how fast a scene is rendered in Blender 3D? --81.227.65.168 (talk) 17:08, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Render/Performances -194.197.235.240 (talk) 17:28, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Sound quality

Could playing sounds from two different sources simultaneously (say, running two YouTube music videos at the same time, or a video and an online game with music) permanently degrade the sound quality on my computer? 90.193.232.242 (talk) 19:15, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

No. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:30, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I also say no. A computer's speakers (stereologic) are made to handle different audio tracks. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that the only way to cause permanent damage to speakers are to over modulate them by turning the volume up beyond the threshold of the voice coil and/or diaphragm (acoustics). Also, see loudspeaker for more info. Letter ⁷ _{it's the best letter :)} 00:30, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

(OP here) The speakers are fine, I can plug any speakers or headphones in and the sound will always be the same. Playing music while having a game on in the background is the only thing I do that other people don't, so far as I can tell. Vimescarrot (talk) 00:48, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

November 1

bad impacts of information system to an organisation

can anyone tell me what is the bad impacts of information system to an organisation?? i need more information about this.. waiting for your reply soon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.48.253.97 (talk) 05:24, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. Tempshill (talk) 05:46, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

... meanwhile, have you read our articles on Information system and Information systems discipline? An appropriate and well-designed information system can be an enormous benefit to an organisation. The opposite can be a disaster! Dbfirs 08:04, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I have to add my two bits - an appropriate and well-designed information system will bring zilch benefits if the people don't use it or don't use it properly. I experienced this myself - installing something isn't enough, it should be run often and be used, too. --Ouro (blah blah) 11:57, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

to Tempshill: i not just want the answer... i just dunno what is the bad or disadvantages of information system to an organisation... so i post here to get some information... so that i can concentrate on the information i get here and try to understand it.. and this is not my homework... just for my self study... if u can please give me some information about it.. or you can tell me about your experience or any cases about this happened to you... i will very appreciate for your information... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.111.87 (talk) 14:12, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

i found that one of the disadvantages of IS is>> Everything has to be kept private at all times. This could be hard to do. anyone can tell me why it is hard? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.111.87 (talk) 16:27, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, computer privacy and security are big issues here if the information is at all sensitive. The organisation needs to employ technicians who are totally trustworthy, and to use a database system that prevents unauthorised users copying the data. And Ouro makes a good point: the system will be a disaster if the users are not willing and well-trained. Dbfirs 09:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Unknown website

Hello there, I am having trouble with an unknown website. Whenever I tried to connect to internet this webpage automatically opened up. I cleaned browser and ran spyware search and destroy software but nothing happened. How can I get rid of this nasty webpage? Thanks--119.30.36.35 (talk) 11:25, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Autostart? Home page settings of browser? Settings of dial-up application (or whatever you use to connect) to automatically open a specific page was effected? What was the usual case before this site started harassing you?

Try installing a different browser (i. e. Opera if you are normally a Firefoxer) and see what happens. Come back then and tell us what happened. --Ouro (blah blah) 11:54, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

If you use Internet Explorer then run HijackThis to see if it picks anything up. Rjwilmsi 13:58, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Check your hosts file.–RHolton≡– 23:48, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Vista Sidebar RSS Gadet Text-Rendering Anomaly

Since the day I upgraded to Windows Vista (= the day it was made available in Sweden), I have wondered why the exactly (seemingly, at least) same string is rendered in different ways sometimes in the RSS sidebar gadget. See this image for an example. Normally, computers are highly predictable and deterministic, so it is rather surprising that the same string is rendered differently on different occasions. Exactly when does this happen? Why? Can you give me an example from Win32 API when this happens? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:15, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Could it be there is some HTML code in the original source feed that is causing one entry to display in a Narrow font? Sussexonian (talk) 22:15, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I did not believe that this simple gadget respected HTML tags. But you might be right - it sounds fairly reasonable. Unfortunately, however, I do not have access to the code that generated the image any more. But there might be more examples in the future. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 08:45, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

pixel intensity??

every image is saved by a computer in form of a intensity matrix,defining a value for each pixel.can any one tell me in which units the values are so that i can apply some radiation formulae like weins law,stfans law on it. yours sci-hunter SCI-hunter (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:37, 1 November 2009 (UTC).

There are many ways to store images. See image file. The Graphics Interchange Format article has some good technical details. --Sean 16:05, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Image file formats store intensity data in an abstract, dimensionless quantity. Computer display technologies take this information and use it to emit light of the appropriate intensity; often there is a bounded linear relationship between the value in the image file and the intensity, in other cases a gamma nonlinearity is applied. This gamma is partially a function of the characteristics of the display device (and it settings), of the graphics hardware and it settings, and sometimes (as is the case with formats like PNG) gamma information is encoded in the original image. So if you're looking for a concrete physical value, you need to know a lot about the capabilities and calibrations of the particular display devices involved - in practice they vary quite a lot in terms of their intensity curve, frequency response, and colour gamut. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:20, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

(EC) This entirely depends on the image file format. It is possibly GIF, but it might also be PNG, BMP, JPG, TIFF, XPM, TGA, etc. See bitmap (BMP) for a far more simple image format than GIF. In a BMP file, after all headers and the optional palette, the image data might be RLE compressed. If it is not compressed, and if the bitmap is 24-bit (the simplest case), each pixel is represented by three bytes (i.e. 24 bits), each byte (a number between 0 and 255) being the B (blue), G (green), and R (red) RGB coordinate of the pixel. Normally (depends on the sign of the height value in the header, if I remember correctly) the scanlines (lines of pixels) are stored bottom-up (rather than the more intuitive top-down order). Also, one must take care of padding bytes in the end of each scanline... --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:22, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Also, some images embed a ICC profile which attempts to regularise the relationship between colour values in the image and actual colour values in the output; this still doesn't get you to absolute physical intensity levels, as there's still plenty of scope for variety of intensity between different physical display devices. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:30, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

explorer.exe

explorer.exe from windows 95 was able to run in Windows 95, 98 and ME. Why doesn't it work in XP or Vista, when even the much older progman.exe from Windows 3.1 still works? Also, why doesn't explorer.exe from XP work on Vista? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.201 (talk) 16:45, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Why do you want to run a different browser on a different OS? The usual reason is checking out web development efforts with various browsers, but maybe that is not your reason. --DThomsen8 (talk) 18:21, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

The OP is asking about explorer.exe, which is the program for Windows Explorer the file browser, not Internet Explorer the web browser. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 20:51, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Internet Explorer is named iexplore.exe. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 08:59, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The first answer does not address the question. The person asking didn't say they wanted to do this; they asked why it wouldn't work.

Computer programs are sets of instructions that run in a certain environment; by that, I mean that the instructions can call on their environment to do certain things for them. When a program wants to connect to the internet, or read a file, or get the current user's name, a program often has to do different things on different operating systems, and even on different versions of the same operating system.

Microsoft made some things compatible among different versions of Windows, and some things not. For some period of time (evidently), the instructions used on W95, 98, and ME were compatible with all three versions. So the version of the XP browser that runs in Vista must have to do some things that are not available in Windows 95. This is common; as an environment such as Windows ages, changes and additions are made, and it is difficult (and arguably unnecessary) to maintain compatibility for very long. Keep in mind that Microsoft makes its money selling software, not keeping things compatible for years and years. Besides that, often new features require instructions that were not thought of and therefore not available in the older system. ralphcook —Preceding undated comment added 18:55, 1 November 2009 (UTC).

Though, on the last point, it's worth noting that the #1 selling point that people use when discussing why they stay with Windows (despite its many flaws) is that it is compatible with the most number of people, and etc. So some compatibility is built into their business model—it's part of the reason people use their software in the first place. If they neglect that, it will definitely impact the business model. That being said, expecting a core system program from 14 years ago to still work on every operating system is a little bit extreme. Your time would be better spent figuring out what it was about that program that you liked and finding a modern equivalent (which probably exists). --Mr.98 (talk) 01:58, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the interesting answers. I am still confused though; why would explorer.exe be too old to work yet ever older programs from Windows 3.1 like File manager and Program Manager still work on XP and Vista? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.201 (talk) 09:22, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

External hard drive blocked

I just moved all my files from my Noteship external hard drive to another which worked great but it's now not allowing me to put anything new on it anymore... Every time I try to add something to it it tells me I don't have permission and that it's "read only". It was never like this before and if anyone could shed some light on this issue that would be greatly appreciated. Pineapplegirls (talk) 18:18, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

What is the external drive formatted as (e.g., NTFS, FAT32?), and what is the OS you are using to access it with (XP, Vista, Windows 7, Mac OSX?)? --Mr.98 (talk) 20:43, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Not sure what has caused the problem, but, I would suggest (if you are using Windows) right-clicking on the drive, selecting properties, then making sure that 'read only' is not checked - if it is, then uncheck it. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 20:47, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm using Mac OX and i'm not sure how it's formatted... How should I check that? thanks for your help

In Finder, click on the drive (should be on your desktop when connected), then go to File > Get Info (Apple+I). Look for the line that says "Format". My bet is that it is formatted for NTFS, which OS X can read, but cannot write.

If you are only going to use the drive with Macs, you should reformat the drive as "Mac OS Extended" format (using Disk Utility—but be aware it will clear the drive when you do this!). If you are going to use it on both PCs and Macs, you can format it as FAT32 (also with Disk Utility), though there are downsides to that format (it cannot handle files over 4GB in size, which depending on what you do, could be an issue). You can also, I believe, download software that lets OS X write to NTFS drives, though I've never used any myself (but if you Google it, it is out there). --Mr.98 (talk) 22:44, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Ok, excellent. So if I format it to Mac and try to open or copy the files to a Windows drive will it work? Or will I just not be able to add anything to it from a windows OS?.. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.39.184.228 (talk) 12:44, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe you'd have to install special drivers for a Windows (NTFS) drive to be able to read the Mac-formatted drive. I know, what a pain—Macs can't use Windows correctly, Windows can't use Macs correctly. It's like we're still in 1991 or something. FAT32 is the only format that can be read by both (and, as stated, it has issues, in particular with very large files), so if you need something that can work easily/instantly on both (not installing any special software), use FAT32 (which you can do in Disk Utility). (Remember, as I said, that reformatting in Disk Utility will necessarily wipe the drive clean the first time you do it...!) --Mr.98 (talk) 14:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually Windows Vista and Windows 7 support writing and reading to UDF as does Mac OS X for a while (not sure but think 10.4.6 at least but I don't use Macs) and also of course most *nix variants (FreeBSD not sure, Linux since 2.6.2 possibly, Solaris not sure). However formatting drives as UDF is I believe often not that easy. (May be possible from the CLI, usually not from the GUI.) While UDF was originally invented for optical media, AFAIK there's no reason why it can't be used (or wouldn't work well) on different media. In fact because rewritable optical media suffers from the same limited write cycle as most flash memory but to a greater extent, UDF from 1.5 have added features to give something similar to wear levelling. While this isn't particularly relevant to extern al hard disks, it does have several advantages over FAT32 (notably including no 2GB file size limit). I've believed since perhaps 2004/5? that given the absence of a clear cut cross platform available by default option other then FAT* (excluding FATex64 or whatever it's called since that's problematic), moving to UDF would be a good idea but only a few people seem to have considered the same thing [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]. The difficulty formating drives as UDF, it's association with optical media and the slow demise of XP likely haven't helped. Nil Einne (talk) 16:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

How to protect a picture?

Is it possible to protect a picture that you uploaded in a a social networking site? Beyond water-marking it, is there something that can be done?--81.47.159.223 (talk) 18:26, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

No, it's really not. The very property that makes digital media so useful and flexible is how innately easy it is to copy, move, and change it. Whenever someone cooks up some half-brained digital rights management scheme to limit unauthorised copies of things, they make things much more difficult for people they still want to view the media, but not very much more difficult for anyone wanting to misappropriate it. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:29, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

(EC) Everything you can see on the screen, you can copy. In almost all cases, Print Screen is sufficient, and a 100 % identical copy is obtained on the clipboard. In some rare cases, e.g. in some games and other full-screen applications, this is not possible. But, of course, you can always replace the computer monitor with some recording device (connect the DVI/VGA cable, from the computer, to this device instead of a monitor). If not even this is possible, you can place a camera in front of the screen. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 18:35, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

(Also, you can usually just turn off hardware acceleration, and this usually makes it possible to take a screenshot.) --Mr.98 (talk) 20:52, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I once ran in a race where organisers hired an events photography company to photograph each runner. They noted (whether by fancy image recognition or manual labour) everyone's bib number and you could go to their website, enter a bib number, and it showed you a photo of that person. But they made you install a special IE-only plugin to see the image, once that made a special directX surface on which to display the image (so to avoid the printscreen/screengrab), and that refused to work if you disabled directX. So they lost a huge number of people straight off, who wouldn't install the plugin, and more who couldn't, and more still who couldn't get it to work. Even if you did get it to work all you got was a small and heavily watermarked image. I later heard from a friend of mine who was involved with the race organisation that, out of about 25,000 runners, they'd sold about a dozen copies. Given that they had several (I think five) photographers on duty, they clearly didn't make money. I appreciate that it's difficult to make money when what you're selling is so easy to copy, but surely they'd have made some money had they just put the watermarked images on the web plain. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:11, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

If you don't want something circulated at all, don't upload it anywhere. If you don't want people using it for high-resolution purposes (e.g. in a magazine, or whatever), don't upload a high-res version. If you don't want someone using something without your permission, your only real recourse is copyright law (threaten to sue), not a technical fix, and even that does not give you 100% control over the image (there are fair use exceptions). --Mr.98 (talk) 20:54, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Google search

I know the answer to this and when someone tells me I will kick myself, but how do you search google if you want to exclude results from wikipedia. BigDunc 18:38, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know how to specifically exclude a site, but simply adding "-wikipedia" to the query has the same effect (rather more so, but if you're looking for sources in a universe uncontaminated by wikipedia, it's not a bad thing to also omit every page that even admits wikipedia exists from the search). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:41, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Google: -site:wikipedia.org whatYouWantToLookFor. Be sure to include the hyphen before "site:" or you will only get results from Wikipedia.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 20:35, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. BigDunc 19:37, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

November 2

blog-style website

I'd like to start a blog-style website, but I'm not sure which host would be right for what I have in mind. Specifically, I'd like a site that allows for very detailed categorizations of each post (sub-categories, easily make new categories, handle large quantities of categories, that kind of stuff). A setup that would allow me to automatically queue up multiple days of uploads would be nice. Adding pictures would be a bonus, but not a deal-breaker; this could be a completely text-only kind of thing. There seem to be dozens of different sites and it's hard to tell which one would be a good fit for me. Any suggestions? Matt Deres (talk) 02:23, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

WordPress can give you queued uploads, easy categories, large quantities of them, but is not so much about hierarchical sub-categories (and I might suggest that you probably don't need them—most sites don't). Can add pictures, etc. All for free on http://wordpress.com/ (you can migrate it to a private domain later if you want) and with loads of community-developed add-ons. Easy to set up. Give it a whirl! Let me suggest that 90% of a blog is just sitting down and writing it. Don't worry about the bells and whistles until you have actually proven to yourself you can stick with it for more than a week. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:47, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Content will not be a problem, I think :). Wordpress was the one I'd been thinking of, though the security problems (as raised on the article space) are a (minor) concern. I could do what I want to do without sub-categories, but it seemed an easy way of of dealing with what I'm planning. If it's not available, somehow I'll struggle on. Matt Deres (talk) 03:11, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

If you run it off of the Wordpress servers (e.g. wordpress.com hosting), the software will always be up to date, and the security will not be an active issue. For everything else, the update process is really easy. As for sub-categories... I would search around for a WordPress plug-in that did it. There probably is one. It is a very flexible, adaptable platform. (And on content... no one thinks it will be a problem, but it is usually the limiting factor. It takes a lot of time to write a good blog post, and people go through them pretty quickly... just speaking from experience! It is harder than it looks...) --Mr.98 (talk) 04:02, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, Wordpress it is unless someone pops by with something better in the next few hours. I don't doubt that most blogs fail from lack of content, but I'm not planning an opinion or diary style thing, but something more like the "Strange Maps" and "What Were They Thinking" blog-style sites (both of which run on Wordpress). I've got the first 200+ posts basically done except for some tweaking and organizing, so that will buy me a bit of time before I have to start scratching my head again. ;) Matt Deres (talk) 20:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Xbox 360 backwards compatability

Well, I downloaded the disc that makes my Xbox 360 able to play original Xbox games. However, when I put in my copy of True Crime: Streets of LA (subpar game but the only original Xbox game I have), a message appears (in six languages, mind you) telling me "This is an Xbox game disc. Please put it in your Xbox to start playing." Well, shouldn't have the disc I just installed to my Xbox 360 fixed that problem? 71.213.70.217 (talk) 03:18, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Note: This was moved from WP:VPM#Xbox 360 backwards compatability. Killiondude (talk) 03:25, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Not all games are backwards compatible. Check out the site Microsoft lists the backwards compatible games. Your game appears to be on there, but you should check a few things.

1. Do you have the latest backwards compatibility software?
2. Is the game an American copy? Is the Xbox an American Xbox? If the regions don't match, it causes issues.

The other option is to go [9] to the 360 compatibility FAQ or go here, [10] where your specific issue is addressed. I'd start with the bold link.

Nezzadar ^[SPEAK] 05:28, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Wait a minute, there's a disc? I thought it was just like a patch or something you automatically download with every system update. I was under the impression it was sort of an invisible DLC thing. Anakinjmt (talk) 06:30, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

If your 360 is on X-Box Live, then it should happen automatically. But a surprisingly large percentage of 360 owners (The Majority!) don't use Live. APL (talk) 16:58, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Er, you probably don't want to hear this, but confusing game discs with film DVDs was one of the last things my first 360 did before it threw up E74/1 red light. Try swapping round other discs and seeing if the same thing happens. It may just be that disc, but even if it seems that way, it may be the console anyway; my old one only ever got confused by Mass Effect. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 14:19, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Simple C question

I've been at this for over 4 hours and can't figure out why this isn't working. I'm trying to write a simple + - * / ^ calculator that starts at 0 and increments based on user input. When the user presses the character Q or q the calculator quits but it doesn't work (among other things). The while ( (operator != 'Q' ) || (operator != 'q') ) doesn't work, but if I remove the || it works fine, and another interesting thing is that if I make this condition an if statement rather than a while, it works. I can't figure out why this isn't working. Any suggestions? -- penubag  (talk) 06:02, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

For your while loop, go back and think it through again (or use Boolean algebra): what would happen if the user inputs "q"? What would this code (operator != 'Q' ) || (operator != 'q') return if operator == 'q'? (answer: 1) Is that correct? What if operator == 'Q'? (answer: still 1) --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:24, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, computer code. How I remember the days when I was a computer major trying to learn Java. How you frustrated me so and made me realize that I needed to be a Vulcan to understand your logic. Anakinjmt (talk) 06:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems correct to me. If the user inputs either a capital or lowercase Q, that program should output the total and quit. -- penubag  (talk) 06:33, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Does it? That code checks if the user input isn't a lowercase q OR if the user input isn't an uppercase Q. Let's try a truth table:

Input	A: !='Q'	B: !='q'	A OR B	A AND B
'a'	1	1	1	1
'q'	1	0	1	0
'Q'	0	1	1	0

Right now no matter what the user inputs your while loop condition will always be true because you have it as A || B, when it should be A && B (ie. loop while input isn't 'q' AND input isn't 'Q'). --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:50, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Aghhhh...I see it now. Negative logic hurts my brain. What I was originally thinking was "is operator Q or q". Thanks for the help; I've updated my code above and just have one more bug to fix. -- penubag  (talk) 07:12, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

This is exactly what De Morgan's laws stipulate. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:37, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

It's good for you to be getting practice with logic now, but in production code you might just say "while (tolower(operator) != 'q') ..." or similar. Also, you should indent each block so you can see the logical structure more easily. --Sean 12:49, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Separately, and opinions vary, but I find the following structure to be clearer:

int main()
{
    char operator;
    double valuetotal, aftervalue, initialvalue;

    initialvalue = 0;
    aftervalue   = 0;

    for (;;)
    {
        scanf("%c", &operator);

        if (tolower(operator) == 'q')
        {
            break; // exits the for loop
        }

        else if (operator == '+')
        {
            valuetotal= add_function( valuetotal);
            printf("The value so far is %f\n", valuetotal);
        }

        // other options ...

    }

    printf("The total is %f\n", valuetotal);

    return 0;
}

This changes the structure from your:

input
test
loop:
  test
  input
output

to:

loop:
  input
  test
output

and since you don't repeat yourself on the input operation, you only have to change it in one place if it changes. --Sean 13:02, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Sean, your code doesn't work properly. (but mine doesn't either). Your code works until I enter an operator it doesn't understand. It says "invalid operator", which it should, but then when inputting 'Q' or 'q' for quitting, it no longer works. -- penubag  (talk)

ffshrine (2)

ffshrine is finally back up (why did they even take it down just for donations?), but it still has a problem. The download links on that site do not work. I click to download a song, but it does not start up; I right-click to download a song, but it does not download. What is causing this? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 08:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Not familiar with that site. My first thought is that, if they shut down to encourage (or for lack of) donantions, then maybe it's a bandwidth issue? Downloads would logically be a big part of a site's bandwidth, I would think, and that can get pricey. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 19:56, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

wavelength???

can any one guide me how can i find wavelength of the colour by its image. 220.225.98.251 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 09:44, 2 November 2009 (UTC).

From a photo in a JPEG file? Short answer: you can't. Even if you take into consideration all the colour space stuff, all the JPEG artifacts and the inaccuracies of cameras, a camera is only designed to capture light as we see them. A pixel records brightness of 3 colours, it doesn't record the wavelength (colour) of the scene. How do you know if orange is really orange or if it's just a mixture of red and green light? That's the long version of "you can't". --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:36, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Conceivably, a multi-spectral image or a hyperspectral image could have sufficiently dense channel packing that it could useful for estimating particular wavelengths. However, conventional images (made on consumer cameras) produce only "red", "blue", and "green" channels - which are very vague, very broad ranges of wavelength sensitivities in each channel. You could give a very wide range of wavelengths which would activate each channel, by checking the technical specifications of your camera's filters or CCD sensor response; but at best this will narrow down to a few hundreds of nanometers wavelength. If you are attempting to do spectroscopy, a conventional 3-channel "color" image will not have the required information. Nimur (talk) 19:53, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

This Kodak CCD technology review goes over the color response and shows the wavelength-vs.-amplitude response in the sensor for a particular model of camera (the Kodak DCS 620x model). In the strict sense, when you have an image, what you know is the channel amplitude (not the wavelength). So you're trying to invert from RGB to amplitude-vs.-wavelength - in other words, "go backwards" from the data recorded in RGB form back to the physical wavelengths which triggered that response. You would need to set up an inversion problem to solve for the most-likely wavelength(s) that gave you a particular RGB or CMYK value in your final image. Whether this process will work depends on many factors - how much do you know about the image source; how orthogonal are the R/G/B channels; how underdetermined is your problem; but it could be done, and it might work for certain well-controlled image processing problems. Nimur (talk) 19:59, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

If you're not aware of it already, note that although light of a particular wavelength has a particular color, it is definitely not the case that everything of a particular color is emitting a particular wavelength. In fact for most colored objects the object is emitting a range of wavelengths. Indeed, two objects can be emitting two completely different wavelength profiles yet appear to be exactly the same color. Color vision is a complex topic, due in part to the fact that eyes aren't true spectrophotometers, but are much simpler Red/Green/Blue detectors (even that's not quite correct, as it's more yellowish-green/green/blueish-violet detector, where the yellowish-green and green detectors have some activity in the violet end, and the blueish-violet detector picks up some red), which the RGB in the JPEG/GIF/etc. is trying to approximate. Unless you know that the source is monochromatic (i.e. it's from a scientific instrument - in which case see the answers above), the easiest option is to just compare the color visually with a similar photograph of the visible spectrum - the whole thing will be inaccurate anyway. Something like File:NASA_Hydrogen_spectrum.jpg is probably what you're looking for as a comparator. Keep in mind, though, that some colors (purple, brown, pink, etc.) can't be represented by a single wavelength, and need a mixture of wavelengths to produce. -- 128.104.112.149 (talk) 22:45, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

As others have correctly said - you can't do this properly. Just about the nearest you could get would be to convert the image into HSV color space (Hue, Saturation, Value) - and to observe the hue of the HSV value. If you mapped 0 (red) to 620nm and a hue of maybe around 0.9 (violet-ish) to 400nm - then I suppose you'd be getting somewhere close to something kinda-sorta right. That might get you a pure color that would look to the human eye somewhat like the color in the image source...but that's incredibly error-prone and I couldn't recommend it for most purposes. SteveBaker (talk) 02:31, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Viceo converter

Are there any open-source video converter programs that require neither codecs nor registration? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 11:51, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

ffmpeg, also gstreamer via gst-launch, but ffmpeg is more straightforward to use. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 13:08, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

handbrake, avidemux —Preceding unsigned comment added by .isika (talk • contribs) 13:25, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

diode snap-off

j'aimerai savoir ce que c'est une diode snap-off? ses structures, utilisations, caractéristiques et fonctionnement —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.204.124.12 (talk) 13:57, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Translation: I would like to know what diode snap-off is? Its structures, uses, characteristics, and function. -- Nimur (talk) 20:11, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

See Step recovery diode -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:19, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

bots

what scripting language are they made from?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 14:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Assuming you mean web bots or Wikipedia bots. They can be made from just about any of them (and are aided by there usually being standard libraries that let you do routine tasks pretty easily, like parse web content). Python, perl, and PHP are pretty common for web bots. If you are interested in Wikipedia-specific bots, see Wikipedia:Bots, especially this section for description of the many different languages that can be easily used. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:15, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

rss

I need a program that'll ding or do something to let me know when an rss feed updates. Any suggestions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.201 (talk) 16:03, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I presume many of the things listed as supporting RSS at Comparison of feed aggregators can do this particularly if they are decidicated as opposed to being a web browser or some such. Having said that it appears Safari does have some notification plugin and Firefox [11] may also do notifications. Email clients with RSS support like Thunderbird would likely also support some sort of notification as they would for e-mail. The comparison page does include a column for 'tray notification' albeit most readers are listed as unknown Nil Einne (talk) 16:26, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I use Alertbear. F (talk) 04:10, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

twitter

is there a way to view/download all the tweets for a particular user? either through twitter.com or 3rd party app? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.201 (talk) 20:14, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

DOS printing

Question moved from Talk:How to print from dos to usb printer prefix:Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives. Astronaut (talk) 22:07, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I have some DOS applications that insist on printing to a parallel printer port. However, my new printer only has USB. Where can I find a cable that can do this? (There are lots of cables that connect the computer's USB port to a parallel printer port but I need the reverse.) Alternately, are there any drivers that can fool the DOS applications into thinking that they are printing to a parallel port when they are actually printing to the computer's USB port. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.196.224.106 (talk) 12:19, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

You don't need a cable; DOS does not recognize USB. Assuming you have Windows XP or above, let it do the work:

• Install the printer under Windows
• In the printer properties, share the printer with a logical name
• Capture LPT1 by opening a command prompt:
  • NET USE LPT1: \\<computer name>\<printer name> /PERSISTENT:YES

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:18, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Lossy compression

I'm practically terrified by it. Well, not terror...more of a creeping paranoia. I noticed a certain song of mine had a strange buzz in the background when I listened to it through the car speakers, and thus began the paranoia.

I'm starting to become concerned about my ~600 songs. They're either bought from the iTunes music store, ripped from CDs, or occasionally one downloaded (Touché! They were songs that could not possibly be bought!). I tend to be a perfectionist, and I can't stand the thought of my beloved music becoming crappier and crappier through the years. I've read through the article about lossless data compression, but I'm still not sure I fully understand. What exactly should I go about doing to ensure that my music doesn't degrade further?--The Ninth Bright Shiner 22:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

See Lossy compression. It's a nice thought, but lossy is not lossy over time, but lossy at the point of encoding and thereafter stable. However pretty much any audiophile will prefer CD or vinyl to MP3. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Playing the music will not result in further loss. No need to worry. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:30, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

O RLY? That's quite the relief. I could have sworn reading something to this extent, though...somewhere. I'm not quite an audiophile yet, but I do prefer quality. Would the truest-to-the-original copy of a file have to be from the file itself; i.e., actually play the original CD in the car as opposed to ripping it and burning a CD? And upon ripping a CD, what would be the action to take to save it losslessly? (Tounge-twister.)

And while we're on the subject, what of images and videos? Any advice there, such as regarding scanning or taking a video?

I sure am asking a lot, aren't I? The finer details of files mystify me, like quarks mystify someone who's just taken high school chemistry. Thanks!--The Ninth Bright Shiner 00:46, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

You only get loss when you compress and make a new file (basically). So when you make MP3s from CDs, you get some loss. You don't get any additional or cumulative loss just by listening to MP3s—the loss is a one-time affair (CD to MP3 = lossy compression). If you take the MP3s and make, say, AACs from them, you get loss (this is known as transcoding—converting from one format to another—and if you go to a lossy format, you get some loss). Every time you convert to a lossy format, you get loss. And indeed, transcoding can create a lot of loss, more than just making one file with a given number of loss, because the different algorithms are taking different chunks of the data out (they aren't taking advantage of previous algorithms' "savings").

Anyway, in most cases, there's a question of how much loss you can detect. If you have not-too-great speakers, a little loss will probably not be detectable. If you are a dedicated audiophile/hi fi dude, then maybe you care. Even in that instance, there are levels of compression and corresponding levels of loss. Personally I don't really have the ear or the equipment to distinguish between CD audio and 256kbps mp3s. But some people do, or claim to.

If you really don't want loss, you have use a lossless format, like FLAC. You can get programs that convert CDs to FLAC files and let you play FLAC files. They are HUGE files though—like, half a gigabyte for one CD. Still, some people go for them. Knock yourself out...! --Mr.98 (talk) 00:57, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

And there's probably too much to discuss about images and video, though Image file formats might be a place to start (also the not so great Container format (digital) - at the very least, there are the same lossy conundrums attaching to both topics. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:04, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Hey, with terabyte hard drives being churned out along with iPod Classics that could eat my own computer's hard drive, anything is possible! Although, is there any easy way to convert to lossless files that an iPod could play (i.e., Apple Lossless), or will it be needlessly complicated and riddled with caveats, like every other nitty-gritty file operation has been for me?

I'll poke around the articles for image and video compression, but they aren't that much concern. Thanks again everyone!--The Ninth Bright Shiner 01:26, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

In theory you should be able to convert lossless to lossless and have it still be lossless. Apparently Max can do this. Never used it myself, though. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:57, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure FLAC is more efficient than that, after all a CD is only 700MB max. My CDs compressed to FLAC are usually 200-300MB per CD. --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:00, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, maybe. I've looked at FLAC files on downloading sites and was amazed that it was basically half a gig per album. In general though I think we can just say that FLAC is about 10X more than high-quality MP3s. Which, again, is fine, if that's what you go for! --Mr.98 (talk) 13:20, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Windows 7 64 bit and Alienware integrated webcam driver

Hi there. Does anyone know whether there is a driver which will enable the integrated webcam in my Alienware m9750 (which came with XP) to work with my new 64 bit Windows 7? I can't navigate Alienware's awful customer support services. Cheers, SGGH ^ping! 23:57, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Its a "USB2.0 Camera" "Bison NB Pro" camera, whatever that means. Windows 7 knows that its there, and knows what it is. It lists it there under devices and printers, however it just shows a white box when I try to use it. SGGH ^ping! 00:05, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

November 3

Windows 7 32-bit & 64-bit DVDs the same?

Hi. I can download the images for Windows 7 for 32-bit and 64-bit. I was wondering if I need to download both images and burn them to two DVDs, or if one of them will be sufficient.

Also, I was wondering if the keys are interchangeable between 32-bit and 64-bit; i.e. if I have a key for 64-bit can I use it to install on a 32-bit computer, or vice versa? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.97.244.36 (talk) 01:28, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not our job on the Refdesk to encourage software piracy, so you're unlikely to get a great response here. By the way, you should know that any software you get from a torrent could have a Trojan horse like a keylogger installed and you'd never know. Comet Tuttle (talk) 01:34, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Why assume the OP is engaged in software piracy? For all you know s/he could be a MSDN or MSDNAA user. Getting infected by trojans and keyloggers is a risk all Windows users face, no matter where they get their software from. No, the 32 and 64 bit discs are different. F (talk) 04:05, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but the vast majority of pirated copies of windows available on the usual torrent sites (well, minus the pirate bay now) have these integrated into the install image. Its not as simple as running a virus scan like it is with a later, not as tightly integrated, infection. --69.110.14.74 (talk) 05:11, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a fair assumption to make because I've personally got access to Windows 7 through Volume Licensing, MSDN and TechNet Plus (basically all the legal ways you can download it) and they give you the serial codes for each version/architecture and it's all very clear for which version it will work with (for MSDN and TechNet the "Keys" link is literally right next to the "Download link") However, to answer the actual question, unlike Vista, Windows 7 uses the same codes for both 32-bit and 64-bit discs. ZX81 ^talk 05:01, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Bit Torrent automatic quitting

In BitTorrent there’s an option to quit when downloads have completed. I want to know whether there is any way in which I can make BitTorrent quit automatically when the downloads haven’t completed, but the downloading has stopped because of the scheduler. Thanks in advance! 117.194.231.6 (talk) 10:15, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

How to become a good (PHP) programmer?

As of now, I can write web applications with PHP skript and mysql database that are only a tiny bit complex, say only 5 tables and 10 pages. The way it is written is probably amateurish, with more number of functions than needed etc. It would be nice if I could write complex applications. Could you please say what theoretical and practical stuff I need to learn / do in order to become a good programmer?.

The only way to improve as a programmer, like all other things in life, is to do more of it. Jump into a larger project, something you don't quite understand. There are also books that talk about coding in general and aim to sharpen your abilities. I have not read any of them, personally. I have heard that Code Complete is considered quite good. But others will have their own opinions on that. In terms of theoretical things, understanding how to use arrays and classes helps a lot; understanding how to use PHP in conjunction with Javascript is rather important to many pages these days. Again, it is better to have a project in mind than to just read the manual page, of course. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:18, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Football Manager 2010

What specs would I need on a laptop/desktop to run the new Football Manager game with all leagues and maximum database and with high performance? How much would such a computer cost? 81.134.2.136 (talk) 11:43, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

The specs are:

Intel CPU - Pentium 4 3.0GHz AMD CPU - Athlon 64 4000+ Nvidia Graphics Card - Geforce 7600 GT 256MB ATI & Intel Graphics Card - Radeon X1800 Series 256MB RAM - 1.5 GB Hard Disk Space - 2.5 GB Direct X - 9

Apparently... more than I suspected for a management game. The 3 gig pentium 4 is a bit more demanding that I expected, but the graphics card isn't particularly cutting edge. You could purchase the parts from reputable online stores and build yourself a desktop computer that knock that game out of the park for about (excluding monitor and/or mouse etc.) £450. I would have suggested a ballpark laptop figure if you are buying one of £400-600. Use google to convert that to dollars if you live across the pond. SGGH ^ping! 12:21, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

How to protect a picture II

Follow-up question to: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing#How_to_protect_a_picture. OK, it is clear that you cannot protect a picture against being copied. However, what about embedding something in the picture, so that you'll know if someone copied it and uploaded it somewhere else? That wouldn't work against "print screen", but it would work against the casual user. I am asking not for commercial purposes, but for privacy purposes. My intention is not to protect my multi-media, but to avoid that someone take my picture from a social networking site and mess with it. 80.58.205.37 (talk) 11:50, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

You mean a watermark? SGGH ^ping! 12:22, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

No, I think they mean some kind of tracking device, so you could see who was using it. There is no such thing, sorry. There are invisible digital watermarks (like Digimarc), which are like regular watermarks but are invisible—that's about as close as it comes. Such a file will not report back to you though if it is being used and abused. Again, if you care about the privacy... don't upload it. You have no real control once it is out there in the world—it is easily copyable, editable, and so forth. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:59, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

How to download emails to HD from Windows Live Hotmail free account

I've searched on the web for this information and I've only found webpages that say this is possible even for the free account - they do not give step by step details, possibly because this has only become available recently. I use Windows Live Hotmail online - I might have dowbloaded and installed something relating to this but if so it does not make itself known. I am using WinXP Sp3 and IE8. So how do I actually do it please? I found something that said you should click on "Account", but I cannot find "Account" anywhere. Thanks. 78.151.90.163 (talk) 13:00, 3 November 2009 (UTC)